Local Government IT in Use - July/August 2010 issue by Informed Publications Limited

Technology & The Transformation of Frontline Services

LGITU Local Government IT in Use July / August 2010

Anything & Everything - Welcome to open data, open government and the darkest corners of the hive mind

Technology to the Core LGITU â&#x20AC;˘ July / August 2010

- Information society and change; all relies on technology

Councils and Public Health - Who will pay for the technology interface?

LGITU Live: Online Potential - A digital foundation for change and efďŹ ciency PLUS: News Update, Shared Services, View over Westminster, Emergency Services, Company & Product Notes & Contracts Won.

Contracts

Features

Products

Comment

ISSN 1368 2660 Editor & Publisher

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

Contributing Editor

Tim Hampson E: Tim@infopub.co.uk T: 01865 790675

Special Correspondent

Michael Cross E: Michael@infopub.co.uk

Advertising & Circulation

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

Design & Layout

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July / August 2010 On the Cover Open data, open government, open to the public mind. ©iStockphoto.com/Ferran Traite Soler

Comment Editorial The Editors welcome editorial information on the use of Information and Communication Technologies in the transformation of frontline services. Please submit relevant material or ideas in the ﬁrst instance by email to the editor, Helen Olsen: Helen@infopub.co.uk

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News Update

All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part, storage in a retrieval system or transmission in any form, of any material in this publication is prohibited without prior written consent from the Editor. The views expressed by the Editors and writers are their own. Whilst every care is taken, the publishers cannot be responsible for any errors in articles or listings. Articles written by contributors do not necessarily express the views of their employing organisation. The Editor reserves the right to edit any submissions prior to publication. The Editor welcomes manuscripts and illustrations for consideration for publication, but on the understanding that Informed Publications Ltd cannot be held liable for their safe custody or return. The Editor’s decision on publication of said submissions is ﬁnal.

3-7

A round up of the news, headlines and trends affecting technology in frontline public services.

LGITU Live: Online Potential

8-9

Digital for digital’s sake will help no one. But a ﬂexible digital foundation gives the public sector the capability for change, and savings. Helen Olsen reports.

Technology to the Core

Michael Cross ﬁnds the government is playing a close hand on ICT strategy.

Anything & Everything

Opening up the workings and data of government to everyone risks opening up the darkest recesses of the hive mind, says Helen Olsen.

Special Focus: More with Less

It all comes back to IT, says Helen Olsen.

A well worn expression in recent years but one that accurately sums up the current challenge for the public sector, says Adobe’s Prelini Udayan.

Councils Lead Public Health Reform

But who will pay for the new IT interface between councils and GPs? asks Michael Cross.

Outing Shared Services from Back to Front Ofﬁce

14-16

Sharing the back ofﬁce has recognised beneﬁts, but could sharing become a strategic resource for frontline delivery? Tim Hampson examines the idea.

Special Focus: Collaboration & Shared Services

Patrick Bolger, chief evangelist of Hornbill Service Management, examines the future of IT service delivery in the public sector.

This Brave New World

Tim Hampson reports from Westminster, where the new government is ﬁnding its feet after a seismic change.

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July/August 2010

Company & Product Notes Emergency Services Contracts Roundup

Local Government IT in Use

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COMMENT

NEWS UPDATE

It all comes back to IT

Directgov takes centre online stage

he public sector world changed on 6th of May 2010. Quite how profound a change is yet to become clear. But the harsh realities faced by the country and the new government have led to the most unsettling and uncertain times I have seen for frontline services in the 18 years in which I have written about the sector. The cuts in budgets needed are far deeper than feared at the beginning of the year. The need to profoundly rethink the form and function of public services is not just desirable, but essential for survival. Whilst some would argue on the dogma and the scale, none would disagree that change must come. The cupboard is bare; there is a country to run. ‘Something’ must be done. But from the vantage point of an observer in an admittedly very specific niche – the use of technology to run the public sector and deliver public services – two facts sit uncomfortably together in recent events. The first is the underlying assumption that technology provides the key to efficiency and engagement with a jaded public. The second is the proclamation of war on the costs of technology. Undoubtedly, over the last few decades margins have been high and handsome profits made from this sector. But with the rest of the world on the brink of a hopeful recovery what danger is there that the brightest technologies will follow rising stars and leave the public sector to its fate? Technology is key to reform and efficiency. ICT will pull together the view for effective place-based budgeting. ICT will enable agile virtual teams to be created across traditional organisational boundaries to deliver this vision. ICT will deliver dramatic savings – be they via online self-service; by enabling more to be done by automating processes; or making the front line mobile. ICT is always moving on, into the clouds and beyond, limited only by the vision of those that can make it happen. The essential nature of this tool to underpin social and economic change should not be under-emphasised. There is something, therefore, that sits uncomfortably in telling ICT suppliers on the Friday to cut their margins then on the Monday launching a Networked Nation that relies on goodwill – much of it from the technology sector. Helen Olsen, Editor

irectgov has returned to its first home, the Cabinet Office, in the coalition government’s first major policy announcement on electronic public services. Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, said that the site would become the responsibility of the Efficiency and Reform Group, which he chairs. In a statement, Maude tied the growth of online services directly to the government’s efficiency agenda: “Getting more people and public services online is essential if we’re going to cut the cost of public services while maintaining standards. This move puts Directgov in a stronger position to implement efficiency savings and provide more information and services that are easier and more accessible for people to use.” Directgov, which claims 29 million users a month, has operated under the purview of the DWP for the past two years. It was originally created by Andrew Pinder’s office of the e-envoy in 2004, replacing the UK Online portal, before moving to the Central Office of Information when the e-envoy’s ‘e-delivery’ functions were wound up. The Cabinet Office announcement said the site would ‘sit in the Government

Liberated NHS poses big questions for IT & councils

oalition plans for the future of the NHS will involve major IT challenges for local authorities as well as NHS organisations themselves. Under the ‘Liberating the NHS’ white paper local authorities will take over responsibility for improving the health of their populations, including organising measures such as immunisation and screening. They will also take on a number of the coordination functions of primary care trusts and strategic health authorities, which will cease to exist in 2013. ‘Each local authority will take on the function of joining up the commissioning of local NHS services, social care and health improvement,’ the white paper states. Local authorities will therefore be responsible for promoting integration and partnershipworking between the NHS, social care, public health and other local services and strategies. The changes, the biggest reorganisation in 60 years of NHS reorganisations, will be supported by ‘an NHS information revolution’, the white paper says. This includes giving patients full control of their health records, and who has access to them. An information strategy to deliver this new vision is due to be published this autumn.

See feature, page 13.

Local Government IT in Use

Communications team headed by Matt Tee, Permanent Secretary Government Communications’, which is part of the Efﬁciency and Reform Group. The group draws together under one roof procurement, ICT, communications, HR and performance. “It is the taxpayer’s champion, combining the authority of the Treasury and Cabinet Ofﬁce, reaching out across the public sector and now going directly to the people we serve through Directgov,” Maude said.

Last post for CAA

ecretary of state for communities and local government, Eric Pickles, has instructed the Audit Commission and five other local inspectorates to stop the costly top-down CAA reports. Pickles said that independent research put the average annual cost of reporting back to government at £1.8m. “The government is committed to shunning the bureaucratic levers of the past by replacing the heavy burden of Whitehall oversight with greater public transparency and accountability so councils can focus on frontline services,” he said. Leicestershire councils found they had 90 full time staff collecting and processing more than 3,000 individual data items for central government at a cost of £3.7m a year. “They also faced 83 different inspections every year,” said the minister. Ending the CAA will save the Audit Commission £10m and cut significant inspection costs for councils. In 2006 the National Audit Office estimated the overall cost of monitoring local government at £2bn a year. Said Pickles, “In the face of the nation’s £156 billion deficit, central government needs to stop the costly top-down monitoring that is engulfing councils and start trusting them to do what is right locally.” July/August 2010

NEWS UPDATE

Prohibitive cost to transparency

own halls will not be able to afford to publish every spending decision above £500 online, ministers have been warned. The shake-up - designed to make local councils “think hard” about spending money - is being introduced with no analysis of the extra cost involved, claims a Labour MP. “In these cash-strapped times, should we not have a debate on the cost to local authorities of this new government imposition?” asked Steve McCabe. “It may be a good thing for everybody to be able to view this information online, but is it joined up government when local councils, like everyone else, are being asked to make huge cuts?” In the chamber, deputy Commons leader, David Heath, ducked the question of just how much it will cost an authority such as Birmingham to publish every spending decision on its website. However, it appears increasingly likely that Eric Pickles will stop short of imposing a legal requirement on local authorities to publish everything above the £500 threshold. There was no mention of the £500 when Pickles’ ﬂagship Decentralisation and Localism Bill was listed in the Queen’s Speech. A letter to councils instead referred to the “expectation that councils will see

the benefits for residents and grasp this agenda”. In addition to spending information, councils have also been urged to publish data on senior salaries, councillor allowances and expenses; minutes of meetings and rubbish and recycling rates. Pickles said that he would be “embarrassed to look you in the eye and ask you to put all spending over £500 online if my own department is only putting spending over £25,000 online”. Instead he would “lead from the front” with Communities and Local Government and its agencies also set to put all spending over £500 online too. COUNCILS FAIL ON EU LICENSING REGULATIONS: Local authorities’ compliance with EU regulations on making it easy for businesses to find out about licensing and regulations is patchy at best. A Socitm survey, commissioned by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, has revealed that only one in 20 council websites currently complies with the directive. Only 5% of sites were rated as ‘very good’, 18% ‘satisfactory’ and 59% rated ‘poor’. Reviewers could find no relevant information at all on 19% of sites. The EU Services Directive was intended to reduce government red tape for new and existing businesses throughout the European Union by providing electronic information and services. www.socitm.net

Pupils keep an eye on energy

upils from Stockton are using state-of-the-art technology to monitor their school’s energy use in a move to reduce both carbon footprint and costs.

A partnership between Stockton Borough Council and Invisible Systems has seen the ﬁrst of 14 schools, Egglescliffe Comprehensive, install wireless real-time online energy monitoring. The system records energy used throughout the school and can be easily accessed via a password protected website. The user-friendly display clearly shows where and when the most energy is being consumed, allowing for the school to take action to reduce energy usage. Pupils will be actively involved in monitoring the system and challenged to come up with ideas of how to cut down on the energy used in the school. Stockton councillor, Jennie Beaumont, said, “It’s great to see the pupils getting so involved in this project to reduce the school’s energy use. We’ve already committed to a very ambitious programme of reducing our carbon output and cost saving and projects like this can only help.”

Want to see some data?

inister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, has called for the British people to nominate which new government datasets they would like to see released. The government has already released central government procurement data, a list of people earning more than £150k, the cost of government websites and energy used by the Home Office and Ministry of Justice. This latest call furthers the “drive to make government as transparent as possible”. The Cabinet Office is now inviting everyone to log on to make suggestions on which public datasets could be made available for reuse. Said Maude, “We promised a new approach to government - one that puts transparency at the very heart of everything we do. “As the saying goes, information is power. By making datasets freely available people are more able to hold public bodies to account and challenge them. This is just the start of a process which will only end when transparency and openness are an integral part of the way public bodies operate and serve their customers.” The most requested datasets already identified include the Land Registry, Companies House, the Integrated Business Register, transport data, weather information and Environment Agency data. www.data.gov.uk

Councils fail to improve websites

ocal council website usability has suf fered a downturn over the last year as councils fail to address key transactional facilities, claims Webcredible’s 2010 Local Council Website Usability report. The research looked at the top 20 councils ﬂagged by Socitm’s Better Connected research and revealed that the average usability score achieved overall was 58.7%, a slight dip in comparison to last year’s average score of 59.9%. Webcredible points out that many users will instead turn to phone or face-to-face services, thus costing time and money.

Invisible Systems’ Adam Humphreys demonstrates the energy-saving system to Egglescliffe School pupils.

July/August 2010

Local Government IT in Use

Meanwhile, a survey by GOSS Interactive suggests that over 40% of visitors to council websites have resorted to calling councils directly in order to obtain the information or complete transactions, rather than using self service tools online. Call handling costs an average of £3.21 per call, compared to just 39p for an online service provision, says GOSS.

NEWS UPDATE

Working towards a networked nation

Government website cull

igital champion, Martha Lane Fox, wants to see “digital leaders” in all local authorities, all 750 Jobcentre Plus ofﬁces and all public libraries by the end of the year.

he government is reviewing all its 820 websites, and most look destined to be culled. Francis Maude, minister for the Cabinet Ofﬁce, has pledged to scrap hundreds of unnecessary and expensive government websites and slash the cost of those remaining to save millions of pounds, saying there would be no more “vanity” sites.

The move is part of her Networked Nation drive to get every working aged person in Britain online by 2012 - saying that the country would save £22bn as a result. She is also calling on retailers to provide tailored internet packages for people on low incomes and the elderly. Lane Fox made the call as she presented her manifesto, Networked Nation - which has the support of the prime minister - at Downing Street in July. David Cameron said that we need to ensure that people aren’t being left behind as more and more services and business move online: “But this issue isn’t just about fairness as Martha’s work shows; promoting digital inclusion is essential for a dynamic modern economy and can help to make government more efficient and effective.” However, there are concerns about where the resources for the hundreds of local WATMORE RETURNS: Former permanent secretary, Ian Watmore, returns as new chief operating officer at the Efficiency and Reform Group (ERG) - charged with making the provision of government ICT more efficient. He will work closely with minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, and chief secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, to ensure coordinated approach to tackling waste and improving accountability across government. This will include exploiting economies of scale and reducing duplication, as well as looking for efficiencies in procurement, project management, property and HR.

digital champions are to come from and doubts about why the private sector should pick up the tab. Lane Fox’s own website, Race Online 2012, is asking for people already online to sign up to volunteer, donate money or equipment, take part in organising events or contribute their own ideas about how to get others connected. According to the site 425 partners have committed to help 1,646,457 people get online. “Around ten million Britons have never used the internet - nearly half of whom are among the most disadvantaged in society. By getting more people online, everybody wins,” said Lane Fox. http://raceonline2012.org/

TIME CALLED ON SCHOOLS BUILDING: Education secretary, Michael Gove, has ordered the end of the Building Schools for the Future programme. Gove said that he wanted to get best value for money and would bring the programme, aimed at transforming schools with state-of-the-art buildings and ICT over the next 15 years, to an end. ICT spending through BSF had been predicted to reach £4.5bn over the lifetime of the programme. According to Gove, it would have been “irresponsible to carry on regardless” with a programme which he described as inﬂexible and needlessly complex.

Local Government IT in Use

The previous government had already culled over one thousand such sites, but was unable to prevent new ones from springing up. Now all government funded websites will be subject to a review looking at cost, usage and whether they could share resources better. Up to three quarters of government sites could be shut, with the remainder forced to cut their cloth and costs by 50%. A Central Ofﬁce for Information (COI) report into the costs, quality and usage stats of government websites, ﬁnds that £94m has been spent on the construction, set up and running costs of just 46 websites and £32m on staff costs for those sites in 2009-10. www.coi.gov.uk/websitemetrics2009-10

CUT FRAUD BEFORE SERVICES: Experian claims that over £1bn in fraudulent benefit claims and social housing provision could be knocked off public spend if the sector tackled fraud at its roots. Experian is not advocating new IT systems or major upfront spend, just implementation of ‘cost-effective and proven fraud prevention techniques’ across the public sector. It flags a number of potential quick win savings: up to £600m in social housing tenancy fraud; £300m from incapacity benefit; £100m a year in single person discount fraud; and £17m on housing and council tax fraud. www.experianplc.com

July/August 2010

NEWS UPDATE

IT suppliers: cut your margins

Job transparency via the Internet

he government has taken steps to renegotiate the costs of its IT contracts.

As part of the deficit reduction programme, the bosses of 19 of the government’s biggest suppliers were invited to the Cabinet Office and asked what they can do to cut the cost of their services. Chief executives of the companies - which included BT, Hewlett Packard, Capgemini, Fujitsu and Capita - met with the government’s chief cost enforcer, Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude. As part of plans to save £95m in government expenditure on computer services, Maude, has already asked civil servants to look at all their IT contracts to see if they should be renegotiated, stopped or allowed to continue. “Each project will need to be reviewed individually to ascertain if the project should be stopped, reshaped or continue; as a result targets by project have not been set,” he said. The supplier get-together marked the start of the process to renegotiate key government contracts, as part of this series of initiatives by the Cabinet Office’s Efficiency and Reform Group (ERG) to tackle the deficit. Maude said that the meeting demonstrates the importance and urgency the government is attaching to the efforts to reduce the deficit. He challenged suppliers to ask what they can do to take costs out of contracts: “Some of

this will come out of margins, but we will also invite ideas on how we can structure things differently to reduce complexity and cost. We will look to put into effect immediate savings and also create plans to further reduce costs in the medium to long term,” he said. The negotiation programme will cover the majority of government’s suppliers and will be conducted centrally for the top suppliers and via individual departments for the smaller ones. www.hm-treasury.gov.uk

Share back office services, says Pickles

ocal government bosses have been told to share back office services, including the sharing of chief executives and press officers. Local government minister, Eric Pickles, has told town hall leaders to “think the unthinkable” and “end silo structures”. He wants councils to share planning departments, legal services, media departments and even chief executives. He says that sharing back office services is “especially important for the highest levels and the most expensive people”. Along with attacking non-jobs and putting job ads online, Pickles also wants councillors to take more responsibility for decisions previously taken by chief executives.

Libraries in the information age

ondon Libraries Consortium is using Radio Frequency Identiﬁcation (RFID) for self-service, stock management and extended opening. The most recent RFID installations are at Tooting , Wandsworth Town, Clapton, John Jackson, Enﬁeld Town and Gants Hill where library technology specialist, Axiell, has provided Bibliotheca Venus machines which offer easy-to-use self issue and return facilities. Pictured below: Branch librarian, Liz Davies, shows a customer how to issue their own books at Wandsworth Town Library. Branch librarian, Daniel Andrews, adds that “people are still wowed by being able to put a whole pile of books on the machine and the machine reading the information from them all at once.”

ouncil job adverts should be syndicated across the internet to save money, increase transparency and help reduce pointless posts, says Eric Pickles, local government secretary. Pickles wants to call time on so-called “nonjobs” and urge greater vigilance over how every taxpayer pound is spent. It can cost £5,000 to £10,000 to place an advert in some national newspapers. The government therefore wants councils to publish job vacancies online in an open and standardised format - for anyone to use, re-publish, mash up and compare without charge. This will not end advertising in the media; local newspapers in particular will remain an important source to advertise jobs to those who may be digitally excluded and not have access to the internet. Said Pickles, “Putting jobs online not only shows local people where their money is going. It will mean they can question whether those jobs are really needed at all.” IS YOUR GAZETTEER SIMPLY THE BEST? Intelligent Addressing and Local Government Information House have announced the 2010 NLPG and NSG Exemplar Awards. The awards recognise the innovation, effort, commitment and achievement of local authorities, police and ﬁre services in the creation, maintenance and utilisation of the National Land & Property Gazetteer (NLPG) and the National Street Gazetteer (NSG) www.intelligent-addressing.co.uk

Local Government IT Excellence Awards 2010 Local authorities with innovative IT-based solution are being invited to blow their own trumpets. Entries for the prestigious Intellect, Socitm and SOLACE Local Government IT Excellence Awards are now being sought. This year’s awards, once again supported by LGITU magazine, has three categories: • • •

service transformation effective ICT partnering supplier excellence

Entrants will need to demonstrate how the use of an IT system or process has improved the efﬁciency and delivery of services within local communities. The deadline for entries is 2 August 2010: www.intellectuk.org/itexcellenceawards

July/August 2010

Local Government IT in Use

NEWS UPDATE

LGA wants control of the front line

he Local Government Association (LGA) claims that potential savings of £100bn can be made from place-based budgeting and local control of frontline services. In her keynote speech to the annual conference of council leaders last month, LGA chairman, Dame Margaret Eaton, called for a “once-in-a-generation programme of change” to strip out the plethora of funding streams, accountability regimes, ring fenced budgets, quangos and funding bodies that soak up billions of pounds of public money. Radical proposals put forward by the LGA aim to release savings of up to £100bn over five years by stripping out bureaucracy and red tape and instead handing power over spending to local people. Its publication ‘Place-based budgets - The future governance of local public services’, argues that public services can be made cheaper, simpler, more effective and more transparent by making locally elected people responsible for allocating public money and taking decisions about local services. Under place-based budgeting councils or groups of councils would be responsible to local voters and to parliament for spending on frontline services. Local decision-makers would oversee economic regeneration, planning, housing and regeneration, home energy efficiency, managing flood and climate risks, adult skills, local transport, primary health care, policing and probation, and support into employment for the longterm unemployed and workless.

Said Eaton, “There are huge opportunities to save money and give people a bigger say in the public sector by starting with a clean sheet and giving power to the people who know their areas best. That is the way to reform the system and save money rather than to cut services we know people really need,” she added. “The government has made it clear there are going to be deep cuts in public spending. But if we simply cut departments and organisations as they are currently conﬁgured, we will do nothing to cut waste and instead hurt the front line more than we need to.” www.lga.gov.uk TAXPAYERS TRUST COUNCILLORS OVER CUTS Taxpayers want councillors to make decisions about reductions in local public spending. An opinion poll by ComRes for the Local Government Association suggests that 62% of people would prefer local councillors to make decisions about public spending in their local area compared to 18% who backed MPs - and just two percent ofﬁcials in quangos. It also shows that 70% of respondents believe that spending on some services should be protected, even if this has an impact on spending in other areas. Taxpayers think that NHS managers, quangos and overseas aid are the top three areas where cuts should be made to save money. Just one percent respectively thought street cleaning, care for the elderly by social services and rubbish collections should be cut to save public money. Almost three quarters of people (74%) believe that frontline services will be hit by cuts.

ContactPoint will shut on 6 August

im Loughton, parliamentary under secretary of state for children and families, has made good on the coalition’s pledge to shut down the controversial ContactPoint children’s database. It will shut down on 6 August 2010. All data currently held will be destroyed. Announcing the decommissioning of the database, Loughton acknowledged the need to support frontline professionals to help protect vulnerable children but said that the government was “examining the case for a more proportionate approach”. Discussions, he said, were still ongoing as to what will replace the database of every child under 18. “There is no dispute over the need for some kind of signposting service for professionals to help them to support and protect the country’s most vulnerable children, particularly when they move between organisational boundaries and geographical areas.”

“Accordingly, we are exploring the practicality of a new national signposting service which would focus on helping practitioners ﬁnd out whether another practitioner is working, or has previously worked, in another authority area with the same vulnerable child. Social workers in particular, and potentially other key services like the police or accident and emergency departments, may need this information very quickly. Such a service must aim to ensure that these children are not ‘lost’ to social care services when they move. We are working closely with our partners to assess the feasibility and affordability of such an approach.”

Loughton emphasised the coalition’s view that ContactPoint was not the answer. “It has always been our view that it was disproportionate and unjustiﬁable to hold records on every child in the country, making them accessible to large numbers of people. Local Government IT in Use

July/August 2010

LGITU LIVE

Online Potential Digital for digital’s sake will help no one. But a ﬂexible digital foundation will enable the public sector to make the rapid changes needed in order to deliver vital cost savings. Helen Olsen reports from LGITU Live. an online services help the public sector make ends meet in the face of cuts, cuts and yet more cuts this autumn? According to July’s LGITU Live panel, undoubtedly so; self-service digital channels can take the pressure off frontline service delivery.

The site, he said, was there “only to deliver beneﬁts to business” and on that measure it had been “remarkably successful” – with research concluded that, for the year in question, £800m had been generated in beneﬁts to business: a return of £22 for every £1 spent.

Guy Ker, publishing director at the government’s citizen-service superbrand, Directgov, says that our world is no longer a broadcast one, but an interactive one where cost savings can indeed be made.

NHS Choices’ head of strategy, Bob Gann, added that, whilst the headline 22p per visit cost was accurate, research by Imperial College suggested that “around a third of patients using self-care on NHS Choices didn’t then need to see their GP”. This 22p visit therefore replaces the approximately £40 cost of seeing a GP in person – at a rough calculation it is saving the country around £40m a year in avoided GP appointments.

Digital delivery for its own sake won’t save money, he adds. But it will enable local authorities and other frontline organisations to make the choices that will save money in the tough times ahead. And indeed, saving money is imperative across the public sector right now. However, the primary duty of the state - to serve the needs of its citizens and business - must still be fulfilled. Digital services therefore provide a welcome opportunity to both improve the quality of the end service whilst reducing the cost of the delivery process. Over the last decade there has been marked investment in digital services, and a markedly upward trend in their use. However, the government has had difficulty in controlling the proliferation of public sector websites and proving value for money. A recent Central Office for Information (COI) report shows some serious web traffic for the government’s three ‘supersites’ but significant variation in the cost per visit – from 22p for NHS Choices to £2.15 for Businesslink.gov.uk. Whilst this is a very good start in the analysis of the value of online service there are obvious issues with the comparators – NHS Choices has a potential pool of all UK citizen visitors versus Businesslink.gov.uk’s substantially smaller pool of UK businesses. Simply assessing users by cost is not comparing like for like plus the nature and complexity of transactions can be substantially different – from an online symptom checker to the process of setting up a new business in the UK. Businesslink.gov.uk’s programme director, David Dinsdale, welcomed the report but said that it “didn’t tell the whole story”. AUDIENCE POLL: 100% agree that online services will help the public sector to maintain service quality whilst reducing costs.

July/August 2010

According to Alan Banks, managing director of LGITU Live sponsor, Adobe UK, the COI report is “helpful in understanding the costs around these services”, but the “true measure is in the beneﬁt to the organisations that deploy those services – in both the quantity and the quality of service delivery and the costs and structures they replace”.

Cost of digital vs. traditional Ker says that Directgov wouldn’t simply take the number of visitors to its site as a measure of success. Rather, he says, the real measure “is the number successfully completing transactions or ﬁnding the information that they want”. It is that success rate that enables the switch to online services: “Giving the government the choice to opt for online delivery over more expensive means of delivery.” Ker very much sees Directgov as an enabler. Being open about the real cost of services is essential. Recent Socitm research suggests that local authority website usage rose by 21.7% last year; but concludes that most council websites are not yet good enough to support a major shift to self service. Furthermore, the IT managers estimate that failed visits to council websites are costing local councils a collective £11m per month.

On the Panel Guy Ker, publishing director, Directgov

Bob Gann, head of strategy, NHS Choices

David Dinsdale, programme director, businesslink.gov.uk Alan Banks, managing director, Adobe UK

Helen Olsen, managing editor, LGITU, Tomorrow’s Town Hall and UKauthorITy.com

LGITU Live was sponsored by Adobe UK. and solutions online.” He points to the high volume of web users looking for information online during the blizzards earlier this year to check for school and road closures. Some of the major innovations in this arena, says Banks, “have come out of the local government sector”. He points to Southwark’s one touch service “which aims to cross sell multiple services from a single contact with the citizen”. Engaging the end user in digital services in this way allows the council to conduct multiple transactions – which is the “initial essence of cost saving”. Moving the citizen naturally from face to face to telephone and then on to web and mobile transactions, using the same system, he adds, provides solid beneﬁts and savings.

Dinsdale is in no doubt that “delivering services online is very convenient and substantially cheaper than face-to-face or over the phone”. But he stressed that service designers must work out the appropriate mix for their service.

Indeed, improving the citizen experience is key, says Ker, but he adds that a lot of work is needed to make sure that online services are both useful and usable – so that they will actually be used. “That is increasingly the benchmark of our success – focusing on how the customer uses the services and designing the services that are appropriate for those needs.”

Ker agrees but adds that digital services’ time has come. “The evidence shows that people are very actively looking for information

Gann points out that services are rarely all one channel, highlighting the NHS Choices text message reminder service for patient

Local Government IT in Use

LGITU LIVE

appointments. A major cost to the health service is DNAs – did not attends. Simple SMS text reminders are now delivering improvements of up to 30% in attendance.

everyone”. He highlights the younger generation, used to social media and video as an information medium. It is important to work with intermediaries, other organisations and the full range of digital services and channels.

AUDIENCE POLL: 63% say establishing their online brand is essential in delivering cost effective online services.

Syndication and trusted content

About 400,000 people a month go onto 75% say establishing their online Directgov then click through to their local brand is essential in creating a sense council – as far as they are concerned it is of place and community. one homogenous user journey, says Ker. “That idea of the back end machines all have to worry about updating central issues, talking to each other such as changes to VAT rates, which can be and integrating totally updated centrally on a global basis. Meanwhile at Directgov, AUDIENCE POLL: 94% say that taking is something that we says Ker, the ‘innovate’ syndicated services from another Banks adds that forms are fundamental to site – which enables public sector site would help their all aspire too. In the 85% of all business processes. “The trick is to individuals to submit organisation provide more services meantime, given the have a form that is intelligent that can be preexamples of applications whilst reducing development costs. constraints of budget, we should work on the populated, can validate data, help guide the developed using governincremental steps to improve peoples’ lives in user through the application process - either ment data, crowdsourcing or other digital the way that we can.” online or offline - and then when submitted technologies – had over 100 partners signed connect automatically to the business proup in the first few weeks of use, including Banks believes that there is a requirement cesses and send data to back end databases. newspapers and local service providers. As on technology vendors to help government All of this fits within the user’s lifestyle and long as the Directgov authenticity and validity do this. “It is not just about stove-piped call provides a cleaner, more compelling user can be maintained, he says, then the reuse centre services, or face to face services or experience.“ of that material “is extremely beneficial to the online services but about the ability to engage community”. in an experience across all those channels, The single point of contact development platforms and access devices.” was based on the prior localdirectgov Businesslink is also very enthusiastic about development. “We all reuse each others’ syndicated content, says Dinsdale: “About developments,” says Dinsdale. Businesslink a quarter of our web traffic is via this route. Brand is currently working on a system to enable The aim is to get the trusted content to where publication of all public sector tender opporthe consumer will consume it, rather than From social care and care directories through tunities above £10k, with the data feeding into forcing people to visit our site.” Every single to business and tax information – it is essendata.gov for reuse. piece of content on Businesslink.gov.uk is tial that the citizen can trust the brand, and checked every year – a content maintenance therefore the content. programme that accounts for “between a Rebuild and reuse quarter and a third of our costs,” he adds. “Adobe’s main area of expertise is engaging the user in the experience once they have Should every council develop its own serTrusted content is vital, says Gann, “You can been drawn to that brand, but brand is the vices end to end? The panel’s short answer find an enormous number of information sites thing that draws people to your information in was “No”. Indeed, Ker, Gann and Dinsdale relating to health. It is essential to us that the first place,” says Banks. “People need to all urged frontline public sector organisawherever you see the NHS badge you can be identify the service as meeting their need.” tions to look to reuse content, learning and assured of the clinical quality of the content developments from and can access it with confidence.” The local service AUDIENCE POLL: 82% say their organitheir own sites and their organisation, agreed sation’s website needs significant joint DotGovLabs that Adds Ker, “Every single one of our 5,000 plus the panel, will further investment in order to deliver develops ideas, services pages is commentateable. We generate always need a local fully accessible, cost saving transac- and content for mutual around 40,000 ratings and 10,000 comments a brand and presence. tional services. benefit. week – and if we use that kind of feedback However, says Gann, we can really improve what we do. This is the there is a “national economy of scale” that All the labs’ projects are small scale, interacexcitement of this world. It is a real opporcan be taken advantage of. The savings on tive and innovative. “One of my favourites,” tunity to get things right.” Reviewing and offer from aggregating services in fewer says Gann, “is a real-time dashboard for reacting to this level of feedback is both a places, with less staff, systems and content hospitals in Lincolnshire where you can see huge undertaking and a major responsibility. maintenance are vital, which is “why the a webcam and waiting time for all A&E and But he believes that “people really do value convergence of government websites to walk in centres.” Other developments are this two way relationship with government”. Directgov is so important. People want to pay based around wikis, webinars, social media their car tax through a respected government and online advice - replacing face to face portal. And be done.” with videoconferencing over the web. Usability and inclusion NHS Choices currently syndicates its content to around 300 organisations. This has been a very successful initiative which Gann says they are actively looking to expand.

How you engage the user in the services you provide is key to uptake and use, says Banks. The important thing is looking at the service from a user-centric point of view. “Too often government services have been provided that expose the complexity of their back ofﬁce applications and internal processes. What you are doing at Directgov is very much capturing and responding to the needs of the end user and entering into a dialogue.” “Inclusion,” says Ker, “means delivering services in a choice and a way that includes

Central services deployed locally The EU Services Directive Point of Single Contact is a good example of a set of transactional services developed centrally, by Businesslink.gov.uk, but made available to local councils to meet an EU directive - ‘jump starting’ their own service offering and reducing the ‘reinvention of wheels’. These forms were built using Adobe’s intelligent eForm solution, LiveCycle. Whilst local authorities have control over the local customisation of the forms, explains Dinsdale, they do not Local Government IT in Use

All the learning from DotGovLabs is available for local government, health and other frontline organisations to reuse. Indeed, the panel would actively welcome contact from any wishing to do so. “Develop once, use many times,” being the panel’s ﬁnal advice.

View LGITU Live now: www.UKauthorITy.com/LGITUlive Coming soon: 17th August 2010 Open government, £500+ expenditure online, social media and online savings. July/August 2010

STRATEGY

Technology to the Core OPINION: Michael Cross says that the new government has hit the ground running with information society issues, despite keeping its strategy cards close until October’s spending review.

ne of the striking aspects of the change of government is the speed with which ministers have got to grips with information society issues. When New Labour came to power in 1997, it took a couple of years for significant strategic announcements to start flowing from the Cabinet Office. It’s taken the coalition just a couple of months. One reason, of course, is the public spending crisis. The other reason is that David Cameron’s strategy for reforming public services (and cutting their cost) is entirely predicated on access to information. Confounding some expectations, Cameron also appears to have embraced the digital inclusion agenda.

to see what is happening on their streets’ will follow in January. And crucially, from this month, ‘government departments and agencies should ensure that any information published includes the underlying data in an open standardised format’. This is one of the six draft public data principles being considered by the board. The others are: •

•

Public data will be available through a single easy to use online access point (www.data.gov.uk);

•

Anything published on government websites should be available as data for others to reuse;

•

All public data, including that released under the Freedom of Information Act, should be released under an open licence enabling free reuse, including commercial reuse;

•

Data should be released quickly “as is” then re-published in linked data form.

IT also tops the list of sectors where the government is determined to squeeze a better deal out of suppliers. All this has generated an interesting new workload for the Cabinet Office’s digital strategy team, reporting to Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude, as chair of the Efficiency and Reform Group. In a surprise announcement this month, Maude announced that, with immediate effect, the group is taking control of the Directgov website, as its delivery arm. Another focus of action is the Public Sector Transparency Board, which also reports to Maude. Members include Sir Tim BernersLee, open data expert Nigel Shadbolt of Southampton University, Tom Steinberg, founder of mySociety, and Cambridge economist and open data campaigner, Rufus Pollock. It would be hard to assemble a stronger lobby for open data - even the board’s civil service ‘minder’, former deputy CIO and head of digital engagement, Andrew Stott, is an enthusiast. The new government had barely sat down before the first big opening of data, from the Treasury’s COINS database, took place in June. Next up, according to a timetable set out in a letter from David Cameron to his ministers, will be IT contracts: all new central government ICT contracts are to be published online from July and all new items of central government spending over £25,000 are to be published online from November. Crime data ‘at a level that allows the public

July/August 2010

Public data will be published in reusable, machine-readable form, rather than PDFs or other unprocessable formats;

In time, these principles will apply to local government. In the words of Communities and Local Government secretary, Eric Pickles: “I don’t expect everyone to do it right ﬁrst time, but I do expect everyone to do it.” However the further you get from Whitehall, the higher the obstacles appear. Local government in particular must invest to deal with the extra granularity required to put all items of spending over £500 online. Concerns have also been raised over the role of third party publishers of data, such as Spikes Cavell’s SpotlightOnSpend. While there is no suggestion that Spikes Cavell has done anything wrong, the transparency board is likely to make it clear that exclusive deals with commercial suppliers are unlikely to fulﬁl the new government’s requirements for open data. Local Government IT in Use

©iStockphoto.com/Adrian Dracup

Questions also remain over what the right to data will do to local authority revenue streams such as property searches. In the meantime, the other wing of the new government information strategy, costcutting, is taking shape. Earlier this month Maude called in the CEOs of the 19 biggest government IT suppliers - headed by HP, BT and Capgemini - to open renegotiations of government contracts. According to one attendee, Maude was unimpressed with promises of falling prices in the future, saying he wanted to see “Green folding stuff, now”. The approach marks a big change in direction. Under the last government, guided by the Office of Government Commerce, the main strategy for cutting IT costs was bulk buying. This seems to be going out of favour. The government has already let one bulkbuying deal lapse, the 12-year-old £500m NHS deal with Microsoft. The Department’s IT agency, NHS Connecting for Health, has written to NHS trusts saying that in future they will have to deal directly with Microsoft themselves. Whether the move is a conscious part of the open-source strategy promised in the Conservatives’ technology manifesto is unclear, but it seems to be causing consternation and rejoicing in equal measure in the NHS. Despite these moves the coalition government’s first 100 days, there is still a sense that more is to come. While there has been much noise about cutting the number and cost of government websites, the coalition has yet to publish a strategy for its web infrastructure. Here again there are tensions between local autonomy and central efficiencies. Meanwhile, the cancellation of the National Identity Register has left a gap in long-term plans for authentication of citizens’ identities online. For a firmer strategic direction - and the beginning of real cuts in projects and budgets - we shall have to wait for the spending review in October. Until then, for all the flurry of activity under the new government, we will still be in a phoney war.

OPEN GOVERNMENT

Anything & Everything Opening up the workings and data of government to everyone risks opening up the darkest recesses of the hive mind, says Helen Olsen.

he government’s experiments with crowdsourcing have had a rocky start, with widespread astonishment among the chattering classes at both the volume and content of the suggestions and comments. Indeed, at the time of writing (July) chancellor George Osborne’s Spending Challenge site (looking for suggestions for where to wield the budget axe) is closed for both – officially due to it being ‘subject to a small number of malicious attacks’. The site now merely enables an email to be sent to the Treasury. Deputy prime minster Nick Clegg’s Your Freedom site, calling for ideas on laws to repeal and freedoms to restore, meanwhile has intermittently been closed to registration and comment since its launch on 1st July. According to a recent Twitter post, ‘We’ve had to stop users logging in due to a small handful of users posting offensive content. Please try back again in the morning.’ Social media is a powerful resource. And open, and approachable, government is a laudable goal. But social media is notoriously difficult to control - as prime minister, David Cameron, found out recently when Facebook declined his request to take down a page idolising gunman, Raoul Moat. The law of unintended consequences looms large in this wild web frontier-land. In an ideal world, every suggestion on the Your Freedom and Spending Challenge websites would be informed, considered and well balanced. Unfortunately, the virtual world mirrors human nature and the real world in every aspect bar two: in the real world there is no virtual cloak of anonymity to hide behind, and in the real world an individual might never find any other with the same extreme views on an issue. Online the trolls congregate and reinforce each other with remarkable alacrity, as a quick look at the comments section of any national paper will demonstrate. Tom Berry, director at Bite Communications, voiced a concern of many: “What is more disappointing than casual and overtly racist comments referring to ‘our Asian friends’ and asylum seekers, however, is the government’s tacit approval of these viewpoints by failing to moderate their own website. Everyone has a right to a point of view, but not if it incites or condones racial hatred.” And not, indeed, under the government’s logo. Like most, however, Berry would urge the government to keep experimenting with social

©iStockphoto.com/Ferran Traite Soler

media and crowdsourcing: “It’s an important step in fulfilling the Open Government agenda and delivering the necessary efficiency and cost savings. However, the government will need to take a more proactive and ongoing approach to ensuring responses are constructive and not offensive.” And therein lies the crux of the matter. To ensure due diligence on this front would require an army of moderators – a major resource to fund at a time when the budget cupboard is bare. For, whilst the tools of the social media trade may well be quick and cheap to use, the art of engagement and moderation relies on people with skill, knowledge, tact and diplomacy – and such people are costly. Ministers had pledged to take the best, or most popular, suggestions for cuts into account when they publish department spending plans in the autumn. However, suggestions such as a tax on people called Steve, forcible sterilisation of the poor, workhouses for benefits claimants, or moving immigrants out of cities, may prove tricky to debate, no matter how many back the suggestion. Shortly before its premature closure the proposal ‘Stop paying scroungers and parasites’ was the highest idea on the Spending Challenge site. Suggestions for the great reform were equally obtuse. As LGITU went to print the second and third most commented on propositions on the Your Freedom site were, respectively, ‘Bring back the death sentence’ and ‘Repeal drug prohibition’. Somewhat fantastically, others suggested repeal of the basic laws of gravity or thermodynamics. As Nick Clegg said, launching the site, “Real democracy is unspun - it is the raucous, unscripted debates that always throw up the best ideas.” Indeed, Mr Clegg, indeed. At the time of writing, the ‘RIP Raoul Moat!’ Facebook page had 18,492 people ‘like’ it. George Osborne’s Spending Challenge page had just 69 fans - but one had thoughtfully added a chainsaw-wielding cartoon character to liven it up. Meanwhile, it remains to be seen how the government will handle the reality of its experiments with real democracy. Local Government IT in Use

July/August 2010

SPECIAL FOCUS: MORE WITH LESS

Austerity & Ambition Do more, with less. A well worn expression in recent years but one that accurately sums up the current challenge for the public sector, says Prelini Udayan, head of public sector marketing, Adobe UK.

he public sector is both reeling from post election cuts and bracing for more to come in the spending review. At the same time, the political rhetoric for a ‘future fair for all’ and the economic turbulence of a nation in recession means that local authorities, police, ﬁre and health organisations are faced with ever increasing demand – and expectation – from the citizens they serve. Meanwhile, the proposed restructuring of the NHS and subsequent lead role in public health for local authorities will challenge the systems currently in place. A number of pertinent points have become clear in the debate and discussion on the future of government services this year: • • • •

•

The process of government and the delivery of services is complex; Demand for public services from a nation in recession is spiralling; Budgets have been/will be cut; The public sector ICT estate is, in the main, unwieldy and historically developed from a silo rather than a usercentric perspective; The citizen does not understand the traditional boundaries of public sector organisations.

I believe that technology vendors now have a requirement to help government knit together the existing, sprawling infrastructure of the public sector ICT estate. It is no longer enough for the industry to focus on delivering stove-piped call centres, face to face or online solutions with add on mobility. Rather, it is incumbent on the industry and the public sector to work together to build engaging user experiences across all organisations, channels and access devices. Open standards and the current generation of platform independent technologies now enable this transformation. This is particularly essential in building the new interface between health and local government that will be required. All too often the citizen is faced with bewildering and frustrating processes when applying for government services or information – and repeatedly asked to provide the same information time and time again. It is time that the citizen was protected from the complexities of government; there is an opportunity now to fundamentally re-engineer services - from the front line, and from a user-centric perspective.

July/August 2010

Indeed, some of the major innovations in service delivery have come out of the local government sector. Take Southwark’s One Touch service: the aim was to cross sell multiple services from a single contact with the citizen and build a system, incrementally, to enable this through multiple channels. Engaging the end user allows the council to conduct multiple transactions in one contact – which is an undeniable and obvious cost saving. However, moving the citizen progressively from face to face to telephone and then web and mobile transactions, using the same ‘familiar’ system, provides real cost and time saving benefits to both council and citizen. Based on Adobe LiveCycle and the Adobe Flash Platform, One Touch currently makes up to 10 services available in just one easy contact - including council tax, electoral and GP registration, application for housing and council tax benefits, school meals, children’s clothing allowances, parking permits and library cards. According to Dominic Cain, head of client services in Southwark, “Our aim is to look holistically at citizen needs and address all service opportunities in one interaction, not many interactions. “It’s exciting when an application like One Touch so clearly delivers on its promise.” Staff are achieving a 99% accuracy rate on all One Touch forms and Southwark has seen a three-fold increase in the number of services that many citizens access per contact. It has also saved over one million pounds in efficiency savings from these improved services. For example, accelerated processing of housing benefits has cut the process from 36 days to just one and cut related staff training down from two years to two days. Adobe is a technology provider that specialises in providing a layer of abstraction between the complexities of the back office and the user. Adobe LiveCycle can integrate and automate the processes of government service transactions to provide the citizen or business with an ‘abstracted’ but engaging user experience. Adobe LiveCycle can pre-populate forms, intelligently lead the user through the transaction and automatically put new data into back office systems to initiate automated service delivery. Intelligent forms can also be used to underpin new ways of working between multi-agency or organisational teams. Local Government IT in Use

Importantly, the processes are intuitive to developer, service deliverer and user alike. Indeed, I believe that the skill levels to develop integrated services from existing systems are fairly standard in frontline public sector organisations today – there has been such a rich vein of development and innovation over the last decade that most organisations will ﬁnd these skills within their ICT department. It is only recently, however, that the open standards and sophisticated tools have been available to enable these legacy systems and infrastructures to be woven together. The citizen does not need to understand what lies beneath, they need only to be able to trust the delivering organisation to keep their private data safe and to deliver the services needed, in a timely and efﬁcient manner. In the new challenges facing frontline organisations from NHS reorganisation this will become more important than ever before. Organisations will need to work together to develop agile systems for collaboration and joint service delivery. Adobe LiveCycle undoubtedly has a role to play here but so too does Adobe Connect – a next generation webconferencing and collaboration tool that allows teams from across an area to work together in virtual meetings to work on documents, view data, and to discuss case loads and strategy. Mid Essex NHS is already using Adobe Connect to enable multi-disciplinary team meetings and case discussions trust-wide and maximise the use of specialist skills – consultants can even log into meetings from home. Plans are also in progress to live stream operations to the local university as part of an ambitious e-learning pilot. In both scenarios security, quality and reliability are key when sensitive patient data is being discussed or viewed. The government has targeted £1.15bn in discretionary areas like consultancy and travel costs. One easy way to reduce travel – and carbon footprint – is to use proven, secure web/video-conferencing tools like Connect. Undoubtedly, technology will still be purchased by the public sector to meet the challenges ahead. But limited public sector budgets will need to be carefully nurtured with business cases focusing on rapid returns - delivering more with less is now imperative.

For a copy of the ‘Beneﬁts Overview of Adobe Customer References’ email: Adobe@lgitu.co.uk

HEALTH & LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Councils Lead Public Health Reform But, asks Michael Cross, who will pay for the new IT interface between councils and GPs? ©iStockphoto.com/Luis Louro

overnment plans for local authorities to step in to the shoes of doomed NHS primary care trusts will pose challenges for local government managers; especially in a time of shrinking budgets. Moreover, as yet, there is little evidence that Whitehall has thought through the IT implications. Under the ‘Liberating the NHS’ white paper published in July, primary care trusts (PCTs) and strategic authorities are to cease to exist from 2013. As widely reported, their commissioning functions will transfer to GPs, working through ‘purchasing consortia’. Ministers hope this will cut NHS management costs by 40%. However PCTs are also responsible for monitoring and planning the health of their populations and planning necessary interventions such as immunisation and screening programmes. According to the white paper, these and other public health responsibilities will transfer to local government. ‘Each local authority will take on the function of joining up the commissioning of local NHS services, social care and health improvement,’ the white paper states. ‘Local authorities will therefore be responsible for promoting integration and partnership working between the NHS, social care, public health and other local services and strategies.’ These new responsibilities will clearly involve coordinated information strategies; and perhaps new IT systems. However while the white paper says the reorganisation will be supported by ‘an NHS information revolution’, it is coy about the details, especially at the crucial interface between local authorities and GPs. As set out in the white paper, the information revolution has two thrusts. The ﬁrst is publishing more data about performance, to help GPs and their patients make more informed choices: ‘Greater transparency will make it easier to compare the performance of commissioners and providers.’ It appears that the NHS Choices website and the Choose and Book electronic referral system are here to stay. Equally encouraging, for the healthcare informatics community,

the white paper makes positive noises about telemedicine and telecare, saying that IT can lead to ‘more efficient ways of providing care, such as online consultations’. More interestingly, the white paper stresses the Conservative manifesto pledge of giving patients full control of their personal NHS files. ‘We will enable patients to have control of their health records. This will start with access to the records held by their GP and over time this will extend to health records held by all providers. The patient will determine who else can access their records and will easily be able to see changes when they are made to their records. We will consult on arrangements, including appropriate confidentiality safeguards, later this year.’ The vision involves several technical challenges. The promise that patients will be able to ‘download their record and pass it on, in a standard format, to any organisation of their choice’, will require much work to fulfil, even within the NHS context. When electronic records expand to include community and social care data, and local government is brought in to the equation, the problems become formidable. However, in focusing so prominently on abolishing PCTs, the government is also abolishing one of the main sources of leadership in electronic health records. Although the picture is patchy, PCTs have been one of the main sources of healthcare IT innovation in England over the troubled past few years. Examples include Salford’s Integrated Records pilot, which has made available shared multidisciplinary records of diabetes patients since 2006 and the recently announced link between urgent care services at Aintree hospital, Merseyside, and 100 local GP practices. This project, claimed to be the largest such scheme in England, is reminiscent of the electronic integration of ‘natural communities’ envisaged in the NHS Information Management & Technology strategy of the 1990s. The scheme relies on the ability to view information from Aintree’s Medway hospital information system on the Emis system used by local GPs. Porting GP-held information into the secondary care setting will give hospital clinicians a fuller picture of a patient’s care, reducing the margin for error and speeding up treatment and waiting Local Government IT in Use

times as well as reducing repeat testing and other duplications of effort. The hospital estimates that access to information will allow the medical assessment unit to handle an extra patient every hour. The white paper implies that patient and GP-led initiatives will achieve the same end result, with less bureaucracy. Although there is no mention of privately held health record systems, the presumption is that they will be part of this future. It is significant that Microsoft chose last month for the UK launch of its HealthVault system of online medical records. An interesting picture of some of the difficulties faced when giving patients control of shared electronic health records appears in the independent evaluation of the NHS Summary Care Record and HealthSpace projects, carried out by a team under Professor Trisha Greenhalgh at University College London. The review, appropriately titled ‘The Devil’s in the Detail’, found little evidence that shared electronic records have yet made healthcare safer or more efficient. In response, Simon Burns, the minister of state for health, told the British Medical Association that the government “broadly” sees a need for patients and clinicians “to be able to access patient records in electronic form”. He said that the effective use of such care records “depends on patients and doctors feeling comfortable with those records rather than them being seen as... imposed as a central part of government”. That’s all well and good, but if the NHS information revolution is to happen, it will require some firm guidance from the centre, especially on technical standards. This sits uneasily with the government’s desire to cut the central bureaucracy and devolve decision making. As the white paper states: ‘NHS services will increasingly be empowered to be the customers of a more plural system of IT and other suppliers.’ More details will appear in an information strategy to be published this autumn. It should be compulsory reading for local authority IT chiefs – after all, if the biggest reform in the NHS’s history goes through, it is they who will have to make it work. July/August 2010

SHARED SERVICES

Outing Shared Services from Back to Front The beneﬁts of sharing services in the back ofﬁce are recognised, but could sharing become a strategic resource for the delivery of front line services? Tim Hampson examines the idea.

hared services. It’s the only game in town, says my contact somewhat ruefully. “When it works, it is fantastic, but I am seeing too many people using it as a way of protecting jobs.” He cites the example of two middle-England local authorities which are moving towards sharing front line services. One of which is tearing up contracts with the private and voluntary sector so that it can bring together some customer facing services under one umbrella. “The costs to them will be enormous, but I’ve seen it before. It’s about job protection and looking after their mates, it has nothing to do with changing culture and delivering a better service.”

And he warns that going it alone will not be an option in many cases, “particularly for smaller bodies, such as district councils, and fire and police authorities”. According to Jackson, shared services are “likely to be part of the more general rethink on what public sector organisations should look like in a world of reduced budgets. In that sense, they should be part of strategic redesign on what is fit for purpose and fit for budgets once retrenchment has worked its way through.”

But, local government secretary, Eric Pickles, has other ideas. He has told town hall leaders to think the unthinkable and end single silo, authority structures.

For services like accounting and ﬁnance, Jackson says that local government must remember that what matters is “good ﬁnancial management” – how ever it’s delivered. It is outcomes that are important, not inputs like having lots of accountants.

In a radical suggestion, he wants councils to share planning departments, legal services, media departments and even chief executives.

“The current approach to support services in local government, of multiple cottage industry-like functions, is no longer tenable,” he says.

Pickles says that the sharing of such services is “especially important for the highest levels and the most expensive people”.

And citizens will benefit by having delivery structures that are more efficient and cost less money to run, and in some cases more effective as they deliver better outcomes. “Where, for instance, sharing allows organisations to provide a more rounded service to people, addressing their needs in the round and only asking them for information once, citizens could potentially get a double benefit,” said Jackson.

Paul Jackson, who was lead author of the local authority finance directors’ association, CIPFA’s, recent guidance on shared services, said that in the context of severe and sustained spending cuts, shared services offer one way in which services might be protected while the costs of running them are also reduced. Jackson has no doubts about the benefits of shared services. “Where skills and investment funds are in short supply, organisations may find that only by collaboration with others will they have access to the CIPFA’s ‘Sharing the gain’ report, tools and guidance are available free at: www.cipfa.org.uk/sharingthegain

resources they need to maintain – or even improve – services be they front or back ofﬁce.”

July/August 2010

“Where back office operations can be run more productively by sharing resources, this will release much needed funds to help protect essential frontline services,” he adds. And he is confident that sharing will save money. “Evidence suggests it can, but it will only be part of the portfolio of cost reduction projects any organisation or sector needs. If approached rigorously, with effective benefit and change managed, there are savings to be had, but effective leadership and implementation skills will be critical.” Local Government IT in Use

Westminster and Hammersmith & Fulham plan to merge education departments. ©iStockphoto.com/Luis Louro

Joint education in the Capital In ground-breaking news, Westminster and Hammersmith & Fulham councils have unveiled plans to merge their education departments. The two boroughs expect the sharing of services to generate 20% savings over the next three years. The two councils are also in preliminary discussions about merging their entire children’s services departments. And it is possible that the NHS and other neighbouring local authorities could also join the two councils to create a wider children’s services commissioning alliance which could be up and running by April 2013. A Westminster council committee report on the proposals concedes that merging two children’s services departments would be more risky than bringing together education provision alone, but such a move would generate even greater savings. The report states, ‘Both councils will need to agree alignment across a number of the more emotive and critical services — statutory child protection, some areas of looked-after children’s services and early intervention services’. Westminster’s, chief information ofﬁcer, David Wilde, says that consolidation will realise efﬁciencies without compromising quality or diminishing localism. And as far as he is concerned it makes strategic sense, especially for the purchase of ICT, “where better use of the market can be made”. He reckons it will be good news for people living in both boroughs: there will be cost reductions and standardisation of the service offering the possibility of joining up of services, and it will save money. Nickie Aiken, lead member for children and young people at Westminster, believes that the changes will improve her council’s ability to support failing schools and jointly commission new free schools and Continued on Page 16.

SPECIAL FOCUS: IT SERVICE DELIVERY

Collaboration & Shared Services The key to efﬁciency? Patrick Bolger, Chief Evangelist of Hornbill Service Management, examines the future of IT service delivery in the public sector.

n the last decade, strategic initiatives like e-government and the Gershon efﬁciency review set a progressive agenda for technology in government, with the mission of “ensuring that IT supports the business transformation of government itself so that we can provide better, more efﬁcient, public services”.

Promoting best practice One of the six principles of e-government was a commitment to “promote global best practice”, which fuelled the adoption of frameworks such as ITIL and the ISO/IEC 20000 standard. While central government was relatively well versed in IT service management (ITSM) frameworks, it took a little longer for other areas of the public sector to embrace best practice. Today, an ever-increasing number of services are being made available online and with IT being placed directly in the public view, ITIL is now widely adopted by all areas of the public sector to manage service delivery and improvement.

Coping with tough times Whitehall departments are feeling the pinch of public spending cuts potentially affecting nearly every sphere. Last year in its study ‘operational efficiency Program,’ HM Treasury said: “Back office operations and IT, led by Martin Read, recommends better management information, benchmarking and review of costs, and better governance of IT-enabled change programmes to achieve £4 billion of savings a year on back office operations, and £3.2 billion of savings a year on IT spending.” It will no doubt be challenging to find such huge savings, particularly when the demand for services in the public sector is increasing and service levels are expected to be maintained and improved. However, organisations should not just resort to outsourcing as a knee-jerk reaction to reducing short-term costs. Innovative solutions can offer ways to maintain service levels and IT service management tools have a critical role to play in delivering efficiencies.

Shared service models both across departments of a single operation or via collaborative use of technology by organisations across geographical areas, as well as ITIL adoption, both separately and combined, can help to drive service efficiency in a number of ways. Annual surveys by the Society of Information Technology Management (SOCITM) show that since 2005, Hornbill has consistently been the fastest growing IT service management software vendor to local authorities, with more than twice as many customers acquired in the sector than its closest competitors. In compiling this article, I sought feedback from our customers in separate areas of the public sector and asked whether their investment in ITSM would enable them to cope with reduced budgets. Despite restricted budgets, many organisations have the confidence and belief that continued investment in best practice this year will enable them to cope with the inevitable reality of having to achieve more with less during the next four to five years.

ITIL adoption Plymouth City Council has gone live with seven ITIL disciplines and is introducing improvements to existing and new processes using elements of both ITIL v2 and v3 with Hornbill’s Supportworks ITSM. Disciplines already deployed include Incident, Change, Configuration, Problem, Request Fulfilment, Access Management and Service Level Management. The ICT Service Delivery Team is currently working on Release, Event and Knowledge Management. “Plymouth City Council is committed to using the ITIL framework. It helps us improve service efficiency, improve system availability, allow prioritisation of services, and ensure better quality assurance,” explains Mel Gwynn, operational service delivery manager at Plymouth City Council. “This enables

or more information on the beneﬁts of best practice service management and shared services on a single technology platform, call: +44 (0) 20 8582 8282 Local Government IT in Use

Plymouth aims to save money and improve services by implementing seven ITIL disciplines

the council to save money while better serving citizens. Supportworks ITSM has enabled us to implement ITIL in a phased manner.”

Shared services Customer Service Direct (CSD) is a publicprivate partnership between BT, Suffolk County Council and Mid Suffolk District Council. The organisation provides a collaborative infrastructure that can support the councils and the services that they provide to the public. The shared services model drives efﬁciencies by uniting resources and expertise. The organisation provides central HR and ICT support functions based on ITIL best practice to the members of the partnership, in a more cost efﬁcient way. At the heart of the support services is a centralised IT desk that uses Hornbill’s Supportworks Enterprise Support Platform (ESP) to support over 6,000 PCs used by employees and an HR support desk supporting over 30,000 local authority staff and a further 40,000 ex-council staff. This model enables the partners to deliver service at a consistently high performance, while also managing costs.

Innovative use of ITSM Despite the bleak projections for IT spending, Hornbill anticipates continued demand for technology that enables public sector organisations to operate more efficiently. The examples above demonstrate that innovative use of service management tools in a collaborative or shared service environment creates efficiencies that enable budgetstricken service departments to manage yet even improve services through an economic downturn. Other examples of collaboration and sharing can be found in some of our Higher Education customers, such as London Metropolitan University where they have gained increased efficiencies from the sharing of the Facilities and IT Service Desks resulting in notable savings and ROI.

www.hornbill.com/gov

July/August 2010

SHARED SERVICES Continued from Page 14.

academies. But she is unequivocal about the ﬁnancial constraints that are also driving the merger. “As spending becomes more and more tight, it makes sense to look at where boroughs across London can share services,” she explains. “Hammersmith & Fulham and Westminster are quite similar in make up, we have a similar socio-economic demographic, so it’s a good ﬁt.”

Kent shared services

and Steria provides shared business services to a growing number of NHS trusts. It currently works with 125 NHS organisations - representing 30% of all NHS trusts, delivering shared business services such as payroll and finance and accounting. The service was created to help NHS trusts streamline back office functions and deliver greater operational efficiency – and enable key staff to focus on frontline care. The joint venture now also delivers the added benefit of sharing proceeds with participating trusts. According to NHS SBS managing director, John Neilson, “This is the first in a series of payments which are earmarked for distribution among NHS SBS clients over the next few years and demonstrates the real value of being part of NHS SBS. The shared services delivery model offers modernisation, high flexibility and cost savings; it’s a model that also clearly works on an operational, performance and return-on-investment basis.”

©iStockphoto.com/ oversnap

In further news, proposals to share services between three councils in East Kent have taken a major step forward, with the appointment of a shared services director. Donna Reed, formerly the director of customer services and business transformation at Thanet District Council - possibly one of the non-jobs Eric Pickles wants to do away with - was chosen for the role unanimously by the leaders and chief executives of Canterbury, Dover and Thanet councils. The shared services project, which is set to generate savings of up £3.5m for the three councils over the next four years, will see a number of different areas being merged. The first of these is expected to be revenues and benefits, IT, building control and customer services. Said Reed, “It’s a really exciting challenge, bringing together the services of three councils and ensuring that we deliver both value for money and the best possible service to residents.” Before any service enters the project, a business case will need to be prepared and agreed that shows at least a 10% saving in the first two years and the level of service that customers would get. The decision on which services progress forward will then be made by each council.

Sharing success in the NHS NHS trusts and organisations subscribing to the NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) are set to receive a share of £1.06m in royalties paid to the Department of Health. Launched in 2005, the joint shared services venture between the Department of Health

July/August 2010

Neilson said that trusts should benefit from operational efficiencies and savings of between 20% and 40%. Aaron Cummins, director of finance at Liverpool Heart and Chest NHS Foundation Trust, said that joining the shared business services “has not only transformed the delivery of our business services, but has also enabled real savings to be reinvested in frontline care.”

Quietly sharing library services South East Library Management (SELMS) consortium is Europe’s largest library system. Comprising 11 councils it delivers library services to over ﬁve million people via a central library management system, Spydus. Civica’s Spydus automates local libraries’ functions and provides web-based lending and mobile access models. The company also provides a ‘hub’ and ‘facilitator’ role which has transformed the authorities’ abilities to share library stock and ICT resources, helping to extract more from their ICT investment and greatly reduce administrative workloads; annual transactions now exceed 30 million on a system with more than 3,000 users. SELMS’ information sharing structure enables consortium members to pool their expertise, circulate their stock faster and increase their records capacity. An Information Group helps members to develop and share best practice in technical aspects of existing and new projects as well as receiving practical advice on new government or regulatory guidelines. The consortium helps each member authority to set up innovative tailor-made service capabilities while respecting budgetary constraints and local library identities. Local Government IT in Use

©iStockphoto.com/Gary Martin

Diane Chilmaid, SELMS chair and business support manager for Kent County Council’s Libraries & Archives service, said: “SELMS member authorities have a learning forum and library management system enabling them to improve customer service and provide a basis for service innovations. We believe that the consortium provides a model for best practice and a framework for different library authorities to share their resources effectively too.” Civica claims that SELMS’ success could provide directors of different local government services with a clear business case for service transformation as well as a practical framework and common processes for making such change happen. Civica libraries director, Simon Parkes, commented: “With the continued tightening of public ﬁnances, consortium models are going to become essential in sharing resources and common systems to radically change service costs. We’re a facilitator as well as a service provider for SELMS, promoting a forum for members and technical innovations - as much as providing a managed service platform. “We see the SELMS consortium as a robust and pragmatic template for different departments and regions – not just library authorities – to build effective shared services programmes that might otherwise have struggled to demonstrate a return on investment or map an effective path to transformation and the common processes needed.” The consortium comprises: lead authority Windsor and Maidenhead, Brighton and Hove, Buckinghamshire, Milton Keynes, West Berkshire, Wokingham, Medway, Kent, Hammersmith & Fulham, Hertfordshire and Slough.

©iStockphoto.com/ Steve Shepard

VIEW OVER WESTMINSTER

This Brave New World Tim Hampson reports from Westminster, where the new government is ﬁnding its feet after a seismic change.

t is hard to imagine justice minister, Kenneth Clarke, being a shrinking violet. He is better known for shrieking violence towards opposition party members.

But for now, ministers are spreading their wings – they can still blame everything on the previous government – while grabbing supporting headlines and leaders in the newspapers.

But the ebullient Clarke was in a coquettish mood when he recently addressed a meeting of legal beagles at King’s College in London.

Local government secretary, Eric Pickles, has declared war on wasteful town halls.

“Like most ministers I am a slightly displaced person,” he said. “I was prepared to take ofﬁce in another department, if we won, and like my entire ministerial team we found ourselves in a department which we were not prepared for.”

He wants to call time on so-called non-jobs and urge greater vigilance over how every taxpayer pound is spent: “What does an audience development officer do?” said Pickles. “Is a cheerleading development officer what taxpayers want? How many transformation officers and business development directors does one council need?”

His revelation reveals the somewhat surreal nature of the new parliament. This is in itself not unusual; new governments often have a halcyon, honeymoon period. The foot-sloggers in the Commons and Peers are still to find their voices. Again no surprise. Labour is far from disarray, but as able a job as stand-in leader Harriet Harman is doing, its MPs have their eyes set on the only vote for them that counts, the one which will choose the next leader of the opposition. Party members will have to endure a breathless series of hustings throughout the summer and wait until the autumn before the winner emerges. Then the business of realpolitk can begin in earnest. Many of the Lib-Dems seem to have the bemused expression of Stan Laurel wondering what “a fine mess” Oliver Hardy had got him in to. But pinch them and they realise they are in government and it is not something they want to give up easily. Some are itching to rock the coalition’s boat, but with the promise of a fixed term parliament they are keeping their hands still for the moment.

Pickles says that it can cost £5,000 to £10,000 to place an advert in some national newspapers. “Often classifieds are filled with job titles many people would struggle to understand and many more that appear superfluous to the key services local people look to their council to provide.” The government wants councils to publish job vacancies online, in an open and standardised format, for anyone to use, republish and mash up without charge. There will be no public sector monopoly - the jobs data can be used by anyone, from commercial recruitment, newspapers to pressure groups. He also wants councils to publish details of all contracts online and has even promised that what is good for the goose is also good for the gander – promising to publish all contracts of more than £500 that his own department makes. Under the current rules nothing more than £25,000 need be published.

On the whole the Tories are a happy lot – enjoying the sound of sabre rattling by ministers promising savage cuts to the public purse. And several are sitting in the tea rooms with smiles, enjoying the sight and sound of a Lib Deb minister announcing yet more reductions in government expenditure.

Sharp-witted Birmingham Selly Oak MP, Steve McCabe, says the measure is being introduced without a debate on the cost to local authorities of this new government imposition. “It may be a good thing for everybody to be able to view this information online, but is it joined up government when local councils, like everyone else, are being asked to make huge cuts?”

Of course there will come a time when the phoney wars ends – and that is likely to be when the spending review is published in October. Then everyone will have something to get their teeth into.

He added, “I question whether - with 35 percent of the population of Birmingham not having online access - it is a justiﬁable extra cost and whether there has been any analysis of what those costs are?” Local Government IT in Use

But Pickles didn’t get to where he is today without learning how to duck and dive. It is looking increasingly unlikely that the £500 limit will be a legal requirement – his hope is that councils will “see the benefits for residents and grasp this agenda”. Council websites look set to become crowded places – what with details of all job vacancies, council minutes, members’ expenses, detail of expenditure, senior salaries, rubbish and recycling rates and hygiene standards at all food outlets the job of a council webmaster looks secure. Chancellor George Osborne, who wasn’t even born when Ken Clarke was first elected to parliament, has also been flying large kites. Not content with suggestions of budget cuts of 25% he wants civil service departments to draw up plans for 40% cuts too. As part of the most fundamental review of public spending seen in Britain for a generation, the chancellor has instructed ministers to draw up separate “menus” of where the axe would fall if they implemented cuts of 25% or 40%. The coalition has promised to safeguard spending on the NHS and overseas aid, while education and defence will be given preferential treatment. In a letter to ministerial colleagues, George Osborne and his side-kick, Danny Alexander, said that the education and defence departments would need to outline savings of 10% or 20%. Some see the exercise as a softening up of the ground before the real battle over budgets begins later in the year. The government of course regards it part of an “open and honest” attempt to prioritise spending across Whitehall. One Tory-shire back bencher likes what he is seeing and hearing – for years he has railed against the profligacy of Labour, deriding most of its MPs as being “pinkoes, whose only other job was as a polytechnic lecturer”. But, he confides, “When will these cuts mean a reduction in the tax I pay? What’s the point of all this pain if there is no gain. When am I going to be better off?” A very good question indeed. July/August 2010

COMPANY & PRODUCT NOTES

ICT suppliers face squeeze

T companies are trying to put a brave face on the government’s drive to cut down costs. It won’t be easy though, as the coalition has imposed a £100m cap on its IT spend. Suppliers are biting on the bullet, tightening belts and hoping that the light at the end of what could be a long tunnel is indeed brighter. Ovum analyst, John O’Brien, says that a total of 35 IT and business process outsourcing contracts in central government are valued in excess of this £100m limit and are at risk – in theory at least. O’Brien said, “Cutting expenditure on these major deals by 10-15% over the next few years would amount to between £270 million and £408 million being removed from current central government IT spending annually.” The new government will, he says, seek “quick wins” where possible. TCS’ record £600m contract with the Pensions Administration and Delivery Agency - signed with the previous Labour administration just weeks before the general election - will be one of the ﬁrst facing renegotiation. Beyond this, and the controversial National Identity Register, the government can be expected to begin targeting existing IT programs that are perceived to provide limited value, or return on investment, such as Serco’s £100m+ BusinessLink contract with HMRC.

Cable & Wireless, meanwhile, is warning of short tern pain. It is warning that proﬁts will be down and is blaming June’s emergency budget. But, “Nevertheless, we are supportive of the overall approach being adopted by government and believe that our unique product set provides us with signiﬁcant opportunity in this area over the medium term,” said a company spokesman. Ovum, meanwhile, says that government policies will not spell an end to the £8.5bn a year public sector IT service market. Says O’Brien, “For those prepared to stay the course, however, new opportunities will emerge. David Cameron has thrown down the gauntlet to the private sector to assist Britain’s economy return to growth. This means that the new government will be seeking ideas and solutions from the private sector.”

But it is not all gloom. Capita is conﬁdent it can make hay out of the cuts. Chief executive, Paul Pindar, said that there is buoyant demand for outsourcing and shared services across the public sector - particularly so in local government.

However, the evidence suggests that the government is getting tough on IT suppliers. As LGITU went to print the government announced it had sacked the Trusted Borders supplier, Raytheon. Minister for Immigration, Damian Green, said that delivery of the next critical parts of the Trusted Borders programme is already running at least 12 months late. “On top of this there remain risks of further delays, and there is no conﬁdence in the current prime supplier - Raytheon Systems Limited - being able to address this situation,” he said.

Cloud development

ArcGIS 10

ostcode Anywhere is making its web services platform freely available, allowing developers to upload their own data to the cloud and build custom services around it. The company is offering an Apple iPad for whoever develops the most impressive service. Its ‘MyServices’ platform will allow developers to rapidly build APIs and web services around any data either hosted on their own machine, or uploaded to the cloud. Sales and marketing director, Phil Rothwell, said: “UK local authorities are now obligated to publish all expenditures over £500 by 2011. Using My Services this can be achieved in a few minutes. Moreover, authorities can rapidly build any kind of services they want around the data, in a fraction of the normal development time. The data can be brought to life by mashing it up with mapping visualisations.” www.postcodeanywhere.com/myservices

He said: “Whilst the current pressures on public spending may potentially affect growth in the short term in a small number of our trading activities, the need for our public sector clients to achieve substantial cost efﬁciencies offers signiﬁcant opportunities for the group going forwards.”

July/August 2010

SRI UK has launched the latest iteration of its ﬂagship Geographical Information Systems (GIS) platform, ArcGIS. ArcGIS 10 updates all aspects of the software and introduces signiﬁcant new features to help users perform their GIS work faster. It enables users to author data, maps, globes and models on a single integrated platform across desktop, server, web and mobile. Through the automation of processes and integration with other critical systems, such as CRM, ArcGIS 10 will allow organisations to make better business decisions based on more reliable analysis ultimately delivering a superior customer service whist driving down costs. www.esriuk.com/arcgis10 Local Government IT in Use

STOP COUNCIL TAX FRAUD: Data Discoveries has developed search software that could stop fraudulent council tax discount claims. The software simultaneously checks a series of databases, such as the electoral roll and postal records and, it is claimed, could help local councils recoup millions of pounds for their increasingly squeezed budgets. It is estimated that 300,000 households across the UK fraudulently claim a single person’s discount on their council tax. www.datadiscoveries.com

TRANSPARENT GOVERNMENT: Unit 4 Business Software has announced that it is one of the ﬁrst software suppliers to develop linked data and standards to support the government’s Transparency Programme. This project is closely aligned to the company’s policy of creating systems that enable organisations to deal with constant change. Linked data is exceptionally versatile and could for instance be used to slice and dice information to analyse spend on individual services, or individual suppliers, or who buys what and where. GIS could then be overlaid against this to provide visual geographic reference. www.unit4.com BETTER MODELLING: Autodesk has announced the availability of Autodesk Topobase 2011 products and Autodesk MapGuide Enterprise 2011 software. “Our 2011 infrastructure portfolio helps transportation, water, energy, and land development professionals use information to better plan, design, build, and manage infrastructure,” said Paul McRoberts, senior director, Infrastructure Modeling Product Line Group, AEC solutions division for Autodesk. www.autodesk.com/purchaseoptions/

GIS & MAIL MERGES: Councils can now instantly pinpoint and contact all residents affected by road closures, ﬂoods or health hazards following the development of an innovative solution by GGP Systems. The company has combined computer mapping and property ID technology to create address lists allowing instant mail merges for notiﬁcation or consultation letters and other direct communications. The new software saves council staff time when communicating with local residents and businesses as it uses a spatial search to easily and quickly identify and select address data. www.ggpsystems.co.uk

COMPANY & PRODUCT NOTES

Microsoft launches HealthVault

he national controversy about electronic health records has heated up with the UK launch of Microsoft’s HealthVault. The web-based personal repository for health data appears to align closely with the new government’s plans for putting individuals in control of their health records. Microsoft’s announcement closely follows publication of an independent evaluation of the NHS projects to create electronic summary care records (SCR) and the HealthSpace personal health record website. The evaluation concluded that there is little evidence that the projects, launched under the £13bn National Programme for IT in the NHS in England, have achieved the beneﬁts intended. Take-up of HealthSpace in particular has been almost non-existent. Simon Burns, the minister of state for health responsible for the IT programme, recently told the British Medical Association that the government “broadly” sees a need for patients and clinicians “to be able to access patient records in electronic form”. However he said that: “Using SCRs effectively depends on patients and doctors feeling comfortable with those records rather than them being seen as something that imposed as a central part of government.” The minister’s statement seems to open the way for commercial providers, led by Microsoft, to enter the health records market www.healthvault.co.uk

Supscription gazetteer

azetteer specialists, Aligned Assets, is offering ‘Software By Subscription’ allowing users to pay a simple, annual subscription fee for the ongoing use of their software, without incurring any initial software costs. Annual subscription for gazetteer management systems, web services, data matching and integration tools will entitle users to regular software updates, ongoing legislative compliance and support.

ONLINE MARKETPLACE FOR CARERS: Opportunity Links has launched the PA Register, an online marketplace to bring together Personal Assistants (paid carers) who are looking for work, and those looking for a PA. With 30% of those eligible expected to receive an individual budget by April 2011 to spend on their care as they wish, Opportunity Links expects to see a big increase in demand for Personal Assistants. The PA Register will match the variety of needs within a local community – from someone requiring an hour a week for help in the garden to someone requiring 24 hour support for a child with special needs – with services available from personal assistants. www.opportunitylinks.co.uk/pa-register.htm

www.certero.co.uk

E-RECRUITMENT ON G-CLOUD: The latest version of Abacus e-Media’s online recruitment solution for the public sector, Recruit, has been selected as a ‘Quick Win’ trial in the government’s G-Cloud programme. Abacus has set up the Recruit SaaS application platform, and has partnered with BT which is providing the Cloud Infrastructure Platform. Recruit provides a comprehensive online recruitment solution from initial job speciﬁcation and online advertising, through to shortlisting, candidate communication, interview management, reference control and contracts, together with talent bank and integration to HR and payroll systems if required. WEB TOOL TO IDENTIFY FORCED MARRIAGES: The government’s Forced Marriage Unit has launched Forced Marriage E-learning, an online interactive resource and training tool to help housing ofﬁcers and other frontline professionals to identify and appropriately support potential victims of forced marriage. www.fmelearning.co.uk

“By moving to Software By Subscription, we have completely scrapped up-front software fees and as a consequence have been able to lower our year-one pricing by an average of 60 percent across our entire product range.”

PARTNERSHIP FOR SOCIAL CARE TRANSFORMATION: Charteris has partnered with social care software specialist, CareWorks, to offer and deliver CareDirector, a multichannel and customer-centric social care solution for social care transformation projects. Under the agreement, Charteris will deliver CareDirector as best-of-breed social care case management system for the delivery of personalised services and selfdirected support. CareDirector is a social care case management system that enables the public to direct their own social care in the way that suits them best.

www.aligned-assets.co.uk

www.charteris.com

Managing director, Dinesh Thanigasalam, explained, “The public sector has been particularly badly hit by the recession and it seems likely that budgets are going to continue to be squeezed.”

SAVING MONEY ON PC USAGE: Certero has launched PowerStudio2.0 for organisations looking to reduce carbon emissions and save up to 43% costs in power consumption. The product is a backward-compatible web-based management application that allows organisations to easily apply power policies and profiles across all their desktops. These include setting alerts to place all office PCs into hibernation, standby and shutdown as well as automatic start-up for maintenance during out of office hours. It also has the ability to wake up remote PCs via web browser, mobile device and email.

Local Government IT in Use

SIMPLIFIED TREASURY MANAGEMENT: BluTek has launched a software package enabling organisations to implement many of their treasury management practices. Blubrik TMS extensively automates everyday ﬁnancial management tasks, freeing up personnel for more added-value work such as analysis and risk management. It provides an ideal, low-cost solution for housing associations, local authorities and other property developers seeking adherence to professional treasury management practices. consultancy@BluTek.hostpilot.com

A LIFT FOR TRADE WASTE COLLECTORS The new MAYRISE Trade Waste Management system provides an easy to use solution for recording business customers, allocating waste containers and managing collection rounds. Designed to work with a council’s centralised address database and Ordnance Survey mapping, the system can also be used to market waste collection services to other organisations. www.mayrise.co.uk

July/August 2010

EMERGENCY SERVICES

Six constabularies aim for single view

ssex, Cambridge, Bedfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Hertfordshire police, with the Ministry of Defence, have selected Infoshare’s ClearCore Enterprise Data Quality Suite to deliver a single person view of all police records. “We began to look into a unified database as part of the outcome from the Bichard Inquiry which, together with MoPI, aimed to assess and improve the effectiveness of the police intelligence-based record keeping,” explains chief inspector Andy Gratrix, CIO at Cambridge Constabulary, who led the initiative. “By combining the forces of six constabularies, we could not only deliver economies of scale but we could create a highly accurate and effective system that would ultimately help us better protect the public.” Each constabulary previously had multiple disparate data systems housing information on criminals, crime recordings, intelligence, domestic violence and child protection. These data silos could not ‘talk’ to each other or be cross-referenced and often contained duplicate or inaccurate information. NORTHGATE BUYS CARM POLICE DUTY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM: Northgate Public Services has acquired the CARM Police Duty Management System from Concorde Informatics. CARM resource management is used by more forces than any other in the country, including the Metropolitan Police and West Yorkshire Police. It enables forces to manage complex shift patterns and to search for available officers with a specific set of skills at any time. It can also analyse the use of overtime budgets and quickly record and monitor absence. POLICE CAPTURE COMPUTER SAVINGS: The chief executive of the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) has outlined plans to save £200m by 2015 through “better use of technology and procurement”. Peter Neyroud said that the agency will make IT savings of £25m during 2010-11, out of total savings of £1bn across all areas of the agency by 2015. “Our challenge is to do more with less by being more intelligent and efficient in how we deliver policing services. Collaboration, sharing and central procurement will be the hallmarks of how the NPIA helps the police service to achieve significant savings in the future.” The NPIA had £30m cut from its budget in June. Question marks over its future should be resolved in the autumn spending review.

July/August 2010

CONTRACT ROUNDUP

CONFIDENTIAL PERSONAL INFORMATION STOLEN FROM KENT POLICE: Kent Police is taking remedial action after the Information Commissioner’s Office found it in breach of the Data Protection Act. An investigation concluded that policies and procedures regarding the transportation and storage of personal information away from the office were limited in scope and required further clarification. The action follows the theft of documents containing confidential personal information from the boot of a police officer’s car parked overnight at a residential address.

EMERGENCY CONTRACTS METROPOLITAN POLICE SERVICE has extended the contract with its prime information and communications technology provider, Capgemini, until December 2015. The contract extension renews an existing seven-year IT support contract between the two organisations, signed in 2005. The early renewal will enable the MPS to lock agreed cost savings in place and set budgets with greater certainty. Capgemini will continue its partnership with its main subcontractors, BT and Unisys. BT’s services include upgrading and rationalising the MPS’ voice and data networks, and Unisys supports application management, data centre hosting, desktop and server break fix. CLEVELAND POLICE AUTHORITY has contracted Steria to deliver the force’s control room, community justice and back-office functions through a shared service partnership that will deliver £50m in cashable savings. The contract is worth £175m over 10 years. Under the partnership agreement Steria will deliver services including call handling; support for the preparation of criminal case files; and shared business services covering finance, HR, payroll, commissioning and fleet management. DEVON & CORNWALL CONSTABULARY has completed a pilot of Airwave’s Academy training service. The constabulary found that Academy improved officers’ operational effectiveness while reducing the amount of time they need to spend in the classroom. NATIONAL POLICING IMPROVEMENT AGENCY has contracted ZF Electronics to supply secure access technology for its Framework Portal - ZF Electronics products will be listed as NPIA-approved devices for authenticating access to the Police National Database and Police National Computer. WILTSHIRE FIRE AND RESCUE SERVICE is looking to Becrypt for remote working, data security and government compliance. The fire service is implementing Becrypt’s remote Disk Project, Connect Protect and Enterprise Manager IT security solutions to enable compliance with the Government Code of Connection requirements for connecting to the Government Connect Secure Extranet (GCSX). Local Government IT in Use

ACCESS, the joint venture company set up by GLASGOW CITY COUNCIL and Serco, has extended a £50m eight year contract with Cable&Wireless Worldwide - meaning the company will continue to provide a complete communications infrastructure to the council, connecting some 37,000 employees across more than 300 GCC sites. As part of the council’s continued efforts to improve communication through new media, C&W Worldwide provides free home internet access to some children with disabilities. BIRMINGHAM CITY COUNCIL has upgraded its contract with ESRI to give citizens quick online access to interactive maps and details about local services and activities. The ‘My Local Information’ service enables residents to search for an address or postcode and to locate and gain information on local facilities and services. BIRMINGHAM has reached an agreement with Tempus to expand and upgrade the broadband wireless network operating in the Aston area of Birmingham so that additional applications, and revenue streams, will be possible. The Aston Pride network went live in 2005 funded by the EU and Birmingham Council but from 2011 the network will need to be completely self-financed. BRIGHTON & HOVE BUSINESS CRIME REDUCTION PARTNERSHIP has selected Hicom’s NBIS (National Business Information System) to monitor and track the activities of criminals operating within the local area by sharing intelligence and information on offenders with other crime reduction partnerships on a national level. BURNLEY, PENDLE, HYNDBURN and RIBBLE VALLEY councils are jointly developing a website which gives a voice to residents. ‘Feedbackonline’ was created with the financial support of NHS East Lancashire. Lancashire County Council also played a big role. The website follows residents saying they want to know what’s happening in their local area and to have a say on issues which are important to them. BOURNEMOUTH BOROUGH COUNCIL has installed GeoInformation’s Cities Revealed heat loss property database as part of its Go Green campaign. The heat loss survey has been incorporated within Bournemouth’s My Property web pages to help residents find out how heat efficient their own homes are and how to reduce heating bills.

CONTRACT ROUNDUP

DECC - Department of Energy and Climate Change - has chosen to license the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) to underpin address data for its National Energy Efﬁciency Data framework (NEED). The NEED project aims to provide property level information on building energy use and performance. The initiative involves linking a number of major public sector datasets describing business and residential buildings with gas and electricity meter-points.

EAST OF ENGLAND education and local government has signed up to a regional infrastructure deal to boost networking and efﬁciency. The shared service will be delivered jointly by JANET (UK), the education and research network, and E2BN broadband services. The three year £6m contract provides a tenfold increase in broadband capacity. HAMPSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL has extended its ﬁve-year relationship with authentication authority, CRYPTOCard, to roll out two-factor authentication for education staff across participating schools in the county. The county’s teachers will be able to access education services, such as SIMS. net which holds comprehensive information on staff and pupils, easily and securely. LAMBETH COUNCIL has deployed Novell Sentinel Log Manager to comply with the Government Connect Secure Extranet Code of Connection (CoCo). The council worked with Novell partner, Securiam, to implement the solution. It also expects to use the solution to help meet future compliance requirements such as PCI-DSS, as well as transform the way it handles IT security issues.

CAERPHILLY COUNTY BOROUGH COUNCIL has selected MetaCompliance Advantage, from Baronscourt, to underpin its user awareness and accountability objectives. User awareness is fundamental to the council’s information assurance objectives and the requirements for automating this area are driven by the increasing importance of data handling and data security. CENTRAL OFFICE OF INFORMATION has selected the Accellion Secure File Transfer Solution. Prior to deploying Accellion, the COI relied on email to share information or, for ﬁles exceeding the government’s 10MB limit on email attachments, information was copied onto an encrypted media and sent via courier - costly and lacking the level of security the COI required. FTP wasn’t a long term option as it was too technical for the average user and required ongoing IT involvement. CIRENCESTER TOWN COUNCIL has asked web design agency, Foundation, to build its new website providing a voice for local people and a link to local clubs and organisations to help promote their online presence. It will carry online booking of sports activities, purchasing of local goods and services, a blog facility and videos about the town and its attractions. COUNTRYSIDE COUNCIL FOR WALES has contracted aerial survey specialist, Bluesky. The framework contract covers the provision of a range of data capture, data conversion and cartographic services to support the council in its role as statutory adviser to the government.

LEICESTERSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL has entered a two-year Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Loughborough University’s Information Science and Computer Science departments. The project will build a workforce trained in information and knowledge management, to help implement Leicestershire’s information management strategy. LINCOLNSHIRE county and district councils have a contract with powerPerfector for the supply and installation of 21 Voltage Power Optimisation units across the region. The contract will enable the region to make significant carbon reductions easily and efficiently; the result of rolling out powerPerfector technology across the Lincolnshire area will be an impressive carbon saving in excess of 530 tonnes and financial savings greater than £88,000 per annum. LINCOLNSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL has selected CACI’s care management software solution to provide its adult care services, including home support and learning disability community support services, with automated homecare rostering, mobile working and payroll functionality. Based on CACI’s OfficeBase and inTOUCH technology, the solution will be used by 650 home support workers, coordinators and managers. LONDON GRID FOR LEARNING has upgraded its data centre network with a high-performance infrastructure from Juniper, including routing, switching and security solutions. The upgraded network enables LGfL to provide bandwidth-rich multimedia teaching and learning services, including videoconferencing with museums and specialist learning centres; content streaming; and online managed learning resources to all 2,600 primary and secondary schools in greater London. Local Government IT in Use

LEE VALLEY REGIONAL PARK AUTHORITY has bought a ClarityLive centralised Leisure Management Solution for a large portfolio of sites including four London 2012 venues that will be managed by LVRPA as part of the Olympic games legacy. The fully integrated software incorporates a range of integrated, state of the art management, sales and service tools, all accessible through a single point of sale (POS) interface.

LONDON LIBRARIES CONSORTIUM is using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) for self-service, stock management and extended opening. The most recent RFID installations are in Wandsworth, Hackney, Enfield, and Redbridge where supplier, Axiell, has provided Bibliotheca Venus machines which offer easy-to-use self issue and return facilities. MET OFFICE has given a contract to Hitachi Consulting to oversee and implement a solution built on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 platform, delivering an overall centralised system aiming to improve business processes. The solution will be utilised across the Met Office to offer customers better service and support the management and the sale of weather-related services and consultancy. NORTH LINCOLNSHIRE COUNCIL is using a budgeting, planning and forecasting system from COA Solutions to help it to monitor and report on its financial performance. Sarah Milburn, principal accountant at the council, comments, “Our budgeting and forecasting was previously done using outdated spreadsheets which were slow and cumbersome. These spreadsheets could only be accessed by the finance team, were prone to error and, as the formulae could be overwritten, they were vulnerable to corruption.” SURREY COUNTY COUNCIL is looking to improve the quality of citizen records across its customer, employee and supplier databases using Experian QAS’s contact data management software. The move is expected to allow the county’s Northgate social care system to better keep track of citizens and care professionals while ensuring that contact details are always accurate and up-todate, removing duplicate and conflicting information. It should also ensure citizen data across the county is kept in a uniform format, while enabling council staff to verify that address details are correct according to the National Land and Property Gazetteer and the national Postal Address File. July/August 2010

CONTRACT ROUNDUP

NORTH LINCOLNSHIRE COUNCIL and vehicle tracking company, Masternaut Three X, have developed an advanced web-based telematics solution to help maximise refuse collection and gully cleansing performance. The system helps to manage the council’s ﬂeet of 66 refuse and highways vehicles and the investment is largely self-funded through operational cost savings.

NORTHERN GRID FOR LEARNING has chosen Blackboard to supply its learning platform framework. More than 400 primary and secondary schools and colleges across seven local authorities in the North East can use Blackboard to deliver content, engage learners and enhance the student experience, all while achieving significant cost efficiencies. OLDHAM & ROCHDALE councils are using Agilisys to provide them with Hornbill’s Supportworks ITSM Enterprise in a shared service deal. Agilisys intends to streamline its service offering with one centralised shared service desk providing support to several clients, initially the Unity Partnership, (a joint venture with Oldham Council) and the Impact Partnership (a joint venture with Rochdale Council) with other private company clients to follow, resulting in significant efficiency gains. TORBAY COUNCIL is using mapping and reporting software from Mayrise Systems to deal with a record number of potholes following the winter freeze. Using a MAYRISE Highways system, reported potholes are logged before being automatically scheduled for inspection and, depending on severity, issued with a work order. Inspectors equipped with PDAs pinpoint pothole locations, record defect details and create reports to update the central system.

PLYMOUTH CITY COUNCIL is upgrading its on and off-street parking facilities with a number of solutions from Parkeon, including the introduction of contactless card readers in new Parkeon Strada pay & display terminals being installed in three of the council’s car parks. POOLE has contracted Parkeon to replace the town’s existing mains operated Pay & Display machines with 71 StradaRapide parking terminals, all bar one of which will be solar-powered. The Stradas will be monitored via Parkeon’s Parkfoli centralised management system on a PC in the council’s offices which generates a warning or alarm whenever a machine requires attention and enables monitoring of parking activity in real-time. POWYS COUNTY COUNCIL is to roll out Civica’s electronic workflow and document management. The enterprise-wide programme for 3,000 employees aims to help the council save £5m by streamlining processes over the next five years. The corporate system will be implemented using a thin client configuration to maximise performance and ensure integrity of data on home-based and remote workers’ devices. PROCUREMENT SCOTLAND has selected Kcom for one of four places within a new public sector framework agreement which will promote competitive tariffs for traditional inbound and outbound telephony, covering geographic and non-geographic call routing and associated network services. ROTHERHAM METROPOLITAN BOROUGH COUNCIL has implemented IBM business analytics software to help transform its budget planning process. IBM’s software is also helping the council to identify formula and policy interpretation errors. Prior to using IBM Business Analytics, finance staff were building multiple Excel spreadsheets to capture and manipulate financial data to produce the latest budget plans. SANDWELL METROPOLITAN BOROUGH COUNCIL is implementing Impact 360 Workforce Optimisation Software from Verint Witness Actionable Solutions. The software comprises three core solutions: workforce planning and scheduling, quality and performance management, and customer feedback surveys. It will support more than 170 agent seats across Sandwell’s three citizen contact centres. SOUTH EAST LIBRARY MANAGEMENT CONSORTIUM has contracted Civica for a central library management service as well as facilitator support. The company’s dual role has transformed the 11 member authorities’ abilities to share library stock and ICT resources, helping to extract more from their ICT investment and reduce administrative workload. Annual transactions will exceed 30 million, with more than 3,000 users overall.

July/August 2010

Local Government IT in Use

CITY OF LINCOLN COUNCIL has been supplied with a 3D model by GeoInformation. The solution utilises Cities Revealed’s Building Height data, and was created using photogrammetric software and delivered in Google SketchUp. This was overlaid with high-resolution aerial photography to provide a realistic view of the city that can be observed and assessed from any viewpoint.

SOUTH STAFFORDSHIRE COUNCIL has implemented Asset4000 from Real Asset Management to manage its £20m of assets. The RAM solution, valued in the region of £20,000, enables the council to achieve IFRS and SORP compliance, flexible reporting functionality and full integration with its existing COA Solutions financial management system, providing improved audit preparation and streamlining processes. SOUTHEND-ON-SEA BOROUGH COUNCIL is working with Vodafone One to provide employees with new communications services. The unified communications service allows the council to integrate its fixed, mobile and PC-based communications so they work seamlessly together. This means workers will be able to log in and out of any fixed or mobile phone with a PIN number and access one voicemail for all mobile and landline calls. SUFFOLK COUNTY COUNCIL has launched its stakeholder engagement programme with help from Pavilion Interactive. An online community for 1,000 council staff and partner agencies aims to provide a voice for all involved. Comprising a collection of interactive media, such as videos, blogs, presentations and articles, the online community enables staff to comment on, discuss and debate topical issues such as government initiatives or department news. WELSH ASSEMBLY GOVERNMENT has chosen to license the National Land and Property Gazetteer as its source of property information and forthcoming planning application registration and tracking system. It was felt that only the NLPG could provide the accuracy and depth of national coverage as well as the reliability required. The Planning Application registration and tracking system is an extension to TRAMS (Trunk Road Agents Management System), a hosted and managed solution provided by Exor Corporation. WEST SOMERSET COUNCIL has selected consultation software from INOVEM so that it can interact with, and feedback to, the public across social media channels.

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