BECTA (the body responsible for IT in compulsory education in the UK) has come under attack over their approach to open source on two fronts.
An early day motion in the commons, supported by 1 in 5 backbench MPs said:
That this House [...] expresses concern that Becta and the Department for Education and Skills, through the use of outdated purchasing frameworks, are effectively denying schools the option of benefiting from both free and open source software and the value and experience small and medium ICT companies could bring to the schools market.
A report by Sirius found that:
Becta cannot account for over £200m of taxpayer's money spent on software for schools
Sirius is hardly an independent third party in this, but their figures are based on FOI act requests and seem to add up. What Sirius want is a change in the way IT money is allocated so that more open source gets used.
