Abstract:
In 2016 Victoria’s IBAC held a public inquiry into the failure of Ultranet, the state department of education’s learning management system that operated between 2010 and 2013.IBAC’s Operation Dunham raised questions about the structure, culture and accountability of the Department of Education and Training. The behaviour of senior bureaucrats involved in the system’s procurement, together with the eye-watering sums that were involved—project outlays are estimated at up to $240 million—attracted substantial media coverage, seriously damaging the Department’s reputation. This paper looks beyond issues of personal corruption that were the inquiry’s focus to examine the policy, technological and pedagogical contexts that framed the Ultranet’s design, implementation and, ultimately, failure. The Ultranet was vigorously promoted by policy entrepreneurs for its capacity to deliver across—and indeed to integrate—a range of policy objectives, including school-based innovation and collaboration, student management, parental engagement, and the enhancement of teaching and learning skills and resources.We argue that the project mobilized a ‘schools of the twenty-first century’ discourse, particularly in its promise of the ‘transformative potential’ (Selwyn 2011, p.58) of digital technologies in all facets of schooling. This worked, in the prevailing bureaucratic environment, to shield it from effective prudential and project management oversight.We ask, where did the enthusiasm come from? How was it generated, and circulated? What assumptions and arguments about education, the conduct of public service management, and so-called ‘digital futures’ was the Ultranet built on? We argue the project has its roots in pre-digital debates about devolution and marketisation which were characteristic of late-twentieth-century neo-liberal thinking on ‘enterprise’ in public sector management (du Gay 2004). The development of digital ICTs and networks provided new ways of mobilizing teacher labour and connecting homes and schools, while conferring positional advantage on schools and teachers (‘navigators’ and ‘champions’) at the leading edge of the digital education revolution.However when we look through the IBAC’s inquisitorial lens the Ultranet project clearly rested on problematic assumptions about the digital literacy and connectivity of parents and teachers, and the viability of a technology-based response to risk and privacy embodied in a ‘closed’ network, that compromised the venture from its inception. Paul du Gay (2004) ‘Against “Enterprise” (but not against ‘enterprise’, for that would make no sense), Organization, 11 (1), pp.37-57.Neil Selwyn (2011) Education and Technology: Key Issues and Debates. London & New York, Continuum Publishing.Main Contact: Philip Dearman - 0409682622