The DET has revealed that it has agreed with the NSW Teachers' Federation that the system needs extra testing "to ensure that issues such as impact on staff and educational benefits are adequately assessed" before students will be allowed to use it.
According to the DET, the system is currently in its pilot phase with the selected vendor. At this stage it is unclear whether the cost and time of additional testing were in scope -- however the department has indicated that the additional testing was not within contractual terms with the vendor.
DET said that "the duration of the [additional testing] phase is still being negotiated".
The project has already been through a series of delays as it survived several ministerial reshuffles. The government first made a solid commitment to the plan in November 2000 -- then included it within its June 2001 budget initiatives.
At the time the department believed that the e-mail addresses could be rolled out within 12 months. However, citing "the need for probity", within that time the government only managed to complete the tender process for the project.
In June 2002, former NSW Education Minister, John Watkins earmarked spending of AU$82 million dollars over four years on the project.
Now it appears that government is facing more headaches as it tries to convince teachers the system is ready for use.
Two weeks ago the NSW Teachers Federation hinted that its Internet service provision oversight committee expressed concerns about the new system's ability to cope with traffic demands generated by schools.
The NSW DET is currently aiming for a 2Mbps standard bandwidth access in most schools by 2004. The department claims the new standard would be adequate for e-mail but conceded that it would have to introduce bandwidth rationing measures to ensure that Web traffic was kept under control.
One NSW information technology teacher, who could not be named, referred to the project as "crazy".
"DET-provided e-mail for all is stupid, wasteful of resources and totally unnecessary. Management of such a huge project is crazy. Any such setup needs to be managed locally within schools," he said.
According to the teacher, most students already have Webmail addresses and transferring responsibility for managing responsible use of those should remain with parents.
He said schools had already had to ban access to hotmail and MSN to eliminate "banal messaging to and fro".
He said the biggest problem is not giving kids e-mail addresses, but providing them with after-hours access to the Internet such as via a school-funded dialup service.
"Equity is the issue. Kids without access to home computers, colour printers and internet access do suffer in a competitive educational environment... [they] shy away from these electives if access at home is not encouraged. These are the kids who most need to do computing electives," added the teacher.
