In the fifteen months since the launch of its e-strategy, the DfES and its agency Becta have been putting in place initiatives that will make the policy a reality in every school. The vision set out in the e-strategy goes far beyond simply using technology to make lessons more motivating or computerising school records; at its heart, there is an aspiration to make ICT central to the process of education in a way it’s never been so far.

It’s a level of ambition similar to that of the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT), but the approach being taken is very different – and so far a lot less controversial. Whilst NPfIT is top-down and centrally-driven, with a relatively small number of very large ICT contracts, the DfES e-strategy is much more about exhorting individual schools to use their delegated responsibilities and their budgets, to do the right thing.

The benefits of the centrally-driven NPfIT approach are clear: large and sophisticated ICT systems designed from inception to work with one another. The challenges are clear too, as any one who has followed the fortunes of iSoft, a supplier of medical software systems, is only too aware.

Making the e-strategy’s delegated approach work well is equally challenging though, with issues both for the intended users of the ICT systems and for suppliers.

First of all, you need to get school leaders interested and on board, no easy task. If ICT experts are still locked in debate about exactly what schools need, it’s not surprising that it’s tough to articulate to busy front-line teachers what the benefits of the e-strategy are. Make no mistake, there will be benefits; however, with no ring-fenced funding for something that’s not going to drive an immediate increase in a schools position in the league tables, there needs to be some hard work put into explaining why it’s so important.

Then, and this is the really difficult bit, the tapestry of separately procured ICT systems needs to be made to work together; and, as anyone who has tried to glue an LEA portal system to a school administration database knows, that’s hard.

With Becta currently working on a framework agreement for Learning Platforms, and the DfES developing a strategic technologies programme, the ICT landscape for schools for the next decade is being defined. An essential part of this landscape is interoperability standards that allow software and content from many different suppliers to work together; if we’re not going to buy big integrated systems, we need to ensure the smaller, separate parts can work together.

Setting these standards isn’t just a job for the policy makers – the educational ICT community needs to work together, with policy makers taking a firm stand and demanding that standards are adhered to. We’re already seeing things get a bit fractured; where’s the requirement that BBC jam content must interwork with Learning Platforms for instance? It’s time for some clear guidelines.

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