Why skills come first
The Body of Knowledge finds that UK value capture is among the weakest dimensions of sovereignty: when the stack is rented, the know-how to run, fix and improve it sits with the vendor. Sovereignty that lasts depends on people. The aim is a single open stack that is taught, researched and used across education and the public sector, so that skills learned at school carry through to university, to work, and back into public services.
A shared stack for learning and for work
Today, schools and universities largely learn on the same proprietary tools the wider economy rents. Teaching on open technology that the public sector also runs means:
- Every learner gains skills that transfer directly to public-service work.
- Employers, including the public sector, gain a larger pool of people who can maintain open systems.
- Improvements made by students, researchers and staff flow back into shared components.
Roles
Schools
- Open operating systems and productivity tools where they meet learning needs, starting with computing and digital skills.
- Low-cost UK-designed computers such as the Raspberry Pi as a bridge to understanding how systems work.
- Curriculum resources released openly so every school can use and adapt them.
Universities and colleges
- Research and teaching in open hardware, including RISC-V, and in secure, reliable distributed systems.
- Open-source maintainer pathways: credit-bearing contribution to the components the public sector depends on.
- Independent evaluation of the stack’s architecture, security and usability.
- Shared sector services, building on Jisc’s Janet network, eduroam and the UK Access Management Federation.
The BBC
- Public education campaigns and learning content on digital skills and the open stack, building on its record of national computing literacy programmes.
- Open standards and open-source media research from BBC R&D as an exemplar of public value from open technology.
Public-sector employers
- Open-source programme offices to steward contributions and reuse.
- Apprenticeships and secondments in UK operators and SMEs that harden and support open components.
- Procurement that rewards suppliers who build UK skills and contribute upstream.
Measuring progress
- Learners and staff trained on the shared stack each year.
- Active UK contributors and maintainers on components the public sector depends on.
- Share of support and hardening spend going to UK organisations.
- UK capability and value-capture scores in the Body of Knowledge, tracked over time.