According to a recent report from The Columbian, an audit released last month by the Washington State Auditor’s Office found that Battle Ground Public Schools failed to maintain proper records of how Chromebooks and other services funded by the Emergency Connectivity Fund were distributed to students in need of tech for online and hybrid learning. Elsewhere at Batavia City Schools in New York, officials could not account for 229 computers and 62 tablets when the district was audited by the state, a report last year from The Buffalo News said.
Considering the challenges that come with managing more devices, schools have started making more use of data analytics software tools and inventory management programs such as SchoolStatus, SysAid and Incident IQ, among others, to help keep tabs on their tech assets and plan their IT budgets accordingly. However, Emily Stapf, a customer success manager at Incident IQ, said many K-12 IT teams still go without much help when it comes to self-auditing their tech assets and managing devices. She said they instead rely on tools like Excel or Google Spreadsheets to help with auditing, which can be more cumbersome and prone to human error.
“This type of [manual] solution requires frequent attention, and as demand on your IT department rises, IT teams have less time to dedicate to inventory control and spreadsheet maintenance. Furthermore, these manual solutions are not built to scale, and as schools and districts continue to grow with new technology and digital transformations, IT teams need a solution that can evolve and scale,” she wrote in an email to Government Technology. “Highly manual spreadsheets can cause inconsistent tracking, which leads to inaccurate data. In addition, the limited visibility into devices that inventory spreadsheets provide inhibits IT teams from making important decisions such as when a device needs maintenance or when to repurchase devices.”
Aside from the adoption of asset management tools like the Incident IQ platform for tech auditing, she said, schools should audit their devices regularly throughout the year and during the summer, rather than waiting until the last few weeks of the school year when teachers, staff and students are most busy.
“Doing audits while school is not in session is key — like summer break. Conducting audits during summer break enables school districts to track the number of devices and the status of each, and plan ahead for any devices that might need maintenance or need to be replaced in the next year,” she said. “Furthermore, to help IT maintain accurate device counts, identify missing or stolen student devices, and pinpoint devices that need repairs or replacements, districts should conduct regular audits throughout the school year ... .[C]onducting regular audits can help make a federal audit less stressful, removing the need to scramble to provide accurate information.”
Consortium for School Networking Chief Operating Officer Robert Duke wrote in an email to Government Technology that districts should carefully evaluate their “refresh cycle” for technology infrastructure and apply budgetary forecasting accordingly. Citing CoSN’s 2022 ed-tech leadership survey, he said more than three quarters of devices using school networks are district-owned, with only 4 percent of IT leaders reporting that school-owned devices comprise less than 50 percent of devices in their respective districts as more and more schools move to a one-to-one model. Duke said schools can consider publishing and maintaining a list of supported devices to help ensure adequate IT life cycle support, adding that schools can also implement automated inventory management systems for all devices and parts used to repair them.
“As the use of devices grow, so will the need for a robust system for quickly resolving software and hardware issues,” he said. “Unsupported devices can be used at the site but should not be maintained and [should be] removed when no longer viable … . The district should carefully evaluate its refresh cycle for technology infrastructure and apply budgetary forecasting.”
In an email to Government Technology, Eric Benedict, the instructional technology user manager for Madison Metropolitan School District in Wisconsin, agreed that schools should consider scheduling audits around replacement cycles for technology. He added that adopting asset-management tools like Incident IQ’s can help steer the process.
“When auditing student devices, some districts stop at, ‘Does this device have an assigned owner?’ Ownership is just one part of the equation — schools should go one step further and audit whether devices are being used. Modern asset-management systems that provide data on device usage can help answer this question, ensuring that devices that are assigned to students are actually being used by those students,” he wrote. “Many school districts are still working through inventory issues from COVID-19. Mid-sized districts might have had thousands of devices shipped in during the height of COVID, and many districts are still working to get their arms around that sudden influx of technology that appeared in classrooms basically overnight.”
