ICT Update

9th May 2007

Our apologies for the absence of updates over the last 3 weeks. The IT Services Team have been flat out getting the tender documents ready for the new Schools ICT Services contract and we have been unable to provide our regular updates.

Personnel Changes
John Edwards will be leaving IT Services at the end of the week to explore other opportunities in the IT Industry. John has made a wonderful contribution to IT services in education for the last 15 years with his most recent success being the rollout of the ntschools.net environment. I would like to thank John for the leadership and expertise he has provided in getting our services to the excellent position they are in today.

Bob Creek will be joining IT Services as the new Director of Infrastructure. Bob has 20 years experience in IT systems management and support and has a wealth of knowledge on all aspects of IT Service provision in the NT.

NT Schools Portal Rollout
The rollout of the new NT Schools portal has commenced with training for school portal administrators being scheduled throughout May and June. The initial focus will be on urban schools with remote schools to be scheduled later in the program. Dianne Sullivan and Robyn Hauser are leading the rollout and should be contacted if you require any information.

Schools ICT Services Tender
Tenders for the new contract to support school IT services will be issued on 17 May with the successful vendor to be selected by the end of August. This will allow time to transition to the new arrangements when the current contract expires in 28 December. The new contract will be similar to the current service model where DEET owns the hardware and provides first level support in schools using ICT coordinators. This is a large contract with a total value of $30 M over five years and we anticipate strong competition for the work from the ICT industry.

ePass Update
Nearly there but not quite! IT Services has been using ePass since the end of March to create, modify and deactivate all ntschools user accounts and reset passwords. This pilot rollout has allowed us to fully test the system and users should have noticed much faster turn around times for account requests.

The only outstanding issue is the lack of reverse password synchronisation which means that windows passwords reset by end users using {<ctrl> <alt> <delete>} are not passed back to the ePass server. We hope to have this fault fixed in the next 2 weeks and will then pass the management of ePass out to schools and end users.

Bandwidth for Remote Schools
It is now apparent that our new environment combined with increased use of the web and online learning has exceeded the current capacity and we have bottle necks for most remote schools with satellite services being particularly affected.

In the short term we are seeking the costs from Telstra to increase the total satellite bandwidth, piloting the use of the IDL network and data compression systems (provided by Optus) to supplement school bandwidth and make it feasible to use IDL during school hours. Tests will be conducted in a number of remote schools this week and if successful the service will be extended to other remote schools experiencing bandwidth congestion.

In the longer term (12 months) we are investigating a new satellite service which should provide much better performance.

Power Supply Problems for Remote Schools
We have been experiencing high rates of failure of the uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) used by the servers in remote schools which appear to be caused by fluctuations in the power supply. The issues have been escalated to Corporate Express and Hewlett Packard who are providing the warranty service. We are awaiting an adequate response.

In the meantime we are looking at purchasing high quality power filters to reduce power fluctuations and therefore the UPS failure rate. The use of filters will also mean servers and networks can be powered directly from the mains power if the UPS fails.

Dell Keyboard problems
Just a reminder that we have a supply of new Dell keyboards to replace any that are faulty. Dell has identified a manufacturing fault and will replace all keyboards that have problems however we can supply them in bulk if you are experiencing ongoing issues. Please cut the cables off faulty keyboards and dispose of them so they don’t get mixed up with the new ones.