Activity 2: Financing an ICT Project activity
 Module 7: Implementation & Financial Issues

Overview & Instructor Notes

The purpose of this activity is to make initial estimates of the costs associated with the implementation of an ICT in education policy. The specific focus is on the cost of the purchase and installation of the hardware and software, the teacher training to use the equipment and the costs of technical support.

Prior to this module the policy discussions likely have been at a fairly high level. This activity causes the participants to consider the financial implications for their policy decisions.

The figures used are estimates that should be adjusted to fit the situation in host country before this activity is undertaken.

The Financing an ICT Project Worksheet should be handed out to participants along with the instructions for the activity. This worksheet can be used to calculate the cost of the project.
The worksheet is provided here as a document but should also be made available in the computer lab as an Excel document.

Participants can use the computer lab and the Excel document to make their calculations.

This activity can take from 30 minutes to 1 hour.

Activity

Instructions

The government has decided to implement 4000 PCs in 200 secondary schools distributed across the country over the next 2 years. They want to provide a local area network in each school and access to the Internet. In each school one PC and one printer will be used for administrative purposes and the rest will be for student and teacher use.

1. The average cost of each Desktop PC is $2,000 US - this includes network cards and modems if required, but not networking.
   
2. The average cost of a server is $4,000.
   
3. A local area network is required in each school - installed cable costs including hubs, wiring trays, cable, design, etc. is $5/meter.
   
4. The cost to install a wide area network and to provide an Internet connection at each school is $7,000 for each kilometer of cable needed (this includes engineering, construction, cable, distribution panels, etc.)
   
5. Productivity software for each PC will cost $500.
   
6. The schools range from 10 to 40 teachers - total number of teachers involved is 4000.
   
7. 20 schools are in remote areas with no telecommunications capabilities.
   
8. All teacher and administrative computing capability is beginner.

Your task is to:

1. List all of the hardware, software, and infrastructure requirements for the project and estimate the costs where possible.
   
2. Identify the cost areas where estimates are required.
   
3. List the human resources requirements to have the project completed in 2 years.

As part of your task, do the following:

1. List all of the functions and tasks that are required to deliver the service.
   
2. Estimate the unit cost and the total cost of each activity. The units can be per piece of equipment, per staff member, per kilometer, etc.
   
3. For each activity estimate the number of units that will be required; the number of pieces of equipment, the number of people, the number of kilometers traveled, the number of kilometers of wide area networking needed.
   
4. Refer back to previous work and to the spreadsheet [pdf 99KB] to develop the list of activities required.