O’Reilly opens learning platform access for UK government

As of today, any government employee who does not currently have access to O’Reilly online learning, will be able to access helpful educational materials, at no cost, until July 6th, 2020. 

Government organisations at all levels, already strained prior to the pandemic, are facing new and unprecedented challenges as a result of economic losses, healthcare emergencies, and the implementation of various complex economic support packages.

In addition to the NHS, government systems for unemployment and furlough claims, pensions and social care, disaster modelling and response, among others, have been significantly affected by the abrupt increase in traffic and urgency.

“For years, government infrastructure and services haven’t kept pace with the speed of technology. Today, the weight of that burden is overwhelming – precisely at a time when the country needs it most,” said Tim O’Reilly, Founder, Chairman and CEO of O’Reilly. “Government agencies need help with everything from tools for remote work, to web design, mobile service design, text-based customer service, data science, and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE).”

“This is an urgent crisis – one where the situation changes every day,” added O’Reilly. “O’Reilly and our partners are in a unique position to help. In the US, after only a week of providing this service, we have seen nearly 5,000 users from more than 350 federal state and local governments sign up for the platform. This desire for learning materials pushes us to expand availability and continue to add more content that will help government organisations be successful in this fight.”

O’Reilly online learning helps agencies and organisations empower their teams to be resilient in times of uncertainty by giving them the knowledge and tools they need to solve immediate and urgent technical problems as they arise. The company’s online training courses and other resources can help get existing and new users up to speed fast – which is especially important in the current situation where time is of the essence.

Many of O’Reilly’s most prominent publishing partners, including McGraw Hill, Packt, and Pearson have also agreed to waive the royalty fees they would normally receive for sharing their content, enabling O’Reilly to provide access to additional technical information that can help ease the burden for government workers immediately.