IT in Use - July/August 2011 issue

Technology & The Transformation of Frontline Services

ITU UKauthorITy IT in Use July/August 2011

UKauthorITy.tv - In their own words... ITU and UKauthorITy.com launch video news and interview channel

Setting a Free Example ITU • July/August 2011

- Government practices what it preaches on free data

Working Securely, Together - ITU Live debates frontline collaboration and technology

Nowhere to Hide - Data plays a crucial role in the ďŹ ght against fraud PLUS: News Update, eLearning Debate, Standardisation Vs. Innovation, View on Westminster, Product Notes & Contracts Won. Contracts

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Features

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July/August 2011 On the Cover Setting the Free Data Example.

ISSN 2046 7133

See page 10 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

Advertising & Circulation

Ann Campbell-Smith E: Ann@infopub.co.uk T: 01983 812623

Design & Layout

Informed Publications Ltd

Printers

DC Graphics

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Contents Comment

News Update

UKauthorITy UKauthorITy comprises the online news service UKauthorITy.com, the video news service UKauthorITy.tv, the market-leading IT in Use magazine and ITU Live webinars, and the market information newsletter, UKauthorITy Report (formerly the Town Hall newsletter). Our core editorial focus is the use of technology to both improve public service quality and reduce service delivery costs across the UK public sector: Central Government, Local Government, Police, Fire and Health.

Editorial Editorial for all UKauthorITy titles is written in house by managing editor, Helen Olsen, and editors, Tim Hampson and Michael Cross. Relevant news releases should be sent by email to the editor, Helen Olsen: Helen@infopub.co.uk

Published by

3-6 / 8-9

UKauthorITy.tv launches; local councillor becomes government’s new head of ICT futures; cloud news, transparency and digital services in our regular round-up of sector news.

ITU Live: Technology & Collaboration

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Can technology enable the public sector to collaborate - securely and cost effectively - both across and between organisations? Helen Olsen asks the ITU Live panel.

Setting the Free Data Example

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Michael Cross welcomes government’s eagerness to practice what it preaches when it comes to transparency.

Debate: What Comes First: Training or Technology?

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How has technology impacted the learning environment?

Helen Olsen invites key eLearning thought leaders to the debate table.

Standardisation Vs. Innovation

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Big society IT for the police could lead us back to the future, warns Michael Cross.

Full House, Fulsome Debate

Informed Publications Ltd, PO Box 2087 Shoreham-By-Sea, West Sussex BN43 5ZF

Hacking and foam pie throwing aside, Tim Hampson looks at NHS reforms, localism and digital strategy inside the house.

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Nowhere to Hide

All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part, storage in a retrieval system or transmission in any form, of any material in this publication is prohibited without prior written consent from the Editor. The views expressed by the Editors and writers are their own. Whilst every care is taken, the publishers cannot be responsible for any errors in articles or listings. Articles written by contributors do not necessarily express the views of their employing organisation. The Editor reserves the right to edit any submissions prior to publication.

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Will Sharing become the norm in public sector ICT? Helen Olsen outlines an editorial research project which aims to find out.

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The key in the fight against fraud and error is data, and collaboration, says Helen Olsen.

Product & Company Notes Contract Roundup

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Subscribe Now See inside back cover for details of FREE public sector subscriptions

To advertise in ITU call Informed Publications: 01983 812623 2

July/August 2011

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NEWS UPDATE

IT in Use magazine and UKauthorITy.com have launched UKauthorITy.tv, capturing interviews and news from the key influencers in public sector ICT. Visit www.UKauthorITy.tv

MARK BRETT, HEAD OF INFORMATION ASSURANCE FOR SOCITM, talks to UKauthorITy.tv about data loss and the need to get to grips with data security in an age of digital service delivery and a mobile workforce.

CIO, DAVID WILDE, talks to Helen Olsen about his move to Essex and progress on the tri-borough initiative he leaves behind at Westminster.

PETER BOLE, DIRECTOR OF ICT AT KENT, tells UKauthorITy.tv about development of the county’s pioneering Public Service Network - laying the foundations for joint working and shared services county-wide.

SOCITM PRESIDENT, GLYN EVANS, explains how the society’s new local ICT strategy, ‘Planting the Flag’, can help frontline organisations to not only build the right infrastructure f o r their own unique local circumstances but also ensure they align with pan-public sector ICT policy and strategy.

GILLES POLIN, ADOBE’S HEAD OF GOVERNMENT FOR EUROPE, discusses the evolution of egovernment across the region and outlines

where Adobe’s new Digital Enterprise Platform can help governments to build citizen friendly, efficient processes from a base of legacy systems.

LIAM MAXWELL, LEAD MEMBER FOR POLICY AT THE ROYAL BOROUGH OF WINDSOR AND MAIDENHEAD, explains how his council is implementing ‘Better for Less’ with innovative and agile use of technology.

Coming soon on UKauthorITy.tv • • • •

Mark O’Neill, Government Skunkworks Government deputy CIO, Bill McCluggage PSN delivery director, Kenny Robertson Qamar Yunus, government lead on open source policy in the ERG

COMMENT: Will sharing become the norm?

Helen Olsen, Editor

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he conversations that I and my editorial team are having with frontline organisations across the country are increasingly of how services can be maintained in this age of austerity. Shared services, underpinned by technology, are seen by many as a saviour solution, but there is much uncertainty as to the right way forward. And most of those involved realise that they have just one chance to get this right.

So, after decades of talk, just how fast is the sector actually moving towards shared services? What, if any, benefits are being gained today?

And how can we share the knowledge base that must rapidly be built?

UKauthorITy and IT in Use (ITU) magazine, in partnership with Capita and with support from Socitm, is undertaking a major quantitative research exercise this summer to answer these questions. Senior officers from all frontline and central government public services have been invited to take part in this ground breaking research exercise in a bid to draw a line in the sand and to provide a benchmark for progress in this vital activity.

Backing the research, Geoff Connell, divisional director of ICT at Newham and head of business systems at Havering, said that in this period of financial austerity, “Authorities must work together in order to deliver high quality services within ever reducing budgets. Opportunities such as sharing of services, jointly procuring solutions and learning from each other’s successes and failures are only possible when there is an understanding of what we are all doing and planning. I therefore welcome this survey as a great opportunity to help us coordinate our activities.”

Jos Creese, Socitm past-president and CIO at Hampshire County Council, added, “This research should give us all some invaluable insights into preparedness, plans and progress towards significant changes in public service delivery... and at a time when we need it most.”

Operational director at project sponsor, Capita, Paul Millard, said that as public sector budgets are “squeezed to deliver the same services for less, councils across the country are exploring ways to meet the challenging targets”. Creativity and innovation are key, he believes, and his company has seen an increase in the number of councils joining forces to share services and resource: “The landscape is changing rapidly.”

He added, “This survey is intended to build a representative picture of the changes in public service delivery, the challenges ahead, how councils plan to tackle them and what steps have already been put in place.”

The results of this project will be reported in the September/October issue of ITU magazine and debated in an ITU Live webinar on 14th September. To register to view the webinar email: Ann@infopub.co.uk

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July/August 2011

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NEWS UPDATE

for public data Councillor is government’s new Foundations corporation chief of ICT futures T

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iam Maxwell, who has been appointed to advise the government on how it can best use innovative technology, was a forthright critic of the last government’s ICT strategy - drafted by his new boss, Ian Watmore.

From September, Maxwell will provide expertise on how government can use innovative new technology to deliver better, cheaper solutions - including efforts to:

As head of IT at Eton and former elected member for Windsor and Maidenhead, Maxwell will bring welcome local government expertise to the Whitehall-dominated Government Digital Service. One observer commented: “It is a really positive move - someone with actual experience of running a local authority/frontline service. He is open-minded and seems keen to avoid supplier lock-in as technology moves into an era of commoditisation.”

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Maxwell is known as an enthusiast for open source technology and for citizens taking control of their personal data: his borough is piloting Mydex, a novel model of identity management designed to put the citizen in charge.

Welcoming him to the role, Ian Watmore said that Maxwell’s insight and knowledge would make him “a valuable source to the team” and acknowledged his “strong track record of delivering success in government ICT” and “significant experience of turning the theory into practice”.

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develop new, more flexible ways of delivery in government; increase the drive towards open standards and open source software; help SMEs to enter the government marketplace; maintain a horizon scan of future technologies and methods.

He set out his thinking in a 2009 paper for the Centre for Policy Studies: ‘It’s ours: Why we, not government, must own our data’. In the paper, which has strongly influenced the current government’s ICT strategy, he connects open data, citizen empowerment and open standards. “By imposing the requirement that people can, if they wish, host data with a trusted... provider rather than the sole government supplier, the IT used to deliver public services will have to utilise open data standards. This will, of course, also lead to a less costly, more agile and more effective provision of IT and of public services.”

Maxwell now has a year, under the eye of Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, to turn that vision into reality.

Watch UKauthorITy.tv’s interview with Liam Maxwell, as councillor of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead: www.UKauthorITy.tv

Cambridgeshire’s PSN

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ambridgeshire’s councils and other public sector organisations are set to see major savings and benefits from a new Cambridgeshire Public Sector Network (CPSN) contract.

Awarded to Virgin Media Business in a county-led partnership procurement the new network will provide a foundation for partnership working by linking public services across the area as well as providing increased bandwidth for more than 200 schools.

©iStockphoto.com/Chris Price

The partnership currently comprises Cambridgeshire, Fenland, Huntingdonshire, South Cambridgeshire, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Fire & Rescue Service, and the Cambridge Citizen’s Advice Bureau.

Virgin has also signed a deal with Westminster - a £190m pan-London IT framework for a PSN-compliant Next Generation Network resource that could act as a one-stop procurement shop to London’s public sector for buying phone, data, video, CCTV and Wi-Fi services.

July/August 2011

Among the datasets to be handled by the new corporation is the new National Address Gazetteer. Under current plans, this will be free only to the public sector. Edward Davey, BIS minister, and Francis Maude, minister for the Cabinet Office, will jointly chair a transition board to consider the data corporation’s membership, structure and governance.

Offshoring? Think of the bad headlines…

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ublic bodies considering offshoring IT services should consult with ministers about the potential for damaging headlines, according to new advice published by the Cabinet Office. The guidance on ICT offshoring, from the government’s CIO council, also recommends “early engagement with your press and media team”.

While the Cabinet Office says that the guidance introduces no new policy, its publication will be interpreted as a nudge to public bodies to consider offshoring. “In order to maximise value for money in procuring services, and uphold their duty to safeguard public funds CIOs will want to ensure that potential suppliers are aware that offshore solutions will be considered,” the guidance states. But it also warns officials to consider the risks - for example the possible loss of control, and extra expense of managing an offshore supplier, as well as security risks. The document also says that offshore suppliers will be expected to operate at the same level of transparency as required by a government department.

http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/sites/default/ files/resources/government-ict-offshoring.pdf

Cambridgeshire councillor, Linda Oliver, said that the Cambridgeshire PSN agreement would provide “faster, more cost-effective and secure networks that will enable public services across Cambridgeshire to deliver more efficient services. Shared networking will keep costs down, delivering more for less while providing real benefits for our communities.”

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he Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has taken over responsibility for three big providers of public sector information as a first step towards the creation of the new Public Data Corporation. Land Registry of England and Wales, Ordnance Survey and the Met Office are all moving from their current sponsoring departments in what appears to be a rationalisation exercise ahead of the creation of the new corporation, which will fall under the wing of BIS. The three all operate on a quasi-commercial model by selling information and services.

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HAMPSHIRE’S CREESE ‘MOST INFLUENTIAL’ IT CHIEF: In a welcome morale-boost for local government, Jos Creese, chief information officer at Hampshire County Council, has been named the UK’s most influential IT chief. Creese, who is a member of the government’s CIO council and immediate past president of Socitm, heads this year’s CIO50 list compiled by publisher, silicon.com. Joe Harley, government and DWP CIO was in third place with Ailsa Beaton, director of information, Metropolitan Police Service and Dylan Roberts, chief officer (ICT), Leeds city council, placed fifth and sixth. www.silicon.com

NEWS UPDATE

Five boroughs on track for a shared cloud

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mbitious plans for five local authorities to share IT services in a private cloud are taking shape in south west London. Chris Pope, director of transformation at London borough of Merton, told the SmartGov Live conference that his borough, along with Kingston upon Thames, Sutton, Richmond and Wandsworth, will jointly procure: • data centres, reducing the number of data centres from five to two, each capable of serving the five authorities; • desktop technology. “Thin client and virtualisation is the way ahead,” Pope said; • directory services, which Pope said are especially vital in a shared infrastructure; • network. The consortium will procure a point-to-point network across all five boroughs.

As far as possible, all services will be procured from existing frameworks. While the project will create a private “cloud” for the boroughs, Pope voiced scepticism about the wider cloud model, at least in the short term.

Cloud applications for local government are “few and far between... the provider market is not there to give us software as a service.”

LONDON AUTHORITIES GO FOR SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE FUTURE: Transport for London and the Greater London Authority have signed a five year agreement with Asite for the use of collaborative software as a service platform. According to the company, Asite’s technology will provide TfL and the GLA with a single integrated data management solution for all aspects of the contract administration process across their construction and facilities management works.

TfL staff as well as their entire construction supply chain will use Asite’s applications to manage contract change and to provide real-time visibility of their schedule and cost position against budget.

Northampton’s apps

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orthamptonshire has launched iPhone and Android apps, plus a general mobile browser, for popular council services. The council worked with local University of Northampton to build the apps in preparation for the 80% of people it expects to be accessing the internet via mobile devices within the next five years. This first phase of mobile ambitions has been promoted and marketed and usage will be closely monitored to determine strategy ongoing. Plans under consideration for the next phase include a dedicated app for libraries, local routes and maps and further development of the mobile browser.

Resetting public sector systems

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oor project management and an inability to share best practice hampers the potential of information technology to transform public services.

The CBI has called on the government to harness the potential of information technology to transform public services, in its report ‘System Reset: Transforming public services through IT’. The report claims that the public sector is failing to make effective use of technology, which could make accessing public services easier for the public and businesses, while saving taxpayers’ money. IT can also revolutionise frontline service delivery and should not be viewed as just a support function, as the Open Public Services White Paper recognises.

CBI head of public services policy, Emma Watkins, said technology could really revolutionise the way our public services operate.

“From giving police officers and midwives handheld devices so that they can update and access records on the move, to enabling the public to access more services online, good IT can reap huge benefits for citizens and taxpayers. But there are worrying signs that the

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public sector is starting to view it as a risky investment. In fact many technologies are available as off-the-shelf products and are already being used, but because there is no formal sharing of good practice, the benefits remain largely unknown.”

Ten lessons the CBI identifies could help harness the potential of IT: 1. Contract for outcomes and value. Don’t over-prescribe.

2. Agree at the outset what should be measured - and measure it.

3. Manage IT systems effectively in order to yield benefits.

4. Standardise systems and data models.

5. Give staff a leading role in the design and implementation of IT change.

6. Start discussions now about investing in future technologies.

7. Good service outcomes should trump compliance with prescriptive rules.

8. Changes of policy should take account of the consequences for IT systems.

9. Challenge services to drive innovation and save cost.

10. Don’t let security paranoia hinder effective working. www.cbi.org.uk

July/August 2011

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NEWS UPDATE

Citizens will have say on public service transparency

Government Digital Service to get teeth:

Don’t rush in to digital by default, say MPs

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For the first time, Whitehall’s IT team is to have the power to enforce its policy across central government. According to the Open Public Services white paper, the new Government Digital Service “will have the authority across central government to coordinate all government digital activity”. This will include “encouraging the commissioning of the best user-centred digital services and information at lowest cost from the most appropriate provider”.

Public services should not be made “digital by default” until they are proven to work for their intended users, including those without access to the internet at home, the influential Commons Public Accounts Committee has warned.

white paper on open public services will be followed by a consultation on transparency, says Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude. The consultation will set out plans to implement the government’s promised “right to data”, Maude said, promising “the most ambitious open data agenda of any government in the world”. The focus of the transparency programme is now shifting beyond Whitehall, to what he called “embedding openness” into wider public services. As the first step, ahead of the white paper, he announced plans to release datasets from transport, criminal justice, education and the NHS. See page 10: Setting the Free Data Example

Greying society wants face time

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hree out of four older citizens would choose offline over online services, according to new research sponsored by Fujitsu.

It finds a growing digital-disconnect between older people and councils as authorities move more services online.

According to the research, 65% of older people said: “it would be difficult for me if local council services were only provided on the internet”. Conversely, 55% of councillors do not believe accessing services by internet is difficult, suggesting a fundamental mismatch of beliefs. Eighty six percent of councillors agree that more people using the internet to access their services saves their council money; yet just 15% of older people have used a local council website to find information In addition, most older people (73%) said they would still visit or phone their local council to receive services, even if more services were online. http://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/EU/uk/pdf/ research/age-report-exec-summary.pdf

Such authority would give the Government Digital Service, part of the Cabinet Office efficiency and reform group, much more power than its predecessors. Previous Cabinet Office digital teams - from the Central IT Unit to the Office of the e-Envoy to the Office of the Chief Information Officer - found their strategies frustrated by departmental and agency policies.

The much-awaited white paper makes several references to IT’s potential to drive efficiencies and promote choice in public services. “Opening up public services will allow providers to innovate and to accelerate the introduction of new technologies,” it states.

These include service-specific technologies such as telehealth as well as generic technologies, for example “using cloud services in the newly opened back-office services”.

The paper specifically dismisses the Directgov slogan of “public services all in one place”. Instead, it says the Government Digital Service will develop a digital marketplace, opening up government data, information, applications and services to other organisations, including the provision of open application program interfaces for all suitable digital services. The GDS will consider a “quality mark” to maintain public trust in digital services, including those from third parties.

Londoners want joined up city

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ondoners want better cooperation between public sector services, as well as closer com munication with their city leaders, according to IBM’s Smarter Cities Survey.

There appears to be a strong belief in localism in the capital; surveyed Londoners said that responsibility for improving their city falls upon local councils (53% rated them as one of the two most responsible bodies) and the mayor (42%). The local community (32%) was seen as more important, in terms of improving the city, than central government (24%). However, despite this focus on the council, the services that surveyed Londoners felt are most important are health, policing and education (in that order) – policy areas that the council doesn’t directly control.

Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, appeared on the Smarter Cities Sofa at BASE London conference: to discuss the report’s findings: www.youtube.com/ watch?v=RVzO1QrXaGM

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July/August 2011

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In a generally upbeat report following the National Audit Office’s latest review of ICT in government, the committee welcomes the “direction and principles” of the government’s new ICT strategy but picks up several areas of concern. “There is a long way to go before government can say it is living up to its claim that there is ‘no such thing as an IT project’, the committee warns.

The report makes several recommendations to the Cabinet Office efficiency and reform group (ERG), which is charged with implementing the strategy. These include: • The strategy implementation plan, due to be published in August, should include a small number of measurable business outcomes, to enable government and critics to measure success and value for money.

• To recognise that the strategy cannot be carried out by central government alone, “the ERG should use its new powers selectively and be able to demonstrate that it has achieved buy-in from departments and suppliers”.

• The ERG should publish its starting gate reviews and other significant reviews during the lifetime of projects.

• The ERG and other relevant departments should withhold sign-off of additional online services until they are satisfied that the service is designed for users. The ERG should also continue to ensure that online services are accessible through libraries, post offices or other alternative means.

• The strategy should pay more attention to cybersecurity, which the committee says is mentioned only once. “This is particularly concerning given the move to more government services online.”

SELF-SERVICE ACCESS FOR HEALTHCARE AND EDUCATION: The austerity-stricken healthcare and education sectors will experience radical change to become self-service industries by 2020, suggests a new report from Steria. In the future EU citizens will be able to access sophisticated self-diagnosis tools to help cut waiting list times and improve patient care, and hospitals and surgeries will carry out remote diagnosis through virtual video or teleconference appointments. In schools, textbooks will largely be replaced by the internet in classrooms, and touchscreen, interactive white-boards will be regarded as standard. www.steria.com/futuresreport

ITU LIVE: TECHNOLOGY & COLLABORATION

David Wilde, Westminster*

Helen Olsen, ITU

Gilles Polin, Adobe

Mark Brett, Socitm

Working Securely, Together I s today’s technology good enough to enable the public sector to collaborate – securely and cost effectively – both across and between organisations? Helen Olsen asks the ITU Live panel.

David Wilde, as CIO at Westminster, has been instrumental in the ground-breaking ‘tri-borough’ initiative whereby the council is joining forces with both Hammersmith & Fulham and Kensington & Chelsea to share service delivery in key areas – including social care and children’s services.

Enabling officers across three councils to work together and safely share sensitive information was a challenge laid at technology’s door. And it has been a challenge, admits Wilde. “From the IT side we have spent a lot of time base-lining costs. For example, social care in each organisation not only had different business processes but also different systems.”

Crucially, leaders in the three councils set out a clear and unified agenda: “It is not about changing the political structure; it is about economies of scale, standardisation and improved quality of services through reduced costs,” says Wilde.

Gilles Polin, Adobe’s European head of government services, reports that the tri-borough work is “quite unique” across Europe in terms of both the autonomy and the size of the organisations involved. “Also, the level of forward planning is impressive.”

One of the big challenges in the tri-borough initiative, which “probably affects most local authorities”, says Wilde, is the legacy system infrastructure coupled with contractual commitments “that roll out to 2016”. It will take a five year programme to consolidate on to one, common, ICT infrastructure. “The real challenge for the CIO – anywhere in shared services – is, how to reconcile the immediate need and desire for operational, line of business services to merge quickly and keep pace with technology without undermining, fatally, how that technology can enable.” The answers are not irreconcilable, he says, but tactical issues need to be tackled ahead of the ‘end goal’ in order to make it easier for teams to merge in the short term.

Whilst technology enables many things, the success of ventures like tri-borough is not dependent on technology, but on people.

Mark Brett, head of information assurance at Socitm, agrees that we often get “too hung up on the technology” when in fact transformation is mostly an issue of cultural change. “If we make bad decisions when we are trying to change these services, we can damage the trust and the reputation of the organisation…

If a website gets compromised the immediate reaction is back to the customer centre and then back to face-to-face.” A year’s cost savings can quickly be wiped out.”

He points out that the local government data handling guidelines have been in existence for four years, but some organisations “have not bothered to take this into account.

Citizens just won’t stand for that anymore.” In addition, he warns, fines from the Information Commissioner will get worse - and he urges the ICT community to see the “valuable and free” guidance available on the ICO’s website (www.ico.gov.uk).

Wilde feels that the roles of SIRO (senior information risk owner) and CIO sit well together and that CIOs need to fill the current void in information governance and compliance and move to proactive, rather than reactive, data assurance.

There are some difficult challenges ahead for the IT community in the public sector, says Wilde. “People are employed in jobs that we no longer need, but let’s address that head on and look forward rather than looking at today.

For example, we are still looking at websites, while the private sector is looking at apps.

We risk missing the boat and for transactional services that is absolutely the future.”

It is issues such as these that Socitm’s ‘Planting the Flag’ strategy is trying to answer, says Brett. “Programmes like David’s will provide some of the real learning that can be captured to reuse elsewhere.” The problem, he adds, is that there are “so many competing costs for organisations that the governance and policy - and even legal requirements - aren’t always at the top of the list. The pressures on frontline services are enormous. We need to think differently.”

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We are in an electronic era, he contends, but still fundamentally working “in the ways of paper”. People don’t understand the damage of an intangible asset - an electronic copy of data - going missing. “If they were carrying around £50 notes they would be a little more aware of it!”

Wilde has been effective in ‘selling in’ the crucial role and potential of technology to ‘connect’ in the tri-borough initiative specifically, he believes, by not explaining the technology: “Don’t try and explain to people what cloud is, because they don’t care.

What they are interested in is, will it save me money? Will it compromise my service? And will it improve the end user experience?”

The panel agreed that the technical profession too often get bogged down in the widgets and the technology, and that it needs to be “more comfortable” thinking in an “outcome based way”.

As with many of the issues under debate, says Brett, this is a key part of the journey in the “professionalisation of IT”.

Indeed, as Polin points out, technology is pervasive and central – to both governments and to citizens. “People expect a 24/7 government that acts more like the private sector. Citizens are eager to access information online, and there is an opportunity for governments to accelerate this change and make savings. But they must get the technology right.” * David Wilde is the new CIO at Essex CC

Audience polls 82% say technology is key to successful collaboration and joint working.

70% say collaborative working such as the ‘tri-borough’ is vital to surviving the cuts and frontline organisations should aspire to this.

www.UKauthorITy.com/ITUlive

View ITU Live now!

ITU Live is sponsored

by Adobe UK July/August 2011

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NEWS UPDATE

Council’s deal with IBM fails to hit savings target

Trusts receive shared savings

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joint venture company set up with computer giant IBM to save Somerset County Council millions of pounds failed to meet some of its contract targets, and may never reach them, a report reveals.

The report, completed a year ago but only now released by the council, admits that a new SAP software system put in to streamline purchasing had big teething problems for staff and suppliers.

The county council and IBM set up joint venture company Southwest One in 2007. Avon & Somerset Police and Taunton Deane Borough Council are also partners. The contract was drawn up to deliver back-office services such as procurement and human resources and produce £192m savings to the council alone over 10 years. The report said that so far only £6m of savings had been delivered, with £60m to come. Earlier this year, the council announced it was to renegotiate its area of the contract and bring some services and staff back in-house.

POOR INTEGRATION HARMING EMERGENCY CARE: A lack of data on patient outcomes and benchmarking is hampering the performance of ambulance services, according to the National Audit Office (NAO).

A report says that emergency care systems are not fully integrated with those in hospitals, leading to long turnaround times at hospital accident and emergency (A&E) departments.

Criticising a 10-year-old government policy of measuring ambulance performance solely by time to respond to an incident, the report says that improvements to the whole urgent and emergency care system will depend on its working more coherently. www.nao.org.uk

£1.2m

unds of £1,192,000 due to the Department of Health as a shareholder of NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) have been distributed to existing NHS SBS clients.

John Neilson, chief executive of NHS SBS, said: “With ambitious savings targets to reach, NHS trusts are looking at ways to ensure funding remains focused on quality and patient care. NHS SBS has demonstrated that trusts can make proven cost savings in their back office, as well as benefitting from added value services. Our commitment to working in partnership with NHS trusts is further demonstrated in being able once again to distribute more than £1 million to our existing clients.” www.sbs.nhs.uk

Reinvest efficiency savings in IT, say doctors

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eneral practitioners have called for cuts in acute services budgets to be spent on IT to improve patient care.

More than half of GPs (57%) believe that at least 10% of efficiency savings made by hospital services will need to be reinvested in IT to deliver better patient care, according to a survey carried out by health IT analyst Silicon Bridge Research and Doctors.net.

The survey, supported by the IT industry association Intellect, also showed a split among GPs on how they expect IT projects should be funded in England. The majority (51%) saw necessary funds having to be provided by the Department of Health or the new NHS Commissioning Board, while only 17% expected NHS trusts to provide their own internal sources of funding.

Out on the moors, but still connected

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onnecting North Yorkshire has received funding of up to £16.4m from Broadband UK to bring high-speed broadband to everybody in the region and all businesses by 2017.

Led by North Yorkshire County Council, the broadband pilot project is working with a range of partners to bring high quality broadband to the country’s largest rural population. NYnet, the council’s broadband company, is also working with the European Regional Development Fund to secure match funding to bring the total investment to £25 - £30m.

John Benson accesses the internet in a remote area of North Yorkshire

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July/August 2011

County councillor, Carl Les, said that the council was determined to bring broadband to all: “The ability to offer services such as remote access to computers and servers, video-conferencing, web-meetings and access to a company telephony system will put North Yorkshire on a level playing field with the major cities such as Leeds and London.”

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Google pulls health records system

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eb giant Google is to close its online health records system, apparently leaving the field open to Microsoft. The company said that its Google Health product failed to create “the impact we wanted” and will be closed on January 1, 2012. The product was launched in the US in 2008, shortly after Microsoft’s HealthVault product. Online repositories for health records, controlled by patients, were seen as an essential step in the US with its fragmented health service.

They also attracted the attention of the UK government, which is examining their use in its planned “information revolution” for the NHS in England. HealthVault is already being tested in NHS pilots.

Cabinet Office takes the reins of NHS IT

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hristine Connelly’s departure from the post of head of health information at the Department of Health means that the Cabinet Office is now firmly in charge of the world’s largest civil IT programme. One of the first tasks facing her temporary successor, Katie Davis, parachuted in on loan from the Cabinet Office’s Efficiency and Reform Group, will be to extricate the NHS in England as painlessly as possible from discredited “local service provider” contracts to impose standard systems. Another priority for the new NHS IT chief will be aligning the Department of Health’s Information Revolution strategy (for England) with the overall government efficiency programme. Connelly’s deputy, Paul Jones, ruffled some feathers recently by insisting that the NHS would not try to enforce the “digital by default” mantra. “The information revolution is not about forcing anyone who is not comfortable with the idea to transact online,” he said in an interview.

E-health heads for the cloud

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HS electronic health records will become available through cloud computing technology from next month in a pilot project under way at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London. Researchers at the hospital are working with Edinburgh Napier University and cloud technology supplier, Flexiant, on “a next-generation e-health platform”. If successful, the project will raise questions about the need for costly dedicated IT infrastructure developments elsewhere in the NHS. However it is also likely to provoke new concerns about electronic health records’ privacy and confidentiality. Professor Bill Buchanan of Edinburgh Napier University, said, “The current infrastructure in the UK often has a non-integrated approach to patient care, where data is not used effectively between GP, hospital and assisted living. Our system allows for data to be stored with its context, such as where it was captured, and then used in whatever way is necessary through well-managed clinical services.”

NEWS UPDATE

Scottish government looks to shared services for ICT savings

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cotland’s public sector could make massive savings in its information and communications technology (ICT) spend if all organisations worked together, finds a new report.

Proposals for saving the public sector up to £1bn in ICT spending over the next five years have been sent to the Scottish government by former IT executive turned academic, John McClelland. His review of public sector ICT infrastructure recommends an overarching national ICT strategy to address national needs and that each part of the public sector, such as universities or councils, should move quickly to shared procurement and use of ICT. Finance secretary, John Swinney, welcomed the review: “The review states that it should be standard to request all public services online and ICT technologies should support more integration across different sectors. That is a vision which the whole of the public sector should aspire to. www.scotland.gov.uk

RURAL SCOTLAND ON LOW ROAD TO DIGITAL REVOLUTION: The Scottish government has criticised plans drawn up in Whitehall for the roll out of 4G mobile technology across large areas of Scotland. Richard Lochhead, Scottish rural affairs secretary, said: “The UK Government position on mobile does not currently meet the needs of rural Scotland and we will continue to press for them to work with us to develop the 4G network, to overcome many of the current problems.”

EU FALLING BEHIND ON E-LEARNING: A survey of how 15-year-olds use computers and the internet to learn finds that European countries trail behind the rest of the world. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development found that, of 19 countries surveyed, no European nation made it into the top five. Students were tested on their ability to evaluate information on the internet and navigate web pages to test their digital reading skills. Korea topped the table followed by New Zealand, Australia, Japan and Hong Kong. Iceland was the first European country in sixth place, followed by Sweden in seventh.

NETHERLANDS PUBLIC SECTOR GOES OPEN SOURCE: Half of all public administrations in the Netherlands (51%) have a strategy for open source or are preparing such a plan, and half (53%) have specific plans to use more of this type of software, finds a survey for the Dutch government. The survey also shows that 66% of all public administrations in the country support the vendor independent electronic document format, ODF, and have made it an option for their staff (69%).

ICO FINES SURREY FOR DATA BREACHES: Surrey County Council has been fined £120,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office for a “serious breach” of the Data Protection Act after sensitive personal information was emailed to the wrong recipients on three occasions.

The ICO said the first incident, which took place in May 2010, was the most significant. A member of staff working for one of the council’s adult social care teams emailed a file containing information relating to 241 people’s physical and mental health to the wrong group email address.

Recipients included transport companies including taxi firms, coach and mini bus hire services.

ICO FOCUSES ON NHS: NHS organisations face fines of up to £500,000 unless they manage patient records more effectively. Christopher Graham, the information commissioner, says that he will have no hesitation in fining NHS trusts if they continue breaching data laws. He believes the health service is beset by systemic problems with its approach to data security. In recent months, staff have lost laptops, memory sticks and sent patients’ records to the wrong people. www.ico.gov.uk UKauthorITy IT in Use

July/August 2011

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TRANSPARENCY

Setting the Free Data Example Michael Cross welcomes government’s eagerness to practice what it preaches when it comes to Transparency. ©iStockphoto.com/Henrik Jonsson

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oliticians, notoriously, are generally keener on transparency when they are in opposition than in government. After a year in office, the coalition government is seeking to demolish that truism with an unprecedented open-data programme. The reason to take the commitment seriously is that open, re-usable, data underpins the whole ‘Cameronist’ agenda for public service reform.

A few days before publication of the open public services white paper, Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude, announced a timetable for the next releases of datasets in a presentation to the Institute of Government.

Maude also announced a consultation on the new “right to data”, where he was joined on the panel by his open data guru - Professor Nigel Shadbolt - and, perhaps more significantly, by the NHS medical director, Professor Bruce Keogh, and the information commissioner, Chris Graham.

Graham - no government poodle - indicated that his office sees making a nuisance of itself in the cause of transparency just as important as doing so to protect personal information. For a start, he suggested that someone use the Freedom of Information Act to try to extract data from Nottingham City Council, the one local authority still resisting requests to publish all items of spending over £500.

He also indicated sympathy in principle for adding more detail to the national crime mapping service at the Police.uk website precise locations of anti-social behaviour in public spaces, for example.

Maude announced a specific timetable for releasing datasets from transport, criminal justice, education and the NHS over the next year. Several of the promised releases are likely to arouse controversy. In the case of the raw data behind rail timetables - scheduled for release in December - the problem is that most of the information belongs to private companies. Maude criticised the “slightly blinkered approach” of transport operators in being slow to release timetabling data for third party development.

The government’s approach is to persuade companies that they will benefit more from public access to their data than they would

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from the sales of their own timetabling apps. The plan is that for data on roadworks on the strategic road network to be published from October, with local authority streetworks registers to follow during next year (subject to consultation). All remaining government-owned free datasets from the Transport Direct website, including the cycle route database and the national car park database, are to be made available for free re-use from October.

Another potentially contentious area is criminal justice. After a rickety start, Police.uk is emerging as a major success story for online public services, with some 400,000 unique visits each month. The Cabinet Office Transparency Board has heard that that the Crimestoppers organisation has had significantly more calls since Police.uk launched. Current plans for development include integrating British Transport Police data and including “what happened next” data so that citizens can see whether a crime led to a prosecution and conviction.

Maude also announced that, from November, the government will publish sentencing data by court. Although anonymised, details will include the age, gender and ethnicity of those sentenced, the sentence given and the time taken at each stage from offence to completion of the case in court.

Trickier issues may surround the publication of NHS data, a particular hobby horse of the Cabinet Office’s new head of transparency, Tim Kelsey, founder of the Dr Foster company. Maude announced radical extensions to the availability of data about the performance of named organisations, especially GP practices. Datasets to be made available are: •

Comparative clinical outcomes of GP practices in England (from December).

•

Prescribing data by GP practice (from December).

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NHS hospital complaints data (from October).

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Clinical audit data for all publicly funded clinical teams in treating key healthcare conditions (from April 2012).

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•

Data on staff satisfaction at each NHS provider (from December).

•

Data on the quality of post-graduate medical education (from April 2012).

Kelsey has a strong ally in Professor Bruce Keogh, NHS medical director, and one of the driving forces behind the publication of individual heart surgeons’ surgical mortality rates. He said that publishing the data would allow patients to evaluate their local doctors objectively. “Rumour and word of mouth are no longer good enough,” he said.

Reaction from some doctors was cool, with the British Medical Association warning against the creation of “simplistic league tables”.

Dr Laurence Buckman, chair of the BMA’s GP committee, welcomed transparency in principle, but warned that outcome measures are difficult to interpret. “There are many factors which will affect one person’s health outcome – what other diseases they have, for example, or what healthcare support or social care is available to them. Any national audit would have to be sufficiently sophisticated to take this into account, otherwise we could end up with simplistic league tables which, without context, could mislead the public.”

Similarly, publishing GP practices’ prescribing data without the context of the demographic of the population will make it impossible for people to interpret the information appropriately, Dr Buckman said.

Keogh said that to avoid such risks it was essential that the initiative be led by GPs. But he warned that not all clinicians would be comfortable with the new regime. “Some are going to find this very difficult but I’m going to make no apologies,” Keogh said. “Some will fall by the wayside, but most people will use the data to improve their services.”

Finally, almost as an afterthought, Maude revealed that he is working on applying the £500 spending disclosure regime to central government. Data from government procurement card transactions will appear on departmental websites from the end of September. That will surely be the real test of a government practicing what it preaches.

DEBATE: ELEARNING

What Comes First: Training or Technology?

Advances in technology have undoubtedly affected the learning environment, but how has this impacted our approach to the development of effective training? Helen Olsen invites key eLearning thought leaders to the debate table.

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o, what comes first: training or technology? According to Clive Shepherd, eLearning guru and chair of the eLearning Network, the answer is “obviously” training: “But actually it is quite a tricky question because the two are inter-woven.

However, technology is just a medium, a channel, for communicating. But on the other hand, online technology is a very big deal indeed; it is so much grander in scope than any other technologies we have engaged with in training. It is incredibly versatile; we can collaborate and communicate, and it is also pervasive – we all have access.”

Matt Wicks, managing director at creative digital agency, The Virtual Forge, has a different view: he believes that “technology is the prime driving force precisely because technology is so pervasive and so invasive. Just like technology was a driving force behind the industrial revolution, the way in which society engages with technology on a day-to-day basis today will inevitably be brought into the learning environment.”

However, Andy Jones, senior learning consultant at Thomson Reuters, believes that “What comes first is the performance or behaviour change you want to effect, or even starting with the question, ‘Do we want to change behaviour?’”

Technology, he says, has become such a strong driver: “People become entranced with the technology, when actually it is just a tool.” The danger is that we develop training with the technology we have, rather than designing the training we want. Equally, the traditional educational paradigm brings its own problems, says Jones: “We have modules and classes, and courses and curricula - all very 1850s educational approaches. The question we should be asking is, why is that important? We can do so much more!”

sophisticated technology at home than they have at their disposal at work. Surely, this must have an impact on training?

“Consumerisation is outside the workplace,” says Jones. “Inside the workplace people are often not empowered or enabled to use the technologies that they are used to using at home.” It is also a question of the willingness to use that technology at work. “Take Yammer, you can be directive and say ‘use it’ in the workplace, but very few will.”

As Shepherd points out, only a very small proportion of people create new content on social media, “The majority don’t participate.

So why would they suddenly participate in corporate social media?“

Video & stories “Video is the one thing that learning and development has criminally ignored over the last few years,” says Jones. “We have an audience, whether in work or out of work, who are extremely used to video and TV, but we just don’t use it very much.”

Wicks points out that the technology - once a barrier in terms of cost and dissemination - is now within the reach of all organisations.

Jones is enthusiastic about the art of storytelling and its power in learning: “If you think of any kind of traditional learning, stories are how humans have related and exchanged knowledge since time began. If I want to get an example over to you I tell you a story. You can video someone telling their story with all their life, all their energy and passion.

And that comes through. It is a very simple medium to show ‘what I did to get over this issue’, ‘here is how I solved that problem’.

It can be very simple, very short, and that is important.”

All agree that technology is a vital tool in the learning and development toolbox.

What is ‘good’ eLearning?

Consumerisation of technology

Good, agrees the panel, has to mean effective. And in austere times, in terms of quality, that might mean “just good enough”.

Two of the greatest global technology trends today are the advance of mobile and the astonishing uptake of technology in general – such that many workers now have more

Clive Shepherd eLearning Network

Andy Jones Thomson Reuters

Helen Olsen Editor, IT in Use

Matt Wicks The Virtual Forge

products a bit better than the competition. But actually what they do is a bit different. The challenge is aiming for effective, and if that means different then we should be different.”

That has to be the right answer, agrees Shepherd. “The classic definition of quality is ‘fit for purpose’. You could argue that if you are doing something that is more than good enough then who has given you permission to waste the organisation’s resources!”

Wicks agrees that as long as eLearning “delivers what it needs to deliver then that it is fit for purpose”. But he feels that the way to achieve good quality results is to think outside the box: “There are solutions out there that will deliver, but people don’t look around and make use of the new things that allow you to create something that is different.” For example, he adds, web conferencing creates new opportunities for collaboration and learning.

Technology & training In live audience polls during June’s live debate an overwhelming 97% said that the increasing use of technology enhances our opportunities for learning. And the panel unanimously agreed with this: technology is opening up new opportunities that surpass the physical classroom and traditional approaches to learning. It provides new channels for engaging with people, telling stories, sharing knowledge and helping them to learn and practice the skills they need.

Of prime importance though is effectiveness. New technology offers the opportunity to deliver more effective, less expensive training experiences than the simple online tutorial. And with both the continuing fall in the costs of these technologies and with the rising consumerisation of technology, those opportunities will prove exciting indeed.

Watch the debate now at: http://adobeenterprise.tv/?video=what_comes_first

For more information about Adobe eLearning technologies email: Adobe@ukauthority.com

However, adds Jones, “There is also an argument to say that if Apple were just ‘good’ then they would be incrementally making their UKauthorITy IT in Use

or visit: www.adobe.com/uk/products/ elearningsuite.html July/August 2011

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OPINION: OPEN PUBLIC SERVICES

Standardisation Vs. Innovation Big society IT for the police could lead us back to the future, warns Michael Cross ©iStockphoto.com/code6d

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n the long and painful history of computerising the public services, probably no arm of government has had such a rough time as the Home Office. Even HMRC and the Department of Health can’t match the run of IT-based project fiascos achieved by the diverse arms of the criminal justice system. In particular, those of the police.

If this verdict sounds familiar, it may be because, 10 years ago, the government was saying very similar things about the management of IT in the NHS. The response, in England at least, was to prescribe “ruthless standardisation”, by removing the choice of systems from NHS trusts and GP practices through the NHS national programme for IT.

Against this background, it is fairly obvious why the home secretary thinks we need a radically new approach to police computing.

Wisely, May did not mention that precedent. But while her radical plan for police IT appears different on the surface, it could run into similar obstacles to that for the NHS.

Theresa May’s announcement to the Association of Chief Police Officers that she plans to create a new police-led IT supplier was made in the spirit of ‘surely this can’t be any worse than what we’ve got already’.

As May said: “The way we do things now is confused, fragmented and expensive. It is absolutely clear that the current system is broken.”

May’s big idea is to create an in-house public-private hybrid supplier. While deliberately not prescribing what the “police-led ICT company” would look like, she listed some fundamental design principles. The new enterprise will:

However there’s a lot more to the plan than desperation. In the context of the ICT strategy and the government’s wider plans set out in the Open Public Services white paper, the police-led IT company may well turn out to be a prototype for things to come throughout the public sector IT scene.

Including the possibility that the clock may be turned back a decade or more.

In her speech, May recognised the importance of good ICT - in the back office as well as on the front line. But she slammed the way police forces spend their annual ICT budget of £1.2bn. “That is a very large sum. I wouldn’t be concerned about the size of that sum if I were convinced that it represented good value for money. But it does not.”

She described current practice of procuring by individual forces as “confused, fragmented and expensive”. Across the police service there are around 5,000 IT staff, working on over 2,000 systems, across 100 data centres, she said. “This is clearly not sensible.”

The consequence is duplication, unnecessary expense as bidding costs get passed on, and a shortage of skilled people to negotiate and manage large ICT contracts.

Spreading professional skills around 43 forces “makes no sense”, she says.

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•

Be police led. “The police need to be at the heart of defining what systems and services they need. They must have a fundamental and a controlling interest in the new police ICT company.”

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Be staffed by IT professionals. “[The company] will be negotiating and managing contracts worth many billions of pounds – this is not a job that can be given to amateurs who have a flair for computing.”

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Have a culture that allows it to attract and retain skilled and innovative individuals. “It must have the incentives in place to drive a more commercial and more efficient approach that will save public money.”

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Exploit the purchasing power of the police service as a whole. “It can do this by aggregating the requirements of as many forces as possible, preferably all 43 forces.”

Each of these fundamental principles may be sound in itself. However the combination should be ringing alarm bells, both within and beyond the police IT community. For a start, there is a conflict between May’s desire for the company to be “police led” while at the same time commercially minded.

Unless “police-led” simply means specifying functional outputs (which is what good IT procurements should be doing now) there UKauthorITy IT in Use

will be a temptation for the company’s leadership to become involved with technical details and gold-plating specifications.

Giving police a “fundamental and controlling interest” in the business would create its own difficulties: public sector-owned IT companies have been tried before - some of the old regional computing centres in the NHS worked on this basis - but they developed a reputation for lethargy and lack of innovation.

And as for central government leaning on each police force to accept the same IT as its neighbours, this risks creating the same kind of disengagement that plagued the NHS national programme.

According to the Open Public Services white paper, the new Government Digital Service “will have the authority across central government to co-ordinate all government digital activity”. This will include “encouraging the commissioning of the best user-centred digital services and information at lowest cost from the most appropriate provider”.

No doubt lessons have been learned, and perhaps some way will be found to nurture agile competition at the cutting edge whilst standardising core applications. The same goes throughout the public sector, wherever services are managed by geographical location. While there is a clear need for central IT infrastructure - the Police National Computer, the NHS data spine, the DWP Customer Information System - there must also be room for innovation and tailoring to local circumstances and priorities.

In comparison with its predecessors, the coalition government has been commendably quick to grasp the importance of digital technologies to public services. It has also shown a willingness to be open to new ideas.

However it has not yet defined where the boundary lies between central procurement of standard systems and allowing organisations to sink or swim through innovation. For a government committed to localism and open public services based on digital innovation, this is a serious shortcoming.

Those concerned by the gap should make their voices heard - preferably in the “listening period” for the open public services programme. We have until September.

VIEW OVER WESTMINSTER

Full House, Fulsome Debate Hacking and foam pie throwing aside, Tim Hampson looks at NHS reforms, localism and digital strategy inside the house. ©iStockphoto.com/Chris Schmidt

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hen it comes to noisy debates in the Commons, few can match the unbridled hostilities of an appearance at the despatch box of health secretary, Andrew Lansley. Labour’s pack now hounds the wounded minister. His signature legislation was chopped, changed and assembled into a different order to defuse objections from the Lib Dems and the massed ranks of the NHS professions.

For the moment, the Tory’s right noisily rallies behind Lansley, pointing their pikes at the sky and not his back. Their eyes look in two directions. Across the house to what they perceive are the less than frightening fighting ranks of Milliband’s foot soldiers and sideways towards the eyes of the real enemy, with whom they share government. The Lib Dems are like clownfish swimming through a sea of anemones, protected from the lethal stings.

Lansley looks as grim as a man who just had a tooth removed without an anaesthetic; and the wrong one taken out at that. Clegg looks, as he always does these days, like the birthday boy who has been told he cannot win at pass the parcel. His misery is palpable.

The top down reform of the NHS has bottomed out. Where once there were clarion calls for commercialism there is an empty feeling from the right that not much has changed.

The government can trumpet it has listened.

While the opposition believes Lansley was pushed into a gigantic falling off an edge, not witnessed since King Kong fell of the Empire State Building, in truth, a junior minister could have introduced the health service reforms, without wasting any of parliament’s time, and most of the rows needn’t have happened.

also includes community pubs in his portfolio. As an advocate for ‘well run locals’ he has become something of a national treasure.

His responsibilities also include overseeing new freedoms and flexibilities for local government, together with new rights and powers for communities and individuals to decide what they want to do with taxpayers’ money, which are enshrined in the localism bill. Regarded as a ‘super safe’ pair of hands it remains to be seen if taking on the brief of introducing new control centres for the fire brigade will cause more smoke than fire.

This particularly hot, if not burning potato, follows on the from the scrapping last December of a multi-million pound scheme to replace 46 fire control centres in England with nine regional sites.

The ill-fated Firecontrol project suffered a series of long delays and rapidly increasing costs since the Labour government announced it, several years ago. The project was supported by neither the Fire Brigade union nor local government and as part of the fall out, no one yet knows what to do with eight purpose built, fully equipped control centres which now stand idle and empty. They are currently about as useful as the beach volleyball court on Horse Guards Parade will be after the London Olympics is finished.

The National Audit Office concluded that the project wasted £469m, blaming the lack of consistent leadership and ineffective governance.

Of course, it is not yet clear where any of this will leave plans to introduce the electronic patient record. However, one thing is certain, Google technology can no longer be the panacea - the US company has pulled out of its patient record project.

Further fanning the flames, the Public Accounts Committee heard the final cost of the project could be as high as £649m and was looking for someone to blame. Enter, the DCLG’s senior civil servant, Sir Bob Kerslake, for a bit of a roasting

Localism our way

Indeed, South Norfolk MP, Richard Bacon, was so angry he nearly spontaneously combusted, especially when Sir Bob admitted that the project had been ambitious and complex, that there had been insufficient analysis, poor project management and that there were flaws with the IT system.

On meeting Bob Neill, MP for Bromley and Chislehurst, it easy to imagine him standing in the lounge bar of a comfortable rural pub on a Friday night, holding a beer glass containing a half-supped pint of bitter. Indeed, you would be not too far off the mark, as the amiable minister for just about everything

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MP for West Suffolk, Matthew Hancock, surmised the project had cost £400,000 for each of the country’s 1,400 control staff and asked “wouldn’t it have been better to buy them all mobile phones?”.

The PAC’s published report is likely to be incendiary, but for now it is Bob Neal who is damping things down. He wants to achieve improved resilience and efficiency using enhanced technology by “encouraging increased collaboration - in a locally determined manner”. The phraseology is about as useful as “muscular liberalism”.

Each fire authority will have up to £1.8m to spend on technology in their control centres.

And they can spend it how they want provided in a “locally determined manner” the government agrees to it.

Well that’s localism for you: you can do what you want providing Whitehall approves.

Digital strategy Public services should not be made “digital by default” until they are proven to work for their intended users including those without access to the internet at home, the influential Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has warned.

In an upbeat report following the National Audit Office’s latest review of ICT in government, the committee welcomed the “direction and principles” of the government’s new ICT strategy but picks up several areas of concern. “There is a long way to go before government can say it is living up to its claim that there is ‘no such thing as an IT project’”, warns the committee.

The report makes several recommendations to the cabinet office efficiency and reform group (ERG), which is charged with implementing the strategy. The MPs want the ERG to recognise that central government alone cannot carry this out: “The ERG should use its new powers selectively and be able to demonstrate that it has achieved buy-in from departments and suppliers”.

The MPs also say that the strategy only pays lip service to cybersecurity. “This is particularly concerning given the move to more government services online,” states the PAC report.

July/August 2011

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FRAUD

Nowhere to Hide The key in the fight against fraud and error is data, and collaboration, says Helen Olsen. ©iStockphoto.com/Krzysztof Zmij

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ata from local authorities has helped identify fraud hotspots where suspected benefit cheats can expect a knock on the door over the summer.

Across the whole of the public sector £2.4bn is lost to procurement fraud, £515m to grant fraud, and £329m to payroll and recruitment fraud each year.

A new mobile regional taskforce has started in two areas of Birmingham - Perry Barr and Kingstanding - re-examining claims for all benefits and tax credits. Ministers have publicly urged cheats to admit their crimes and pay back the money before they are trapped and taken to court - and, potentially, to prison.

And they have announced plans to take the taskforce to other ‘’high risk postcodes’’ from the autumn, in the most determined effort yet to cut the bill for benefit fraud.

This burden simply cannot be borne in our age of austerity.

The drive is possible because the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has interrogated data held on its fraud referral system in greater detail than ever before. Information was gathered from the DWP, Revenue and Customs and from local authorities holding data on council tax benefit and housing benefit. All supplied the DWP with details on the number of fraud referrals and the number of occasions action has been taken - to identify ‘hotspot’ areas by postcode.

Lord Freud, the welfare reform minister, said: ‘’The new taskforce is our latest weapon in tackling welfare fraud on the front line. People who are receiving the correct benefits and tax credits have absolutely nothing to fear,” he said. “But if people have deliberately not told us of a change in circumstances, they should do so now - before the team comes knocking at their door.’’

Lord Freud said that it would be even easier to catch cheats when the universal credit is introduced, gradually from later in the parliament, automating the benefits system.

Fraud hit squads are part of a wide-ranging strategy to reduce welfare fraud and error overpayments by one quarter - £1.4bn - by March 2015. The strategy includes the use of private-sector analytical techniques to screen tax credit applications before payments are made, to save £256m over four years.

The National Fraud Authority (NFA) estimates that fraud alone costs the public sector around £21bn a year. The bulk of the loss is due to fraud against the tax (£15bn) and benefits (£1.5bn) systems. Local government is also facing significant threat to the public purse, accounting for £2.1bn of fraud each year.

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The attack on fraud forms one of the cornerstones of the government’s efficiency and reform agenda. The Taskforce on Fraud, Error and Debt, established late 2010, is a high-level, cross-government group with a primary focus on combating fraud. It has brought together fraud professionals from both private and public sectors, overseeing eight pilots that tested new approaches to tackling fraud, including the more efficient use of credit reference agency information, deployment of data analytics, and use of insights from behavioural science to improve how fraud is combated.

It is fair to say that there has been a step change in how seriously the government is now taking fraud. Indeed, moves are afoot to adopt an all-pervasive, cross public sector, zero tolerance culture, rather than the current ‘pay first, check later’ environment.

According to an interim report from the taskforce, there are “huge opportunities to reduce fraud through better coordination across Whitehall, between Whitehall and the rest of the public sector, and indeed between the public and private sectors”.

Initiatives covered in the taskforce report include commissioning credit reference agencies to verify the circumstances of 20,000 benefit and tax credit claimants and tracking down over-payments made to suppliers and asking for money back.

In one pilot, the report said that HMRC invested £1m, secured from contract renegotiations with an IT supplier, in an innovative screening technique for tax credit applications. The tool analyses information provided by prospective claimants on their tax credit application form, compares this against internal and external data, from credit reference agencies for example, and decides the likelihood of the application being fraudulent.

“HMRC piloted the exercise on approximately 4,000 new tax credit applications to test proof of concept and subsequently piloted the new process preventing losses of £10.63m between September 2010 and March 2011,” the report states.

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In this interim report the Taskforce has agreed four priorities for tackling public sector fraud: • Collaboration – silos must be removed; all parts of the public sector must work together by: sharing intelligence on fraudsters; developing cross-cutting capabilities; initiating joint projects using data analytics; and ensuring we jointly procure data analytics to drive down costs.

• Assessment of risk and measurement of losses – fraud risk must be assessed before projects and programmes are under way. Losses should also be recorded and reported via the quarterly data summary.

• Prevention – investment and resource should go into prevention, not just detection and punishment. When vulnerabilities are detected as part of risk assessment, they should be designed out.

• Zero tolerance – there is no acceptable level of fraud.

According to cabinet office minister, Francis Maude, steps taken to tackle the £21bn worth of fraud a year across the public sector saved £12m in their first few months. Announcing the taskforce’s interim report, Maude said that the eight pilot projects had shown “immediate and startling results” and, indeed, signalled the end of the “pay first, check later” culture. He urged public sector bodies to work together and share intelligence on fraudsters through joint procurements of data analytics and other services in order to progress the fight against fraud.

But the government should be doing more to get “under the skin of fraudsters,” said Vicki Chauhan, director, government practice at BAE Systems Detica. According to Detica, as government automates services, with the new Universal Credit for example, exposure to cyber threats, opportunistic and organised fraud will increase. “As government increasingly takes its services online, it will be important that criminal behaviour is better understood - drawing on expertise and existing data from across sectors can spot suspicious activity early on and successfully prevent fraud before it occurs.”

http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/resource-library/ eliminating-public-sector-fraud-counter-fraudtaskforce-interim-report

PRODUCT & COMPANY NOTES

Siemens pushes PSN

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aving been instrumental in shaping development of the Public Services Network (PSN) Siemens Enterprise Communications is promoting its benefits to the public sector.

According to Siemens’ director of public sector strategy, Michael Bowyer, “While the PSN will drive efficiencies in procurement, it will also reduce the cost of supporting existing infrastructure, provide the ability to reuse existing assets, deliver operational flexibility and reduce operational expenditure. It is more important than ever to embrace PSN and deliver significant cost savings through shared services.” Working together with BT, Siemens claims to be the only partnership able to provide the comprehensive range of communications services necessary to fully support the successful development of PSN. www.psnsiemens.co.uk

MODELLING DISASTER MANAGEMENT: A consortium led by the Met Office and including IBM, Imperial College Business School and Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London has received funding from the Technology Strategy Board to prove the concept of Open Platform. The group will create a technology enabled business platform, like that of Google, iTunes, Amazon or EBay, which allows different types of data to be combined, exchanged and modelled with other types of data to understand impact, in a bid to create an online marketplace to exchange knowledge, data and modelling techniques between the government, disaster risk reduction and insurance sectors.

SHARING THE CLOUD JOURNEY: UNIT4 has launched Shared Journey, a new cloud based solution for public and private sector organisations using its Agresso Business World and Coda Financials enterprise software solutions. Available on subscription basis, Shared Journey allows groups of public sector bodies or not-for-profit organisations to work together to quickly set up and launch a shared services operation based on either Coda or Agresso. Each organisation/division within the shared service can obtain all the benefits of cloud computing while maintaining the highest level of independence/identity, and delivering group benefits and efficiencies. www.unit4.com

POTHOLE? WE’VE GOT AN APP FOR THAT…: Buckinghamshire citizens can now report highway defects with Masternaut’s new iPhone app. People can photograph and report a pothole, loose paving, broken bollard or faulty street light and send the geolocation and information direct to Transport for Buckinghamshire for action by the highway maintenance teams. www.masternaut.co.uk

KENT TO SELL IT SERVICES TO OTHER COUNCILS: An IT organisation set up by Kent County Council is to begin selling a package of IT services for schools to other authorities. Kent Technical Services is working with Getronics, a provider of hosted desktop services, and is marketing the package, Ubiquitous Desktop Solutions, following a pilot at a primary school. It includes hardware and software aimed specifically at the education sector. www.technicalservices.org.uk

Transforming multi-channel customer experiences

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dobe has launched ADEP, the Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform for Customer Experience Management (CEM). The platform enables organisations to build immersive, multi-channel digital interactions for today’s social and mobile customers.

The company is also delivering a new set of Customer Experience Solutions, built on the Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform, to help drive personalised, targeted connections and campaigns both online and offline. For IT organisations, the platform helps to optimise customer interactions across all lines of business.

Adobe’s new offering is a modular, open, standards-based platform for delivering engaging digital solutions across social, web, mobile, and print channels. It provides organisations with a unified foundation to make, manage and deliver multi-channel digital experiences leveraging HTML5, Adobe AIR, Flash Player and Adobe Reader Mobile application development also gets a boost through integration with Adobe Flash Builder and Flex. Integrated with the Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform, Flash Builder 4.5 and Flex 4.5 now include new support for building mobile applications for Android devices, BlackBerry PlayBook, iPhone and iPad. h t t p : / / w w w. a d o b e . c o m / s o l u t i o n s / c u s tomer-experience/enterprise-platform.html http://www.adobe.com/solutions/customerexperience.html UKauthorITy IT in Use

Atos eTHOS

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tos has launched the eTHOS Identity Authentication service, providing secure access to local and central government services. The company has also signed a framework agreement for the provision of secure authentication services to UK regional authorities, initially focused on members of the LondonPSN. Atos will serve the framework through the launch of the ‘eTHOS Identity Authentication’ service. This new service includes all four lots of the framework covering a range of two factor credentials for one time passwords; local edge services for remote access; federated core Identify Provider services and, through partnership with the Post Office, a flexible, national registration capability at low cost. The Atos identity provider will be tScheme accredited and services will be made available on an output based, per user pricing model. http://uk.atos.net/en-uk

PARENTMAIL LAUNCHES PARENTAL ENGAGEMENT: ParentMail +Pay has launched ParentMail 2 along with a mobile app for parents, ParentPlanner. The product consolidates information for parents from every school, club or nursery their children attend into one single account so they can keep better informed and also deal with the huge amount of day-to-day eventualities involved in bringing up their children. www.parentmail.co.uk

VIRTUAL PC SHOWCASE: Researchers at Birmingham City University have revealed ground-breaking technology that will lead to ‘virtual PCs’ being available to millions of remote users – everywhere and anywhere.

Project leader, Dr Peter Rayson, said: “This is an innovative software platform which allows users to have their own ‘virtual PC’, with their personal files and settings, on any machine with internet access, anywhere in the world.

The cloud platform provides content and apps to inform, interact, socially connect and even entertain, as well as delivering all essential services and educational requirements. The uniqueness of this technology is that it is accessed via low cost USB devices plugged into any available PC. NEXT GENERATION NETWORK OPERATIONS: MLL Telecom has completed its next generation Network Operations Centre (NOC), significantly improving its ability to monitor and manage its network services. “The new NOC will help us deliver a range of new benefits to our customers. For example the improved intelligence provided means that our customers will now be able to receive management information at any location via devices such as the Apple iPad and be able to act upon it quickly,’ said MLL’s Gary Marven. www.mlltelecom.com July/August 2011

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CONTRACT ROUNDUP

HEALTH CHEDDAR MEDICAL CENTRE has selected Jayex’s Enlighten waiting room management solution. Enlighten provides the centre with innovative, cost-effective workflow technology designed to assist in improving patient experience from arrival through to consultation. Cheddar will be utilising the technology to provide the practice with upto-date demographics, trend information and to inform purchasing decisions through controlled patient feedback.

GATESHEAD HEALTH NHS FOUNDATION TRUST has completed a deal with the Sits Group, which takes it closer to a fully virtualised data infrastructure for some of its most critical departments. With currently 80 virtualised and 40 physical servers in its infrastructure Gateshead Health sought a secure backup and recovery management system as part of an ongoing virtualisation project for departments such as A&E and pathology. The VMware environment is accessed by over 2,500 users across three sites.

LEEDS TEACHING HOSPITALS NHS TRUST is working to develop an open source portal to give clinicians a single view of data held in its patient administration system (PAS).

The portal, Protean, is in pilot phase and was developed using the Eclipse software development environment. The server layer uses Java programming, while the presentation layer uses the JavaScript library Ext JS to create an open source rich internet application layer framework, allowing users to access portal tools through a browser.

MID YORKSHIRE HOSPITALS NHS TRUST has selected Zeus Technology to help manage its key medical applications. At any given time, 500 employees can be using one of 150 web-based systems to access medical records and patient results via the trust’s two datacentres.

NHS GLOUCESTERSHIRE has deployed Tunstall Healthcare to help clinicians manage patients with long-term conditions. The one-year programme will improve patient outcomes and reduce

FIRE HAMPSHIRE FIRE AND RESCUE SERVICE (FRS) plans to share services over its new 999 network with both other fire services and local authorities. Procured under a shared framework agreement form, the network - supported by Virgin Business Media - is said to be both secure and compliant with the government’s Public Sector Network. In addition to connecting 51 fire stations, and the fire service’s headquarters, wider connections to 16 other partners in the framework have been enabled.

HAMPSHIRE FRS has adopted Astium GEO-Information Services’ SAFEcommand solution to ensure its firefighters receive critical frontline emergency information. Fire crews in the service’s 130 appliances now have access to the latest operational data including potential risks at an incident location - such as gas cylinder storage or how to gain access to particular stretch of river - from their in-cab terminal on the way to an emergency call.

HEREFORD & WORCESTER FIRE AND RESCUE SERVICE has awarded Telent a contract for the provision of a SEED Command & Control Mobilising System and Cyfas Integrated Communications Control System. The system will enable secure, effective dispatch of firefighters and resources to emergencies throughout the county, leveraging the latest technology for automated vehicle location to give dynamic, realtime mobilisation. The contract, issued via Hereford’s prime contractor, Computacenter, is the first of its kind to be let in England since the government announced its decision to cancel the national FiReControl project which would have provided similar functionality.

MERSEYSIDE FIRE & RESCUE SERVICE is pushing forward in the post-FiReControl environment with a corporate gazetteer management system from Aligned Assets. The Symphony Bluelight system will see the service building on the work achieved during the FiReControl project in matching its existing address data to the NLPG in order to create one definitive gazetteer that will be used throughout the service.

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NOTTINGHAM UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS NHS TRUST is using Cisco Cius and Nervecentre Software to help redirect 8,000 hours of nursing time a year into hands-on patient care. A study by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants showed the deal is delivering cash savings of £97,000, an estimated £292,000 per year of avoided costs in extended lengths of stay, and improved patient safety and increased staff satisfaction. The system includes a Cisco medical-grade network to provide both wired and wireless network access, a real-time workforce management system from Nervecentre; and 11 Cisco Cius tablets. hospital admissions by delivering a managed system of care and timely responses, through the use of telehealth.

NHS PROCUREMENT HUBS has signed an agreement with Computacenter to offer VMware virtualisation technology to NHS trusts. The programme is led by the NHS Commercial Procurement Collaborative which, together with the NHS Shared Business Services’ procurement arm and London Procurement Programme, chose Computacenter following a competitive tender process through the buying solutions framework.

NHS SHARED BUSINESS SERVICE has chosen Certero to provide a power management product, available for use by the wider NHS and to allow organisations to easily apply power policies and profiles across all their desktops. NHS SBS was established in 2005 to help NHS trusts streamline back-office functions and deliver greater operational efficiency, thus enabling key staff to focus on frontline care.

SECTRA has selected SQS to manage testing function across the £35m NIPACS programme for Northern Ireland. The project provides digital management of all radiology information and images throughout the public healthcare system in Northern Ireland. SQS’ role includes the provision of a structured methodology and set of processes to support every stage of testing and ensure correct approach to minimise risk of defects in the system.

UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS BIRMINGHAM, with TIBCO Spotfire, has implemented a new system that helps clinicians and managers make decisions. Spotfire’s virtual ward bed reviewer enables senior nursing staff to make bed allocation decisions more quickly and easily, with better access to patient data. The system aggregates all sources of data used in the hospital and provides a user-friendly interface that interrogates the data, providing real-time answers to questions.

CONTRACT ROUNDUP

LOCAL GOVERNMENT BARNSLEY METROPOLITAN BOROUGH COUNCIL has selected a library management system from Capita-owned Talis to benefit over 220,000 citizens. The software will allow the council to provide improved, intuitive services such as reservations, catalogue search, payment of fines - by phone, email, post and SMS. BOLTON COUNCIL has gone live with Liquidlogic’s PROTOCOL Integrated Children’s System. The system integrates with Capita One, Bolton’s educational management system, providing an essential multi-agency link for the council. Liquidlogic has worked closely with Bolton to migrate over two million case notes and 100,000 children’s assessments from the council’s legacy system.

CAMDEN BOROUGH COUNCIL has selected Computrace to protect its laptops and the data held on them. The council operates a mobile security policy strategy based on industry-standard recommendations around password protection, hard disk encryption, data protection, and computer tracking. It has already activated Computrace on 1,300 of its laptops to address the computer tracking and data protection element of this.

CARMARTHENSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL has deployed Xsigo virtual I/O as part of a server consolidation initiative. Users can now quickly and easily connect any server to any network and storage device through a consolidated infrastructure. Because the I/O Director delivers up to 40Gb bandwidth per server connection, it allows IT administrators to increase server consolidation ratios and accelerate management tasks such as vMotion and data backup.

CHESHIRE WEST AND CHESTER COUNCIL has awarded Civica a contract to provide an integrated system for its case management across its legal department. The new system will be based on Civica Legal software, which gives the legal teams web-enabled applications and modern infrastructure to ensure centralised single process for case management, court bundling, billing and debt recovery.

CROYDON COUNCIL has deployed HumanConcepts OrgPlus Enterprise solution. The council is using the Software as a Service LAMBETH has appointed Capita preferred bidder for a collaborative partnership to deliver a range of services encompassing and extending the existing revenue collection contract administered by Capita and additional services including management of the council’s call centre operations, ICT support services and a benefits resilience service. For these core services the contract is expected to be worth £60m over 10 years with the option to extend for a further five years.

(SaaS) version of OrgPlus Enterprise to manage its organisational structures for more than 10,000 staff more effectively within the new budget constraints.

DORSET COUNTY COUNCIL and Kcom have signed a four year framework agreement (with the ability for services to continue for a further seven years) to supply a wide area network and unified communications. The network will be a shared resource available to any public sector body in Dorset and surrounding areas. Initially the network will extend to approximately 400 sites, involve unbundling over 30 BT exchanges, and will incorporate two data centres and consolidated connections into government services.

GLOUCESTER CITY COUNCIL has improved business efficiency by using a budgeting and forecasting system from Advanced Business Solutions. The software has helped to reduce budget loading time from ten days to just minutes and to better monitor, evaluate and improve its financial performance by replacing spreadsheets with real-time monitoring of financial plans and forecasts.

GLOUCESTERSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL is adopting a multi-agency approach to children’s services to support more effective early interventions and has chosen Liquidlogic’s PROTOCOL Integrated Children’s System and PROTOCOL e-Enabled Common Assessment Framework (eCAF). Up to 1,600 social care and health practitioners from agencies including the council’s CYPS, education, health, police and youth services will access the new systems.

LEWISHAM BOROUGH BUSINESS AGAINST CRIME says it has reduced town centre crime by 62%, as a result of using NBIS (National Business Intelligence System) from Hicom.

Using NBIS, the organisation is able to share data on offenders quickly and easily between retailers, the police and other crime reduction agencies nationwide.

LEWISHAM has reselected Capita Local Government Services to provide systems support for its revenues and benefits service.

The contract, worth £1.4m over five years with option to extend for a further two years, runs from June and is a continuation of the existing 18 month systems support service contract.

LONDON LIBRARY CONSORTIUM is subscribing to Smartsm to drive efficiencies around its shared collections. The tool helps libraries practice the proven Evidence Based Stock Management Methodology, allowing them to manage and develop their collections based on evidence.

LIVERPOOL CITY COUNCIL is set to refresh its joint venture contract with BT after securing an improved deal. Liverpool Direct Limited was formed in 2001 and runs the city council’s ICT service, contact centre, one-stop shops, together with human resources and payroll, the revenues and benefits services, and the social care service, Careline. In addition to a £9m discount on the cost of the contract and £17.5m of investment in ICT, BT has agreed to spend £18m on projects which will create jobs and fund housing and social care programmes between now and 2017. the council’s virtual private network remotely.

Managed in a central resource pool, staff from all departments will be able to use the USB sticks for mobile and home working. The solution is also part of the council’s disaster recovery plans to ensure business continuity.

NORTH NORFOLK DISTRICT COUNCIL has signed a contract with Concerto Support Services to deploy Concerto Assets software to manage and maintain its diverse property estate. The software will allow the council to address the data issues with the view of centralising, cleansing and improving asset data.

POWYS COUNTY COUNCIL has chosen LogRhythm’s integrated log management and Security Information Event Management solution to help cut the cost of complying with government and payment card industry data security standard regulations. The council will also use the product to proactively identify and remediate internal and external security threats to its critical IT infrastructure.

REDBRIDGE COUNCIL and Virtual Viewing have launched a website that uses 3D modelling to show the development potential of Ilford town centre. It has been described as a one-stop shop for would-be investors. The site allows users to take a virtual tour of the area while making key documents such as due diligence papers, urban design reports and planning policy accessible in one easyto-access place. www.investilford.co.uk FINGAL COUNTY COUNCIL is using Nathean Technologies’ Logix to identify cost savings and efficiencies councilwide, including significant savings in energy bills, as well as reductions in procurement costs such as plant hire. The tool is also being used to analyse housing and citizen service needs.

NEWCASTLE-UNDER-LYME BOROUGH COUNCIL has selected Becrypt Trusted Client to deliver secure mobile working to its officers. The council has ordered 90 licences for Trusted Client, which will be supplied to staff on USB sticks giving them secure access to UKauthorITy IT in Use

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CONTRACT ROUNDUP

WESTMINSTER has signed a £190m panLondon IT framework with Virgin Media Business for a PSN-compliant Next Generation Network resource that could act as a one-stop procurement shop to London’s public sector for buying phone, data, video, CCTV and WiFi services. Any public sector organisation in the capital will be able to sign up to the framework, potentially generating millions of pounds worth of savings from simplified procurement, standardisation and sharing technology used by different organisa©iStockphoto.com/aprott tions.

RENFREWSHIRE COUNCIL has selected Certero’s PowerStudio PC Power Management solution to help it achieve its PC-related cost and energy savings targets.

RUTLAND COUNTY COUNCIL is deploying Symphony iManage from Aligned Assets for managing its LLPG, Local Street Gazetteer and Associated Street Data. It is also using Aligned Assets’ integration module, Symphony iExchange, to automate exports of gazetteer data into back office systems as well as those to the national hub.

SOUTH BUCKS COUNCIL has awarded a contract worth £11m for back office services including ICT to Steria and Northgate.

In a seven-year deal, the suppliers will deliver a wide range of services including accountancy, software implementation and maintenance as well as hardware and consultancy. Revenues and benefits, including collection and recovery of council tax and benefits, forms part of the deal.

POLICE CLEVELAND POLICE AUTHORITY has selected Steria as its partner for delivery of the force’s control room, community justice and back-office functions. The shared service partnership will deliver £50m in cashable savings. The centre will provide transformed business services based around new technologies and new electronic processes integrated with existing as well as upgraded technology.

STAFFORDSHIRE POLICE has given Sepura a £1m contract for both hand portable and mobile terminals. Staffordshire completes the quartet of Midlands’ regional constabularies, with West Midlands, West Mercia and Warwickshire also benefiting from Sepura TETRA radios.

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July/August 2011

LUTON BOROUGH COUNCIL is delivering a wide range of frontline council services using GIS from GGP Systems. Holding more than 190 individual layers of mapped information ranging from addresses to parking zones, gritting routes, potholes and street lights, the system can be accessed by more than 3,000 staff via the council’s intranet.

Members of the public can also access the data via the council’s website where it can be used to report a range of defects and service delivery reports.

SOUTH OXFORDSHIRE AND VALE OF WHITE HORSE district councils have extended their existing contract with Capita to deliver revenues and benefits, financial and customer services through a shared services arrangement. The extension is for a period of three years, to July 2016 and is worth some £8.9m.

As a result of the original contract both authorities saw their very best council tax collection rates last year.

TOTALNOTTS consortium of Nottinghamshire public sector partner agencies, has procured Covalent Corporate Performance Management for collaborative use across eight local authorities to improve organisational results by actively managing goal-critical Key Performance Indicators, avoiding data overload and allowing managers to take timely corrective action where necessary. Totalnotts comprises Bassetlaw, Broxtowe, Gedling, Newark & Sherwood, Rushcliffe, Ashfield, Mansfield and Nottinghamshire councils.

TUNBRIDGE WELLS BOROUGH COUNCIL is the 20th council to deploy SecurEnvoy’s SecurAccess for its network. SecurEnvoy randomly generates any required keys within the customer’s environment meaning there is nothing relating to its customers’ security stored at SecurEnvoy and therefore customer details could never become compromised.

WANDSWORTH used ICT integrator Fordway Solutions to manage a successful infrastructure improvement programme, increasing network availability from 95.8% to 99.8% and significantly improving user satisfaction.

Projects have included installing SCCM and SCOM, upgrading the VMware platform, setting up network monitoring and addressing problems with the borough’s extensive thin client terminals, including the installation of Microsoft APPV to enable applications to be launched more quickly.

WARRINGTON is using a computer-generated 3D model of its town centre to support ambitious regeneration plans for the borough. Created by aerial mapping company, Bluesky, the model will be used to show how proposed town centre regeneration schemes would look after development.

The model was supplied ready for use in the council’s Computer Aided Design software application – AutoCAD - and in Google SketchUp. UKauthorITy IT in Use

WILTSHIRE COUNCIL has confirmed its Azzurri Communications contract for an IP telephony solution for its 5,000 staff; the project has been delivered on budget and within 50% of the planned timeframe. After reviewing potential suppliers through the buying solutions framework, the council selected Azzurri on a pilot basis and subsequently reengaged the company to implement, support and manage a hosted Mitel-based platform.

EDUCATION CARDIFF AND VALE COLLEGE, formed by the merger of Barry College and Coleg Glan Hafren, is implementing a financial management system from Advanced Business Solutions. This integrated system, which will include electronic procurement and workflow functionality, will improve financial reporting and support the new college’s sustainable agenda by eliminating time-consuming paper-based processes.

DUNDEE COLLEGE has installed a Liberty Library Management System from Softlink.

Being able to use email and texting tools to alert students if they have overdue books has saved the college time, effort and resources, prompting it to be more proactive and giving it greater control over stock. It has also significantly reduced costs by streamlining the whole library management process.

GENERAL TEACHING COUNCIL FOR SCOTLAND is developing an online management tool for student teachers using C2 Software. The GTCS has offered a similar system, also developed by C2 Software, to probationary teachers for the past four years through its MyGTCS portal.

KILMARNOCK COLLEGE is to transform efficiency levels and improve financial control by implementing a financial management system from Advanced Business Solutions.

The new system, which has integrated electronic workflow and document imaging functionality, will enhance the reporting and accessibility of financial information across the college.

UNIVERSITY OF PORTSMOUTH has selected Objective Corporation’s content, collaboration and process management solution to enhance the way the organisation manages its documentation.

CONTRACT ROUNDUP

SHOWCASE

CENTRAL GOVERNMENT & AGENCIES

GGP

BLUE BADGE IMPROVEMENT SERVICE has awarded a five year contract to Northgate to deliver the new Blue Badge on behalf of central government and local authorities. In association with Payne Security which will print, supply and distribute the newly designed badge, Northgate will develop a secure web-based service including an online eligibility checker and application form available on Directgov, and a secure common datastore of key information on badges and badge holders to enable verification checks to be made quickly and easily from desktop or mobile device. The service aims to go live 1 January 2012.

DEPARTMENT FOR COMMUNITIES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT’S pivotal Geography Publishing Service (GPS) has been launched in the cloud. In line with the ‘more for less’ agenda, the migration of the GPS by Informed Solutions to a fully managed, cloud-hosted service is expected to realise savings in the region of 40% in the first year alone for DCLG. The GPS delivers mapping and gazetteer functionality to a range of web-based applications, including the Places solution and the business critical, national Fire Incident Recording System.

GREATER LONDON AUTHORITY is implementing Asite’s Software to provide a single integrated data management solution for all aspects of the contract administration process. The software will provide real-time visibility of actual schedule and cost position against budget.

MAYRISE

HIGHWAYS AGENCY has signed a £57m seven year contract for a National Traffic Information Service, which will be available from September. The service will be provided by a consortium of Mouchel and Thales UK, and cover motorways and A roads. It will replace the traffic and data processing elements of the existing National Traffic Control Centre contract.

LAND REGISTRY is using SAS to decode data and generate statistical reports detailing the performance of its mainframe computer. The solution is delivering major time savings and a significant reduction in the likelihood of errors for the organisation, improving mainframe performance.

MINISTRY OF DEFENCE has ordered 12,500 rugged tablet PCs in a five year deal worth £30m. Software Box will provide the Getac tablets under the joint asset management and engineering solutions contract.

The PCs will feature PGP HMG encryption. The contract includes software, installation, configuration and maintenance support as well as access to a dedicated helpdesk.

REMPLOY and online job finder and training provider, MyWorkSearch, have joined forces to enhance the range of services available to disabled and disadvantaged job-seekers. The partnership will provide Remploy candidates with access to MyWorkSearch’s award-winning interactive eLearning content and a range of online job search tools.

SCOTTISH PROCUREMENT AND COMMERCIAL DIRECTORATE has awarded Fujitsu a place on both Lots for the IT Managed Services Framework Agreement, meaning that Fujitsu becomes one of a limited number of IT suppliers pre-approved to tender for IT managed services contracts across all public bodies in Scotland.

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WELSH GOVERNMENT has awarded a four year contract for the management of intelligent transport systems, including telecommunications and tunnel systems for the entire motorway and trunk road network in Wales. Winning contractors, Amey and URS/Scott Wilson, will provide motorway technology including telephones, signals, CCTV cameras and the two traffic management centres across Wales.

WORTHING HOMES, SOUTH YORKSHIRE HOUSING ASSOCIATION and BROADACRES HOUSING ASSOCIATION have selected Asset4000 from Real Asset Management (RAM) to help process and control their asset bases and account for assets at component level in line with the Statement of Recommended Practice.

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