IT in Use - March/April 2011 issue by Informed Publications Limited

Technology & The Transformation of Frontline Services

ITU UKauthorITy IT in Use March/April 2011

Smart Operators - Smart cities are all the rage

New ICT Strategy

- With time and money running out technology has much to prove

Agile is the New Black ITU â&#x20AC;˘ March/April 2011

- Everyone is talking about Agile, but who is doing it?

ITU Live: Digital Services

- In the Age of Austerity online and digital services offer big savings

PLUS: News Update, Joining Health & Social Care, Digital by Design, View on Westminster, Product Notes & Contracts Won. Contracts

ITU

Features

ITU

Products

ITU

UKA Comment

ISSN 2046 7133

March/April 2011

Editor & Publisher Helen Olsen E: Helen@infopub.co.uk T: 01273 273941

On the Cover

Time is running out for technology to prove itself.

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

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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

See page 3.

©iStockphoto.com/Igor Dmitriev

Contents Comment New and improved: Helen Olsen welcomes the new ICT strategy

News Update 3-7

The government’s new ICT strategy, the Public Accounts Committee inquiry into government’s use of technology and a round up of the key news, headlines and trends affecting technology in frontline public services.

ITU Live: Digital Services in the Age of Austerity

8-9

Fighting for the Big Society

Agile is the New Black

Online Services Special Focus: Digital By Design

Smart Operators

Joining Health & Social Care

Company & Product Notes Contracts Roundup

Can online and digital services help the public sector get through this Age of Austerity? ITU editor, Helen Olsen, puts the questions to this month’s ITU Live panel.

Tim Hampson reports from Westminster on the Big Society vision.

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

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Michael Cross ponders the meaning of ‘agility’ for public sector IT.

Frontline services must focus on Customer Experience in order to deliver high quality public services that citizens choose to use, says Adobe’s Prelini Udayan Chiechi. Tim Hampson asks whether the time has finally come when technology can deliver the sustainable dream. Local authorities and GPs are waiting for some indication of the kind of information architecture they are expected to build, and who is going to pay for it, says Michael Cross.

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March/April 2011

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16-18

Comment

New and improved

he government’s new ICT strategy has landed; just as MPs are hearing damning evidence against continuing the status quo in terms of government’s use of technology. Change is on the cards for two reasons: there is no money left, and the genie of wasted taxpayers’ millions is well and truly out of the bottle. The new strategy is to be warmly welcomed. It wants value for taxpayers’ money, it wants better outcomes, better services, and it wants agility - for the public sector to take advantage of the leading, not the bleeding, edge of technology. But Socitm makes some valuable points: the strategy does not go far enough in pulling the entire public sector ICT infrastructure into a standard, interoperable line. Neither does it solve the problem of the EU’s procurement Maria. Meanwhile, the public have no faith in the public sector’s ability to look after their data – today that is, let alone in the cloudy future. And the ICO is getting increasingly agitated by the continuing failure of the public sector to get its data house in order, recently fining Ealing and Hounslow a total of £150,000 for losing laptops with unsecured citizen information on them. However, it is not just high tech data losses that the citizen has to worry about – the ICO found Wolverhampton City Council in breach of the Data Protection Act after ‘allowing’ confidential personal information to be disposed of in a skip. You really couldn’t make it up. Council documents containing names, dates of birth, bank details, employment records and medical information had been fly-tipped after being dumped in a skip at a community leisure centre. The skip was stolen and the documents in it discarded…

News Update

Agile, cheaper, faster and standard - the new look for government ICT

ime and money are fast running out in the public sector, but the government’s new master plan for drastically cutting back public spend on ICT whilst improving value for money and quality of ICT outputs, offers a ray of light for the future. Launching the new strategy, minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude (pictured below) said that government would cut out “duplication and waste” by sharing ICT assets across government and standardising on common systems. The strategy focuses heavily on agile development, open standards and interoperability across government systems. “For too long, government has wasted vast amounts of money on ineffective and duplicate IT systems. We need to ensure that frontline services have the tools to do their job to deliver effective public services,” said Maude. “We will end the oligopoly of big business supplying government IT by breaking down contracts into smaller, more flexible projects. This will open up the market to SMEs and new providers.” In its ICT strategy, the government commits to: • reduce the cost of using data centres – servers which store, process and transact government-held information – by 35% over five years, cutting their carbon footprint; • move away from big bang solutions delivered by the same large suppliers to a greater number of smaller and agile projects; • publish details of government contracts and reduce bureaucracy and costs, so that new providers and SMEs have the opportunity to win government ICT contracts;

Despite the council having written procedures (and a contract) in place for the secure disposal of personal data, council employees had “failed to recognise the confidential nature of the information when they disposed of it”.

• share and reuse ICT solutions and services, via a common ICT infrastructure, an ICT asset register and fully online Applications Store, to enable the reuse of business applications and components across the public sector;

High tech, low tech, the basic problem remains: there is yet to be fostered a culture within the public sector whereby personal data and citizen confidentiality are both valued and respected by all.

• enable interoperable ICT by using common and open standards, creating cross-government standards on Application Programme Interfaces and developing a quality assurance ‘kite mark’ - helping to open up new innovative services from a diverse range of providers.

And that intractable, resistant to change, culture will follow this strategy like a sea anchor – for it is people that must make these eminently sensible changes. Technology is just the tool.

Helen Olsen, Editor

One key, and perhaps essential, change will be to increase ownership and oversight by requiring senior responsible officers (SROs) to stay in post until an appropriate break in the ICT UKauthorITy IT in Use

programme or project life to reduce the risk of project failure.

Mixed reactions The public sector IT community has welcomed the fact that the government now has an ICT strategy - but finds plenty to question about the contents.

©iStockphoto.com/Igor Dmitriev

One of the most outspoken criticisms comes from the Society of IT Management, which commented that, like its predecessors, the strategy is too focused on central government. ‘Although there is less focus on ‘departments’ the strategy still falls short of embracing the sort of pan-public services approach that Socitm would like to see,’ a statement said. However Socitm welcomed the new emphasis on IT-enabled business change, service efficiency and technology consolidation. ‘These chime with what Socitm has been saying for some time, based on its research evidence.’ Particularly helpful, Socitm said, is the focus on open standards; standard architectures; development of a standard, secure, cloud desktop; re-use of technologies; collaborative and mobile working; the use of agile and adaptive approaches, and a risk-based approach to secure information sharing. ‘Unfortunately, the prescriptions advocated in the strategy continue to be mainly about technology, with limited recognition of the role of information and very little about specific public service outcomes and business transformation,’ the statement said. Socitm is sceptical that ‘agile’ approaches to systems development will happen unless facilitated by agile procurement, ‘and there is little in the strategy to suggest that current procurement regimes will change’. The society also questions why a government apps store is needed to supplement what the private sector is already developing, and wonders why, when discussing plans for the Public Sector Network, the strategy overlooks existing networks in Kent, London, Hampshire and Wales. A warmer welcome to the strategy came from software trade association, Intellect. Director general, John Higgins, said: “This marks a milestone in the government’s reform agenda, with a fresh look at ICT as an enabler of better services for the public. The strong leadership in place at the centre ticks one crucial box. Now it’s time to get down to business.” March/April 2011

News Update

IT cuts an opportunity Tory-controlled London Borough of Hillingdon is expecting to cut its IT budget by a further 2% next year - but is upbeat about the consequences. Roger Bearpark, assistant head of ICT, said that the council had prepared the ground for radical change by virtualising its IT infrastructure. Hillingdon has cut its server inventory from 200 to “nine physical pieces of tin”, housed in two main facilities, down from five, said Bearpark. “Not only can we contribute to the overall cuts by keeping our own costs low, but we can also drive efficiencies throughout the rest of the organisation, and because we have such an agile infrastructure, we can make these changes quickly.” The council already runs what it calls the ‘Hillingdon Cloud’ and is working on a project HANTS OFFERS UK-WIDE SHARED OPPORTUNITY: Hampshire County Council is to set up a back office shared services programme with UNIT4 Business Software that will be offered for use by other public bodies “in a bid to help them reduce costs and reform service delivery”. Services will be delivered collaboratively by the council and other public sector partners. Hampshire will be the hosted service provider and provide support and functional expertise for finance, procurement, asset management and HR & Payroll. UNIT4 will underpin the shared services delivery with its Local Government Platform, which is founded upon Agresso Business World. A number of organisations are said to have already expressed an interest in the provision of shared services through this partnership.

Secure link between GCSX and NHS N3

to share services with three other councils that also have their infrastructure virtualised. “Moving government services to the cloud makes perfect sense; it assists with capacity management during peak periods, avoids duplication, increases security and stability of the system and most of all could save billions in IT costs.” Bearpark was speaking at an event hosted by supplier, VMware, to launch its latest survey on the impact on IT of the spending review. The results show that 54% of public sector organisations due to make cuts in their IT budgets have yet to begin. Six in ten (61%) say that reduced budgets are already impacting frontline services; 73% that IT is integral to cost-cutting efforts and 91% that IT has the ability to transform how organisations operate. MANAGEMENT BEFORE SERVICE CUTS: An LGA survey finds that councils are cutting senior management posts and pay in order to protect frontline services - nine out of 10 have already reduced senior officer and eight out of 10 middle-management costs. Just over half (52%) are planning to make savings through pay freezes, but 73% have no current plans to implement pay reductions for other staff. ww.lga.gov.uk MOJ SHARED SERVICES: Prisons and courts are to share back-office services in a five year, £22m deal with Accenture. The systems integrator will implement an Oracle enterprise resource planning application and an ‘infrastructure-as-a-service’ model across the MoJ network to provide shared HR, payroll, finance and procurement services.

‘Business as usual’ for shared ICT success

ewham has made savings in 2010/11 of around £800,000 from its shared ICT arrangements with Havering – and is on track to save a further £800,000 in the current financial year.

“But equally importantly,” says CIO of both councils, Geoff Connell, (below left) “Newham is scoring over 6.6 out of 7 for customer satisfaction from its users and Havering has greatly increased system availability and disaster recovery arrangements while also delivering against massive change management programmes; all enabled by technology.” Newham, Havering, and soon Waltham Forest, are due to go live with new customer services technologies for residents based on the Microsoft stack. Says Connell, “Critically, these are the same products across both councils, deployed in the same way, sharing design, process, code and support arrangements. Possibly a first!” Word of the success of Newham and Havering shared services is spreading. “We are now providing services to other boroughs such as Waltham Forest and Camden, with discussions with others ongoing,” says Connell. He is keen to get “other authorities to share our Oracle ERP arrangements, benefitting from the work we have done with CAP to create a ‘close to vanilla’ local government version of the Business Suite, running as a cloud service out of Texas.” A number of London boroughs are following developments with interest. As Connell says, “All in all you can see that regional working is rapidly becoming business as usual.”

March/April 2011

UKauthorITy IT in Use

able&Wireless Worldwide has established the GCSX-N3 Interconnect Service, providing a secure gateway between the Government Connect Secure Extranet (GCSX) and NHS N3 network. The GCSX-N3 Interconnect Service provides the foundation for more integrated health and social care by enabling secure, reliable and efficient information sharing between local government and the NHS. It also costs local authorities considerably less to obtain and run than a separate N3 connection. Early adopter, Simon Watton, IS programme manager at Rochdale MBC, said, “The GCSX-N3 Interconnect Service makes commercial and business sense. Our priorities are speed of implementation, high resilience, expandability and predicted lower cost of ownership, all of which were met with this implementation. It also helps us realise further cost savings as we do not have to obtain and maintain two separate connections and is much simpler as we have a single point of contact for both services.”

Shared services no panacea for frontline services Sharing chief executives, merging backoffices and joining forces to buy goods and services will help councils balance their books – but not till the next decade. Such savings will not save frontline services in the short term. Increasing the pace of the move to share services, however, will save councils hundreds of millions of pounds over the next ten years, says the Local Government Association (LGA). With budget cuts heavily front-loaded many of the projects identified by the Local Government Group cannot be implemented in time to help minimise the short-term impact on frontline services of a 28% cut in council budgets over the next four years. The predicted saving from 200 shared services projects either running or under consideration comes on top of measures already introduced by councils which delivered £3bn of savings between 2005 and 2008, £1.7bn in 2008-09; and more than £4.8m every day in 2009-10. Nottingham and Leicestershire county councils claim savings of £2m per year sharing HR, payroll and finance services. And Bromsgrove and Redditch councils say sharing management services and a chief executive has saved £500,000 over the last 18 months. East Lindsey and South Holland district councils sharing services across five back-office functions is predicted to save just over £30.7m over the next ten years. LG Group ‘Shared Services and Management Guide’: http://www.local.gov.uk/lgv2/aio/1345994

News Update

Private sector to take on authentication PAC hears

anks and other private businesses will be expected to take over the job of authenticating citizens’ identities for e-government services, says Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude.

Maude told MPs on the Commons Public Administration Select Committee inquiry into the government’s use of technology that a project on online authentication is under way - but that the government will not be building its own system. “There are organisations out there who are viewed as highly good at verifying you are who you say you are. We shouldn’t be re-inventing that wheel.”

where three suppliers control almost a third of the government’s £16bn ICT expenditure. “Government’s intention is to learn from what local government and others have been doing, to break very large national projects into much smaller projects so that they can be individually procured in an easier way, delivering with more rapidity,” said Watmore.

Just close the chequebook “Just close the chequebook,” was chief executive of agile specialist, Erudine, Martin Rice’s advice for improving government’s track record in IT.

Appearing alongside Maude last month, Ian Watmore, chief operating officer of the Efficiency and Reform Group, added, “If the banks have a good ID platform, we will not need to build our own but re-use marketbased solutions that already exist.”

Procurement procedures make it impossible for SMEs to bid for government contracts, Rice told MPs – and even when an innovative small firm forms part of a large system integrator’s initial offering it will be “engineered out” when the deal is signed, he said.

Maude also revealed that the new Major Projects Authority would be monitoring programmes such as the benefits reforms to ensure adherence to the new principles.

Rice recommended building “fast, iterative” systems using agile methods. He cited examples of Facebook, which is under continuous development, and Amazon which, he said, does not have an IT department but in which every staff member is looking for ways of cutting transaction costs.

Much of the MPs‘ questioning was on the government’s commitment to meeting its target of 25% of ICT spend going to small and medium sized companies (SMEs). Maude said government is “pressing hard” for deregulation in the European procurement process. And he criticised the way that officials had “massively embellished” guidance on IT procurement over the years.

Whitehall must learn from councils

The committee heard that government agencies need to move beyond the assumption that new systems have to be set up as standalone projects and outsourced to industry. “We outsource far more than other European governments,” said David Clarke, BCS chief executive, a process which “passes knowledge and expertise to suppliers”.

Local government should be a role model for central government when it comes to ICT procurement, said Watmore. He told the committee that they would break up ICT contracts, and work to change the current situation

Committee chair Bernard Jenkin (Conservative) asked if the witnesses agreed that current procedures lock out SMEs; no one objected. The committee is expected to report this summer.

UKauthorITy IT in Use

Universal credit an agile ‘guinea pig’

ystems to implement the government’s new universal credit benefits are to be the guinea pig for a new strategy to avoid IT project disaster. The DWP had originally planned to have the new system ready by 2015; however a new ‘agile’ approach has enabled this date to be brought forward by two years. The revelation appears in a major critique of government IT strategy published by think tank, the Institute for Government. ‘System Error: fixing the flaws in government IT’ argues that government’s approach to IT is fundamentally flawed, and that current guidance on best practice is reinforcing a cycle of failure. It says that the current model remains ‘completely outdated’ and refers to a ‘glacial pace’ where the IT procurement process takes up to 77 weeks. It condemns the tendency to ‘gold plate’ specifications and thus effectively stifle agile development and innovation, citing the bespoke scheduling tool designed for the MoJ’s virtual court project - which amounted to little more than a room-booking system - and a Defra rural payments system, the design of which required more than 100 consultants, that could have been handled by an off the shelf spreadsheet. The reports condones two examples of agile working being adapted for large-scale projects. One is the Operation Amberhill system, developed by the Metropolitan Police and Home Office with IndigoBlue, to prevent identity fraud. This is a modular system centred on a rapidly developed database to which more functions could be easily added as needs emerge - originally estimated to cost several million pounds and take a number of years to deliver it had, using agile methodologies, been operational within three months for less than £100,000. The second, and much higher profile trial, will be the DWP’s project to create the new universal credit system. www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk

March/April 2011

See page 11

News Update

Single domain test for Whitehall’s agile approach

entral government’s IT development team - part of the new Government Digital Service - is working on a single government web domain, the Cabinet Office digital engagement blog has revealed. The project will also test the application of ‘agile’ development techniques to government projects. According to the blog, Chris Chant, interim executive director for digital government, has commissioned a project to test the feasibility of a single domain as a further step towards web rationalisation. The project is being led by Tom Loosemore, formerly of the BBC’s web operation, and Jimmy Leach, currently head of digital at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Loosemore “is quickly creating a small team of skilled people from inside and outside government to create a prototype, a proof of concept, to see how a single domain might look and operate. This would take the website rationalisation which had already begun to its logical conclusion.” http://digitalengagement.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/ blog/

WHITEHALL’S AD MEN TOLD TO USE OWN DIGITAL CHANNELS: Public advertising campaigns should try to reach citizens through the government’s own digital space rather than through commercial advertisements, an inquiry into government communications has concluded. Last year, government spent £1.01bn on communications, concluding that government usage of digital channels ‘might be lower than industry benchmarks’. Government owned assets, such as Directgov and poster sites on government buildings, ‘could have an annual value of around £50 million’, the review states.

NEW EU LAW ON ‘COOKIES’: Public sector organisations running websites in the UK must ‘wake up’ to the fact that EU legislation requiring them to get consent in order to store or access usage information on consumers’ computers is coming into force on 25 May, says information commissioner, Christopher Graham The new law is an amendment to the EU’s Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive. NHS DIRECT TO IMPROVE DIGITAL EXPERIENCE: Bunnyfoot is to help NHS Direct improve user experience across its digital services. The focus will be on improving access to health and symptom checkers and Online Patient Decision Aids, which are designed for users with chronic or serious conditions searching for guidance on treatment and tests.

GeoPlace is go!

roduction of the new national address gazetteer database, to provide one definitive source of address data for England and Wales, is on track to go live this autumn. GeoPlace, a public sector limited liability partnership jointly owned by the Local Government Group and Ordnance Survey, was created last year to solve a decadelong impasse over intellectual property in postal addresses. Products produced from the national address gazetteer database will be available through Ordnance Survey, with the public sector licensing GeoPlace products through the Public Sector Mapping Agreement. Maintenance of the national address gazetteer database will build on processes already put in place by local authorities to provide up-to-date address and street information to a central hub formerly known as the National Land and Property Gazetteer. www.geoplace.co.uk

IT in frame for police efficiency

olice forces use an astonishing 2,000 different IT systems, the government has observed while serving notice of a shake-up in funding. Home secretary, Theresa May, said that the number works out at more than 46 for each of the 43 forces in England and Wales. New regulations will force police chiefs to co-ordinate their procurement and save badly-needed cash, she said. The Home Office must find ways to cut funding for the police by 20% by 2015 while protecting frontline services

POLICE FORCES MERGE IT DEPARTMENTS: Thames Valley and Hampshire police have signed a legal agreement to create a single IT department, to be managed by Thames Valley police. The collaboration builds on other successful shared services projects in the south east region, and provides ‘real opportunities to enhance and improve the services delivered to the public’. Hampshire IT staff became employees of Thames Valley police at the beginning of February but have not changed their work location. CRIME TRACKER WEBSITE: Avon and Somerset police has launched an online crime tracker to provide the public with access to information extracted from its systems. The force hopes that the website, TrackMyCrime, will help to cut the time people spend waiting for police officers to call them back about their enquiries, as they will automatically be updated by email or text. Victims of crime are also able to send messages back to the investigation team and view information, for instance, about their stolen or damaged property.

March/April 2011

UKauthorITy IT in Use

Little faith in councils’ ability to keep data safe

s government cuts in the public sector begin to bite fears are increasing that personal records cannot be kept safe, according to a YouGov survey of 2,000 UK residents carried out for Websense. Nearly half of all respondent (48%) were worried that the spending cuts could put their personal and financial information at risk, and 35% thought government secrets might make it out into the open; 44% of all respondents felt government spending cuts would reduce the security of their personal and financial information over the next five years, with 19% believing the long term impact of cuts will make data ‘much less secure’. Local government fared badly in the poll as only 36% of people thought councils could keep data safe. Central government (including HMRC, DVLA & Passport Agency) was ranked above councils with 47% being very or fairly confident they are able to keep people’s data safe.

ICO clamps down on data breach

t’s not just high tech data losses that the citizen has to worry about – the ICO finds that Wolverhampton City Council breached the Data Protection Act by allowing confidential personal information to be disposed of in a skip. The ICO first became aware of the breach in October 2010 when a local newspaper reported that council documents containing names, dates of birth, bank details, employment records and medical information had been fly-tipped after being dumped in a skip located at a community leisure centre. The skip was stolen and the documents in it discarded. Despite the council having written procedures – and a contract – in place for the secure disposal of personal data, council employees had “failed to recognise the confidential nature of the information when they disposed of it”. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has also recently served Ealing Council with an £80,000 penalty and Hounslow Council with one for £70,000 for serious breaches of the Data Protection Act after the loss of two unencrypted laptops containing sensitive personal information.

News Update

Councils still don’t ‘get’ digital delivery

ouncils still do not recognise digital delivery as faster and more convenient for the public as well cheaper for the taxpayer, according to the authors of the authoritative annual study of council websites. The 2011 Better Connected survey published by Socitm finds that websites have made a modest improvement since last year. But this follows stagnation in the previous year. The judgement is based on comparison of standards across 12 criteria for usefulness and usability.

Take charge of communication channels

ocal authorities should take central control of all channels of communication with their populations to achieve “significant and permanent future savings” according to the consultancy wing of the council IT managers’ organisation, Socitm. Socitm Insight claims that bringing all front-office contacts under central management, and run to common standards, will lead to better service and better value for the taxpayer. “This report gives real insight in to how frontline delivery can be reshaped to protect service quality and reduce cost,” says Socitm president, Jos Creese. “What is recommended is not without risk, but the pace and depth of public sector cuts and reform requires a radical rethink about how we design and deliver services.”

Nine councils (2% of all UK sites) achieved the survey’s top, four-star ranking: Brighton & Hove, Bristol City, East Sussex, Eden, City of Edinburgh, Lewisham, Richmond upon Thames, Salford City and Surrey Heath.

Despite recent moves to reap efficiencies by splitting front and back office management ‘tradition persists’, states Socitm’s report, whereby some departments – notably planning and social services - continue to manage their ‘own’ customers. ‘Better Served: customer access, efficiency and channel shift’, found that even where a professional customer services activity exists, it very often covers only part of the council’s interaction with the public.

This compares with 11 last year, of which only East Sussex and Salford have retained four star ranking this year. The number of three star sites is 131 (30% of the total 433) compared with last year’s 106 (24%).

Managing customer communication and transaction channels better, finds the report, would not only improve efficiency and reduce avoidable contact but enable enquiries via phone, mail and face-to-face channels to be shifted to lower cost-to-serve web channels. And, provided the website is up to the job, the marginal cost of servicing these additional enquiries online is ‘almost zero’. www.socitm.net

The report contains some good news on the public acceptability of cheaper electronic services. It reports that a 12.7% increase in usage of the web by the adult population in the past year (Ipsos MORI) is matched by a 12.95% increase in usage of council websites. However more than one fifth of visits to council websites during 2010 ended in complete failure, potentially creating wasteful avoidable contact in councils’ other customer channels.

POOR BACK OFFICE INTEGRATION COSTS COUNCILS DEAR: According to NDL’s survey into integration between back office and customer-relations management (CRM) systems, 17% of organisations are still re-keying all data; 38% are re-keying more than 60% of data. Lack of integration, say 71%, is a barrier to maximising the benefits of their CRM. Only seven percent of respondents say their organisation has a CRM system which is fully transactional with the back office. However, there is realism over the budgets available for technology: only 68% will replace current technology but 91% are likely to increase their integration projects to drive more value from existing systems. Indeed, 89% see technology as a route to achieving the efficiency savings now required. info@ndl.co.uk

Commenting on the findings, Socitm president, Jos Creese, said: “The web is no longer about technology. It is about delivering lower cost services designed around the user. Any public service organisation, therefore, which is not fully integrating the potential of web delivery in financial and customer service strategies is likely to be under-performing in both areas.” www.socitm.net

TEXTING THE EMERGENCY SERVICES: A voluntary trial enabling 14,500 people to text the emergency services should be made mandatory, says Ofcom. The trial has been successful, with around one emergency text a day requiring attendance by the emergency services for situations such as strokes, heart attacks and childbirth. The proposal forms part of a wider consultation on changes to Ofcom’s regulations that need to reflect new European law that comes into effect on 25 May. Under the new European regulations, access to the emergency services for disabled people must be as close to that delivered to other consumers as the technology will allow.

BIRMINGHAM TRANSFORMS: At its midway point, Birmingham City Council’s ambitious Business Transformation scheme - launched in 2006 and supported by the Service Birmingham joint venture with Capita - has already banked £244.2m in savings with £93.6m of recurring annual savings going forward. This means that £711.9m of the £1bn projected savings to 2016 have been secured. TAX CHEATS CAUGHT VIA COUNCIL DATA BANK: Birmingham City Council has identified £6.8m worth of fraudulent and incorrect claims for single person council tax discounts - plus £1.2m in unclaimed benefits - by using its data warehouse facility. Officers carried out data matching exercises across a “vast wealth of information”. So far the council has collected £3.6m of the debt identified and is said to be pursing the remainder. NHS BUYING CHANGES: NHS SBS is launching Commercial Procurement Solutions, a new service to help trusts manage their procurement in the most cost efficient way possible and drive up to £1bn in savings for the NHS over the next five years. UKauthorITy IT in Use

SCOTTISH HOUSING PORTAL: Alex Neil, Scottish minister for housing and communities, has launched the ‘Better Futures’ framework, a way of recording how housing support impacts on people’s lives. Underpinned by a web-based system delivered by Capita, the framework enables organisational performance tracking plus the identification and measurement of programme impact and outcomes. Said Neil, “Housing providers, those commissioning services and importantly, those using services will be able to take advantage of these tools to measure progress, prevent crisis situations, show the value of investing in services and improve service quality.” http://www.ccpscotland.org/hseu/information/better-futures

SCOTTISH ONLINE HEALTH CHECK FOR 40TH: The Scottish government will invite 74,000 people turning 40 each year to complete a self-assessment health questionnaire on line or by telephone The NHS 24 service, Life Begins at 40, will allow people to assess their own health before being given health information specific to their individual needs along with pointers towards other sources of information on national and local services. March/April 2011

ITU Live: Online Citizen Services

Digital Services in the Age of Austerity Can online and digital services help the public sector get through this Age of Austerity? ITU editor, Helen Olsen, puts the questions to this month’s ITU Live panel.

igital champion, Martha Lane Fox, plans an ‘e’ Revolution, calling for online to become “the first point of contact” for public services. Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude, evidently of the same opinion, has convened a ‘ministerial working group on digital’ to investigate the feasibility of a move to one, single, government domain - based on “agile shared web services”. Lane Fox claims that, as well as delivering better services for citizens, shifting just 30% of government service delivery contacts to digital channels can potentially deliver gross annual savings of more than £1.3bn, rising to £2.2bn if 50% of contacts shifted to digital.

equated to only around three online contacts per person per year in the UK. So, yes, in this digital world, it should be possible to meet the digital champion’s targets.

Failing transactions To achieve such widespread take up, however, there will need to be a shift in focus on to measuring how many people are finishing transactions, and gaining a clear understanding of why so many currently fail.

Ker seizes on this theme of enabling the civil servant to do their job better. “People who administer services and deal with the public are all part of the same delivery organisation. There are lots of opportunities with face to face contact to help clients understand the basics. In Service Canada a benefits claimant sits next to the officer to view the screen and process together. Here in the UK the customer sits opposite. We have lots of great opportunities to transform the way we interact with people.”

He adds, “In government we have a wide “Ensuring that we understand customer responsibility to ensure that as many people need is critical to getting this right, end to as possible can use the services we offer. We end,” says Cain. It goes beyond just reasons for service failhave a role as a broking agent therefore to Is this realistic? Our ure, he argues. get people accustomed to online services, live audience poll says POLL: Yes, a further shift online Understanding working towards the outcome of an efficient yes: 30%+ is eminently can deliver savings the process digital society.” realisable, with fewer and most than two in 10 saying 50% more contacts could be online 54.5% a p p r o p r i a t e Integrating services; multi-touch that less than 30% of 30% more contacts could be online 27.3% contact at Less than 30% more could be online 18.2% current contacts could each stage Cain is adamant that if you can reduce avoidbe moved online. is crucial. He able contact and improve service, cost will cites housing ultimately reduce. “We used Adobe LiveCycle Guy Ker, publishing director at Directgov, benefits processing: whilst Southwark can to create a customer led conversation with firmly believes that there are lots of potencomplete the process in under 24 hours there the service representative that points out reltial savings to be gained from a shift online are elements, such as proof of identity, where evant services to guide the customer through including reduced avoidable contact and effithey encourage some face to face contact. the complexity of multiple services. Very ciency improvements; but he cautions that “Ultimately, that reduces the process overall, quickly you can see potentially seven conservices must be designed around the needs with less total contacts.” of the user: “Lane Fox is absolutely right. But it has to be done well - if done badly you could Ker concurs, “We are talking about POLL: Top three attributes of a sucend up with a worse experience.” the total mix in the service. It is cessful online service increasingly a question of getting Southwark’s Dominic Cain says that face to professionals like us to understand Easy to access/use 85.5% face contact costs the council “£10 to £13 where that mix lies. There are lots Reliable service 71.5% per transaction; telephone costs £2.50; and of people where face to face would Delivered using efficient processes 35.5% for web transactions we are talking pence be most efficient. The theory here Easy to find 28.5% in relation to service delivery”. He is targetis that we can give them more Awareness of online capability 21% ing 70% online take up of relevant services, attention by making the mass of Keeps customers informed about progress 7% “But what is key is ensuring that we can transactions online and less time Personalised service 7% still supply vulnerable customers within the consuming.” borough; encouraging take up by increasing awareness and making it easy to use. tacts with a customer reduced to one, slightly Integrated back office extended, contact.” “One of the biggest reasons for customPolin is concerned about the general lack of ers coming through to our contact centre is Once the information has been given the integration between systems within governbecause of a failure in a service. If we get it system prepopulates the relevant service ment, “People are moving from one screen right, and right first time, we will see a huge application forms. Intelligent forms also to another! I believe that there are huge savtake up of online services moving forward.” reduce the need to ask irrelevant questions. ings from redesigning the internal systems “It is fantastic,” says Cain. “So much easier within government and providing civil servGilles Polin, head of government at Adobe, for the citizen. On housing benefit we reduced ants with better information and systems to points out that the targeted savings, based our processing time down from 30-40 days to do their job properly – in a more pleasurable on Dominic’s and his own similar figures, 24 hours.” environment.”

March/April 2011

UKauthorITy IT in Use

ITU Live: Online Citizen Services

Customers’ champion – with teeth Francis Maude wants to make Directgov the customers’ champion, with teeth. However, Ker suggests that the real challenge is not to give Directgov a stick, “But to get a consensus about the objectives, methods and outcomes. Once we have that we need to operate as one cooperative, and design together. “In the centre there is the Cabinet Office, where Directgov sits, but the principle of government is to do things through cooperation and collegiate activity rather than using the stick – if you have to resort to that you haven’t made the argument,” he adds.

Standards and consensus Standards are a key area, all agree. Services provided by government “Must be easy to use and transparent,” says Polin. “Standards are important for the citizen, because the citizen is also a consumer. Adobe pushes open standards and ubiquitous platforms – this makes things easier to for the citizen to use.” Adds Ker, “The standardised acceptance of what constitutes success is the overall take up and acceptance of it - as when the railways became standardised and people could travel across the whole country. It is the same in business and government, being able to understand, through the use of metrics what the outcomes are, where people are falling down and not completing the transaction.

whole data sharing POLL: What comes first: online driving focus on the aspects of informa- services or service redesign? customer perspection across central tive to “the very top of to local and local Online front end on existing services 50% the tree” so that when to central govern- Redesign service top to bottom 50% policy is decided the ment. Tell us once ‘how’ of delivery is part on bereavement and birth, working together of that conversation. to improve the service.” Not being able to access DVLA data in relation to parking perPolin says that the UK has an advantage mits, for example, extends the application over many of its EU counterparts in having process at Southwark. Directgov in such a central role at the Cabinet Office. “In France, for example, the equivaKer agrees that this will take time to overlent sits within the government tax agency come. “Absolutely, an efficient single login and is focused really only on tax.” that points you to the relevant and common areas is important, but getting a lot of services All in all, the panel agreed that whilst the delivered more efficiently is probably the next default should be digital there will always be thing on the agenda – we need to focus on reasons for maintaining other channels for improving the things we can easily improve.” contact. Says Ker, “It will be rare for a service to be 100% online, but there will be many that All government services; one domain can be 80% to 90% online.” Is it possible to bring all government online services under one domain? The panel is surprisingly positive on both the need and the will to do so. Says Ker, “There are a lot of very useful conversations going on, and we have a financial reality that we must respond to. We have to offer the best service we can at the best price we can.

On the panel

“Digital will enable us to offer a much better service at a much better price. That goes into all our relations with suppliers and partners. We can’t be locked into things as we all know that this world is constantly changing.”

“Directgov is looking to be the central point of contact for getting together those experts from across government to gain the momentum to achieve this.”

In the past government has indeed been locked into resilient, but watertight, contracts. In a rapidly changing digital landscape however, Ker now POLL In the Age of Austerity, believes that we Cain also believes that need “a new, more which is more important? consistency is imporagile, more flexible tant. “Sometimes and economically Reducing costs involved 22.5% we miss a trick in responsive model. Reducing unnecessary contacts 22.5% the sharing of data – This is a cultural Reducing both 55.6% how can we improve revolution, there is council tax collection, momentum for payment of housing benefit or issuing a parkchange. And without that we won’t be able to ing permit? All of these involve standards. take advantage of the exciting possibilities we now have.” “What would help us is closer working with central government to understand a common Citizens also support such a move, believes approach to how we use the information we Polin. “Citizens want more flexibility in all capture.” accessing public services. The goal now is to focus on what we have today, to revamp, to rearrange and regroup. A redesign of Common local/central login front applications to have happy citizens and happy civil servants using easy interfaces Whilst there is much good work – both integrating the internal systems.“ complete and in progress – there are “big complexities involved in hooking up local and central government” with a common login. One-stop government Conflicting concerns over data protection and data sharing could be the biggest barrier, says Cain. “Our experience is that there is an expectation that information is shared within the council. People get upset when they find out when we haven’t. ‘We gave you the information, why didn’t you tell housing/parking’ etc. I think we need to look further at the

So, can the panel see a future whereby in Southwark a citizen can do one-touch council services and car tax renewal, seamlessly, in the same contact? No reason why not, say both Ker and Cain. Keys to achieving this goal, they agree, will be solving the data sharing conundrum and UKauthorITy IT in Use

View in full now at

www.UKauthorITy.com/ITUlive ITU Live is sponsored by Adobe UK. For more information about Adobe digital technologies, or to discuss your organisation’s requirements, email: Adobe@lgitu.co.uk

March/April 2011

Big Society

Fighting for the Big Society A lido in prime minister David Cameron’s constituency in Oxfordshire could provide a defining sink or swim image for the future of his visions of a big society, says Tim Hampson.

volunteer-run swimming pool in Chipping Norton found that its discretionary rate relief had been removed by the local district council. And through the letter box came a bill for £1,800 in rates.

Supporters of the pool are mounting a ‘can’t pay won’t pay campaign’, saying that they are precisely what the Big Society is all about - local people running a local service - and that paying the outstanding bill would financially threaten the future of the pool. The open air pool was made famous when Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear used it to drive a Rolls Royce into it as a stunt. The car’s radiator is still on display there. However, it could now become emblematic for the growing tensions felt by people, councils and parliament about the implications of the Big Society. MPs love council bashing. It is part of the game of national politics. Councils and the NHS are bureaucratic fiefdoms which are in need of constant tinkering if they are to be made more efficient. But the ripples from the Chipping Norton row could herald a bigger splash than the one made by Clarkson’s Roller. For the yet unanswered question is, who should fund the Big Society? Talk to some Tories in the commons tea rooms and they seem quite clear. Tax is there to pay for the army and the roads they march on, the courts and the prisons to house the guilty; and that’s it. Frankly they are bemused that the army of volunteers needed to run David Cameron’s Big Society will in fact be a platoon of paid bureaucrats. Up to 500 senior organisers who will empower citizens to ‘shape the services that matter to them’, are to receive a wage of £20,000 in the first year of their four-year training programme. Known as a neighbourhood army, they will supervise 4,500 unpaid part-time workers and volunteers. They will first appear on the streets in ten areas including London, Birmingham, Bristol, Cornwall and Norfolk.

March/April 2011

Cameron says his mission in politics is to repair the breakdown in our society: the family breakdown and community breakdown that has done so much damage to people’s lives – not to mention the costs that our deep social problems load on to the state. The idea at the heart of this – the Big Society – is about rebuilding responsibility and giving people more control over their lives. Though seemingly not over paying their rates. But Cameron says that doesn’t just apply in areas like volunteering. “It’s as relevant when it comes to public services and the decentralisation of power. Indeed, I would argue that our plans to devolve power from Whitehall, and to modernise public services, are more significant aspects of our big society agenda than the work we’re doing to boost social action.” The government’s white paper on public sector reform says that there should be a decisive end of the old-fashioned, topdown, take-what-you’re-given model of public services. “And it is a vital part of our mission to dismantle big government and build the big society in its place,” said Cameron. Writing in the Telegraph he said, “We all know the damage caused by centrally controlled public services. As a backbench MP I campaigned vigorously against the arbitrary closure of special schools, which deprived so many parents of the choice they wanted. “During the election, I lost count of the number of parents who complained to me about their inability to find a decent state school for their child. And though I was always so grateful for the tremendous care my eldest son received, I never understood why local authorities had more control over the budget for his care than Samantha and I did,” he said. He says that the white paper will release the grip of state and power will be placed in people’s hands. “Professionals will see their discretion restored. There will be more freedom, more choice and more local

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©iStockphoto.com/David H. Seymour

control. Ours is a vision of open public services.” But some Tory MPs are beginning to question just how open public services will be if they are run by private companies. In several shire counties the vision of a big society has hit trouble on several fronts when it emerged that American firms could take over the running of libraries. But Cameron is undeterred – and true to his Tory roots he reminds us that, ”Of course there are some areas – such as national security or the judiciary – where this (the Big Society) wouldn’t make sense. “But everywhere else should be open to diversity; open to everyone who gets and values the importance of our public service ethos. This is a transformation: instead of having to justify why it makes sense to introduce competition in some public services – as we are now doing with schools and in the NHS – the state will have to justify why it should ever operate a monopoly,” he says. Well the government might get some idea of what people think of their plans on 5 May, following the successful passage of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act. The Act, which supporters say makes votes fairer by ensuring that constituencies are more equal throughout the country, has received Royal Assent. Voters will be asked to choose between keeping the existing first past the post system or adopting the alternative vote. The government is neutral (Cameron, against – Clegg, for) on the outcome and the poll will be conducted independently by the Electoral Commission. Outside the Westminster village there is an almost palpable indifference to the introduction of a new voting system or even the Big Society. And like the swimmers at the Chipping Norton lido the things going on will only make ripples and waves when the bills start to come in and there is no money to pay for anything.

Agile Development

Agile is the New Black Michael Cross ponders on the meaning of agility for public sector IT. ©iStockphoto.com/iztok noc

e don’t yet know what recommendations will result from the latest parliamentary inquiry into the state of government IT. We can, however, be sure that one word will feature strongly in the report of the Commons Public Administration Select Committee, which, when we went to press, had just concluded taking evidence from senior figures on the government IT scene. That word is ‘agile’. It is coming close to being prescribed as a panacea for all the woes of IT-based programmes and projects - or at least as a mandatory buzzword in all specifications and sales talks. After all, who can say agility is a bad thing? However before pinning too much hope in the concept, or dismissing it as just another tick-box ritual, it’s worth examining what the term means and how it’s being used.

For purists, Agile means adherence to the 2001 Manifesto for Agile Software Development (www.agilemanifesto.org) drawn up by enthusiasts for ‘extreme programming’ seeking to escape from ‘the baggage of Dilbertesque corporations’. The four overarching principles were to place: • individuals and interactions over processes and tools; • working software over comprehensive documentation; • customer collaboration over contract negotiation; • responding to change over following a plan. Connoisseurs of public sector IT will recognise some familiar themes from inquests on past programmes and projects. Responding to change, in particular. Earlier this year a report by an influential and well-resourced think tank, the Institute for Government, proposed Agile as a solution for the public sector’s IT woes. In the tradition of authors of best-selling management handbooks, ‘System error: fixing the flaws in government IT’, takes the buzzword and stretches its application far beyond its original technical meaning. It argues that Agile principles can be usefully

applied to wider aspects of IT-enabled business change projects not just to developing the software. Agile projects are ‘modular, iterative, responsive to change and have users at the core’. An Agile solution, the report claims, ‘can actually deliver more for less’. For example, it says an Agile approach allows organisations to concentrate on priorities, stripping out the cost of non-essential elements. ‘It can also help overcome the inertia arising from traditional practices of needing 100% agreement from all the stakeholders for all requirements’. Meanwhile, the systems benefits start to appear sooner, generating enthusiasm and bright ideas which can be fed in to an iterative process of improvement. The result, the report says, could be to transform the whole experience of government - allowing it to join the IT revolution ‘rather than watching from the sidelines’. The idea is certainly attractive. It chimes not only with Web 2.0 thinking but also with the findings of the landmark Information Age Governance study by Helen Margetts that the UK is unique in its enthusiasm for large-scale inflexible procurements from big systems integrators. It was no coincidence that Professor Margetts was one of the first witnesses at the Public Administration Select Committee Inquiry. No coincidence also that one of only two private sector witnesses called was Martin Rice of Eurodine, a specialist in Agile methodology. Rice’s forthright comments about the inflexibility of government procurements, and particularly his advice “Just close the chequebook,” was evidently music to committee members’ ears. Rice stressed that Agile requires a mindset change. Rather than exhaustively specifying new systems from a blank sheet, he said that organisations should “get some very clever people who can do these quick systems, say ‘Is this what you want?’ and get everyone involved in developing.” He cited the examples of Facebook, which is under continuous development, and Amazon which, he said, does not have an IT department but in which every staff member is looking for ways of cutting transaction costs. UKauthorITy IT in Use

It is almost certain that the committee’s report will draw contrasts between the Amazon and Facebook stories and those of projects such as the grossly over-specified rural payments system, or painfully drawnout Tell Us Once service. And Agile isn’t unknown in government, especially in local authorities. Even Whitehall has success stories, notably the Number Ten e-Petitioning site knocked up under the last government. But, assuming the select committee calls for its wider adoption, is it really applicable to running the gigantic secure, mission-critical transaction engines of public services? Ministers and accounting officers are understandably nervous about the possible consequences of deliberately foisting iterative developments on citizens. ‘It’s only a beta version’ may be acceptable to geeks, but not to the electorate at large. My suspicion is that, like the Institute for Government before it, the select committee is pushing at an open door. Ministers are delighted that big suppliers are getting a public kicking, and will enthusiastically adopt the language of Agile in future projects. We will almost certainly see a commitment to spreading contracts more widely among different suppliers, with more core IT expertise retained in house. However whether there is any real change in the management of really big IT programmes, such as those required by the reform of social security benefits or the NHS, remains to be seen. In such programmes, the avoidance of risk overrides any other consideration, and in government expending a disproportionate effort specifying procedures for tiny groups of ‘difficult’ customers must remain the norm. While we’ll start seeing the label ‘Agile’ on every single IT-based change project in the public sector, the very ubiquity of the term will render it meaningless. Perhaps we can be agile enough to recognise that Agile is most unlikely to be a panacea? http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/ publications/23/system-erro March/April 2011

Special Focus: Online Services

Digital By Design Frontline services must focus on Customer Experience in order to deliver high quality public services that citizens actively choose to access via low cost service channels, says Adobe’s Prelini Udayan Chiechi.

aving directly linked the quality of a customer’s online experience to bottom line profits, the brightest marketing brains in the commercial world are now focused on Web Experience Management. The public sector may have markedly different goals and drivers to the commercial world, but one fact is shared: it is significantly cheaper to deliver services on line. Making the citizen’s experience of online public services better in order to actively promote channel shift should be a key goal of all public services in today’s world of cuts.

One view of the citizen It is also more efficient - and therefore lower cost - to have one view of the customer across all potential channels. Indeed, according to Socitm Insight, local councils should be ‘seizing the opportunity for significant and permanent future savings by reorganising the way they manage customer contact’. Their latest report points out that comprehensive enquiry and service data across all services and channels is needed in order to manage customer enquiries efficiently, identify scope for improvement, and track progress. Organisations cannot start on an effective programme of ‘channel shift’ until data is collected and available for analysis. Socitm advocates bringing all front office customer contact - whether face-to-face, by phone, through the website or other means - under central management, to enable customer contact to be run to common standards. The customer contact data analysis thence made possible, argues Socitm, will lead to both service improvement and savings in the cost of delivery: a better service for the customer and better value for the taxpayer.

Digital experience Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences. We are virtually everywhere you look, from TV and movies to magazines, to websites to enterprise applications. Over the past 27 years we have enabled businesses to reach consumers regardless of what computer they have, what browser they like, or what device suits their needs as technology and the web have evolved. We help to create and deliver the most compelling content and

March/April 2011

applications in a streamlined workflow, and optimise those experiences for greater return on investment. We enable these things across media and devices, better than anyone else in the world. Our solutions address the challenges organisations face today in considering every possible device, every user, and every intersection between content and applications: • How do you address all aspects of the content workflow? • How do you eliminate redundant customer-facing systems and processes and maximise existing investments? • How do you organise and act on the customer data you’re gathering through these thousands (or millions) of interactions? • And most importantly, how do you engage with your customer through a compelling experience to get the results you need? Web Content Management technology was developed to cover the process needs for publishing content in the online world and there can be few, if any, public services that do not now employ a content management system. However, technology has evolved and sophisticated Web Experience Management tools enable you to put the customer at the heart of digital operations. Adobe’s CQ5 Web Content Management platform, incorporating analytics and optimisation from Adobe Omniture, delivers a unified solution for customer insight and experience. It also empowers customer facing staff to make informed decisions and resolve customer queries on the spot. CQ5’s Digital Asset Management subsystem makes management of large quantities of rich media, such as video, painless; while CQ5 Social Collaboration allows feedback elements such as blogs or commentaries to be integrated easily into websites via the OpenSocial industry standard. Meanwhile CQ5 Mobile provides an easy-to-use browserbased authoring environment that enables content to be created once and quickly repurposed for all platforms - from Android, Blackberry, HTC and iPhone to Galaxy, Xoom and iPad. UKauthorITy IT in Use

©iStockphoto.com/fmatte

Adobe LiveCycle can then automate, integrate and streamline existing underpinning business processes and transactional services to deliver a consistent and transactional user experience across all channels for both citizen and staff. The aim is to provide an agile, flexible, scalable and standards-based development platform that can reduce infrastructure, development and training costs whilst facilitating delivery of personalised, optimised services. Results from Socitm’s ‘Better connected 2011’ survey of council and other frontline websites suggest that most still do not recognise that digital delivery is faster and more convenient for the public as well as cheaper for the taxpayer. Whilst council website use is increasing in line with national web usage, over one fifth (21.89%) of visits in 2010 ended in failure – potentially creating wasteful, and avoidable, contact in other customer channels.

Local, social, mobile and digital In order to reduce dependence on traditional, more costly-to-serve, channels of phone and face-to-face, Better connected 2011 suggests that councils evaluate website performance and focus on three themes - think customer, focus on ‘top tasks’, and go mobile. I would add, think local, think social and think digital. The technology exists in next generation web content management systems to personalise, deliver, track, analyse and monitor customer experience across all channels and to develop services that intuitively lead the citizen through the process – on any platform. Today’s digitally savvy citizen expects consistent and efficient access on the move, wherever they are, whatever device they are using. However, overall, it is about placing the citizen, not the organisation, at the heart of operations – as both the starting and the end point of cost effective, efficient and engaging public services that are digital by design, not by default.

For more information about Adobe digital technologies or to discuss your organisation’s requirements, email: Adobe@lgitu.co.uk

Smart Cities

Smart Operators Tim Hampson asks whether the time has finally come when technology can deliver the sustainable dream.

marter cities; smarter communities. Smart is the new way of doing things. John Eger, a professor at San Diego State University who is founder of World Foundation for Smart Communities, is widely credited for his work on smart communities and how technology can help resources to be used in a more sustainable way. “A smart community is one that has made a conscious effort to use information technology to transform life and work,” says Eger. A former aide to President Nixon and Gerald Ford, at the heart of his vision is the belief that people and communities “down to and including the smallest neighbourhoods” have the ability to take ownership of this new future. Eger says that policies and programmes, therefore, whether developed at the local, or a higher, level must be communicated broadly and well understood by all stakeholders in order for them to be successful. And it is not just in the US where the idea has struck a chord. Last year the European Commission approved funding for seven smart cities projects under its Competitiveness and Innovation Programme. The projects are all designed to help cities deploy IT in new and innovative ways that enable them to become smarter by developing the smarter, digital, greener and more inclusive economies that need to emerge after the recession. Under the chairmanship of Manchester City Council, the new Smart Cities Portfolio Working Group brings together cities across Europe, including Issy-les-Moulineaux, Brussels, Cologne, Bologna, Oulu, Bremen and Malmo. Together, they hope to bring the benefits of internet services to all of their residents and businesses. They also hope that working smarter will enable them to become test-beds for new web services that will benefit citizens and businesses alike. The Manchester strategy aims to create a digital master plan for the city. One of its key aims is to put in place super-fast broadband across the city. “We aim to do this by creating a new open access network, putting in place fibre to the premises connections, advanced wireless and a new internet hub exchange,” said a spokesman for the project.

©iStockphoto.com/FabioFilzi

By creating this next generation connectivity, the project aims to link key employment sites across the Manchester city region to accelerate job growth, enhance the digital skill base and provide new opportunities for home access, flexible working and telecare services.

“Through IBM’s Smart Cities initiative we hope to maximise the tremendous opportunities for Glasgow to develop low-carbon energy technologies, efficient homes, the provision of affordable heat and the creation of sustainable communities,” said Glasgow City Council leader, Gordon Matheson.

Manchester Digital Development Agency will lead the work on behalf of the council, and will work with the local university to distribute internet-linked monitoring devices. City residents will be encouraged to carry the devices to monitor the environment and feed back real-time information through wireless connections while they are walking, cycling or using public transport.

Edinburgh too says it is using technology smartly to save energy. A network of carbon clubs has been launched across the city with help from its technology partners, BT and Microsoft. A website has been created where council employees can form their own clubs where members can access a library of information and energy savings tips, build their own microsites and pledge to undertake actions that will reduce their impact on the environment.

The use of IT to help cities to become competitive and overcome challenges such as traffic congestion, environmental protection and infrastructure pressures has been cited as key in a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit and Siemens. IT, claims the report, should not be considered as a single infrastructure solution, but as the ‘fifth utility’ alongside electricity or water as an essential architecture that underpins all services and activity in an urban setting. “One of the most striking findings is the fact that ICT has become a basic utility, like water and electricity, and is key to a city’s competitiveness,” said Eveline Baumeister, head of city management at Siemens IT Solutions and Services. “There is a lot of potential for IT initiatives like smart grid, which will enable citizens and businesses to better manage and optimise their electricity usage, improve energy efficiency and encourage the use of renewable energy sources.”

Council leader, councillor Jenny Dawe, said: “The concept offers staff the chance to make a real difference through generating cost and carbon savings for the organisation. We are committed to reducing Edinburgh’s carbon footprint to zero by 2050. That will mean changing behaviour and putting good environmental practice at the core of all activity across the city.” London mayor, Boris Johnson, has bought into the idea of a smarter, greener London. The mayor wants London to be recognised as a world leader in improving the environment by tackling climate change, reducing pollution, developing a low-carbon economy, consuming fewer resources and using resources more effectively.

Meanwhile, IBM has awarded Glasgow City Council a £250,000 Smarter Cities grant to help it improve the delivery of services. The money is being given as part of a wider fund being made available through IBM’s Smarter Cities Challenge - a programme that will provide more than £30m worth of technology and services to 100 municipalities worldwide over the next three years.

Families and households in Kingston upon Thames have begun a project to reduce the amount of energy they use. The Smart Communities project, led by a team of researchers from Kingston University, aims to encourage people to change their everyday practices to reduce their energy consumption. The three year project is one of the first to explicitly encourage and facilitate a community to discuss, develop and adopt its own new energy saving ways of doing things in their daily lives at home,

The project intends to create a software platform to integrate and manage city operations such as police, fire and emergency responders, along with modules to add water and sewer management and transportation and traffic planning to the mix.

As John Eger says, smart communities are those that will help people to better deal with the increasing economic and social challenges that will confront them in the coming years. Perhaps the time has come for us all to get smart.

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March/April 2011

Health & Social Care

Joining Health & Social Care Local authorities and GPs are waiting for some indication of what kind of information architecture they are expected to build, and who is going to pay for it, says Michael Cross.

lmost single handedly, Dr Amir Hannan is disproving the idea that ordinary NHS patients have no interest in a central pillar of the government’s health reforms in England. His practice, at Haughton Thornley Medical Centres in Hyde, Greater Manchester, is about to celebrate giving one tenth of its entire patient list access to their complete medical records over the web. It’s taken Dr Hannan five years to recruit 1,000 patients to view their records through his portal, www.htmc.co.uk. As well as checking their information, patients can use the web to request appointments and repeat prescriptions, view test results and read any correspondence between GPs and hospital consultants. One of the aims of the government’s reform plan for the NHS in England will be to replicate Dr Hannan’s success across the country. The government’s response to the consultation paper ‘Information Revolution’, due to be published in early April, is expected to endorse the idea of web access as part of the long-term plan to give individuals control over their own information. It’s not going to happen overnight. Haughton Thornley is one of only 50 practices around the country that offers online patient access, through a version of the widely used EMIS GP software. Of those 50 practices, only a handful have embraced the idea with anything like Dr Hannan’s enthusiasm. (Part of his original motivation arose from taking on patients from the list of serial killer, Harold Shipman.) Dr Hannan says that, in five years of record access, “we haven’t had a single problem”. However he has been careful to ensure that every patient who signs up fully understands what is involved, and gives informed consent for their records to be posted on the web. Before being granted access, patients have to print off and sign a PDF document. This includes filling out a four-page questionnaire, which leads them through potentially difficult issues by asking them what they would do if they received an alarming

March/April 2011

diagnosis, or saw upsetting information added by a third party such as a relative. Another question asks them what they would do if they accidentally received a letter addressed to another patient. “It’s an explicit consent process of putting people through a lot of hoops,” Dr Hannan says. He then has to check the record to see that there is nothing in it that the patient should not see. If there is, he cannot remove it - only advise the patient that they may not want to see the record or, in the last resort, refuse access. The main difficulty, he says, is when the record contains comments by third parties. In the case of patients currently receiving psychiatric care, he always checks with their consultant, but it is not always possible to clear every piece of third-party data in a lifelong medical record. This is a significant workload, he admits and predicts problems if large numbers of patients suddenly start demanding access. Dr Hannan’s union and professional body, the British Medical Association, agrees. In its response to the Information Revolution consultation, it warns that viewing a health record is very different to booking a holiday online, not least because the NHS’s patients are often those least able to handle the technology. ‘NHS data is often subjective, sensitive and narrative and therefore does not easily lend itself to simple comparisons, which may be possible in other industries,’ it warns. ‘Data is also often recorded as an aidememoire for the doctor as much as a factual record of the care delivered to the patient. Aide-memoires may only be beneficial to the doctor and therefore may not always be appropriate for wider sharing. An example may be a reminder of a task; for example, look up management of depression in pregnancy.’ In its own response to the consultation, the Society for IT Management raises similar concerns. While enthusiastic about patient access to ‘all significant sources of health and social care information, including GP, social care, acute hospital, community care and mental health’ it suggests that individuals will increasingly need help UKauthorITy IT in Use

understanding complex information about their health and social care. ‘Although there will be some information that will need to be explained by clinicians, there is a real risk that clinical staff could get swamped by requests for people to spend time querying the detail of their health and social care record’, states the response before suggesting that ‘an interpretation service, possibly provided by voluntary peer groups, should be investigated.’ Socitm also stresses the need for what it calls a ‘multi-channel’ approach to health records. ‘If someone wants to keep their own records in a ‘shoebox’ this should be feasible.’ In all cases, ‘The issue of where, and under what jurisdiction, data will be stored, processed and disclosed will need to be addressed.’ GPs will need some hand-holding as well as their patients, Socitm suggests, proposing that ‘regional or sub-regional groupings of local authorities’ could run systems for allocating health and social care. ‘Given this, and the current financial constraints, it is likely that the transition to the future will be a mixed environment of an increasing joining up of some large systems, where there is a clear business case to do so, together with the development over time of patient and service-user driven systems.’ What local authorities and GPs alike are waiting for is some indication of what kind of information architecture they are expected to build, and who is going to pay. The BMA says the very shortage of money is itself reason for caution with patient access: ‘At this time of financial restraint, there should only be investment in this area if an evaluation provides evidence of patient demand and clear benefits.’ It is clear that, while the information revolution may not be the most headline-grabbing aspect of the NHS reforms, it may well be one of the most challenging. The basic problem, however, is that there are just not enough Amir Hannans to go round. Socitm consultation response: http://bit.ly/fjrgzF

Product & Company Notes

CareFirst

LM Systems has launched the latest version of CareFirst, the foundation of its Social Care Services Platform.

Arlene Adams, managing director of OLM Systems, said, “Our Social Care Service Platform provides authorities with a flexible and cost effective business platform from which they can build and deliver services to all their stakeholders... The platform will host applications, content, collaborative services and transactions. It provides a framework for authorities to blend these offerings together to deliver social and business services. This will enable authorities to undertake transformation in a cost effective manner whilst protecting frontline services. The platform has been architected to provide a solution that meets the requirements of the Munro Report and the Personalisation agenda... but is flexible enough to change and adapt as the market evolves.” www.olmgroup.com THIS IS THE DROID YOU ARE LOOKING FOR: The National Archives has launched the fastest, most accurate version yet of its file-identification software. As the mountain of digital data continues to grow daily on hard drives across the world, this quick, free and easy solution can help manage digital information. A new file-profiling tool, downloadable from The National Archives’ website, takes the hard work out of managing digital data. It can scan millions of files at a time and correctly identify hundreds of different file formats, including most document, audio, video and image files in common use. www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/droid REDUCING THE COST OF DATA: Address and geographic data specialist, Postcode Anywhere, has launched a new advisory service which aims to reduce the cost of data in light of recent changes to public sector addressing and geographic data licensing. The service comes in response to the imminent impact of the proposed Public Sector Mapping Agreement (PSMA) and National Address Gazetteer database (NAG). Both initiatives respectively aim to give public sector organisations access to unified and consistent addressing and geographic data. www.postcodeanywhere.co.uk E-LEARNING FOR NEW COUNCILLORS: Councillors elected for the first time in May will be offered online training courses by the National Association of Local Councils. The tools will allow councillors to complete courses at home in less than 20 minutes. This first suite of e-learning courses is predominately for new local councillors. It includes five short modules on key aspects of local council work, to provide a new training tool for councillors based on the recently revised Good Councillors Guide. www.nalc.gov.uk

NEW LAGAN: Lagan has announced Lagan Local Government Business Intelligence Version 8 Release 2 to coincide with the latest release of Lagan Local Government Version 8. The product leverages new functionality available in the latest release of Microsoft’s Report Builder making it easier and faster to build and maintain reports, including the ability to share components across multiple reports and build reports directly off an OLAP cube. www.lagan.com SAP SOCIAL SERVICES: SAP has announced SAP Social Services Management for Public Sector, which streamlines administrative processes and workflows between front and back office, increasing transparency to help staff at all levels make decisions and allocate social benefits in a more targeted manner. It supports multiple, diverse social benefit programs, tailored to particular legal requirements and country-specific legislative need, including unemployment, old age, temporary and permanent disability, and family benefits. www.sap.com/industries/publicsector

INSPIREd mapping

sers of the latest release of GGP Systems’ desktop Geographical Information System will be some of the first to comply with the latest EU Directive on spatial data. Designed to improve access to and knowledge of geographical data holdings, the INSPIRE directive requires that member states provide public access to location based data related to the environment. The latest release of GGP GIS will allow users to submit information about their spatial data holdings to a publicly accessible, centrally maintained data catalogue, GeoNetwork Opensource.

BLUE LIGHT GAZETTEER: With the cancellation of the FiReControl Project, gazetteer specialists, Aligned Assets, has released the UK’s first corporate gazetteer designed specifically for the Fire and Rescue Service. With over two years of research and development, the Symphony Bluelight Gazetteer is compatible with both NLPG and the forthcoming NAG, and can enable the fire and rescue services to create and maintain gazetteer data to feed all frontline and back office systems, says Aligned. www.aligned-assets.co.uk/bluelight

GGP GIS already offers the ability to store complex layers of mapped information in an international standard format defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). Being able to directly read from and write to spatial databases means information can be effectively shared between departments and/or other organisations, eliminating isolated data silos, reducing data duplicity and improving system interoperability, as well as enabling the joining up of diverse datasets to provide a richer information resource. The storage of geographical data in this format also enables it to be published using WMS (Web Map Service) the international standard for internet mapping and the preferred format for INSPIRE publication. www.ggpsystems.co.uk

FIRE RISK MANAGEMENT: Innogistic has launched CFRMIS 5, the next generation of its fire risk management solution. CFRMIS is in use at almost 60% of the country’s fire and rescue services for technical, community and operational risk management. The product is now entirely web based, offering further efficiency and cost benefits for brigades. www.innogistic.co.uk

Fujitsu launches roadmap to cloud

UKauthorITy IT in Use

ujitsu is claiming to be the first major IT services provider in the UK to combine expert consultancy services and genuine cloud implementation capabilities. Its new cloud consulting service aims to help senior IT decision makers to understand how they could potentially be using cloud within their organisation by understanding the disruptive element of cloud and the opportunities it brings. It will also help to assess the different options and make informed decisions about the right cloud solutions - and help develop a clear roadmap for harnessing cloud to drive significant business value. Fujitsu has published ‘The White Book of Cloud’ which explains clearly the different cloud models on offer to users. www.fujitsu.com March/April 2011

Contract Roundup

Central & Regional MARINE MANAGEMENT ORGANISATION has awarded a contract to Fiviun to deliver a fully centralised system to handle the processing of new marine licences. It will replace the multiple licences that currently regulate a number of specific activities in the marine area. The new system will remove complexity and duplication with one complete end-to-end solution. ORDNANCE SURVEY MAPPING and Data Centres have chosen Innogistic to provide a new hosted solution to replace the outgoing Ordnance Survey MDC system. The new solution will provide the functionality to create new versions of all the existing OS large scale products, such as OS Sitemap and OS Landplan, and will allow access to the expanded range of OS datasets recently available under the new licensing terms. SCOTLAND’S ENVIRONMENT PROTECTION AGENCY is working with BT Business and HTK to deliver a new flood warning system. People registered for the service will be able to choose how they want to be alerted and flood warnings will then be cascaded from a single system. SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT’S ECONOMIC AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AGENCY has signed an ICT shared services agreement already used by a number of non-departmental public bodies in Scotland. Delivered by Atos Origin, the Skills Development Scotland Information Systems shared services deal will now service Highlands & Islands Enterprise.

Further Education BIRMINGHAM METROPOLITAN COLLEGE is rolling out Active Dashboards, business intelligence dashboard software from Dynistics, to provide users with a real-time graphical representation of college and student data. It is being used by the management team in the first instance before roll out to departmental heads, other college staff, and ultimately to its 25,000 learners. TYNE METROPOLITAN COLLEGE is to increase purchasing efficiency and financial control by implementing software from Advanced Business Solutions. The contract comprises electronic procurement, document management and business intelligence functionality solutions, seamlessly integrated into the college’s existing ABS financial management system and rolled out in phases from the end of March. UNIVERSITY OF HUDDERSFIELD has selected SpendInsight Spend Analysis Service as part of action to tackle the challenge of reduced funding. The Spend Analysis and eCommerce marketplace project will help to reveal opportunities for cost savings within the procurement back office and to save money by rationalising procurement spend.

March/April 2011

Health BMI HEALTHCARE has given PRM Green Technologies a three-year contract to dispose of its unwanted computers. The health care provider has 73 sites across the UK and PRM will perform quarterly collections from every BMI Healthcare hospital and healthcare facility, fully compliant with Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directives. The deal was won in partnership with Orchid IT. IVY COURT SURGERY in Kent identified digital dictation as a key instrument in streamlining the way GPs and secretaries work. With the implementation of BigHand, GPs now have the ability to send all dictations, previously dictated on analogue tape machines, to a fully customisable workflow, making the dictation available to all members of the secretarial team and for placement in a practice folder. KINGS COLLEGE HOSPITAL NHS FOUNDATION TRUST has implemented Dynistics Service Line Management Module, a pre-built suite of dashboard template reports that graphically illustrate key metrics for trusts and highlight areas where efficiency improvements can be achieved. The software automatically retrieves data from a Patient Level Costing application and presents information in a range of interactive charts with the added ability to drill down into the detail within each dashboard where required. MANOR WAY HEALTH CENTRE has selected a multimedia digital display system from Jayex. It will be used to visually educate and communicate to waiting patients. The health centre will be able to digitally display informative health messages through video, web content, internet TV, graphics and RSS news feeds; all which is 100% within the control of the practice. NATIONAL SERVICES SCOTLAND has awarded Atos Origin a contract worth £1.4m to supply software to support aneurysm screening. The programme is due to go live at every NHS board throughout Scotland between 2011 and 2013. Atos Origin will supply, implement and support the system throughout the country and provide training to clinical and administrative users of the system. COVENTRY’S street lights are being equipped with new remote monitoring technology connected to a central street lighting management system supplied by Mayrise Systems. Following a £250m PFI award to Balfour Beatty by Coventry City Council, the citywide installation of a centralised system will allow the automatic dimming of street lights and signs from a central control centre. The Mayrise integrated Telensa system also allows automated fault reporting and improved asset management through the synchronisation of asset information. UKauthorITy IT in Use

ALLERDALE BOROUGH COUNCIL, on behalf of Allerdale, Copeland and Carlisle City councils, is just one of ten new revenues and benefits implementations recently completed by Capita Software Services and worth a combined total of £3m. The contracts, which include two shared services, range from comprehensive revenues and benefits solutions to specific business rates applications - helping authorities to increase the accuracy and speed of processing and offer online services for citizens including the ability to easily provide change of address, sign up for e-billing and complete direct debit payments. Councils include the Allerdale shared services, Blackpool & Fylde shared services, the City of London and the councils of Gateshead, Greenwich, Lewisham, Rochdale, Rushcliffe, South Staffordshire and Tameside Metropolitan.

NORTHERN DEVON HEALTHCARE TRUST has gone live with McKesson’s CarePlus Child Health solution for child healthcare management. The implementation completes roll out of the solution across the county, replacing four disparate systems and providing centralised access for child health records across the region. The system will facilitate improved communication between administrative and clinical teams, increase cost efficiencies and provide a single vision of child health to support high-quality patient care and service redesign where required. WEST SUFFOLK NHS TRUST is to benefit from an enhanced business intelligence solution from Ardentia. The Activity Flow Analytics system is being used to help the trust to benchmark its performance and measure market share.

Contract Roundup

Housing ACCLAIM HOUSING GROUP is delivering security using Bloxx’s real-time web filtering, powered by its Tru-View Technology. The group can fully protect staff from viewing nasty or productivity-draining websites as the solution categorises web pages in realtime and is blocking or allowing access as defined in the group’s internet policy. LAMBETH LIVING has become the latest housing organisation to join a shared service to handle out-of-hours and emergency customer calls. Vangent, operator of the panLondon out-of-hours service in partnership with Lambeth Living, implemented the service in a record time of five days. NSHOUSING is implementing a mobile working solution from Consilium with an outlook to improving productivity within the organisation. The five year, £250,000 contract, will heavily contribute to NSHousing maintaining and improving its set targets, including productivity and completion of more jobs in one visit, and facilitate bringing its repairs department back in-house. Consilium’s offering was deemed ideal as a comprehensive solution which could be tailored to fit NSHousing’s specific requirements. OPTIMA COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION, COBALT HOUSING, SIX TOWN HOUSING AND TAI CEREDIGION are all using software from Covalent CPM to support the social housing providers’ day-to-day activities by ensuring compliance with performance frameworks, tracking actions in service and improvement plans, managing tenant feedback and consultation events, and ensuring the organisations’ strategy and business plan objectives are regularly updated and correct. DUMFRIES AND GALLOWAY COUNCIL has re-located its data centre, with help from IBM, to a refurbished Category C listed historical landmark building in order to maximise energy efficiency and offer improved real-time data processing. For over half of the year, the new data centre uses outside air for cooling, helping to reduce energy consumption and costs estimated savings of £20,000 a year. The council has consolidated 325 servers across the region down to 75 and virtualised its hardware infrastructure.

CHESHIRE EAST COUNCIL has developed a new central land and property gazetteer using Symphony iManage from Aligned Assets. This unified database of addresses was formed from the LLPGs previously held by Congleton Borough Council, Crewe and Nantwich Borough Council and Macclesfield Borough Council when the three became one, and will drive efficiencies across the authority.

Local Government BARNSLEY COUNCIL is to roll out Concerto project management software to help manage its ‘transformation’. Barnsley has successfully used Concerto Projects for the last two years to manage its information services and ICT projects and is now looking to deploy the software to help council-wide. CANTERBURY CITY COUNCIL has selected the Pillar Axiom 600 storage system. The council IT team supports close to 700 full-time staff members and councillors accessing IT services at 25 different sites and across 70 disparate business units. CHESHIRE EAST COUNCIL’S revenue and benefits team says it has quicker benefit payments, electronic billing and a faster turnaround on benefit applications since installing a Northgate software system. The council previously operated three different computer systems, from different suppliers, inherited from the three former authorities covering the area prior to unitary status. CHESHIRE WEST AND CHESTER COUNCIL has chosen Liquidlogic’s PROTOCOL Integrated Children’s System (ICS) and Integrated Adults’ System (IAS). The ICS and IAS systems will be fully integrated with each other, allowing sharing of relevant data between the council’s children and adult teams and providing practitioners with a more complete picture of a child’s or adult’s care requirements. CITY OF EDINBURGH COUNCIL’S Interactive Learning project has transformed the delivery of workplace training for the council’s 18,000 employees and achieved savings of £1.18m. The Brightwave developed modules have reduced training time and enabled council experts to carry out vital frontline work. Using e-learning rather than a classroom-based solution has resulted in cost-per-user savings of 740%.

Police

CONWY COUNTY BOROUGH COUNCIL is to streamline processes and rationalise back office systems as part of an ambitious estate holdings review - a programme of smarter working, back office efficiencies and greater use of home and mobile working. This underlying process re-engineering is enabled by the introduction of Civica’s Workflow and Electronic Document Management systems, which allow employees and residents to access and store documents digitally from anywhere, at any time. DUNDEE CITY COUNCIL has upgraded its IBM mainframe server and storage systems in order to deliver greater value to its citizens whilst also meeting reduced cost targets. A cost effective IT architecture supporting key systems such as social services and web services has been strengthened, with performance improved by 50%. EAST DORSET DISTRICT COUNCIL AND CHRISTCHURCH BOROUGH COUNCIL are implementing a financial management system from Advanced Business Solutions. The new system, which will include electronic procurement, budgeting and forecasting as well as business intelligence functionality, will improve budgeting efficiency and financial transparency. MID DEVON DISTRICT COUNCIL is using Getmapping for an up-to-date and highly detailed backdrop to its mapping systems to enable direct time comparisons to be made during a range of tasks, from contaminated land assessments to planning enforcement. The council makes extensive use of its imagery across a wide range of departments including, address management, development control and planning enforcement, environmental health, land charges and estates management. The imagery can be used to pick out detail such as field boundaries, vegetation cover, street furniture and recent development.

CITY OF LONDON CORPORATION has awarded Accenture a five-year contract to centralise procurement. It is a first step in to local government for Accenture, which says its fee will be related to the savings made by a shared service centre. A new central City of London Procurement Service will be created to undertake all procurement and procure-to-pay functions. This service will be run by a joint team from the authority and Accenture. UKauthorITy IT in Use

March/April 2011

Contract Roundup

LEEDS, NORTH LINCOLNSHIRE, EAST LINDSEY, BASSETLAW and BRECKLAND councils have all awarded contracts to Bluesky for its heat loss maps. The latest night time surveys will extend over nearly 2,000 square kilometres of urban Britain and be undertaken using Bluesky’s thermal survey system. The thermal maps will be supplied ready for use in the councils’ GIS and web mapping services and help to address fuel poverty, reduce carbon emissions and improve e n e r g y efficiency. FALKIRK COUNCIL is lead authority for a partnership of Scottish councils which has awarded a two year procurement contract to Probrand. The framework provides a prequalified list of suppliers that can participate in mini-tenders to drive down the cost of ICT hardware. The partnership includes Falkirk, Stirling, Clackmannanshire, Dumfries & Galloway councils plus Central Scotland Fire & Rescue and the Assessor for Central Scotland. FAREHAM BOROUGH COUNCIL is cutting costs with an IT upgrade. Imerja, working in partnership with lead supplier Virgin Media Business and infrastructure vendor Extreme Networks, has completed a major overhaul of the IT network at the council. The new IP-based network is a more reliable and resilient system and provides an energy-efficient, scalable solution for the council. HACKNEY COUNCIL is investing in new technology that makes it easy for staff to create, access, manage and distribute content on websites, extranets and intranets. The council has moved its main websites to OpenText’s Web Site Management platform as part of a new initiative to raise website profiles, support better engagement with residents through Web 2.0 applications and lay the foundations for a future of web services. HEREFORDSHIRE COUNCIL AND NHS HEREFORDSHIRE have selected Updata to support an existing community-wide public sector network connecting 102 schools, 58 local council corporate sites and 6,000 users. The central shared IT team for Herefordshire will save approximately £1m over three years from managing and monitoring functions in-house. HILLINGDON COUNCIL has trialled Dun & Bradstreet DNBi cloud-based, credit risk management platform. The proactive push of intelligence to teams is enabling Hillingdon to engage quickly with businesses that are experiencing difficulties, minimising any potential impact on services to residents.

March/April 2011

LEEDS CITY COUNCIL has renewed its threeyear technology support contract with Sabio for provision of ongoing services and maintenance for the council’s contact centre infrastructure and telephony architecture. Sabio will additionally support an advanced Interactive Voice Recognition solution and upgrade the core Avaya ACD platform. MERTON BOROUGH COUNCIl has chosen allpay and Wincor Nixdorf to improve service and reduce costs for its improved payments system. The kiosk technology offers customers more choice and convenience for bill payments and the opportunity to source information automatically. MERTON COUNCIL is using Process Flows’ SMS technology to help maintain primary computer systems continuity. In event of a problem, maintenance engineers are automatically alerted with a text message which results in minimised ‘down-time’ and reduced interruptions to frontline services. NORTHUMBERLAND COUNTY COUNCIL is providing high speed connectivity and wifi to street level across the county for council and businesses via KBR wireless mesh technology, which allows for cost effective mobile connectivity across a vast region. NOTTINGHAM CITY COUNCIL has appointed Esri UK to develop an interactive energy map to help reduce carbon emissions across the city. The council’s energy strategy is committed to reducing city-wide carbon emissions by 26% by 2020, and ensuring that 20% of Nottingham’s energy requirements are by then met by renewable sources.

WEST LONDON ALLIANCE, comprising the London boroughs of Brent, Ealing, Hammersmith and Fulham, Harrow, Hillingdon and Hounslow, has chosen Oxford Computer Consultants to provide a social care information procurement system. Between them, they spend around £330m a year on adult social care from the voluntary and private sectors the greatest spend on adult social care of any single local government body in England. WEYMOUTH AND PORTLAND BOROUGH COUNCIL has launched its online public mapping system based on Cadcorp’s Web Map Layers, the final stage of its corporate deployment of GIS. WIRRAL METROPOLITAN BOROUGH has installed Axway’s Automator, to integrate 14 operating systems, cut 24/7 shifts and reduce spending by £2.5m. Wirral is able to automate system jobs, react to monitored data exchanges in real-time, and apply processing based on time or events.

Police HAMPSHIRE POLICE has upgraded its CORTEX Software Integrated Communications Control System (SICCS) across two sites, with APD deploying CT Connect CTI software to help the force better support 3,800 police officers, 500 special constables and 348 police community support officers. The new software seamlessly integrates with existing Nortel Contact Centre 6 technology, which enables calls to be shared between the two sites using APD supplied user-friendly touch screens.

SURREY COUNTY COUNCIL Children’s Services is using Liquidlogic PROTOCOL ICS, an integrated children’s social care recording system for its 750 social work practitioners. Careful data cleansing prior to input has improved data quality to support consistent recording practice, clear processes and a clearer overview of progress and work volumes. TELFORD & WREKIN COUNCIL is helping its 69 schools collaborate more efficiently and drive down the cost of ICT, by migrating its school information management solution to Serco Learning Progresso. Fully web-delivered and professionally managed as a hosted service, Progresso will enable schools to quickly, easily and cost-effectively, share data on assessment, behaviour and attendance, freeing them to spend time teaching. WANDSWORTH COUNCIL has agreed a 15 year deal with Bovis Lend Lease and Civica for a range of construction and ICT services to improve the infrastructure of schools in the area. The contract, part of the Building Schools for the Future programme, will include computer systems maintenance and the installation of telecommunications and computer and information processing equipment. UKauthorITy IT in Use

WILTSHIRE POLICE has selected Cadcorp to provide a corporate GIS delivering location-based information to force applications. The software will provide sophisticated modelling and analytical capabilities for crime and intelligence analysis, deliver live locational data to the police command and control system, be used for tracking both personnel and vehicles in the force automatic resource location system, and also used in the emergency communications centre in relation to 999 and nonemergency calls.

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