IT in Use - January/February 2011 issue by Informed Publications Limited

Technology & The Transformation of Frontline Services

ITU UKauthorITy IT in Use January/February 2011

Rise of Free Data

- Economic woes could drag down data

ITU Live: Cloud as Utility ITU â&#x20AC;˘ January/February 2011

- Procurement puts a brake on move to cloud

Here Today, Cloud Tomorrow

- Does cloud offer public sector a lifeline through the budget cuts?

Libraries & Digital Engagement - What future the library in the Big Society?

PLUS: UKauthorITy.tv round-up, News Update, Hacktivists and Spending Cuts, View over Westminster, Product Notes & Contracts Won.

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Features

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January/February 2011 ISSN 1368 2660

Technology and transparency

On the Cover

ommunities secretary, Eric Pickles, is calling for councils to protect frontline services by merging back offices, and by sharing both service delivery and senior officers.

Heading for the Clouds. See pages 8, 9, 12.

Editor & Publisher Helen Olsen E: Helen@infopub.co.uk T: 01273 273941 Contributing Editor Tim Hampson E: Tim@infopub.co.uk T: 01865 790675 Special Correspondent

Michael Cross E: Michael@infopub.co.uk

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Contents Comment Technology and transparency

January/February 2011

News Update 3-7 A round up of the key news, headlines and trends affecting technology in frontline public services.

ITU Live: Procurement Brake on Cloud

Helen Olsen reports from ITU Live, where the panel found innovation and the adoption of new technologies mired in public sector procurement practices.

8-9

The Rise of Free Data

UKauthorITy.tv

IT Trends Down

Cloud Special Focus: Here Today, Cloud Tomorrow

Michael Cross worries that economic woes will hold back the freeing of public data. Round up of video news available on ITU magazine’s TV portal.

Council IT may be tightening its collective belt, says Helen Olsen. But right now, IT most definitely matters. Cloud services offer the public sector a lifeline through the budget cuts, says Adobe’s Prelini Udayan Chiechi.

Libraries & Digital Engagement

Troubled Times Ahead

Think of public libraries and it is hard to think of them as anything other than council-run services, argues Tim Hampson. Tim Hampson reports from Westminster, where the political waters are rocking both government and opposition ships.

Company & Product Notes Contracts Roundup

Michael Cross gets down to the netroots.

UKA UKauthorITy IT in Use

Pickles is convinced that transparency will tame the public budget monster. And he believes that if councils fail to publish their spending online for ‘armchair audit’ they risk being punished by the electorate in May’s English local elections. His department is prepared to force compliance, so deep is the conviction that transparency is essential if public spending is to be contained – and reduced – without losing services. The argument runs that councils making cuts to frontline services whilst maintaining comfortable middle and senior management roles will be exposed to citizens as wastrels, and consequently lose their mandate to continue manageing public budgets in the local elections. But not all in his party share this view. MP from Cornwall, Sheryll Murray, is concerned that the wrong party will bear the voters’ wrath at these elections – and is calling for the date of each spending decision to also be published. Meanwhile, technology, of course, continues to play both hero and villain centre stage. Not only is its use in government being now scrutinised by MPs but it continues to be touted as a cure to inefficient people processes. And the irony of it all is that technology’s crucial role can only be scrutinised by the use of, and ubiquity of, technology.

Helen Olsen, Editor

Of Hacktivists & Spending Cuts

To advertise in ITU call Informed Publications: 01983 812623 2

Indeed, he sees no reason to cut services and has openly expressed disappointment at the lack of enthusiasm for such restructuring and belt tightening at the local level – cutting middle and senior managers would, he says, help to tackle the cuts.

©iStockphoto.com/PhotographerOlympus

17-18

TORY WARNS ON TRANSPARENCY: Forcing local authorities to publish raw data to reveal spending above £500 could lead to voters punishing the wrong party, warns Sheryll Murray, the South East Cornwall MP. Murray has urged the government to ensure that the date of each spending decision was also published – so that the public would know which party was in power at the time. But communities secretary, Eric Pickles, said that voters would have to use the Freedom of Information law - or a simple letter to their council - to obtain that further detail.

News Update

Few get-outs from transparency

ocal authorities should not try to use the Data Protection Act to escape their new obligations for transparency, according to a long-awaited draft code of practice. As expected, the code covers all items of spending over £500. It also requires the publication of all contracts and details of senior jobs. A single paragraph dealing with ‘Exclusions and exemptions’ says that, where data falls under one of the exclusions of the Freedom of Information Act it will be ‘in the discretion of the local authority’ whether or not to publish the data. However the code implies that the default should be publication. The code, open to consultation until 14th March, covers all local authorities in England, including fire and police authorities, national park authorities and Transport for London. Communities secretary, Eric Pickles, hinted that he would make the code mandatory if authorities do not comply voluntarily. As a minimum, authorities should release: •

Spending over £500. Any organisation or individual receiving at least £500 of public money ‘should expect such payments to be transparent’.

•

Grants to the third sector, ‘clearly itemised and listed’.

•

Senior salaries, defined as being all above £58,200. (Individuals may refuse consent for their name to be published.)

•

An organisational chart of the staff structure.

•

Copies of contracts and tenders to businesses and to the voluntary sector.

•

Audit and performance reports.

•

Data on the democratic running of the authority, plus councillor allowances and expenses.

Councils were further challenged to give easy open access to data on performance data, licensing applications, transport information and hygiene reports for food outlets. Information should be easily accessible where possible through a single access page - and available for re-use. Wherever possible, data should be published in ‘open and machine-readable non-proprietary structured formats, for example as a spreadsheet rather than a PDF document’. Councils will also be expected to respond to public demand for additional information from residents. The code also recommends that a public inventory UKauthorITy IT in Use

should be registered at the government’s central information hub, www.data.gov.uk. Eric Pickles said that “the taxpayer has a right to look under the bonnet of their Town Hall and see what decisions are being made on their behalf and where their money is being spent.” He commended the vast majority of councils that have met the deadline, suggesting that the new code would “give the few remaining refuseniks a clear game plan to follow”. Reflecting the open data philosophy set out in the Labour government’s Power of Information programme and enthusiastically picked up by the coalition, the code refers to ‘growing expectations’ that new technologies and data should support transparency and accountability. ‘Local authorities should not seek to pre-determine the value of their data and the level of public demand; rather they should understand what data they hold, what their communities want and then release it in a way that allows the public, developers or the media to present it in new ways... It is this process that will create demand for data.’ CLG is prepared to ‘take action if necessary’, to force compliance by all councils. Ministers are understood to be ready to use existing legislation, requiring councils to publish information, if they do need to wield the big stick - and Pickles has suggested those councils that had “chosen to leave their local electorate in the dark” would pay a price at the English local elections, in May. http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/ localgovernment/codepracticeladataconsult

Managers should go before services

hile speaking to the House of Commons Local Government Select Committee, Eric Pickles said that he sees no reason for councils to cut frontline services. He argued that councils need to look seriously at the shared services options. Councils, he says, should merge back office functions such as HR, planning, legal services - as well as ICT services - and share senior officers to ensure that frontline services are protected despite the toughest local government settlement in a long time. Pickles expressed his disappointment in councils not doing enough to restructure and reduce spending at local levels, saying that it was “beyond the point of negligence” if council leaders did not expect this magnitude of spending cuts. He was impressed, he said, with the way Liverpool City Council reduced its senior management numbers to protect frontline services. The Cabinet minister insists that taking out “middle management” would help councils tackle budget cuts effectively. January/February 2011

News Update

Safe pair of hands for government CIO

he Cabinet Office has announced that Joe Harley, chief information officer at the DWP, is to take on the additional role of government chief information officer (CIO). Harley will chair the public sector-wide CIO Council and participate in all new CIO appointments in central government, reporting to the minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, and the government’s chief operating officer, Ian Watmore. Bill McCluggage will continue as the deputy chief information officer. He will work closely with Chris Chant, the government’s new director for directgov and digital engagement, and be able to call upon the commercial, procurement and programme management capabilities in the Cabinet Office to improve the delivery and cost effectiveness of government ICT projects.

MPs turn spotlight on government technology

committee of top MPs is to investigate how the government develops, implements and spends £16bn a year on information technology. The inquiry, which will examine the government’s overall strategy for information technology, is being undertaken by the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC). According to the PASC central government is notorious for large IT projects running over time, over budget and ultimately failing. The committee’s chairman, Bernard Jenkin, says that the inquiry will identify business needs, the effectiveness of governance arrangements, procurement policy and practice. The committee is concerned that government has a poor track record for managing large projects. www.parliament.uk/pasc

At the DWP Harley has won a reputation for driving hard bargains in contract negotiations with major suppliers, reducing the IT budget by 31% since 2006 - from £1.16bn to circa £800m in 2010. His appointment as replacement to John Suffolk will be seen as a choice of a safe pair of hands - and one that avoids the embarrassment of the Cabinet Office advertising openly for a six-figure-salaried job. Meanwhile his taking on of dual roles actively demonstrates the government mantra of ‘doing more for less’. Ian Watmore, the first person to hold the government CIO title, will remain the senior information risk officer for government.

Scottish flexible working could roll out to all councils

cottish councils are looking at new business models to run local government services which could be taken up by local government staff anywhere, anytime. The adoption of flexible and agile working practices in the age of financial austerity will help councils to save money, says Improvement Service in Scotland (IS), set up in 2005 to help improve the efficiency, quality and accountability of local public services in Scotland. It is developing several projects to deliver a range of online tools and hands-on advice designed to help people in Scottish local government to work more effectively. The City of Edinburgh, Scottish Borders, West Lothian, Fife, Aberdeenshire, Argyll and Bute Council have all agreed to trial the flexible working projects.

Broadband in the belfries

he prayers of villagers in rural Herefordshire who want access to hi-speed downloads have been answered after the Bishop of Hereford did a deal to put wifi masts into 12 church steeples. Kingstone (below) is the first church in the Diocese to have broadband equipment installed in its tower, giving more than 150 households across three communities access to 4Mbs of download speed. The equipment can also offer up to 35Mbs for businesses and other high end users. As part of the deal between the Diocese and broadband provider, Allpay, churches will receive an annual fee of £500 for allowing their churches to host the equipment. Both organisations see the project as an example of the Big Society in action and are keen to emphasise how important the service could be to local communities. Anni Holden, director of communications for the Diocese, said: “We are delighted to play a part in helping people in Herefordshire and south Shropshire to have access to a level of service that urban places take for granted. The work the Diocesan Advisory Committee has done to bring about the standard licence is an excellent example of how our central diocesan services are here to support parishes across the area.”

January/February 2011

UKauthorITy IT in Use

Public spending cuts to drive technological innovation

Learning grid invites London public sector on board

ight in ten councillors believe that technology is key to making the cost savings that the government demands. In a ComRes survey for IT supplier association, Intellect, more than 80% of councillors surveyed said that their authority is open to new ways of employing technology in its service delivery; and 72% expect their council to rely more on technology to deliver services in future. “Technology is a powerful tool that can be used to help local authorities to tackle this dual challenge of achieving cost savings while improving the way services are delivered,” said Charles Ward, Intellect chief operating officer. “It is really encouraging to see that local councillors are aware of the potential that technology offers to solve the problems.” However, 95% of those surveyed are bracing themselves for a swathe of redundancies in their council as a direct result of the cuts. Most of those surveyed were fearful for the future relationship of local and central government saying it was going “to be more difficult”. Other findings include: •

Almost six in ten councillors, 56%, say ‘the green agenda will take a back seat as the spending cuts bite’;

•

88% expect to see evidence of a willingness to consider more innovative ways of delivering services for less money;

•

Just over half, 51%, expect localism will ‘devolve real power to get things done’;

•

More than a third, 37%, expect a shift in power from local to central government over the current parliament.

ll public sector bodies in London will be offered a chance to make use of the new broadband network being built to handle the capital’s education needs, the network’s operator has said. London Grid for Learning, which connects 3,200 locations across the capital, is making the offer as part of a contract with Virgin Media Business to upgrade the network to capacities of up to 10 gigabits per second. The five-year contract, negotiated under the JANET academic framework, is worth some £200m. Virgin will replace incumbent Synetrix, part of Capita IT Services. London Grid for Learning was set up in 2000 as a community interest company owned by all 33 London boroughs. Brian Durrant, chief executive of the London Grid for Learning Trust, said that the deal would save schools up to £100m a year. He also said the capacity would be available to local authorities and other public sector organisations on drawdown contracts.

Westminster trials buying portal

estminster City Council is planning a procurement portal and e-tendering solution for itself and other public organisations. The council said that the portal would enable organisations to share procurement information, contacts and best practice. The project, funded by Capital Ambition, follows a feasibility study that found that such a portal would reduce time spent on tendering and provide savings of £80m. Organisations expected to use the portal include Transport for London, the London Development Agency, the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, the Metropolitan Police, London borough councils and NHS bodies in the capital.

DORSET COUNCILS’ NATIONAL WEB FIRST: Dorset’s local authorities have achieved a national first after Weymouth & Portland Borough Council decided to join the partnership website, dorsetforyou.com. All seven councils in the shire county will soon have a single shared website providing joined up information and services for local residents and businesses. Dorsetforyou.com will save local taxpayers an estimated £1m a year. WHITEHALL SETS THE OPEN STANDARD: Government departments and other public bodies should specify open standards when procuring ICT unless there are ‘clear business reasons’ why not, the Cabinet Office has decreed. A brief policy note, released just within the deadline set by its business plan, commits departments, agencies and NDPBs ‘wherever possible’ to deploy open standards in their procurement specifications. WELSH COUNCILS FACE MERGER PROSPECTS: Welsh ministers have given themselves the power to merge councils if they fail to meet standards under Assembly Government new proposals. Angry council leaders are questioning both the powers and the process, but local government minister, Carl Sargeant, says it is the duty of the assembly government to “step in” when councils fail to meet expectations. It is widely believed the powers are being brought in to merge Anglesey and Gwynedd councils. SCOTTISH PRIVACY BENCHMARK: A set of principles for identity management and privacy drawn up by the Scottish government are likely to become a benchmark for all public bodies in the UK. The principles, covering five topics - proving identity and entitlement; governance and accountability; risk management; data and data sharing, and education and engagement – were drawn up by an expert group that included the assistant information commissioner for Scotland, prominent lawyers, activists and academics as well as Alan Kirkwood, chair of Socitm Scotland.

Cloud and BPO key government IT trends

he cloud and business process outsourcing (BPO) will be two of the key trends aimed at driving efficiencies in government IT in 2011, according to Ovum. In a new report the analyst states that government agencies will become more open to a cloud-based approach to service delivery and outsourcing in the coming year, as the need to cut costs comes to the fore. Jessica Hawkins, Ovum analyst and author of the report, said: “We expect to see consumption-based and shared delivery models gaining momentum in 2011, as agencies become more open to the efficiencies that a cloud-based approach can offer. However issues of privacy and security will mean some governments will remain cautious.” EU AID FOR BROADBAND: Communications minister, Ed Vaizey, told the House of Commons that successful projects for the next £50m worth of broadband funding will be announced in May 2011, and that the government expected to invite bids from April. In total the government has said it will use £530m in the current spending review period to support broadband and stimulate private sector investment in infrastructure. The European Commission approved a record amount of state aid for the deployment of broadband networks in 2010 – more than €1.8bn of public funds to be spent on broadband projects. £500M LOST THROUGH POOR PROCUREMENT: NHS hospitals often pay more than they need to when buying basic supplies, Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, has reported. A combination of inadequate information and fragmented purchasing means that NHS hospitals’ procurement of consumables is poor value for money. The NAO estimates that at least £500m a year could be saved by the NHS on its spending on consumables, and potentially much more for some products.

COUNCIL TAX RUN BY GOVERNMENT? Council Tax should be part of the Universal Credit administered by the central government think tank, says the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS). It suggests that a centralised system of council tax administration linked with the Universal Credit system would enable the government to meet its target of saving half a billion pounds from the Council Tax benefit bill. GLA SHARED SERVICES TARGET: The Greater London Authority and umbrella organisations aim to save £450m from shared services and procurement over two years A consultation document puts a range of activities under review to find out where further savings and efficiencies can be made through shared services. The review also covers the Metropolitan Police, London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, Transport for London and the London Development Agency. UKauthorITy IT in Use

January/February 2011

News Update

Crime maps overwhelmingly popular

itizens can now view details of local crimes online thanks to a new crime mapping site, www.police.uk. The site was overwhelmed by heavy demand on the day it launched, proving both public appetite for such information and government’s underestimation of this interest. The crash of the police site appeared to repeat the experience of an ONS site publishing results of the 1901 census, which was overwhelmed in January 2002 after a heavily publicised launch. According to the Home Office, www.police.uk was receiving 75,000 visitors a minute, most launching searches by postcode or street name, by 10 am. A high proportion of the searches came up with the message that the street was not covered by a police service, prompting questions about the quality of geographical information system being employed. National crime mapping, launched despite the scepticism of several chief constables (and popular newspapers), has emerged as a centrepiece in the government’s effort to create an army of ‘armchair auditors’ to monitor public services. Home secretary, Theresa May, described the service as “a major achievement, reconnecting the police and communities through the power of information”. The Home Office said that www.police. uk is the first phase of a wider package of work to make crime, justice and policing FIRECONTROL ENDS: The troubled project to replace England’s current 46 fire and rescue control rooms with a national network of nine control centres has been terminated. Fire minister, Bob Neill, made clear in the summer that FiReControl contractor, Cassidian (formerly EADS Defence and Security) ‘must deliver the main IT system to time, cost and quality’. The department and contractor have now ‘jointly concluded’ that it ‘cannot be delivered to an acceptable timeframe’. POLICE STORE DATA ON 999 CALLERS: Millions of people who reported crimes to 999 or non-emergency numbers in England and Wales have had their details stored on police databases, finds a freedom of information request from the Press Association.

more transparent. It named five ‘trailblazer’ police force areas that will be publishing more detailed information about crime and responses to it: •

•

Hampshire Constabulary is developing an online socially interactive facility to let the public see street level crime, incident and activity data updated daily, and ‘play an active part in the resolution of community problems’.

•

Lincolnshire Police and West Yorkshire Police will explore how to supply information on sentencing outcomes alongside details of crimes.

•

Surrey Police is developing an interactive application for mobile phones to improve communication between communities and neighbourhood policing.

•

Leicestershire Constabulary will explore development of online case tracking systems for victims so that they can monitor the progress of their case.

As several of these projects involve seamless link-ups with the fragmented and delayed criminal justice IT infrastructure, it is likely that more system crashes lie ahead. MOST WORRY ABOUT DATA: A survey has revealed that 80% of people are concerned about protecting their personal information on line, the Information Commissioner’s Office has said. The ICO is urging people to take more care on social networking sites, to think before giving out their personal details on line, and to understand what to do when things go wrong. POLICE, CAMERAS, TRANSPARENCY: Councils and the police will have to publish full information about speed cameras, under proposals from road safety minister, Mike Penning - including data about accident rates at camera sites, vehicle speeds and the numbers of motorists prosecuted or offered training after offences recorded by cameras.

est Valley Borough Council and Winchester City Council have confirmed Tony Fawcett as their new joint head of IT services. The appointment builds on other joint projects and collaborations between the two authorities. Fawcett will have responsibility for the IT team for both authorities, supporting over 1000 users, and developing the potential to host specialist service applications for use across the partnership. These changes, which include a recent move to a shared IT help desk and a joint web development project, are expected to realise savings of over £300,000 in the first three years. The initiative is also expected to promote consolidation of systems and suppliers, which will generate further savings.

January/February 2011

UKauthorITy IT in Use

£11m saving in joint IT venture

avering and Newham London borough councils are set to save more than £11m between them in a ground breaking deal to share technology support services. A new team, under the leadership of Havering and Newham’s joint head of ICT, Geoff Connell (left in picture), will be created from existing staff to support the two boroughs’ technology support systems and drive forward a programme of updating and standardising systems. “This shared service agreement is a great example of where we can make significant savings without cutting frontline services,” said Havering’s leader, Cllr Michael White (centre). “This is not about merging services but looking for opportunities where joint working offers significant benefits for all the authorities involved.”

he work of some social workers is made harder by the focus on imposing and meeting managerial targets and regulations, and in so doing has forgotten that the needs of children should be at its heart.

The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead and Thames Valley Police will be publishing more detailed data.

Sharing IT leadership

Calls for end to ‘tick box’ social services

Efficiency boost in Fenland

enland District Council and the local Valuation Office (VO) have revamped working practices to ensure that bills for Non Domestic Rates are issued promptly and to the correct address. Cashable savings, efficiency gains and improvements in service delivery have been realised by both organisations from basing operations around the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) as ‘the definitive’ address list.

INTELLIGENT CUTS TO POLICE SPENDING: Britain’s police forces should look at ways of cutting back on their more than £1bn spend on computer systems, says National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) boss, Nick Gargan. Speaking in a debate on efficient and accountable policing he highlighted the fact that the £1.4bn cost of IT to police - around 10% of total spend - was roughly twice the level of comparable sectors, and called for examination of “intelligent ways” to reduce this spend. He accused forces of a silo mentality which was stopping forces from realising the benefits of using IT more effectively. He added, “Inefficiency is built in to a system where 43 forces deliver the full range of policing services through structures that are essentially replicated 43 times.” FEW CURBS ON COUNCIL SNOOPING: The long-awaited shake-up of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) has stepped back from imposing new curbs on the tapping of communications data. The Home Office concluded that the practice was too ‘important’, particularly in enabling local authorities to trap ‘rogue traders who particularly target vulnerable people’. As a result, local councils will - it appears - still be free to monitor phone calls, emails, text messages and internet use, with just cause. But they will be required to obtain the formal approval of a magistrate before they proceed - council officers currently make that decision alone. RECORD NUMBERS FILE TAX ONLINE: Almost seven million people chose to file their tax returns on line by the January 2011 deadline. In total 6,907,410 people used the online option, accounting for 78% of all returns. This was a 7% increase on the 2010 total.

In the second part of her report looking for a replacement to the ContactPoint child database, Professor Eileen Munro focused on the child’s journey from needing to receiving the right help. “The development of bureaucracy was done with very good intentions,” she said. “It’s a matter of when it gets too much, it gets out of balance. I think the anxiety around missing a case of child abuse has distorted things. People have got overcontrolling all the way down the system. They think, ‘If you can control it more, we can make children safer’, whereas in fact it is doing the opposite.” The first part of the review found the work of some social workers is made harder by a digital divide between local authorities and their computer systems. The report’s findings were welcomed by children’s minister, Tim Loughton, who said he agreed with the approach of “getting help to the neediest children and families as early as possible, and recognising that child protection is not just the responsibility of social workers”. LGA research has shown that only 13% of a social worker’s time is spent with a family when making a first assessment – 87% is spent on paperwork and recording. www.education.gov.uk/munroreview/downloads/ TheMunroReviewofChildProtection-Part%20one.pdf

CULTURAL CHANGE FOR NHS REFORM: The trade association for the UK’s technology industry has joined in the chorus of criticism of government plans to transform the NHS through the use of technology. Intellect warns that the government’s plans for an information revolution in the NHS will require a huge cultural change by patients if health and social care is to really benefit from the revolution. www.intellectuk.org/healthcare COST WARNING: In a 20-page response to the DoH consultation ‘Liberating the NHS - an information revolution’, the British Medical Association says that IT systems have ‘significant implementation costs’ but a ‘significant time lag’ before any resulting savings appear. The BMA, a traditional critic of IT schemes, also warns of GPs being deluged with emails from patients if the government’s plan goes ahead. The information revolution paper, published last autumn, proposes a locally-led strategy for computerising the NHS, with patients having greater access to electronic information, including their own medical records. The BMA also warns that there must be safeguards to reduce the risks involved in sharing sensitive data.

Mayor of Newham, Sir Robin Wales (right), added that Newham expects to save around £7.5m over the next five years. “We hope to be able to attract other boroughs to join us, offering the opportunity for even more efficiencies.”

IT the key to NHS efficiency savings

mprovements in IT hold the key to the NHS meeting its target to save £20bn by 2014, the government says. It has pointed to e-developments as effective ways for hospital chiefs to make the ‘efficiencies’ that have provoked cries of pain across the country. The suggestions come after a committee of MPs warned that the NHS had no ‘credible plan’ to make the savings demanded by health secretary, Andrew Lansley. NHS chief executive, Sir David Nicholson, admitted the task required had ‘never been achieved in the history of the NHS, or any healthcare system in the world’. But the Department of Health (DoH) insisted the £20bn could be shaved off the NHS budget by ‘cutting back on bureaucracy, not on frontline care’. Among the ideas it urged local health chiefs to pursue were: •

Greater use of e-learning - Imperial College NHS Trust was saving £350,000 a year in the field of safeguarding children;

•

Greater use of reminder calls of upcoming appointments - NHS Epsom and St Helier saved £45,000 in one month.

But the ideas will struggle to convince the Commons health select committee, whose report in December was scathing about the prospects for efficiencies of £20bn. DOCTORS ‘STIFLING’ NHS IT REVOLUTION: The NHS Confederation has enthusiastically embraced telemedicine and new information technologies, but warns that clinical scepticism may have ‘disastrous consequences’ for public health. It says that ‘active and passive’ resistance by doctors, often based on incorrect assumptions about what patients want, has ‘stifled’ the use of telemedicine and electronic health records in the NHS. www.nhsconfed.org UKauthorITy IT in Use

STAFFORDSHIRE SHARES WITH NHS: Staffordshire County Council is to set up a public sector network and share its IT functions with the NHS. The deal will see the council and South Staffordshire Health Informatics Service join resources in an IT network, sharing services including telephones, broadband internet network and mobile phones. This will save the council and schools in the county £600,000 annually, and the NHS £240,000. LEEDS INVESTS IN CHILDREN’S SOCIAL CARE IT: Leeds council says that new technology is needed to bring its infrastructure into line with national standards and help protect vulnerable children and families in Leeds, following two poor Ofsted reports. The move is also part of a major programme of work to transform children’s services across the authority. It is not known if the system will be developed in or out of house.

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January/February 2011

ITU Live: Cloud as Utility

Procurement Brake on Cloud

market,” says O’Neill. “Which then drives up competition, quality and ultimately, value?”

government’s ‘skunk-works’, is passionate “about the opportunity – which comes along very rarely in IT – to say we can rethink our business model”.

Cloud, he adds, is a “fundamentally disruptive technology. It brings both risks and benefits, and we must be very careful in its use - but POLL: When? Government computing that is not an excuse must do ‘Better for Less’, 18% heading for cloud now not to use the cloud!” argued Liam Maxwell. 41% planning to within year Indeed, the IT specialist It was at this point that and Conservative council- 41% no plans for cloud the interview took an lor at the Royal Borough of unplanned turn, when Windsor and Maidenhead recently published Alan Banks, MD of Adobe Northern Europe, a pamphlet with Conservative think tank, said that he was “fascinated” by the conthe Post Bureaucratic Age, with the same versation. “Because government has never title, identifying “significant overspends been short of brilliant politicians. Government compared to the private sector”. Mainly, he has never been short of brilliant technology says because people haven’t looked at the leaders. The level of innovation within the commercial opportunities of new technology civil service is every bit as good as the pri– cloud being one such example. vate sector. The public sector should “think of what the outcome should be, and start from there. More effective IT services delivered in a flexible way.” According to Maxwell, one of the key things about Localism and the localisation of services is that “it should be possible for someone to set up a trestle table in the town centre and open a government office providing services where and as they are needed”. Having a silo-based public sector structure just doesn’t make sense, he adds. “We need to think about the outcomes we want from our £21bn spent on IT. For that amount of money surely we can get a better outcome: more flexible services delivered in a better way.” Mark O’Neill, highly respected CIO at the Department of Communities & Local Government, agrees: “Delivery (in the public sector) has followed form, not the customer. And that is the problem. We created a range of silos rather than creating what people want.” This has reduced choice, caused “wheel reinvention,” and led to the outcome being forgotten, he says, with the focus instead on the process. O’Neill, who is also CIO at the Department of Media, Culture and Sport and lead on the

January/February 2011

“The issue that we have, as a commercial technology organisation that could provide you with disruptive new ways to deliver services, is that you are impossible to contract with. We cannot work with you under the current contractual frameworks and the current pace at which you work and engage with the private sector.”

of the four million who work in government is IL4 or below. “Do they need to go through massive IT security process? Why not have a common email system? And a common desktop?” Maxwell does not accept the price difference from a desktop at Windsor costing £354 a year versus a standard desktop in central government costing £1,600 to £2,000 a year. Security does not adequately explain this. “What’s missing in government IT is any real form of competitive tension.” His research suggests that the ‘Big Nine’ IT suppliers “spend more than it costs to run the whole Foreign Office annually on public sector tender and procurement processes… It is a tremendous waste, but it also locks in the current incumbent. Everyone is locked in, and the SMEs are locked out.” Open standards, argues Maxwell, would open up the market to competition from the wider market. “If I want to use Excel for a day, I should be able to do so. Why not sell the services on a daily basis?”

O’Neill agrees. “There are two groups of people who complain bitterly to me about the procurement process: suppliers and purchasers. Nobody likes the current purchasThe panel agreed. Indeed, POLL: Cloud Concerns? ing process.” both Maxwell and O’Neil 43% security were visibly frustrated by But what was being 22% cost the public sector procuredone to change this? ment process within which 12% threat to organisation they were bound to operate. 9% loss of control Francis Maude and his team at the Cabinet Said Maxwell, “The fun- 9% sustainability Office have a “perdamental capability issue 4% disruption ` sonal commitment to that people are not comSME engagement,” fortable in addressing is: said O’Neill. “SMEs How should I procure commercially from the don’t know how to get in to the process. Part market.” of the solution is breaking up the silos and processes, and part about decomposing the Windsor’s chief executive, Ian Trenholm, solutions. he says, recently wrote a report, ‘We are not all different’, arguing that as 95% of “Often in government, when we come to a what councils do is the same we should river we immediately start the process of be able to deliver similar services together. building a bridge – which takes a long time, is “Government departments, councils should very expensive, and is no use to anyone until be able to work together. Take email for it is finished. Why not instead ask people to example. Why do we spend so much on build boats? Usable immediately; creating a government email?” He argues that as 95% UKauthorITy IT in Use

to do due diligence and have identified an exit strategy.”

Banks argues that much innovation in the technology world “happens by accident – look at SMS, social networks” – which then evolve because they have business value. “In the US we have Banks continued, a vehicle for happy “Applications in the POLL: Cloud Benefits? accidents. Take cloud solving parts of 38% rethink service delivery the Department of the business problem Defence’s real-time 31% significant business benefits on open standards that battlefield briefing work together – is the 31% reduce ICT costs developed by Adobe. world that we are all 27% a ‘good thing’ for organisation Within less than 18 moving to, but (governmonths that was ment) currently has no adopted by more than vehicle to engage with us. 300,000 people around the world – there is real business value to the DoD in doing this.” “If I want to help government by providing some open software that would meet a core Cloud services – such as the collaboration business need, for free, and then maybe look tool, he says, “are going to be commodat the value of it after, I can’t do that. And so ity, viral applications that will be adopted your ability to innovate is very limited.” because they have business value. There has to be a vehicle for people like me to work Maxwell agreed, adding, “Why do we not in the G-Cloud to provide those services at have the open document format as standa price that is defined by the value to the ard? It should be a basic citizen right to read individual.” any document about them, in any application that they want to.” In his research, Maxwell Maxwell cites ‘Fix My Street’ and the ‘Boris calculated the savings to government of Bike’ apps that have grown up “outside govadhering to such as standard at around ernment” and warns again of the danger of £51m. government IT being sidelined: “If that had been left to traditional government developHis council, Windsor and Maidenhead, ment there would probably be a beta next was putting its money – and time – where year, on a platform out of date by the time its mouth is, said Maxwell, hosting an it was ready, and probably only available in Open Forum Europe ‘Plugfest’ at the end Lambeth because it was a pilot.” of February. “... where you get a group of people working in government technology, So is government’s approach to new techlock them in a room and don’t let them out nologies changing? According to O’Neill, Yes: until their applications and the formats they “We are trying to change things quite radiuse work with yours.” cally, and quite dramatically. Partly it is about LEAN thinking, on the commodity side. But Unless you have agreed standards and then it is about having the ability to innovate formats at the basic level, the other more and to engage in an agile way.” difficult questions of how systems and data work together aren’t going to be answered, It is not just about technology, says O’Neill. “It he argues. “The time of is about a fundamental the behemoth of govern- POLL: Which Cloud? shift in culture. How do ment IT is past. Unless we move away from a government IT gets this 12.5% public world in which we think right, the IT function will 12.5% private in bridges to one where be passed by. One of the we ask, how can we get key dynamics of getting 75% mixed public/private people to build boats?” the crime maps out so quickly is that people were putting their own So what is holding back cloud, today? “A crime maps together – and it’s much better mediaeval approach to security,” says O’Neill. for all to have the real data!” “We lock it all away, focusing too often on confidentially rather than availability.” O’Neill maintains that the fundamental challenge is that “IT is a tool, a means to the end, Maxwell agrees, but argues that “because not a barrier to getting things done. But we you have to think through all the security have allowed the process to take over rather issues before you put a database in the than focusing on the outcome. cloud” it is potentially more secure. Security should not be seen as a barrier, he adds: “We “How do we decompose the outcomes in should take an adult view of risk.” such a way that we put competition into the market and provide opportunities for a range O’Neill agrees, adding, “The problem with the of service providers (traditional or big socicloud is that people lose sight of the fact that ety) and yet don’t go to the other end of the it is a relationship that you need to manage. spectrum – where everything falls apart? And for any relationship you go into you need

Of course, the austerity programme places urgency on the need to solve issues that, traditionally, government could have grappled with for years. Many things are possible, says Maxwell, if you have open standards and open structures. “You need a common platform across government that allows innovation.”

All agree that the public sector approach to purchasing must be revised. Equally strongly, all agree that standards are key to creating an open market.

Helen Olsen reports from ITU Live, where the panel found innovation and the adoption of new technologies mired in public sector procurement practices. ithin the context of the tightest Spending Review in recent history, the panel agreed that new technologies such as Cloud Computing hold out the hope of low cost ‘utility’ computing. But the public sector procurement model must change if technology is to deliver promised benefits.

“And within this we need to ensure agility, so that we build innovation into the picture.”

UKauthorITy IT in Use

Adds O’Neil, “We have a number of people in the right places, and a drive or desire to say we possibly have a once in a lifetime opportunity to break down the silos; to break down the barriers; to use technology, to look at the process of government and see how we can shift that process.”

On the panel:

ITU Live is sponsored by Adobe UK

View in full now at www.UKauthorITy.com/ITUlive January/February 2011

Public Data

IT Trends

The Rise of Free Data

IT Trends Down Council IT may be tightening its collective belt, says Helen Olsen. But right now, IT most definitely matters.

Michael Cross worries that economic woes will hold back the freeing of public data.

remarkable Phoenix is emerging from the bonfire of quangos set alight by Francis Maude on becoming Cabinet Office minister last year.

that not all data handled by the corporation will be free - this will apply only ‘where this is appropriate and consistent with ensuring value for taxpayers’ money’.

The Cabinet Office’s business plan, published last November, commits to working with the BIS department and HM Treasury to create a new public body by April 2011. According to the plan, the Public Data Corporation will be the source of ‘core reference data for free release’, putting in to effect the government’s promise to set public information free.

In the open data community the announcement prompted some alarm. The pressure group, Open Rights Group, said that while the corporation ‘could provide a collaboration environment for two-way improvement of data, and drive innovation by linking smaller start-ups with larger companies that can scale up the ideas’ it detected the influence of BIS and the Shareholder Executive in the plan. It warns that the plan could lead to ‘a two tier system with some free data available, while other valuable stuff is sold as premium services’. In other words, a situation very similar to what we have today.

It looked like unalloyed good news for the public sector IT community - not least because it was quickly followed by news of a National Address Gazetteer created by merging Ordnance Survey’s Address Layer product with the newly nationalised National Land and Property Gazetteer. Cabinet Office insiders say that the gazetteer came about after a personal intervention by Maude, who ended a decade-long standoff between owners of competing address databases with the demand: “Sort this out. Now.” Amid the good news, one nagging question remained: why was a government otherwise committed to cutting the public sector creating a new public corporation? A possible answer began to emerge last month when a press release made the first formal announcement of the Public Data Corporation (PDC). The statement said that the new corporation will, for the first time, bring together government bodies and data into one organisation and ‘provide an unprecedented level of easily accessible public information and drive further efficiency in the delivery of public services’. The statement recognises the conflict faced by many state agencies between maximising revenues from the sale of data and making the data freely available to be exploited for social and economic gain. ‘Creating the PDC will enable the conflicts at the least to be managed consistently with a view to opening up access, and at best to be eliminated.’ It also revealed that the corporation ‘can be a vehicle which will attract private investment’. This went in tandem with a revelation

January/February 2011

Meanwhile, specific concerns are being raised about the address gazetteer, an obvious candidate for the ‘core reference data’ set. Fears are growing that, far from being made available as a public good, the government is beginning to see this as a commercial revenue stream. While it will be free to the public sector - removing an old bone of contention for local authorities - the current plan is that private users will pay. One leading authority and campaigner, Professor Robert Barr, is calling for the Public Data Corporation to ensure that the database is made freely available as core reference data. In a letter to the government’s Shareholder Executive, copied to business secretary, Vince Cable, Barr says that the creation of a new joint venture, GeoPlace, to absorb the local-government created National Land and Property Gazetteer as well as Ordnance Survey’s addressing data, leaves two problems unresolved. They are: •

Pricing. Because the definitive National Address Gazetteer is a natural monopoly, Barr says there is no way to set a fair commercial price for its use. “Whatever price is set, the combination of cost and procurement effort will ensure that some beneficial uses of the data will not take place.” He proposes that the gazetteer be made available free of charge, and funded by a levy or a small additional charge on procedures that create changes to addresses, UKauthorITy IT in Use

©iStockphoto.com/setixela

such as land registrations and planning permissions. “The database required to support the NAG is neither large nor, necessarily, expensive and can be made publicly available through www. data.gov.uk.” •

The gazetteer’s relationship with Royal Mail’s Postcode Address File. Barr notes that the government appears to be planning to leave postcodes in the hands of Royal Mail as a commercial asset. “It is bad enough that Royal Mail chose to play shop with data originally provided by local government because of its database creation rights. It will be even more unfortunate if the monopoly in the supply of correct mailing addresses and postcodes is sold along with Royal Mail for a private corporation to exploit.”

Barr calls for a consultation to resolve these issues. “Now we must learn from the errors of the past and ensure that GeoPlace is established as a sustainable organisation.” Another critic is the Demographics User Group, which represents private sector users of government data, including household name firms such as Sainsbury’s. In letters to the Cabinet Office and the Office of Fair Trading (which is considering whether to investigate) it is making the free data argument that addressing is a natural monopoly and that datasets should be available to all. ‘Neither the commercialisation of the NAG nor the privatisation of the PAF will be in the public interest. Both should be retained as public assets, free at the point of use.’ On the other hand, the leading supplier of addressing data services, QAS Experian, which has arrangements with about 70% of local authorities, sees no threat to its business model. “From a cost perspective this can only be a good thing,” says Alister Humphreys, head of public sector. Until details emerge about the structure of the Public Data Corporation and its commercial partners (if any) - and in particular what datasets it will handle and on what terms - it is hard to tell whether the new quango will be good news for free data. The fear is that public bodies will find it hard to get into the free-data habit - especially in these economic times.

ocal authorities grappling with hefty spending cuts are continuing to invest in IT - but at a drastically lower level than two years ago, according to an authoritative annual survey of council IT. The Society of IT Management’s IT Trends survey shows that the volume of IT purchasing fell by 30% in 2010, with IT budgets overall falling by 2.9% to around just £2.7bn a significant drop from 2008’s heady heights of approximately £3.2bn. However the survey’s author, John Serle, said that the decline was less than expected - a sign that organisations see IT as a way of cutting their overall costs. “IT has emerged stronger and fitter and positioned to help organisations transform,” he said. Serle said that pressure from budget cuts is forcing nearly every local authority to consider sharing IT services and facilities. Local authorities employ about 29,000 IT staff - some 1,000 fewer than in 2009 – and the percentage of the ICT budget spent on staff is at its lowest since records began. ‘We are concerned that a ‘salami slicing’ approach to cutting local public service expenditure will adversely impact ICT,’ the report warns.

It urges managers to assert themselves in leading radical rethinking of how organisations use technology to run services and publish information. More of the same is simply not enough: ‘Improving value for money within the ICT function will continue, but the scope, without radical change, is inadequate.’ The report identifies radical change to involve: •

Considering deep service sharing with other authorities, or outsourcing;

•

Hard-nosed negotiation and ditching expensive equipment, software and service contracts;

•

Re-thinking the service model towards maximising self-service, use of the cloud and strict standardisation around ‘good enough’ solutions.

Within that context, mobile and flexible working, workflow and document management, shared (and cloud) services, and web self-service continue to be a core focus for council CIOs. Cost savings from rationalising basic infrastructure – server virtualisation, network consolidation – are largely still to be realised and the scope for re-engineering

ITU

business processes around citizen needs holds much promise. Overall, there is great evidence that there is much still left to do. However, perhaps the greatest challenge for the council CIO now will be to take a lead in the radical rethink of how the organisation delivers its services and publishes its information. Said Socitm’s Roger Marshall, “Never has the saying ‘be part of the solution, not the problem’ been more appropriate.” One major balancing act identified for council IT services is the requirement for both access to information to deliver efficiencies and open the books to the army of armchair auditors, versus the need to safeguard data and confidentiality. The report’s authors wonders how far the latest Wikileaks will affect future thinking for both the UK and US governments. The IT Trends survey, now in its 24th year, is based on data from 520 local authority and other frontline organisations. ww.socitm.org

See the video report on UKauthorITy.tv when it launches next month. www.UKauthorITy.tv

magazine’s new video news portal, UKauthorITy.tv, launches next month. In the meantime our video reports can be seen on our web portal, www.UKauthorITy.com. New stories include:

ICL

INFORMED COMMUNICATIONS

Small Businesses, Agile Working and a Financially Constrained Public Sector: Newbury Management Consultants’ Kelvin Prescott talks about the barriers to SMEs in tendering for public sector contracts and cost reducing ‘agile working’.

Outsourcing and the Spending Review: Martyn Hart, chairman of the National Outsourcing Association, outlines the opportunities to add value by outsourcing non-core activities and the vital role technology has for the public sector.

Video vs Web Conferencing: Matt Wicks, from The Virtual Forge, explains the latest collaboration and communication technologies and explores the difference between web and video conferencing.

Transforming Service Delivery: KPMG’s Iain Gravestock thinks there is an opportunity, post Spending Review, to fundamentally rethink public service delivery.

Open Data and Transparency: Dane Wright is heading up open data and transparency at the London Borough of Brent, and has gained a reputation for thought leadership on this subject along the way.

Web Conferencing, Cost Reduction, Collaboration and Communication: Adobe’s Will Cawthorne explains how the latest web conferencing technologies can help the public sector cut both its carbon emissions and travel costs.

UKauthorITy IT in Use

January/February 2011

Special Focus: Cloud Services

Libraries

Here Today, Cloud Tomorrow

Libraries & Digital Engagement

Cloud services offer the public sector a lifeline through the budget cuts, says Prelini Udayan Chiechi, head of enterprise marketing at Adobe.

Think of public libraries and it is hard to think of them as anything other than council-run services, argues Tim Hampson. ©iStockphoto.com/FabioFilzi

©iStockphoto.com/PhotographerOlympus

very now and again industry encounters a ‘disruptive’ advance that subsequently reaches a ‘tipping-point’, bringing fundamental change across both that industry and society as a whole. Take, for example, the invention of the automobile at the turn of the 20th Century. It wasn’t the invention of the car that influenced the future shape of America. It was only when Henry Ford, in 1908, set up the first production line for the Model T Ford - churning out a standard, reliable and affordable commodity - that the car was taken to that nation’s heart. In the technology industry today, Cloud Computing is that disruptive advance. And it is standards – in the form of open standards – that will enable this new paradigm of utility computing to bring flexibility and economies of scale that fundamentally shift technology from being a specialist area to a commodity. Like the car and the tipping point that was the Model T it will not be the technology development itself but the ubiquitous nature and dramatic economies of scale that it can bring that will deliver a fundamental shift in our use of technology. We are at the cusp of this process; of being able to provide much lower cost technology to government, enabling both huge efficiencies and a simultaneous step change in the quality of public service delivery. Last year we launched our flagship enterprise development platform, LiveCycle ES2, into the cloud as a managed service hosted on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud infrastructure (Amazon EC2).

Agile

on demand: LiveCycle Managed

Services now enable you to develop and deploy enterprise wide LiveCycle applications securely without installing, configuring, or maintaining LiveCycle in your own data centre. This provides a reliable and resilient platform for building personalised customer experience and interactive solutions whilst reducing the upfront investment costs of developing such automated, efficient processes. Indeed, the next generation LiveCyle environment in the clouds offloads the entire enterprise deployment to Adobe, running in a secure data centre looked after 24x7 by Adobe personnel. That side of things is our

January/February 2011

problem, not yours. And we believe that we can do this more efficiently, and at less cost, than anyone else. Cloud therefore enables you to reduce upfront costs, capital expenditure and support, and instead focus resource on rapid developments that back-end integrate into your existing systems and databases. In the cloud, perpetual licence pricing evolves to a subscription-based pricing model, enabling projects to move at the speed of light. Agile development is the norm.

Safe

and secure: With any new tech-

nology there is, quite rightly, caution. With cloud, people worry predominantly about the potential loss of control over their systems, about the security of their data and the sustainability of the platform. It is vital to have a well-planned strategy, based on open standards, and to undertake due diligence over security issues. For example, we believe that we have a more secure environment in the Amazon cloud than many organisations have in their own datacentres. Amazon has many years of experience in designing, constructing and operating large scale datacentres. And both Amazon and Adobe have proven track records in physical security, network security, access controls, and data security. These are essential skills and competencies to any organisation, but this expensive resource can be provided ‘on tap’ as and when needed in this new model.

Strategic

utility: Data Consolidation and the cloud play a strong part in strategic ICT thinking. Both were key planks of the previous government’s aspirational ICT strategy and both are widely expected to be underpinning themes to the government’s eagerly anticipated new strategy due to the significant potential savings on offer. In October 2010 former government CIO, John Suffolk, questioned why central government has 8,000+ data centres – these could be cut, he said, “to around twelve”. Such dramatic savings cannot be overlooked.

Furthermore, commoditised cloud offerings for government offer organisations the freedom to choose not to renew major IT outsourcing contracts and instead to buy the UKauthorITy IT in Use

IT they need in components – as they need them, when they need them. A government framework could verify these components for quality, usefulness and security, significantly removing the burden public sector procurement that currently holds back innovation in the sector.

Business as usual: In the cloud, your busi-

ness users can be more autonomous and less reliant on IT as they configure applications to fit their evolving needs. In the commercial world, a key bellwether or ‘first mover’ industry is traditionally investment banking. And in the banks today some of their biggest transformation projects that involve cloud technology are not being run by the IT department, they are being run by the business. Government IT needs to understand and get close to the needs and dynamics of the business of service delivery - as trends in the banking industry suggest, sophisticated and intuitive systems are no longer the preserve of the IT department.

Working

in the cloud: Adobe’s portfolio of cloud services enable organisations to communicate and collaborate, wherever they are, whenever they are. Adobe Connect 8, as a hosted web conferencing and collaboration tool, can be used to facilitate agile working and rapid response to the immediate pressures on the public sector – turn services on and off, pull cross-agency teams together and remove the need for expensive face to face meetings with flexible video conferencing.

Collaboration within or between teams and organisations can be facilitated with web conferencing and the Acrobat.com hosted file sharing tools. Officers can work on the same document, at the same time and see all edits and amends. And sophisticated Acrobat portfolios take publishing to a new, rich media, level where data, text and video content can flow within the portfolio. The cloud is here to stay; it is an advance that cannot be ignored. And it will change the way in which we use and view technology.

For more information about Adobe technologies and the cloud, email: Adobe@lgitu.co.uk

he roots of our library system go back more than 150 years when liberal MP, William Ewart, introduced the public Libraries Bill in 1849. The Bill encountered considerable hostility from the Conservatives, who argued that taxes paid by the middle and upper classes would be paying for a service that would be mainly used by the working classes. One MP argued that the “people have too much knowledge already: it was much easier to manage them twenty years ago; the more education people get the more difficult they are to manage.” Well perhaps the more things change the more they stay the same. Over the years, libraries have grown and prospered and become embraced in many part of the country as being a vital community asset; part of the very fabric of a locality as important as a church, pub, school or post office. Although the number has stayed largely stable over the past decade - at the 4,500 mark - there has been a decline in use. However the number of people using libraries is still considerable. More than three-hundred and twenty million visits were made to public libraries last year, which is more than attend premier league football matches. And they have not been slow to embrace the challenges of a digital society; more than fifty-six million visits are made annually to public library websites in England. But libraries are not more immune to the cuts in public expenditure. As councils prepare to set their budgets campaigners say that about a third of Britain’s 4,517 libraries are under threat - along with 6,000 jobs. Annie Mauger of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CLIP) said: “This really is a cut which will hit the poorest hardest, because libraries cater for young parents, the elderly, and the unemployed. We also provide internet access for the nine million people who do not have their own. In places it will rip the heart out of communities.” She says that libraries will not be immune to the substantial savings being sought across the public sector. “However, we do ask that proper consideration is given to the true value

of libraries, their contribution to learning, reading and literacy, community well-being, skills and economic regeneration. It is a simple fact that libraries are even more vital in difficult economic times,” said Mauger.

of digital opportunities. In its first phase a number of authorities are linking libraries, including Northumberland with Durham, Oxfordshire with Kent and Kensington & Chelsea with Hammersmith & Fulham.

But does a community really need a collection of books any more or even a building called a library? The British Library is to digitise up to 40 million newspaper pages and then make them available online. They will include papers - local, regional and national - dating back to the early 1700s. And it will not stop there; 20 million pages of 19th-century literature (approximately 80,000 books) are to be digitised along with 4,000 hours of archival sound recordings in addition to the 4,000 hours already digitised and 100,000 pages of Greek manuscripts.

Says Vaizey, “A strong library service, based around the needs of local people, can play a key role in our ambitions to build the big society by providing safe and inclusive spaces for people to read, learn and access a range of community services.” Crucially, he says, this means that the people who use and cherish their local libraries will have a much greater say in their future.

It is a trend that is happening across Europe. In January the European Commission released ‘The New Renaissance’, a report on efforts to digitise Europe’s cultural heritage. Europe has been particularly energetic about its digitisation efforts, developing the Europeana online portal - which currently features more than 15 million works of art, books, music, and film, as well as the European Library, which provides access to 24 million pages of fulltext scanned by 14 national libraries. European commissioner, Neelie Kroes, says that digitising libraries could usher in new benefits for education, for innovation and for generating new economic activities. And she has urged member states to increase their funding for digitisation in order to generate jobs and growth in the future. But more money is going to be hard to find. Here in the UK, communities secretary, Eric Pickles, has announced a £6.5bn cut in the money given to councils, with most facing an average cut of 10% this year. Culture minister, Ed Vaizey, points to the Future Libraries Programme, a partnership between national and local government, as a potential saviour. It aims to help the library service during the current cuts to ensure that libraries play a central role for communities in the Big Society. The programme aims to spread learning and generate momentum in achieving cost savings, new partnerships and governance models. It also aims to take advantage UKauthorITy IT in Use

The grand vision is for library services to have ‘greater connection’ with other local services that are designed around the needs of the public, rather than based on organisational boundaries. However, encouraged by David Cameron’s Big Society philosophy, councils across the UK are saying that volunteers must replace paid staff if libraries are to be saved. But not everyone wants a big society library run by volunteers or digital opportunities even. And around the country protests are mounting against library closures. In Oxfordshire, 20 libraries are set to lose funding next year. The council says it will support community groups wanting to convert libraries into community-run facilities as part of the government’s big society drive. But as yet there is little enthusiasm or take up. In 2009, the then libraries minister, Andy Burnham, ordered an inquiry into proposed library closures in the Wirral that led the plans being dumped. In the last few months campaigners have been calling for culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and Vaizey to do the same, given the much greater threats now being posed to the library service in many counties. Campaigners say that under the provisions of the 1964 Museums and Public Libraries Act, the secretary of state, Jeremy Hunt, is the custodian of library services. When in opposition Vaizey was a high-profile campaigner against library closures. Today he says that his Future Libraries Programme will report later this year on different ways of providing library services. But this could well come too late to save many. January/February 2011

View on Westminster

Troubled Times Ahead

Of Hacktivists & Spending Cuts

The political waters are rocking both the government’s and the opposition’s ships of state, says Tim Hampson.

OPINION: Michael Cross gets down to the netroots.

olitics always does it. The party leaders want us to concentrate on one thing as they attempt to control the news agenda and then like buses, two events come along which grab the headlines. The drip, drip of publicity against Mr Cameron’s personal spin doctor finally filled and sank Andy Coulson’s dinghy. He wasn’t drowning but certainly has waved goodbye to public life. Some might think the Essex boy had got his due desserts, but his departure did cause the Number 10 office a problem. Who to replace him with? “An Eton toff or another barrow boy,” confided one Toryshire MP. The new shadow chancellor, Ed Ball, will certainly be sailing on choppy waters. He carries with him the political ballast of being the architect of the former prime minister’s now derided economic policies. But even though the chattering classes were asking whether “two Eds were better than one” some real work was being done inside the chamber. After what seems like the longest of goodbyes, the much derided national identity cards are no more. The last time one could be used was midnight on 21 January as the government finally pulled the plug and kept its election manifesto commitment to dump the scheme. But their final goodbye proved to have a hefty price tag as the government admitted that it would cost millions to scrap the National Identity Register. Immigration minister, Damian Green, said that scrapping ID cards was about “restoring people’s trust” in government on personal data handling and government’s trust in people. He said that laying ID cards to rest demonstrates the government’s commitment to scale back the power of the state and restore civil liberties. In a written parliamentary answer, Green stated that the Home Office estimated a cost of up to £400,000 would be incurred in dismantling systems and destroying personal data held on the register. Green wrote, ‘It is estimated that cancelling ID cards and the NIR will realise net savings of £86m over the next four years. The Identity and Passport Service (IPS) will incur some one-off

Online

January/February 2011

expenditure and asset write-offs during 2010-11, including the secure destruction of the NIR. The net costs in 2010-11 will be near to £5m’. Meanwhile, Cabinet secretary, Francis Made, turned his attention to shared services. He wants more government departments to merge back offices. And where the civil servants go local government should follow. He said that the government’s Efficiency and Reform Group was “working with departments to accelerate their use of shared services for back office services, such as finance, HR and procurement so that significant economies of scale can be delivered”. Maude told MPs that he wants to see the public sector managing its assets more effectively. “The government announced in the 2010 spending review that as a first step to introducing a more coordinated approach to property asset management in the public sector it would set up Property Vehicles for the central London and Bristol office estate from 2011-12.” Further details, he promised, will be announced in due course. The scrapping of ContactPoint, the database of vulnerable children, was another manifesto commitment made by the government. Its demise was announced last June in the bonfire of the databases. Education and children’s minister, Tim Loughton, told MPs that the Department for Education has been exploring the practicality of a new national signposting service in detail, together with relevant partners. In other words, one database is being replaced with a different database. He has asked Professor Eileen Munro of the LSE to come up with a solution. It was important, he said, to avoid the creation of any unnecessary demands on social workers and others at the frontline. “Any solution must be firmly focused on helping front-line professionals to spend as much time as possible helping vulnerable children and families,” said Loughton. “Any national approach must be fit for purpose, proportionate and relate to a clear need. It must also be cost effective and have benefits for the front line of child protection. This was not the case with ContactPoint.” UKauthorITy IT in Use

He said that if a new ICT system is the solution, or part of the solution, the children in scope should be limited to: those who are looked after; those with child protection plans; and, subject to further consideration of legal issues particularly relating to consent, those who have been the subject of section 47 investigations. It is important that any database contains only details of children known to be at risk; otherwise it could fall into disrepute. Clear criteria, he added, would also need to be in place for the removal of a child’s details from the database. The first part of the academic’s research makes interesting reading. Munro has found that the work of some social workers is made harder by a digital divide between local authorities and their computer systems. She says that some authorities equip their social workers better for a computer based system than others. As part of her review she is looking at ways of reducing bureaucracy and how performance of child protection professionals can be measured. She has found locally procured IT systems to support case management have been a major cause of complaint from social workers. “Although mandatory requirements have recently been removed, most systems currently in use have been developed on the basis of previous requirements and will take some time to change,” she says. Munro says that future ICT systems for children’s social work should rebalance functionality to take account of the importance of maintaining a narrative which describes all the events associated with the interaction between a social worker and others, such as a paediatric department at a local hospital, and the child and their family. She recommends that ICT systems for children’s social work should be developed in such a way that it should be relatively easy to cope with both changes in requirements, and, equally important, take account of local circumstances extant in children’s departments. Now that will be a challenge both for local authorities and their suppliers.

hatever their political col`our, local authorities are certain to be on the front line of this spring’s protests against government spending cuts. Much of the activity will be planned and, probably, carried out - on line. I had a glimpse of the new ‘hacktivist’ thinking last month at a conference held at TUC headquarters to inaugurate the Netroots movement in Britain. In the US, where it has been around for nearly a decade, Netroots is a loose federation of leftish/liberal campaigners counteracting what they see as the right-wing dominance of blogs and online media. In the UK, to judge from the turnout at the conference, Netroots is a slightly uneasy alliance of public sector trade unions, student groups, fringe political parties and cyber activists based on common opposition to spending cuts. An influential component of Netroots is the ‘UK Uncut’ campaign of direct protests against retailers and other businesses alleged to be avoiding taxes; there’s also an overlap with the outright cyber-sabotage of groups such as Anonymous, best known for carrying out denial-of-service attacks against organisations seen as hostile to Wikileaks. Representing what was widely seen as the old guard, the Labour Party was represented by the former minister, Tom Watson MP, in weekend jeans. And in an opening address, the TUC’s general secretary, Brendan Barber, hailed the power of web media “to bring people together in a progressive cause”. Up to now, Barber maintained, “political opinions on the right have had a more forceful presence in cyberspace”. The conference concurred. An example repeatedly cited was the online campaign against fuel price rises, dismissed by one delegate as “backed by quite sinister right-wing forces”. There was consensus that much could be learned from the Conservatives’ use of new engagement techniques: an initiative commended was last year’s Make IT Better project, which aimed to create a crowd sourced IT strategy. “It got a lot of kudos from online networks - most people didn’t realise it was the Tories.”

Workshops on themes such as using social media and protecting anonymity on the web gave a good guide to online tactics likely to be embraced by activists. One popular proposal was the time-honoured ‘entryist’ tactic of joining existing groups and changing their political flavour. “Build the organisation by tapping in to networks that already exist. Embrace disruption,” one workshop presenter recommended. Even the Daily Mail, operator of Britain’s most read news website, was seen to be open to entryism. Delegates observed that the paper’s web content has a different flavour to the print edition - including an emphasis on a campaign to boycott the new owner of Cadbury. Delegates noted with amazement that the Mail’s message was indistinguishable from that promulgated by groups such as UK Uncut - all down to the power of the web, they said. “Social media has the potential to neutralise the power of corporate media... 10% of Daily Mail traffic is driven by Facebook, which the paper sees as a gigantic free marketing engine.” However there was a warning that there are limits to what entryism can achieve: “Social networks are like shopping malls - they are pseudo public spaces, you can publish there so long as you’re not interfering with advertising.” Andrew Walker of the politically neutral Tweetminster network stressed that online activism was about listening as well as shouting or disrupting. Political campaigns have been slow to get this message, he said. “Lose the ego - it’s not about you, it’s about democracy. Try and be invisible and listen more.” He advised activists to be agile, not to preach to the choir. “Issues play well, platforms don’t. The new politics hasn’t happened yet. The public will be telling you what cuts they can swallow - build on that. Local is more important than national.” Chris Coltrane, of the UK Uncut movement against corporate tax avoidance (and other causes), gave some hints on how to combine the web with street protests. As an organisation, UK Uncut is just a website with a list of forthcoming “actions” plotted on Googlemaps, he said. “It’s completely UKauthorITy IT in Use

non-hierarchical.” His message to activists was: make it interesting. “If you have an interesting protest, people will pick up on it.” Twitter is “a game changer” he said - “A protest of fifty people can turn into fifty thousand people when you get the internet involved.” What does this mean for local authorities? At the launch conference, Netrooters seemed to see councils as fellow victims rather than targets, with trade unions as potential staff members. However there were rumblings of feeling against councils, and other public bodies, using the cuts as cover for a “right wing transformation agenda” - which activists see as a legitimate target. One worry for local authorities may be cyber sabotage against online services if campaigners start seeing them as villains in the piece. The culprits won’t necessarily be on the left - councils are also liable to local attacks from across the political spectrum against so-called ‘vanity’ projects, even when these involve shared-service investments designed to save money in the long run. In the words of the Sunday Times, ‘Councils splash out on new HQs as staff are slashed’. The activist group, Anonymous, is trying to present attacks on government websites as a legitimate form of disobedience ‘a new way of voicing civil protest’. However specialist lawyers say the authorities are likely to take a much sterner view: under the Computer Misuse Act 1990 a person is guilty of an offence if they carry out ‘any unauthorised act in relation to a computer’. Nigel Stanley, the TUC’s head of campaigns, delivered a dose of realism about the extent of popular support for protests. Polls show that 52% of people back the spending cuts, 39% opposed them and 59% agreed that the Labour government bore most of the responsibility for the crisis. “These are not good starting points,” he said with some understatement. However the government is vulnerable on the question of fairness. “The more it’s an emotional and personal story, the more we are winning,” he said. January/February 2011

Company & Product Notes

GIS for social housing

GP Systems has announced a start-up package to enable UK social housing providers to take advantage of free Ordnance Survey digital mapping. GGP Housing is an off the shelf software package including licences of GGP’s Geographical Information System (GIS) together with a complete installation, training and support programme to ensure the most effective use of geographical information and map based data. The GIS helps to manage property records, occupancy rates and maintenance schedules as well making it easier to share information with suppliers, tenants and stakeholders in an easy to understand visual way. www.ggpsystems.co.uk FREE LOOKING LOCAL APP: Looking Local has developed a free app which gives people across the UK immediate and intuitive access to local councils and housing associations. Key to the app is the ‘Report It’ feature which covers everyday issues such as dumped rubbish, graffiti, potholes and road repairs, street lighting faults, street furniture damage, abandoned vehicles and anti-social behaviour. Usability and convenience are key, making reports perfectly suited for iPhone delivery where location detection, map browsing, camera integration and a highly responsive interface allow users to quickly report issues on the go. http:// itunes.apple.com/gb/app/looking-local/id409806455?mt=8

WFS to stream OS MasterMap

Contract Roundup

FIGHTING TENANCY FRAUD: Capita has launched its tenancy verification service. The fully managed service enables quick identification of social homes being sublet, without creating additional work for council officers or requiring the time and cost of visiting every social home. The service uses data and technology to scrutinise financial activity at a specified address before assessing against housing records. www.capita.co.uk GETTING TO GRIPS WITH SHARING: Local authorities need to set aside cultural differences and embrace shared services if they are to meet austerity measures, says Hornbill. Its new white paper, ‘Shared Service, a Vision of 2012: delivering more for less’, discusses the practicalities of delivering shared services both across departments and across diverse geographies. www.hornbill.com. FLEXIBLE OPTIONS FOR PATIENT RECORDS: Orion Health has released Electronic Health Record offering advanced flexibility and new options for healthcare organisations. The enhanced version enables a connected system of health to achieve smarter patient outcomes. It offers secure, interoperable, standards compliant data integration between existing hospital IT systems, to create a unified view of patient information that can be shared among providers within and across a healthcare system - regardless of where the care was provided. www.orionhealth.com

Confirm on the move

GUY’S AND ST THOMAS’ NHS FOUNDATION TRUST has rolled out BigHand across the trust for faster clinical correspondence. Beyond replacing analogue tapes, the trust has seamlessly integrated BigHand’s digital dictation system to help improve efficiency, cut turnaround times and provide a firm platform for a single system which will integrate to other trust IT systems in the future.

omerset County Council has gone live with Pitney Bowes Business Insight’s (PBBI) new advanced highways management system. Based on Confirm, PBBI’s infrastructure asset maintenance and management system provides an all-electronic, end-to-end solution for mobile-enabled management of highway defects between Somerset’s highway inspectors and its highway contractor, Atkins. With 30,000 road defects reported each year, the mobilisation of the Confirm-based maintenance system has enabled Atkins’ work gangs to respond quicker and more efficiently to logged faults. This has resulted in 98% of defects being repaired within their target response time – a significant improvement on previous performance. www.pbinsight.co.uk

Oracle CRM ‘on demand’ from UK data centre

racle is targeting public sector business with the launch of a UK data centre, a move which will open up its On Demand CRM solution to organisations previously unable to adopt software as a service due to data legislation. The launch will enable European firms to store their data within the UK, thereby meeting EU regulatory requirements relating to the management of their data - significant to public sector bodies, some financial services organisations and consumer goods organisations which in the past have been restricted from adopting SaaS solutions.

Steve Fearon, VP CRM On Demand, EMEA Oracle, said that having a UK-based data centre could have huge significance to Oracle’s activity in the public sector, where legislation and political sensitivities dictate that citizen-centric data must be hosted within national boundaries. “We are looking at healthcare and primary and secondary healthcare trusts, local government, certain central governments, as well as certain industries such as some financial services organisations and some consumer goods organisations, where they are very keen to have it hosted within the EU,” he explained. http://crmondemand.oracle.com/uk/products

Wireless up in the mountains

rqiva and Alcatel-Lucent have announced a Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless technology trial in the Preseli Mountains, west Wales. The trial demonstrates the economic and technical viability of a neutral-host wireless network as a route to extending broadband internet services to areas with no broadband coverage (‘notspots’) and those with speeds lower than 2Mbits/s throughout the UK, estimated at 10% of UK households. www.arqiva.com

etmapping has launched a Web Feature Service (WFS) to stream Ordnance Survey MasterMap over the internet. The WFS feed will reduce network overhead and the need to manage and update this very large, complex and constantly changing dataset. WFS enables users to interrogate, update and create map features whereas WMS feeds used by online mapping portals such as Google Maps only display an image, which users cannot edit or analyse. www.getmapping.com

January/February 2011

UKauthorITy IT in Use

NHS

NHS CROYDON, WEST KENT, BATH & NORTH EAST SOMERSET AND EAST SUSSEX DOWNS & WEALD have all signed up to MedeAnalytics’ UK performance network, which enables healthcare organisations to examine different aspects of performance by pulling together key statistical information into bespoke dashboards and score-cards. NINE NHS TRUSTS ACROSS CUMBRIA AND LANCASHIRE have chosen Salford Software to deploy a single identity management solution for 40,000 users as part of existing Active Directory deployments. Salford Software will implement the solution at no licensing cost to the trusts under an Enterprise Wide Agreement from Connecting for Health. PENNINE CARE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST has become the 44th trust to receive National Accreditation, supported by Sunrise’s service management solution, Sostenuto. The accreditation process requires ICT departments to demonstrate strategic alignment to the business and the right technology tools to achieve their goals. WEST LONDON MENTAL HEALTH NHS TRUST has implemented a full-IP Aastra Solidus eCare contact centre solution, from Aastra reseller partner, Telent. The new contact centre will allow the trust to provide single point of contact and prompt, efficient call management for the general public. BIRMINGHAM CITY COUNCIL has extended and expanded its original five year contract with Capita for ICT and contact centre services by a further five years in a deal worth around £300m. Under the deal the council-supplier joint venture, Service Birmingham, will also deliver the council’s revenues service for a period of 10 years from next April. One hundred and fifty two revenues staff will transfer to Service Birmingham under TUPE regulations. Birmingham hopes to generate a further £55m in savings on top of the £69m targeted in the original contract.

Local Government

Police

BARKING AND DAGENHAM LBC has signed a seven year joint venture agreement worth £250m with Agilisys to reform the delivery of its back office and support services. A jointly owned business, Elevate East London, will be formed in a bid to improve efficiency, make savings and create local jobs. BASSETLAW COUNCIL has commissioned a night-time thermal survey from Bluesky to help address fuel poverty and provide detail on private housing stock across the Nottinghamshire district. The thermal mapping aerial survey will record highly accurate measurements of relative heat loss from individual buildings delivering a property level digital map for use in the council’s GIS. BIRMINGHAM HIGHWAYS maintenance and management service, run by Amey in a 25 year partnership with Birmingham City Council, has chosen Telensa’s PLANet system to help manage nearly 100,000 streetlights. PLANet will be used to control switching and dimming and - it is anticipated - help to reduce energy usage by 40% compared to conventional street lighting. BLACKPOOL COUNCIL plans to roll out Concerto Sites asset management software to include its estate of 6,000 council houses by 2014 on top of the 1,200 commercial properties - from schools and leisure facilities to council offices - the system already manages successfully. BLAENAU GWENT COUNTY BOROUGH COUNCIL, using technology from Quest Software, has revamped the way it uses its Microsoft Active Directory system to radically improve efficiency and service to its 2000 users. Previously it could take a month to get a new user fully online with all permissions, and an old account could persist for months after someone had left that role. BOLTON COUNCIL is collaborating with Kcom to optimise its entire managed services. Kcom undertook a mid-term contract audit with the council. This provided opportunity for a review and optimisation of its managed services delivery, resulting in a 30% reduction in costs across all fixedline communications services and a total saving of approximately £500,000 over four years. BOURNEMOUTH BOROUGH COUNCIL and Mouchel have signed a 10-year Incremental Partnership Contract initially worth £15m per year. Mouchel will support a council-wide transformation programme that will enable the council to save up to 40% of its revenue budget over the next 10 years. A shared services hub will be set up to deliver services for the council, but with the intention of also supporting other public sector organisations across the south of England in areas such as ICT. UKauthorITy IT in Use

DYFED POWYS POLICE FORCE is rolling out MidlandHR’s iTrent web-based HR, payroll, talent management and workforce planning solution for its 3,200 strong workforce policing the four unitary authorities of Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion, Pembrokeshire and Powys. The latest phase of the force’s HR transformation includes iTrent’s Recruitment and Web Recruitment functionality, giving Dyfed Powys Police complete control in identifying the best candidates from the widest pool of applicants. NORTHAMPTONSHIRE POLICE has signed a £10m communications framework on behalf of itself and two other police forces. Police in Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire will be able to buy IP telephony and a unified communications solution supplied by BT iNet through the deal. WEST YORKSHIRE POLICE has upgraded to the latest version of Hornbill’s ITIL-compatible Supportworks ITSM Enterprise. It will be used by 123 IT staff to support over 10,000 police force employees serving in the area. As part of the upgrade West Yorkshire Police has rolled out a self-service facility for all staff to log and check the progress of their calls, which frees up service desk staff to provide a more proactive service.

CAMBRIDGESHIRE AND NORTHAMPTONSHIRE COUNTY COUNCILS plan to save nearly £7m through a new contract with Fujitsu to host their shared IT platform for business support services. The councils have been sharing technology for business support processes in areas such as finance, human resources and procurement for the past four years, through an initial contract due to expire in early 2011. The two councils are the founding partners of Local Government Shared Services (LGSS), a shared service venture set up to provide business support services to the two councils and potentially other public sector organisations. January/February 2011

Contract Roundup

Showcase

CAMDEN has signed a £6.1m contract with RM for ICT products and services under its Building Schools for the Future programme. RM will supply the services as part of the BAM consortium, appointed to deliver Camden’s BSF programme which will renew three schools. RM will provide a managed ICT service including its Community Connect 4 networking system, VoIP telephony, classroom and student computer systems, software, support and management. DENBIGHSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL has become the latest public sector organisation to join the ProcServe Trading Network. The roll-out of xchangewales eTrading throughout the council will enable end-to-end paperless procurement and give decision-makers a clearer picture of council spend. DEVON COUNTY COUNCIL, Gloucestershire County Council and Luton Borough Council are accessing the National Resource Allocation Web Service to generate indicative budgets for people around the country with social care needs who wish to take up a personal budget as set out in the government’s reforms of social care. The system provides real-time links with local IT systems thus allowing budgets to be generated in seconds. It has been developed in collaboration with 25 local authorities over a three-year period. SOUTHAMPTON CITY COUNCIL’S £100m highways maintenance partnership with Balfour Beatty WorkPlace is using Confirm OnDemand from Pitney Bowes Business Insight to help maintain the city’s highways. Southampton councillor, Matthew Dean (right) and Balfour Beatty WorkPlace MD, Terry Woodhouse (left), say that the on-demand infrastructure asset management and management system, which integrates with PBBI’s MapInfo GIS, will enable the council to pinpoint defects in the road network and associated assets and expedite necessary repairs.

DUMFRIES AND GALLOWAY COUNCIL has launched online top ups at Moffat Academy for secondary school pupils. The council has pioneered the use of the National Entitlement Card at local schools to enable sQuid electronic money to be used to top up school cashless catering accounts so that children can pay for food and drink in the school canteen, without the need to take cash to school. EDINBURGH COUNCIL says a move away from a cumbersome paper-ticket system previously used by its contractors to a new PDA-based approach has improved efficiency and service to council users. The upgrade - part of its ongoing ‘Smart City’ partnership with BT - means the scheduling work of its building services operation, which helps service and maintain some 23,000 homes and encompasses over 200 skilled tradespeople, has seen a massive paper trail replaced by an electronic, centralised system. GUERNSEY’S schools has contracted education ICT specialist, XMA, to provide IT and engineering support to 25 schools across the island for the next four years under a network managed service for the State’s Education Department (SED). HERTFORDSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL has partnered with WisePay to centrally manage online payments and funds across a number of its schools, streamlining the administrative processes to deliver time and cost saving efficiencies. KING’S LYNN & WEST NORFOLK has selected LogLogic log management and intelligence solution to help meet the government’s GCSx and CoCo compliance requirements. KNOWSLEY COUNCIL has enhanced its case management, transformed case bundling and improved debt recovery rates using a Civic Legal case management software platform with a view to contributing to Knowsley’s efficiency targets. LEICESTERSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL has teamed up with City University London to create an online resource that enables its staff and citizens to better understand public satisfaction with local services and amenities. The new website, developed by City’s giCentre, allows employees and the public to interpret the survey results using data visualisation, and tailor services to match.

January/February 2011

GGP

LEWISHAM has become the 13th member of the London Libraries Consortium - which now covers over three million residents. From March 2011 Lewisham’s 250,000 residents will be able to access the consortium’s shared library management system, Axiell OpenGalaxy, from any internet-enabled computer, iPhone or via a library computer.

SOUTHEND-ON-SEA BOROUGH COUNCIL has implemented Hornbill’s Supportworks ITSM Foundations service management software to provide IT service support to council employees based at its four locations. The ‘bite-size’ ITIL solution was chosen to meet service level targets as part of its initiative to deliver service excellence for end users of over two hundred applications and reduce overall ICT costs.

UKauthorITy IT in Use

NORTH SOMERSET COUNCIL and Agilisys have selected Agresso Local Government as a key enabler of their business improvement programme in a 10 year, £600,000 deal. The solution will provide a complete view of finances, allowing councillors and officers to make informed decisions based upon accurate, real-time information. NOTTINGHAMSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL is replacing a number of bespoke IT systems across HR and finance with SAP’s full ERP suite including HR, financials, procurement, business intelligence and other related service areas. WESTMINSTER CITY COUNCIL asked eDigitalResearch to engage with staff and track views and opinions via digital survey. WOKINGHAM BOROUGH COUNCIL has asked Northgate Public Services to manage its ICT in a five year partnership worth £8.5m. The partnership will focus on improving customer access and service, reducing cost, making processes more efficient and effective, and improving ICT governance. WORCESTER CITY COUNCIL has joined forces with Malvern Hills District Council to automate processes with Civica Financials systems. The two authorities have a history of sharing and were able to engineer a costsaving shared solution by capitalising on Malvern Hills’ use of Civica Financials and other software products, which provided a common platform for integrating financial processes. Worcester is also streamlining other core business functions using Civica’s e-purchasing and e-budgeting modules. TAMWORTH BOROUGH COUNCIL plans to use GGP’s Gazetteer Management Software, GGP NGz, to transform its services to the public. The new system gives rapid access to information held in different council computer systems and is designed to improve frontline services by linking information together using a centralised database of all properties, land and streets.

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