For producers and consumers of information, the Business Consequences of the current situation are that they have to work harder to stay in the same place. The gap between expectations and the sector’s ability to respond is widening. There is a real risk that the digital divide — the gap between the information rich and information poor — will also widen. ESAF needs to give as much weight to enhancing sector capabilities and processes as it does to providing ICT tools.
- Time
- Current systems and processes are rigid and slow to react to changing needs in a changing, increasingly diverse world.
- Cost
- The current environment results in a lot of rework and duplicated effort to reprocess the same information for different purposes.
- Quality
- We are unable to offer the service quality our customers want because we don’t have the necessary back end service quality from other information providers.
- Scope
- We can’t offer the range of information services we want (and our customers expect), because we can’t find and get the information we need.
- Value
- Inability to access and analyse the full range of available information leads to poor advice and lowers the quality of decisions.
- Access
- The different levels of technical infrastructure in schools distort the learning experience in favour of rich, urban schools.
- Usage
- Copyright holders set conditions of use and are reluctant to allow open, web-based access to (and re-purposing of) digital content.
- Commitment
- Competition in the tertiary sector (driven by EFTS-based funding) makes it hard to reach agreement on shared systems and standards.
The fundamental shift required is from systems set up largely for administrative convenience — institution-centred — to information organised around communities of interest — learner-centred.
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