My April Fool today

This morning I sent an email to everyone at work:

To: All Staff
Subject: Paying for internet access after Easter

As you’re aware, money is tight next year. To make things worse, our school internet connection costs have increased – mainly because we are now metered, and have to pay-per-site rather than per-month. It’s a bit like having Pay As You Go rather than a monthly contract on your mobile.

In consultation with a working party of staff, it has been decided that the best course of action is to charge departments for their internet usage, in the same way that they are charged for their photocopying.

Department heads will receive a department charge report once a week by email, like the current printing reports. These will contain logs of site visits, by whom, and when, and how long each member of staff spent on those sites, as well as the costings.

This is actually beneficial in other ways:

1) Internet access speed will be increased as fewer people will be using it
2) The internet will be used for non-work purposes less often

In time, we will also be quotaing student accounts, so they can only spend a certain amount of time on the internet each week.

Actual costings are a bit complicated, as they vary from site to site. There is a categorisation system called “Olaf-Ripol Categorisation” for websites (a bit like the Dewey Decimal system for books), and different categories will be charged at different rates. Sites like the BBC will be cheaper than international sites, for example, and most educational sites will be in the cheapest category. Thankfully access to Fronter will remain free.

I’ve been doing a dummy run of this for the last few weeks, so will be able to provide you with more information and some example cost sheets by the end of the week.

I hope that all made sense!