Dear Susan …

You know, I totally forgot, this morning, to post up the by now traditional Friday Question Set.

All I can tell you is that I’m blaming my router!!

Well …

I’ve now sent the old one back, and received a new one.

Here’s hoping I don’t get that same IP address problem …

But let’s move on, shall we … ?

I’ve got to admit, I’ve actually — and finally — had something approaching a final response from Susan Carragher, who’s in charge of Essex County Council’s Adult Learning and Libraries department: the department responsible for the IT provision in Essex libraries.

Here’s what she said …

Dear Mr Downie

Thank you for your recent correspondence and blogging with regard to the use of IT in Libraries. Please find below our collated response.

Let me first give you some background on the service Essex County Council provides for the residents of Essex and also clarify some of the statements in your correspondence.

• ECC currently has 73 Libraries across Essex where we provide open IT services. Across these sites we have 619 computers all with a Microsoft XP operating system, Microsoft Office software as well as other software such as Adobe reader, WinZip and Visio viewer. 464 of these computers are for use on the public network by Library customers. 155 of these computers are used for booking items in and out of Libraries. The Libraries network is completely separate, both physically and logically, from the ECC corporate network so there is no risk of events that affect one network crossing to the other.
• The content filtering of the internet service is provided by E2BN. E2BN are the Learning Grid for the East of England and regional provider of the National Education Network. E2BN supplies and hosts the proxy server for routing all internet traffic. The content filtering is similar to that received by all Schools within Essex and therefore sufficiently complex to reduce the risk of inappropriate material or files being accessed via a Library computer. Their website is http://www.e2bn.org/ should you wish to know what this organisation provides.
• The current library booking system is called Netloan and at this time Netloan is a Windows-only platform. Further, I can advise that Netloan have no plans scheduled to develop a client for Mac OS-X in the pipeline at this time. So if ECC were to move to Apple Mac’s we would have to replace our existing booking system at a potentially considerable cost.
• Currently libraries use the product ‘Secure to Lock’ and ‘Win Select’ to apply security settings and policies, unfortunately by using this software some new USB flash drives are not recognised and therefore do not work. Library staff, if available can use these USB Flash Drives on their Essex County Council corporate computers but only in ‘read only’ mode, otherwise if they opened them in ‘write’ mode the corporate media encryption solution (which is CheckPoint’s PointSec Protector removable media encryption) would encrypt the USB Flash Drive.
• I can confirm that we do not use Ubuntu anywhere on the ECC network and that ECC is not considering any changes currently to the existing OS for Libraries.
• Unfortunately Libraries are not classed as learning establishments but are in fact part of the Local Authority services. Essex has attempted many times to take advantage of these types of discounts, but unfortunately we have been unsuccessful.
• Essex County Council has an arrangement which utilises the existing OGC Catalist Framework to give Essex Authorities beneficial core pricing when purchasing Hewlett-Packard computers, and therefore we can purchase them at a far reduced price compared to an Apple Mac.
• The current computers in Libraries were supplied via a partnership in place from August 2002 to February 2010 with BT Global Services. At the time of installation they were our Strategic Partner, used for all IT procurement and services within Essex County Council.

Over the coming months there will be significant changes to the IT services provided at all our libraries with some exciting services yet to be marketed.

1. We are currently upgrading every Library internet connection to a minimum 2Mbps speed, in some cases we will be implementing up to 10Mbps (Chelmsford/Colchester and other bigger Libraries). This upgrade will be more cost beneficial to Essex County Council as we move from an outdated product which is no longer supplier (MetroVPN) to an MPLS network supplied by Siemens.
2. Free public WIFI is going to be made available to all Library users so they can easily bring in their own laptop and take advantage of free internet access. The wireless solution we are installing is straightforward and we will be providing user information in our libraries to guide wireless users. Library staff will help facilitate access to wireless connections but they are not trained or insured to carry out diagnostics or modifications to privately owned equipment so we do not guarantee to resolve all technical queries which might arise.
3. Starting in May 2010 we will be running a programme of upgrades to the build on every Library computer. The only additional cost to Essex for this work is engineer time to carry out the work, which we have estimated to be 4-6 weeks. Each computer will be reimaged to a new software suite using existing Windows XP licensing but moving from local security settings to an Active Directory Group Policy set up. Updates will be delivered through WSUS server present on the network and remote installations will be facilitated through Microsoft SCCM, thus making changes in the future easier to deliver remotely.The complete list of software is on the attached document
4. As a result of this reimage you will notice a dramatic decrease in the number of errors occurring when customers use USB flash drives. This trend will continue as we will be able to apply driver updates and patches more efficiently and effectively over the new upgraded network and using Group Policy and SCCM.
5. The re-image is making better use of what we have available and not incurring any further license/software costs to Essex County Council.
6. We will also be replacing all 693 CRT monitors with new flat screen monitors therefore reducing significantly the amount of energy used at our libraries, the amount of space required and also improving the computer image quality for all users.

Finally we will be working with our internal IS specialists to determine the future viability of using virtualisation in order to deliver virtual desktops using technologies such as client Hypervisors. As you can see from the work already completed and the programme of work ongoing Essex County Council strives to provide an excellent IT service in all its Libraries and we are making continued commitments to provide this service for years to come.

Susan Carragher.

Hmmm …

There’s good and bad, mixed in there …

For starter’s, the fact the actual speed — and bandwidth, presumably — are to increase, is no bad thing. Neither’s the fact that Wi-Fi is to be introduced into ECC libraries.

But allow me to point out that she says ‘Library staff will help facilitate access to wireless connections but they are not trained or insured to carry out diagnostics or modifications to privately owned equipment so we do not guarantee to resolve all technical queries which might arise.’

Again, that’s good.

But I can’t help but feel that there may — may — be problems, there, if it turns out anyone needs specialist software or hardware to access that network: I doubt it, in this day and age, but …

I’m must also be honest, and confess that something else she said, worried me slightly.

In one of her bullet points, Ms Carragher says ‘Essex County Council has an arrangement which utilises the existing OGC Catalist Framework to give Essex Authorities beneficial core pricing when purchasing Hewlett Packard computers, and therefore we can purchase them at a far reduced price compared to an Apple Mac.’

But fails to give an example of the price, per unit, that they can get, compared to the price of — say — a low end Mac Mini. Especially considering that the Mini will happily take up a lot less room — and energy — than many computers.

Nor does she seem to have realised that (a) Hewlett Packard are one of the few companies to offer substantial Linux and Ubuntu support, or that (b) there’s various types of virtualisation and emulation software around that may well be able to run the Netloan software she mentions, regardless of the actual OS.

Granted I wouldn’t know how it works, fully: I’m no expert, can’t claim to be, and fully expect to have various technically minded friends and relations to point out any problems.

But, having installed the open source Wine* emulator on various friends computers, I know that it’s something to look at.

You can bet your bum I’ll be mailing her back.

* Designed to emulate — obviously — a version of Windoze, if needed.