Fergus Rose, ACS International Schools' Advancement Director, looks ahead to the future of IT across our schools.
The future of IT at ACS International Schools
Fergus Rose, Advancement Director at ACS International Schools, looks ahead to a new IT strategy.
Since the summer, the IT team has been working extremely hard to apply learning across our IT systems as services have been restored. Learning from the loss of IT services last summer has also shaped the delivery of the major projects that were originally planned in the summer and were rescheduled, including during the autumn and winter holiday breaks. Topmost in our minds has been the aim to minimise disruption to school operations and to ensure the work is completed securely and safely with strong cyber security protection so our systems and data are robust.
The team and what they do
The central IT team look after all of our IT infrastructure, networks, cyber security and devices. A lot goes on behind the scenes to manage cloud and on premises infrastructure and servers, make networks available, along with supporting all the devices and equipment our students and staff use. The central team is located in the UK, with three based at ACS Doha. Essentially, their critical work supports and enables our educators to be able to deploy technology to help them do their jobs in teaching and learning. Their work also provides critical IT services to all the non-teaching functions such as HR, Finance, Facilities, Admissions and Marketing and the many other areas important for ACS to operate.
The team is flexible and base themselves in our schools, as needed, depending on the plans and projects. The most visible, of course, is the IT Service delivery team, who move from campus-to-campus to support the schools, be it new equipment for students, or refurbished classrooms and teaching spaces. What you may not know is that the other central IT team members also move from campus to campus to support the IT programme. Central IT works closely with each school, especially with the dedicated Digital Teaching and Learning Coordinator at each campus.
Parents are most interested in how their child is using IT in the classroom and in the education setting. At its simplest, we have our laptops and iPads that we make available. They have to be on a device management system, software apps have to be deployed and they’ve got to work on the network and be secure.
All of this is managed by central IT. It’s the teachers and students who bring that device to life with what they do with it. It’s like a partnership. Naturally, most people in the organisation don’t think about or see most of the enabling IT; they focus on their devices and how they are using it.
The central team manages the hardware and software and connections for our iPads and specialist teaching areas. For example, at Hillingdon, there’s a really interesting new Film Animation and Gaming course. Our central IT team has helped enable the hardware and software for the programme to launch.
Building forward better
Looking ahead to our new IT strategy, our primary strategic initiatives are what we’re doing on our infrastructure, networks and what we’re doing for our users. A big theme is strengthening cyber security and business resumption. Another big theme from our Building Forward Better IT strategy is about removing complexity and improving standardisation across ACS, which builds greater resilience.
On-premise vs cloud
You may have heard these terms relating to where servers are located. Along with most organisations, our strategy has been to shift more towards cloud-based servers, yet we will always have a hybrid model of cloud-based and on-premise. There are some reasons why you want to keep things on premises, such as for printers. If every time someone wants to print locally, they have to send it up to a server in the cloud, and back down to the printer, that takes time, so you have ‘latency’ issues, i.e. it takes a long time! Also, you’re needlessly sending up a lot of data up to the cloud and down from the cloud. That all costs money. So, in this case it’s much better to have a local server.
Another example is students working in labs with massive media files. To send those files up to a cloud server and down again, it’s slow and expensive.
Cyber security
We had Cyber Essentials as a quality mark from the National Cyber Security Centre, and we’re heading towards Cyber Essentials Plus – a higher level and externally audited.
We have already implemented things such as boundary firewalls and internet gateways, secure configuration, good access control, malware protection and patch management. The other big thing we’ve implemented for security is Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) for all of staff.
Phishing emails are more prevalent than ever, and we have to be extra vigilant. That’s why all staff are now using 2FA for their devices email and access to certain services. This is the extra level of security that you may typically expect to see when you use banking apps.
Above all, please be cyber secure, not just at work but in your personal life too, so an important message remains that each one of us needs to be vigilant. If in doubt, do not click.
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