These questions were drafted in order to empower school leaders to take greater ownership of the key strategic area of IT in schools.- If there was a major fire in the server room, how long would it be before each of these services could be restored: email, telephones, school MIS and accounts?
- If a generous donation of £250,000 was given to the school specifically for IT developments (in addition to the normal budget) what would you recommend we spent it on, and what would be the advantages for the school and end users (Pupils, Staff, Parents)?
- If your budget was suddenly cut by 50%, how could you cope, and what would be the effects on the School and the end users?
- What would be the effect of our main Internet connection being severed by a JCB somewhere? What services would we lose? Have we any backup systems in place, or would they have also been severed by the same JCB?
- Can you show me any records of the systems' reliability over the past 12 months? Do you regard the reliability as acceptable? If not, how could we improve it and how much would it cost?
- What might happen if a major incident occurs while you (or any one specific member of your staff) are away on holiday abroad for 2 weeks?
- How many individuals are sufficiently privileged administrators that they can see my (the Head's) documents, emails, etc.?
- If a pupil got hold of a staff password, and started using it, how would we ever know, and how long might it take to find out?
- Can you retrieve a file which was last seen one month ago, and how long would it take to retrieve?
- For each member of your technical staff (including yourself) what would be the immediate effect on the running of the system if they suddenly (with no notice) left? What specific tasks would it be difficult for the others on your team to perform, and how long might it take to recover fully from the loss? Is there adequate documentation to minimise such a problem?
These questions were drafted by the ISC IT Strategy Group in 2009.
