Think I may as well address of couple of issues that people have raised, which without more information would be perfectly reasonable to mention.
The reason for the usernames as they stand is that they reflect what's called a "staff code". This is used in schools as a shorthand for each member of staff, and it's also what appears on e.g. the timetable. For anyone who left school in the last couple of decades or so, cast your minds back to the way your timetable looked. You'd have a subject (or subject code, e.g. Ma for Maths), room number and then... something like ABC - generally speaking, that's the teacher's initials as students shouldn't know staff's first names (very old British tradition, I know, but it's very common). They already know their own staff codes, so it makes sense to have that as a username as it's one less other thing to remember and these are people who can't deal with plugging a computer in... ;) Believe me, we have to make a LOT of compromises in education!
So people are used to referring to John Smith as e.g. JBS, and you'll see that on e-mails, timetables, pigeon holes, requests to form tutors etc. Some schools even name their forms after the form tutor - we don't because tutors can change and then it's a faff... :P
What I would point out is, as long as you're actually using the middle name as a differentiator, you don't really get any duplications in our staff size (93 FTE count). Exceptions were where a member of staff actually didn't have a middle name, in which case we used what's now being proposed as the new system, but that was rare.
You only begin to get these duplications when you stop including the middle initial, and that's really why I object to this. Yes, I do object to the fact that it's against best practice and I'm busy anyway, but what's REALLY bugging me about it is the fact that it's a stupid system he wants to move to. I can already tell we're going to have two VCHs, two AMOs and... three SDEs! He hasn't proposed a system for how to handle duplicates at all, never mind one that could handle THREE people being the same!
Also, teachers get very attached to their staff codes, you know. It's a bit silly and sentimental but when you've been e.g. JBS for 20-odd years, you do get attached. Personalised number plates are very common too as people ascend up the ranks... :P
So basically this is annoying everyone and achieving nothing... and why? Because he doesn't like the fact he's been given Timetable & Cover as a senior management responsibility and can't cope with remembering who's who just like everyone else.
He has a list of who's who on the wall... I've created documents indexed by surname and staff code that auto-update every midnight from the MIS and linked to them on the Start Menu... plus he can always just look them up from the MIS himself or ask a colleague... and apparently that's still not enough! And then, the only response I get when I point all this out is "hmmm... I think you just need to accept that senior leaders require this change to promote SMART working!"
Sooo... that's why I was pissed off enough to write in about it... :/
Biting the hand that feeds IT
