Choosing IT well — and knowing whether what you already have is working.

The work I am asked for most. Establishing what you actually need before anyone sends a quote, writing it down so suppliers answer the same question, and then helping you read what was really offered rather than what the covering letter says.

Schools come back for this. Several have had me write the requirements once, then again four years later when the contract came round.

• Requirements gathering
• Written specification
• Comparing responses
• Sense-checking a decision already taken

An honest answer to “is our IT any good?”, written for the people who have to act on it rather than for the people who run it. What is working, what is at risk, what it is costing you and what happens if nothing changes.

It usually comes with a risk register you can keep using afterwards, and a summary short enough that governors will actually read it.

• Health check
• Risk register
• Executive summary
• Follow-up support

Choosing a management information system, not running a tender. That distinction is deliberate and it matters right now: at least one major supplier no longer takes part in tender processes, so a formal tender can quietly exclude them and leave you choosing from a worse shortlist than the market actually offers.

So this is advice on the decision — what fits how you work, what the migration really costs you, and which questions to put to each supplier.

• Requirements and fit
• Supplier questions
• Migration realities
• Comparing on more than price

Appointing technical staff is hard when you cannot assess the work, and so is managing them afterwards. I write the job description, sift, sit on the panel and set the technical questions — and afterwards I support whoever they report to, usually a business manager or a deputy head.

• Job descriptions
• Shortlisting and interviewing
• Mentoring for the postholder
• CPD and performance management

When I help with a policy it is usually the conversation rather than the drafting. The hard part is getting leaders to an agreed position they can defend, and the document is the output of that discussion rather than the start of it.

Then the part most policies never get: I deliver the training that launches it, so staff know what was decided instead of receiving an email with an attachment. Artificial intelligence is the live example — a leadership workshop, a policy out of it, then whole-staff INSET.

• Leadership workshop
• AI and acceptable use
• Whole-staff INSET
• Governor briefings

The board-level work: coming out of a PFI contract, due diligence on a merger, moving to a new operating model, or splitting IT apart when a school changes hands. Phased plans, a transfer risk register, and someone in the room who has done it.

• PFI exit
• Merger due diligence
• Target operating models
• Transition planning

I am a Microsoft licence reseller, and I administer tenants that are too small for anyone else to be interested in — some with only one or two users. A managed service provider will not take that on, and it still needs doing properly.

Licensing, mailboxes and shared mailboxes, permissions, migrations from whatever you are on now, and someone to ask when it breaks.

• Microsoft licences
• Tenant administration
• Email migration
• Small charities and networks welcome