Mining database gold

Your ICT supplement (April 30) reminds me that most education organisations offering degree-level professional qualifications have spent vast sums building and maintaining bespoke databases to operate the administration of exam candidates, fees, results and so on.

Somebody somewhere will eventually get rich building a standard system that can be adapted easily by universities and other qualifications providers.

The biggest surprise is that Bill Gates has not already done so. Has anyone else?

Henry Pavlovich
Director and chief executive
Institute of Linguists, London