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Content Filtering – who’s in control? – a potted history. #EDUScotICT

I have noted a number of references to Internet Content filtering in the EDUScotICT discussion to date.  Comments seem to imply that Glow and Content filtering are in some way the same thing.  The following comments are intended to clarify the position and express some of my own views on this topic.

The History
I can recall the days when Schools were first connected to the internet directly via an Internet Service Provider (ISP).  The ISP was often specialized in Education and so was branded an “Education ISP”.  Early on, it was realized and generally agreed, that pupils needed be protected from some content on the internet so Education ISPs typically provided a filtered service this was sometimes referred to as a Walled Garden.

When the SSDN Interconnect (Glow Interconnect) was introduced, UKERNA (now JANET(UK)) pointed out that the connections to Local Authorities would be based on and equivalent to an unfiltered internet feed – in other words an open connection to the Internet.  It would become the responsibility of the LA to manage its own security policies by means of its own firewall.  As each LA was connected to the interconnect, it set up and managed its own firewall/internet filter.  In some cases the internet filter was provided to the LA by their ICT managed service provider.  This later scenario opened up some interesting issues which I don’t intend to explore in this post.

Is Content Filtering part of the Glow service?

Internet content filtering was a requirement of the original Glow functional specification, but the National Filter service as specified was never implemented.

Why was the National Filter never Implemented?

For a number of reasons it was not possible to agree a solution during the original negotiation phase and some budget was held over to help cover the cost of this service early in the contract period.

Detailed discussions were held with the Glow Contractor and proposals were put forward for a National Filter solution in which there would be a national base filter, subject to the agreement of all LA’s, and then each Local Authority could take responsibility for their own filter policies and manage them on a day-to-day basis as an extension to the national core filter.   This proposed system was capable of supporting time-of-day exceptions, and allowed filter policies to be added and associated with individual users or groups of users based on the Glow SSO service.  Each local authority would have had white and black lists which they could edit and manage locally.

LTScotland took the decision NOT to implement the solution on the basis that it was too costly despite the fact that analysis of individual LA costs (at the time) showed that a national solution would be more cost-effective and provide increased functionality.  Some LAs had at the time been holding back on upgrading their local filter service in expectation of the National Filter coming in to play.

It may well be that the same economy of scale could be achieved today if the matter of the national filter was to be revisited.

So what is the current position?

Each Local Authority has continued to implement its own filter solution (hardware and software) and sets its own policies regarding what content should be blocked or allowed to enter the LA network.  Some LAs will provide a mechanism where there are different filter policies for different times of the day and in some cases policies can be applied for different user type.  In no case will the filter policy being applied to the user’s session be connected in any way with their Glow User credentials – but the policy may be linked to the user’s network identity (the ID and password (PWD) used to access the LA network).

When a user leaves his/her place of work (school/office etc) they will subsequently connect via their home network or some other public access point such as library or community centre etc.   When at home, LA filter will have no effect on their access to the internet however some public places my also offer access through the filter service this could include public libraries and community centres which are managed by the LA.

Why do we filter content sources hosting useful education resources?

 This is of course the consequence of decisions which LAs have made about filtering.  I do not intend to level any criticism at any local decisions about filter policies but I do want to make some general observations.

I think that access to some education resources have been blocked inadvertently as a result of a policy decision taken to block certain types of content for a variety of reasons.  Let me elaborate around one case I have seen discussed!

YouTube contains a wealth of content which is educationally useful.  It also contains loads of very questionable content!  Video content (the stuff of YouTube) is also known to be a consumer of network bandwidth – much more so than other media such as text based and audio only messaging etc.  In order to either prevent the network being used to access questionable content or to stop the transit of video traffic a decision will be taken to block access to all YouTube traffic.  This is an easy decision to take and the resulting policy is easy to implement.  But the consequence is arguably bad for education because this prevents access to a wealth of useful resources.

The justification for this position is either to reduce the risk of an abuse incident or to protect scarce network bandwidth – or both.

LAs do have a significant responsibility to provide appropriate connections to schools and to manage their available budget to achieve the best possible provision in this context.  We should not be naive about this and recognize that there will always be some resource limitations.  We need to also balance this against the value that quality access to internet based resources can bring in terms of increased learner and teacher experience.

In the YouTube scenario above, decisions taken about protecting the network  and/or its users can lead to a disadvantage for educators and learners.

Some LAs chose to implement the Glow Content Delivery Network (CDN).  This provided a web cache in each school so that access to high bandwidth resources could be achieved in a much more efficient manner.  This was exemplified when a Virtual Work Experience simulation was implemented which made extensive use of Video and allowed pupils to explore at will a number of virtual worlds concerning different jobs.  Without the CDN in place this application caused the network to crash but with CDN it worked perfectly.

In my view this is something that really needs to be looked at again.

Irrespective of the existence of Glow we need to use the resources invested in to open up opportunities for enhancement of the classroom experience – not limit the opportunities.  How crazy is a situation where a teacher might want to refer to a video but have to tell the pupils to “look at it when they get home”! A core objective of the Glow portal was to make it easy for users to access and share content – at no point in the specification of Glow was it discussed that the introduction of Glow would take the place of the internet as a source of resources.  I believe that the Glow vision was more about providing better access to resources and collaboration opportunities where ever they are hosted.

The point is, from the start, Glow was always intended to be, and always has been, an OPEN network. It is local filter policies that have rendered the user experience of Glow as something much more restrictive.

I am not discounting the consequences and risks of opening up access to the internet but I really think that for the sake of teachers and pupils we do need to challenge some current thinking on this topic.

How to implement a better system?

It is not for me to dictate what should be done by those who are in charge of LA networks but I would like to offer a few observations.

 

  • The current position is unacceptable – LA ICT managers should not be dictating which resources teachers can and cannot exploit!
  • If there is a network resource issue – i.e. lack of bandwidth let us expose this by demonstrating the effect of lessening content access restrictions.
  • Each LA should have a procedure for opening up a block when a teacher has found a resource which is considered essential to their teaching and learning.
  • Removing a restriction should be possible in as short a period of time as possible, and preferably instantaneous.
  • Detect abuses of the network service and deal with each event on its own merits.
  • Take a position that we need to start from an open environment and only apply filter where very necessary.
  • The process of policy decision making should be open and responsive to exception requests.
  • Teachers should have a the strongest voice when it comes to decision about filtering any content that is educationally appropriate.

2 thoughts on “Content Filtering – who’s in control? – a potted history. #EDUScotICT”

  1. Hi Jim

    Once again, loved your post.
    You have summed up in your bullets the very essence of what should be the case.
    And I might distil it down further … we are Professionals; we need to be given the respect (in the first place) and rights that go with this position. In all walks of life people abuse position, but you’re right, the actions of the few (very few) are castrating the rest. Starting from an open environment and only apply filter where necessary is the only way forward with this issue. Surely the positives would vastly out way the negatives? But how to convince entrenched opinion? Trust is the key, but in the current climate (McCormack) I fear it will be in short supply. But lets not give up…the truth is out there!

  2. Jim, I do so agree with all you say.
    However there are some urban myths about web filtering. One is that it is very difficult to get a site opened up. While I agree with what you say about instant opening of a site, allowing users to explore rather than just go to known sites, that can be quite difficult to achieve in practice. For a period of 4 months I ran our Websense filtering and in that time I only received a handful of requests to open sites all of which were granted and were achieved within about 24 hours. However on one occasion the Websense server fell over allowing unfiltered access and within a few minutes I had two phone calls from irate teachers wondering why their pupils were able to get into YouTube (as it happened). Unfortunately the arbitrary nature of web filtering has led many teachers to think that there is no point in asking for access to sites they want to use.
    Personally I am all for very open access and good users policies and education. After all we should be preparing pupils for the real world.

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