Local Government IT in Use - May/June 2010 issue by Informed Publications Limited

TECHNOLOGY & T H E TRANSFOR MAT I O N

FRONTLINE SERVICES

LGITU Local Government IT in Use M a y / J u n e 2 01 0

LGITU Live - C I P FA a n d S o c i t m : W h a t d o e s c o a l i t i o n m e a n for frontline services?

ICT Under Scrutiny LGITU â&#x20AC;˘ May / June 2010

- Where next for public sector technology strategy?

Election Night Chaos - Wo u l d e l e c t r o n i c v o t i n g b e b e t t e r ?

Back to the Hybrid Future - An organisation fit for the 21s t century? P L U S : Vi e w o v e r We s t m i n s t e r, N e w s U p d a t e , I n n o v a t i o n & C h a n g e , P r o d u c t Notes & Contract Round-Up

CASE STUDIES

F E AT U R E S

PRODUCTS

COMMENT

L GI T U Local Government IT in Use

On the Cover ISSN 1368 2660 Editor & Publisher

Contributing Editor

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

May / June 2010

Back to the hybrid future for technology in the 21st century. See page 14. © iStockphoto.com/UGUR KOBAN

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

Special Correspondent Michael Cross E: Michael.Cross@infopub.co.uk Advertising & Circulation

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

Design & Layout

Informed Publications Ltd

Printers

DC Graphics

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

In this issue...

Comment No rose garden for the public sector.

News Update

2-6

LGITU Live: Coalition and Frontline Services Helen Olsen reports from LGITU Live’s latest panel interview discussing the impact of a new government - and new cuts - on frontline services.

7-8

An Historical Alliance The sun was shining on the first day of the new coalition government, says Tim Hampson, but there are austere times ahead.

Special Focus: Personalisation Local and regional information hubs point the way for creating online marketplaces for adult social care services, says Gavin Cameron.

ICT Under Scrutiny Michael Cross looks at what the new government means for public sector technology.

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

Special Focus: Innovation & Change The new coalition will usher in an age of ambition, innovation and austerity for the public sector, says Alan Banks.

Publisher of: LGITU, the Tomorrow’s Town Hall newsletter and www.UKauthorITy.com

Election Night Chaos Would electronic voting have stopped the scenes of chaos at some polling stations on election night? Tim Hampson investigates.

Back to the Hybrid Future Michael Cross finds that Microsoft’s vision of the 21st century organisation has a 1990s feel.

Product Notes

Published by:

© Informed Publications Ltd, 2010 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.

Contract Round up

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.

Advertise in LGITU t: 01983 812623 e: Ann@infopub.co.uk Subscribe Now - see inside back cover

May/June 2010

Local Government IT In Use

15-17

COMMENT

NEWS UPDATE

No Rose Garden... T

hey may never have promised us a rose garden, but the public sector didn’t expect a bed of thorns. A tsunami of change and budget cuts is heading towards us. The first warning signs were seen in pre-election promises, firmed up in the coalition agreement and then laid bare for all to see in £6bn cuts on Monday 24th May. What will the budget bring? And the spending review? Things are happening at breakneck speed. Becta, its people and jobs, gone. ID cards, canned. And a Great Reform on civil liberties, libel and privacy on the horizon. (No word yet on the final axe for ContactPoint, however.) Quangos are for the chop. A recruitment freeze is immediate. Consultants and travel are to be slashed and property ownership questioned. War has been declared on profligacy and waste in the public sector. ICT suppliers to the sector will suffer too. £95m in IT ‘savings’ with £1.7bn targeted from renegotiating deals with ‘major suppliers’ - many of which are ICT companies.

Right here, right now: £6.2bn cuts hancellor, George Osborne, and chief secretary to the treasury, David Laws, announced immediate cuts of £6.2bn to government expenditure and “Whitehall waste” ahead of the emergency budget later this month.

Coming just 10 days after taking office, the savings are the first step in the government’s efforts to tackle an unprecedented £156bn deficit and focus on driving out Whitehall waste - “while protecting the quality of key frontline services” - ahead of the Spending Review later this year. Communities and local government will be expected to make £780m of cuts, and local government itself a further £405m. Additional £1.165bn savings will be made in local government by reducing grants to local authorities to reflect their contribution to the £6.2bn. The government will also remove the ring-fences around over £1.7bn of grants to local authorities in 2010-11, to give them ‘greater flexibility to re-shape their budgets and find savings in the areas set out above, while maintaining the quality of services to their customers’.

This new coalition means business.

Outside of local government the savings are allocated across different areas, many of which will clearly impact on frontline organisations, suppliers to the sector and the use of technology:

Is it a bad thing? Not necessarily. Prosperity breeds, if not complacency, at least reluctance to challenge the status quo. Adversity, on the other hand, often breeds innovation and team spirit.

• £1.7bn from delaying and stopping contracts and projects, including immediate negotiations to achieve cost reductions from the major suppliers to government;

The public sector is being shaken up. How it responds will determine how it is shaped in years to come. Teamwork, innovation and a commitment to change will be essential to deliver the challenge: keep on supplying high quality services, but lower your costs.

• £95m through savings in IT spending;

Innovation has long thrived in the sector, but teamwork – outside the immediate service silo – has proven difficult to deliver. It is now or never. Attitudes must change, services must finally be joined up and the sector as a whole must work together. However, as the LGITU Live panel warns (see page 7), taking people with you on this journey of change may be the hardest part. Viewers agree: 92% of the audience say that public sector culture is a block to change. Strong leadership will be needed to make sure everyone moves forward, together and with hope. For change we must. The cupboard is bare: wrote the outgoing Treasury secretary to successor, “I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left”. Helen Olsen, editor

• £1.15bn in discretionary areas like consultancy and travel costs; • £170m from reductions in property costs; • at least £120m from a recruitment freeze across the civil service for the rest of 2010-11; • £600m from cutting the cost of quangos; • £520m by reducing other lower value spend. Following David Laws’ resignation, Osborne and new chief secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, are re-examining all spending approvals made since the 1st January 2010, “to ensure that they are consistent with the government’s priorities of good value for money”. Communities secretary, Eric Pickles, said, “The spending decisions we have outlined show our determination to help tackle the immense public deficit the new government has inherited, whilst shielding council services like rubbish collections and social care. Councils have already Local Government IT In Use

Photo courtesy of the Prime Ministers’ Flikr stream

made big efficiency savings in recent years. Central government needs to follow that example. We are putting tough controls on Whitehall spending. A radical scaling back of the scope and interference of quangos and putting power with councils and communities will deliver significant savings, ensure services are meeting the needs of the people that use them and cut out waste.” The devolved administrations will have the option of making savings this year or deferring their share of the savings, which totals £704m, until the next financial year. Savings will be driven by a new Efficiency and Reform Group, whose board will be chaired by minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, Francis Maude. The group will have the power to make sure departments work together to tackle waste and improve accountability across a range of areas, including ICT spend, procurement, advertising and marketing spend, and civil service expenses and recruitment. “This group will assist departments in renegotiating contracts, and it will oversee an immediate freeze on unnecessary spending on consultancy, advertising and new ICT spend over £1m,” said Osborne. He warned that harder times were to come: “Even tougher decisions await us in the Budget and the Autumn Spending Review if we are to restore responsibility after the years of Labour extravagance and mismanagement.” www.hm-treasury.gov.uk www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk

Daily News : Daily Headlines Keep up with the headlines. Get UKauthorITy.com daily news alerts direct to your inbox

www.UKauthorITy.com May/June 2010

NEWS UPDATE

Big Society IT policy takes shape

The great repeal

he government is to press ahead with the Conservative manifesto commitment to publish ICT contracts in full. This is one of several transparencyoriented Conservative manifesto commitments to make it in to the Coalition Programme for Government, published this week.

Queen’s Speech confirmed a (Great Repeal) Bill to ‘roll back TtheheFreedom state, reducing the weight of

As expected, the programme announces the cancellation of the national identity scheme and the Photo courtesy of the Prime Ministers’ Flikr stream ContactPoint database, but Other promised measures include is silent on the National Programme for IT extending the scope of the Freedom of in the English NHS. Information Act. This is likely to include Several measures in the programme taking in bodies such as the Local originated in the Conservative IT Government Association, Maurice Frankel, manifesto, published earlier this year. head of the Campaign for Freedom of These include creating ‘a level playing Information, said yesterday. field for open-source software’ and large None of the Cabinet Office ministers ICT projects being split into smaller appointed by the new government has components. been officially handed the transformational There are several ‘free data’ requirements, government portfolio. However the ‘free data’ agenda and other digital society including a new ‘right to data’ and for new sets of data on healthcare and crime to be issues are likely to fall under the purview of Nick Hurd, appointed minister for civil made available. All such data will be society in the Cabinet Office. The required to be made available in an ‘open Conservative Hurd (the fourth generation and standardised format, so that it can be of his family to be elected to parliament) used easily and with minimal cost by third had been shadow minister for charity, parties’. social enterprise and volunteering. He is Several new transparency measures apply likely to be the front-line ministerial face of specifically to local authorities, which will the coalition’s ‘big society’ programme. have to publish meeting minutes and local Launching the ‘Big Society’ Mr Cameron service and performance data, as well as announced “the start of a deep and all items of spending above £500, and serious reform agenda to take power away ‘contracts and tender documents in full’. from politicians and give it to people. We However the only reference to electronic know that when you give people and health records the Conservative manifesto communities more power over their lives, more power to come together and work pledge to put patients in charge of making together to make life better, great things decisions about their care, ‘including happen.” control of their health records’.

BECTA goes: The department for

ID cards to fade out with summer he government has moved quickly to abolition identity cards. Keeping Telection promises, home secretary, Theresa May, has published the Identity Documents Bill that will end the scheme and destroy the linked database, which contains the biographic and biometric fingerprint data of card holders. The government aims to have the Bill pass through parliament and enacted before the parliamentary recess in August. Cancellation of the scheme could save both the public purse and the citizen up to £9bn. The 15,000 people who have already paid their £30 to gain a card will not get a refund. The BBC reports that some 60 staff working on the scheme for the Identity and Passport Service in Durham have lost their jobs. The role of 3

May/June 2010

the Identity Commissioner will also be terminated. Public panels designed to scrutinise the identity cards scheme have already been disbanded. Cancelling identity cards will save the taxpayer around £86m over the next four years once one-off costs like decommissioning costs, contract termination and asset write-offs are taken into account. It will also save ongoing operation costs, creating a gross saving of more than £800m over ten years, which would have been funded through income from fees. Supplier contracts - totalling £1.1bn - will now need to be unpicked. Contracts include one for £385m with CSC and a £265m deal with IBM. Local Government IT In Use

government imposition on citizens that has increased in recent years through legislation and centralised programmes’. The Freedom of Information Act will be extended to provide greater transparency of public affairs, regulation into the use of CCTV tightened and the Scottish model for the DNS database will be adopted. Criminal justice, anti-terrorism and libel law will all be reviewed and reformed. Prior to the Queen’s Speech, deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, said, “It is outrageous that decent, law-abiding people are regularly treated as if they have something to hide. It has to stop. “So there will be no ID card scheme, no national identity register, no second generation biometric passports. We won’t hold your internet and email records when there is just no reason to do so. CCTV will be properly regulated, as will the DNA database, with restrictions on the storage of innocent people’s DNA.” education will be targeting £670m in cuts, including £80m from closing the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency and other savings in DfE quangos. Stephen Crowne, Becta chief executive, said that cutting the organisation was a mistake: “Our procurement arrangements save the schools and colleges many times more than Becta costs to run. Our Home Access programme will give laptops and broadband to over 200,000 of the poorest children.”

Economic ‘wrong turn’: Trade union, Unite, was quick to say that the cuts are an “economic wrong turn”. Gail Cartmail, Unite assistant general secretary for the public sector, said, “While the cuts, such as reductions in civil servants’ travel, management consultants and quangos, may appear to be peripheral to the central deficit debate, this is the harbinger of some very painful cuts that will be come in the Budget on 22 June and in the comprehensive spending review in the autumn.”

CBI welcomes cuts: Richard Lambert, CBI director-general, welcomed the spending measures as “painful but necessary steps to demonstrate the UK’s seriousness about tackling the deficit. Just as private sector firms had to take strong action to cut costs during the recession, so too must the public sector.” He adds, however, that there is still “considerable scope to make even greater savings by re-engineering public service delivery”.

NEWS UPDATE

Pickles targets ‘fat cat’ councils The new communities secretary in Britain’s first modern coalition government is no stranger to local government - and certainly not short of ideas for reforming its perceived shortcomings. Eric Pickles, 58, is former Conservative leader of Bradford Council and as a shadow minister has held the local government portfolio since 2002. Despite his bluff, northern, end-of-pier image, Pickles is a fervent moderniser and is one of the originators of the ‘Big Society’ theme of the Conservative manifesto.

Pickles is also technologically aware; during the election campaign he was one of the Conservatives’ highest profile Twitterers. The MP for Epping and Ongar joins a cabinet team that can be expected to be ruthless in pushing through spending cuts in the emergency budget expected by the end of June. Over the years Pickles has repeatedly pledged to tackle “fat cat councils”.

No unitaries for Exeter, Norwich and Suffolk Secretary of state for Communities and Local Government, Eric Pickles, has called a halt to unitary restructuring plans for Exeter, Norwich and Suffolk. “When the priority must be to tackle the immense public deficit we have inherited, it is ludicrous that taxpayers’ money is being wasted imposing a council reorganisation in Exeter and Norwich,” said Pickles. “This government made it clear in its coalition agreement that reducing unnecessary spending would be part of how we cut the deficit. Today I am pulling the plug on this expensive distraction and saving the taxpayer £40m of restructuring costs.

“Councils in Devon, Norfolk and Suffolk will now be able to concentrate on delivering services to their communities and achieving genuine savings for the local people who elected them.” An urgent Bill has been introduced in parliament to revoke the orders that create the new unitary councils. Subject to parliament the aim is to enact the Bill by the summer to give certainty and stability for councils’ budgets. Mr Pickles has also called a halt to the consultation on proposed changes to Suffolk.

ash up Warwickshire: Warwickshire IPFA toolkit - weapon in the battle for M County Council has challenged efficiency: A new easy-to-use visual C hackers and the tech community to prove tool that allows councils to track the the value of opening up its data on the opendata.warwickshire.gov.uk site. It is making many of its previously unreleased datasets - on everything from the number of school exclusions to bridge height restrictions - freely available to the world in general. A new Apple iPad is up for grabs for the best idea. Warwickshire’s competition follows moves from councils in London, Lincoln, Lichfield and Kent to make data freely available for reuse.

performance of their services and to compare them to those of other authorities will be launched by CIPFA in September. The Value for Money Toolkit, developed by Somerset County Council, helped Somerset move from a two star rated council to a four star ‘improving strongly’ authority in just three years. It will help councils trying to identify areas where efficiencies can be made as funding cuts bite after the general election.

We’re the solution not the problem, says IT industry uppliers of IT systems and services to the public sector have reacted with concern to the government’s announcement that it is seeking big savings in its ICT spend. The main theme is that the Treasury should instead be looking to IT as a source of savings particularly through outsourcing.

According to Ferenc Szelenyi, EMEA vice president of public sector services at Dell, “The government should be more concerned with commissioning the right outsourcing services for each sector. Managers in the public sector should turn to IT outsourcing at a time when improving efficiency and cutting costs is imperative.” Meanwhile, Sureyya Cansoy, associate director at ICT industry body, Intellect, says, “Freeing front line staff for administrative burdens using technology can mean resources are used more efficiently without harming the quality of the service. “Although change programmes and technology have an upfront cost, they can deliver significant long term savings and efficiencies that could make an appreciable difference to the UK government’s structural deficit over medium to long term,” she adds. Intellect commended the government for seeking efficiencies and said that its members were ready to work with government. Cansoy urged government to follow a ‘do it once’ approach - sharing services and re-using assets. “We are keen to see progress on the government ICT strategy and other cost-saving programmes which the industry and government have worked on. In due course we want to move on to discussions of how ICT could be used more effectively to enable real savings in the operational costs of public sector delivery.”

www.ggpsystems.co.uk

Transforming Britain’s public services

With its class-leading GIS and gazetteer software, GGP Systems is playing a vital role in improving public services. Providing the very latest solutions for managing and delivering spatial information, GGP has an unrivalled 16-year track record in successful system implementation and support across the UK public sector. Call us now on 020 8686 9887

NEWS UPDATE

Management consultants’ tips for cuts new Management Consultancies Association (MCA) policy paper, ‘We can cut the deficit: Ten proven ways of reducing the public sector deficit while improving public services,’ sets out ten suggestions for cutting the public sector deficit.

The paper, which has been circulated to senior figures within the three main political parties, suggests how public procurement could be reformed, the value of built assets unlocked and back office functions made more efficient. MCA says that the policy tips suggested by its members could save the government over £25bn each year while protecting and improving frontline services. Major savings identified include £11bn savings across London by increasing government agency collaboration, £8bn which could be saved by sharing services, and over £6bn which could be saved by applying Lean principles to the NHS. Contributors to the report include Alsbridge, Atos Origin, Bourton Group, Digital Public, EC Harris, Navigant, PIPC and Pricewaterhouse-Coopers.

abour Government archived: The Lcopies National Archives has published online of key government websites from

E-waste from UK wrecks lives in Africa

the Labour government. Government information published in the weeks before and immediately after the general election has been documented.

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ http://nds.coi.gov.uk

ibre optic roll out: BT is to expand its Fcover roll out of fibre-optic broadband to more than two thirds of the UK. Originally the company’s target was 40% of the population by 2012, but it now aims to spend another billion pounds to cover 66% by 2015. The total cost of the fibre roll out will be £2.5bn, which BT says is the largest such investment in the world that does not rely on public money. The initiative should make the UK one of the best connected countries in the world. e’re all going offshore: The National W Outsourcing Association has predicted a surge in both public sector offshoring and outsourcing, and has urged the new government to air caution, saying the government ‘must get its approach to outsourcing contracts right in order to meet objectives’. The prediction came on the publication of the NOA’s quarterly Outsourcing Reputation Index. www.noa.co.uk

www.mca.org.uk

Community broadband in the north orth Yorkshire villagers are to benefit from high-speed, next generation broadband thanks to a new community project by NYnet and NextGenUs UK CIC.

NYnet has provided fibre-based internet to within striking distance of the villages of Newton-on-Rawcliffe and Stape where it is beamed wirelessly over 24km to outlying homes and businesses by community interest company, NextGenUs UK CIC. Community service provider, Beeline Broadband, delivers the internet connection. The project hopes to tackle the social and economic disadvantages resulting from a lack of internet access in rural areas. Residents will now be able to access a broadband connection with up to 10Mbps upload and download speeds. Resident, Mike Steele, says, “The broadband connection has made an incredible difference to my life. It has reduced my working hours and given me time to keep in touch with my family who are spread all over the world, via web cam.” Elderly resident, Norah Moxon, uses the internet to do her grocery shopping, order online prescriptions and arrange doctor appointments without having to worry about paying per minute. She says, “The internet provides a window to the world and brings the outside inside. As a result of the new service, I have embraced technology as I would rather have the benefit of it than be afraid of it. This has made a huge difference and I now feel less isolated.” NYnet, formed by Yorkshire Forward and North Yorkshire County Council with funding from the European Union, provides a super-fast internet network to ensure North Yorkshire is not ‘left behind’ by the rest of the world in the next phase of the internet revolution. 5

May/June 2010

Local Government IT In Use

ollowing a BBC3 documentary that revealed IT waste belonging to prominent UK organisations had been dumped in Ghana, government-supported e-waste disposal specialist, Remploy e-cycle, is urging senior decision-makers in the public sector to make sure they know exactly where their old computer equipment is being sent. The programme ‘Blood Sweat and Luxuries’ showed boys as young as five risking their lives to salvage scrap metal from computers to sell for as little as 5p. Some of the equipment was marked with the names of Westminster College, University of Surrey, Wandsworth Borough Council, South Hampstead High School and even West Yorkshire Police.

Cinderella resource he ‘Cinderella resource’ – aka information - could be key to public sector success in managing austerity, says Socitm in a new report on information management.

In ‘Managing information: managing the lifeblood of the organisation’, Socitm says that, while technology has increased our ability to harvest, process and store information, the ability to manage, control and exploit it has failed to keep pace. One unfortunate consequence is that almost all the known routes suggested for the public sector to achieve more with less – be they shared services, flexible working, customer self-service, re-engineering services, or even the latest fix, cloud computing – require their employees and customers to have easy access to top-quality, reliable information. ‘The tendency of public sector organisations to overlook the management of its information, and the training of managers and staff in how to handle it, will, therefore, compromise their ability to deal effectively with the current crisis,’ states Socitm’s report. www.socitm.org.uk

implify data: The director of information policy and services at the National Archives, Carol Tullo, said that the public sector needs to make information more easily accessible to people to achieve efficiency. She said organisations could deliver more for less if they “provide access to information and enable others to use it... If we empower and provide easy routes and simple routes without barriers to this wealth of information that we create in the public sector, and allow others to add value to that and to innovate, then we can strive and drive for innovation.”

NEWS UPDATE

Data matching identifies fraudsters Sophisticated data matching between councils, the police and the health service has helped track down thousands of benefit scroungers - and the Audit Commission has called for a greater sharing of council and other public sector data to track down even more fraudsters. The National Fraud Initiative (NFI), the UKwide antifraud programme, helped to trace £215m in fraud, overpayments and error in 2008/09. NFI compares information from 1,300 organisations including local authorities, the police, the NHS and nearly 100 private companies. In 2008/09 it helped to trace £183m of fraud and overpayments in England alone. A similar initiative in Wales ondon’s going wireless: Boris Johnson, mayor of London, has confirmed plans to deploy wireless internet across the capital by 2012, in time for the summer Olympic Games. The plan would see the installation of Wi-Fi access points in every lamppost and every bus stop across the capital, and has already won the backing of 22 borough councils in London. Despite revealing the ambition, the mayor didn’t reveal the programme’s cost, or whether it would operate on a pay-as-you-go business model.

ritons wise up to online security: Britons are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of taking steps to stay safe online, Ofcom has said. While cyber crime levels continue to rise, the latest research carried out by the regulator found that four in five adults who make use of social networking sites allow only their friends or family members to see their own profile. This compares to the figure of just 48% recorded back in 2007, suggesting more people are waking up to the dangers posed by online fraudsters.

tracked down £4.5m of fraud and overpayments.

See it. Experience IT.

In one case Salford City Council identified a taxpayer who had been receiving the single person discount since 2001. The person’s partner, who should not have been disregarded for council tax purposes, had lived with them throughout the period. The NFI also helped to track £84m in pension fraud. Data matching helped South Tyneside Council identify one pension overpayment totalling £30,000. Following a pensioner’s death, his stepgrandson had fraudulently collected pension payments for some years. www.audit-commission.gov.uk

ritons spending more time than ever B online: The amount of time the average Briton spends on the internet has more than doubled over the past three years, says the UK Online Measurement Company. The typical internet user in Britain now spends 22 hours and 15 minutes online each month. The rise of 65% on 2007 usage is attributed largely to people making use of social sites. uick check for websites: Chief Q executives should be asking three key questions about their websites now that most customer interactions are online, states a new briefing from Socitm Insight. These are the cost of failed visits to the council website, the proportion of all enquiries now coming in via the website; and the top ten things people come to the council website to do. www.socitm.org.uk tweet too far: Kerry McCarthy, Labour’s winning candidate for Bristol East, allegedly breached electoral law by giving details of a constituency postal vote count to her 5,700 followers on Twitter. The matter has been referred to the police.

Matching voters to homes espite problems at polling booths, council held electoral registers benefited for the first time from their linkage with the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG). The single address register enables all entries to be linked with a property. Tandridge District Council - using GGP software - one of the first to achieve a 100% adoption of the government directive, had matched its electoral registers to the NLPG in 2005 but spurred on by the MOJ directive in 2008/9 found that 435 properties were missing from the electoral register. In Nottingham, a city with over 130,000 electors, the council found over 1,300 anomalous records in their electoral register - with more than 2,000 missing addresses.

ClarityLive Next Generation Leisure Management Software ClarityLive is the new, fully integrated software that takes customer experience to a new level. It enables you to connect and deliver the most rewarding interactions possible, encouraging customers to do more, buy more and remain loyal. From core leisure management tasks to bar and food service, ClarityLive excels.

Experience ClarityLive now +44 (0) 1732 525870 leisure@claritycommerce.com www.claritycommerce.com

Local Government IT In Use

January/February 2010

LGITU LIVE

Coalition and Frontline Services The political events of the last month have been unprecedented, historic and deeply unsettling for those working in frontline public sector organisations, says Helen Olsen. ocal government, police, fire and health face much of the fallout from the immediate swingeing £6bn cuts to public sector finances. And these cuts are just the start of austere times ahead - the new chancellor’s emergency budget later this month is expected to be ruthless in pushing through spending cuts.

The Spending Review in the autumn will be awaited with trepidation. Meanwhile, whilst action is needed rapidly to put the brakes on spending, the pressure remains firmly on to deliver frontline public services without interruption. Socitm’s Martin Ferguson warned LGITU Live viewers of the dangers posed by a “knee jerk response” to the cuts. The introduction of new policies, such as flexible working, without proper thought being given to the supporting processes and technology could seriously undermine attempts to deliver savings, he says. CIPFA’s Alan Edwards, meanwhile, foresaw danger in both the recruitment freeze and reductions in training. The potential loss of skills from the sector could have long-term repercussions: “We could end up with the wrong people in the wrong place, and negate much of the work done recently in workforce planning and modernisation.” The private sector is just emerging from possibly the worst recession in living memory. Adobe’s Alan Banks reveals that the company had to make painful cuts to its workforce ”within weeks”. He is under no illusions about how hard 20-30% cuts will be for the public sector. “We’d be burying our heads in the sand... to think this won’t affect people’s jobs.”

Opportunity to innovate However, adversity is often the driver of innovation, says Banks. Edwards agrees that there is the opportunity to “think the unthinkable about collaborating with others, about which services we provide or buildings we own... It is an interesting opportunity to focus on innovation, on how we engage with our customers and our staff. I’m a big fan of crowd surfing! It’s an opportunity to look at that kind of technology.” Ferguson also feels there is a major opportunity to be had: “The Total Place pilots have demonstrated the validity of the 7

May/June 2010

whole place approach. The unknown quantity in this is our ability to underpin that with the governance structure and technology.” Understanding the needs and preferences of citizens in localities and redesigning services to span the spectrum of public services is key, he adds. Edwards is quick to point out that councils had been targeting efficiency savings for many years, “the quick wins have already been achieved”. Instead he advocates immediate and ongoing “micro management” as a means of keeping the focus on the bottom line and strengthening both financial discipline and culture. Ferguson advocates flexible working, citizen self service and effective channel management to migrate transactions to cheaper channels. Open data, he says, will also bring opportunities: “Publishing information and data in a way that it can then be used by entrepreneurs to improve services, such as the Brighton bus iPhone app developed at no cost to the council.” For the long term approach to righting the public finances Edwards cites CIPFA and SOLACE’s ‘After the Downturn’ report which focuses on collaboration and shared services, de-layering the public sector to put the energy into localism and local decision making, and reducing the level of inspection and regulation. Redefining the relationship between citizen and state will also be essential, he says. (As LGITU went to press the government had cancelled the Comprehensive Area Assessment - a welcome start to removal of the inspection burden.) Edwards adds that we are “almost bound to see more outsourcing of services... and we probably need to think about the offshoring of services.” The issue of off-shoring generated a number of audience questions around data security, UK unemployment rates and ‘G-cloud’. The panel felt that application of agreed standards would mitigate many risks and Edwards pointed out that banks were no less concerned about security than the public sector. The UK was “a trading nation” he said and the market had much worth exploring. Cloud computing offers significant potential opportunities in terms of scale Local Government IT In Use

The Panel Alan Edwards, council member and chair of the IT panel, CIPFA Martin Ferguson, head of policy, Socitm

Alan Banks, managing director, Adobe UK

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

and cost reductions, said Ferguson. The unknown quantity however was the way in which the private sector would embrace delivery of the concept as it “will inevitably incur a fall in revenue for them”.

Technology-enabled change No one is under any illusion that the status quo can remain. Change is essential but the costs of major structural change can be avoided, says Ferguson, through effective use of technology. “There are ways of working, virtually, in a unitary fashion across whole places without having the physical structure in place.” Indeed, technology enables many of the changes required and Ferguson is enthusiastic about the Conservative’s technology manifesto - which targets the local delivery of services via the ‘Big Society’ programme. Socitm’s ‘seven point plan’, he says, stands alongside these aspirations for “reformed, collaborative and innovative public services, driving the decision making responsibility down to the local level wherever possible”. He also welcomes its “strengthened role for a CIO within government able to press forward with standards that could be implemented at the local level”. The Public Sector Network, he says, and the standards that will underpin it, will need strong central leadership. Alan Banks highights the opportunities heralded by cancellation of some of the “national, heavily invested in, monolithic projects” such as ID cards and modifications to the NHS plan for IT “that struggled to deliver anything of value”. Many trusts, he says, are working with Adobe at the local level to harness back-

LGITU LIVE

office systems and processes with a lightweight integration layer and modern user interface to deliver rapid efficiencies in records management. Web and videoconferencing tools are also being used to enable e-learning and collaboration between multidisciplinary teams - and even universities - in innovative new pilots.

gone; there is a new layer that sits above those back offices that has customer interaction and business process management etcetera with much lower costs. The support charges may well be the same, but the cost of new projects should be lower.”

says, in successfully driving change through the organisation. Edwards adds that finance directors are “right there with IT directors” in being engaged with the necessity for radical change. It is tools like Lean and Six Sigma “allied to technology that will really make a difference” .

Says Banks, “The collapse of some of these national programmes will actually fuel innovation that will allow local authorities to deliver the services that they are under pressure to deliver. I don’t think that there is going to be a negative.”

An audience question on open source prompted discussion around enabling a level playing field and allowing the market to decide on the way forward, rather than mandating a way forward. “There are opportunities, certainly, but the jury is still out on the benefits,” said Ferguson.

Edwards agrees: “This is an opportunity to simplify and change culture. It will be a good thing.” He quotes CIPFA’s top ten tips on using technology to drive efficiency as a useful resource, but adds that the focus will be on payback: “Short payback is going to be really, really important.”

an online ‘Citizen Self Services’ help the public sector continue to deliver high quality services in the face of £6bn cuts? Yes 98% No 2%

Banks recounts his own experience of delivering technology-led change in the private sector only to find that culture was the biggest stumbling block. “It was incredibly difficult to break down some of the fiefdoms associated with the old way of doing things.”

Online citizen self service is oft touted as a quick win in lowering the cost of service delivery. The panel felt that, regardless of potential policy changes, the shift to online service channels will continue.

He warns that, in the public sector “there are thousands of people that need to be taken with you”.

ill shared services across frontline organisations finally become a reality in the first 18 months of this new government? YES 49% NO 51%

CIPFA and SOLACE have put a lot of thought around collaboration and shared services in recent months. Their joint document ‘Sharing the Gain’ looks at how to make these initiatives work across both back and front office – and also between different organisations. It flags the work in Worcester around jointly assessing benefits for the elderly, which involves the DWP as well the county and districts. Ferguson believes that the frontline ICT estate is ready, today, to enable shared services. “The Public Sector Network, which is growing out of our experience with Government Connect, and the ability to bring together and reuse existing assets will be the key to shared services.” A member of the audience asked whether legal barriers to shared services would come down – the panel agreed that, absolutely, this must happen.

“There will be even more focus on how we put transactions online, how we shift channels and how we support those who need face to face services,” says Edwards. “We need to move people over to the lowest cost channel.” He cites the DVLA’s success in running one system driving both online and automated phone services. Engaging the citizen with this change will be key to delivering savings, says Banks, highlighting how Southwark Council migrated citizens to the phone first and then to the same services on the website once they had bought into the joined up service. “The underlying infrastructure and services remained the same to contain costs and retain simplicity.” Ferguson agrees that, in terms of efficiency and savings, “it is absolutely core” to have a common infrastructure and information base. The full spectrum of channels should be available, “but enabled by a common information infrastructure”.

Meanwhile the G-cloud, says Banks, will add impetus to shared services, allowing the creation of “mash ups of best practice and delivery of new services very quickly and innovatively to the citizen – and all that will drive efficiency and cost savings.”

s technology essential to improve Isavings? new ways of working and cost

He questioned the focus of frontline organisations: “Are they there to be technology organisations or to service the needs of local people?” Leaders may decide that ICT is not their core competence, leading to consolidation of the back office or outsourcing.

The frontline ICT estate is ready to underpin radically new ways of working, says Ferguson. “However, the real emphasis needs to be around people and information – look at Vale of Glamorgan, Hammersmith and Fulham – the real key to successful transformational change is the way in which people have been engaged with the change, information requirements addressed and underpinning technology put in place to deliver that change.”

The technology is evolving, and the price point changing, he added, in response to an audience question on whether suppliers would reduce their charges to the sector. “The days of a back office refresh are

Yes 88% No 12%

Leadership from the top is essential, he Local Government IT In Use

s public sector ‘culture’ a block to effecting the changes needed to deliver savings? Yes 92% No 8%

Alan Edwards spoke of both the need to invest in change and for “big political gestures” – such as that just witnessed in the coalition - to generate trust. Strong leadership combined with big gestures of trust and responsibility – such as Worcester’s handing over of a shared trading standards service to a district – would be needed, he says. Martin Ferguson feels that there is, increasingly, an appetite from the top for change. Edwards agrees and commends the health service initiative, QIPP – quality, innovation, productivity and prevention – for placing the importance of the quality and prevention agendas alongside the innovation and productivity ones. “The sense of urgency is creating a real culture and focus for change... It’s not just about cost reduction; we can drive quality at the same time!” But how do you get members on board with this change, asks one viewer? “Tell them the stories, show them the people,” advises Ferguson. Take them out to see the successes, adds Edwards. There is no doubt that there are enormous cultural challenges facing the public sector in what will inevitably be difficult times. However, it is clear that our panel believe that change is not only possible but desirable. Technology will be a key enabler and must go hand in hand with savings in the radical redesign of public service delivery we now need. The current crises may be just opportunity to “think the unthinkable” and take a step change in public service delivery.

View LGITU Live now www.UKauthorITy.com/LGITUlive Coming soon: 6 July Online citizen and business services May/June 2010

VIEW OVER WESTMINSTER

An Historical Alliance They never promised us a rose garden. But the sun was shining on the first day of the new coalition government, says Tim Hampson. ©iStockphoto.com/S. Greg Panosian

ave and Nick were once again in front taken by a Liberal Democrat there can also of lecterns, but this time in the garden be found the foundered career of a Tory of 10 Downing Street holding a press politician who for the last few years has conference. They looked for all the world been marching to the beat of David like they were taking part in an al fresco Cameron’s drum. They dreamed of the day version of the television debates for the when Gordon Brown would be usurped prime ministerial candidates. But, once from office and their feet would slide under where there three, now stood only two. the table of in a ministerial office. Now And no one asked where Gordon Brown such people, who had spent long hours was. travelling the country making the same speech endless times, must The prime minister and his reflect on why a hated and deputy, with their new derided political opponent haircuts and smart cut suits, has taken their place above looked and sounded like rival the salt, has ministerial managing directors of privileges and they after software companies making years as a shadow a presentation to a trade government spokesman association. All they lacked have now become a was an electronic pointer backbencher? And as they and PowerPoint. ponder their fate no doubt Dave’s new world had begun they will ask how did David the day before. In what Cameron lose a 20 point could become a metaphor electoral lead in less than Photo courtesy of the Prime Ministers’ for his administration, as he Flikr stream 12 months? headed to Buckingham The reality of the election result was harsh. Palace to meet the Queen and ask consent Without enough seats for a parliamentary to form a government, his car became majority, the Conservatives had to talk with stuck in London’s rush hour traffic. And while his cortege slowly moved through the the third-placed Liberal Democrats about an alliance that would let the Conservative crowded streets - perhaps as a sign of leader walk into 10 Downing Street. what could have been - a rainbow appeared over the skies above Both Cameron and Clegg were probably Westminster. But, like the attempt to form a damned if they did and damned if they progressive coalition of the left, it quickly didn’t. At the end of the day Con-Lib disappeared. coalition was probably the only game in town. But, if they get it wrong the beaming It is going to take time to get used to a smiles and jokes on the lawn of Downing formal coalition government for the United Street could soon turn to Con-Dem-nation. Kingdom. Despite the fact that Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have much So broken Britain has become brokered experience of coalitions and they are Britain. It is still early days and the new commonplace in local government. government has yet to make many of its expected changes to central government’s The right wing of the Tory party for the machine. moment doesn’t want rain to fall on the parade of the new government – the “left One change, however, has taken place. side of it is wet enough already,” remarked The Department for Children, Schools and one. Families has been renamed the Department of Education and a simple logo replaces The defeated candidate for Montgomery. the rainbow image of the last government. former Liberal Democrat MP, Lembit Opik, In pre-election talks the new education who now seems to be standing for the second past the post party, got quite lyrical. secretary, Michael Gove, requested that officials draw up an action plan to rebrand Quoting Gore Vidal he said, “Whenever a the department. The new design literally friend succeeds, a little something in me looked like it had been drawn on the back dies.” For the first time in 70 years Liberals of an envelope – the days of large budgets were in the cabinet and he was green with to spend on reorganisation and image have envy. gone. On its election in 1997, Labour spent Politics is a dirty business and for every millions creating and restructuring place in the cabinet and ministerial post departments. Such profligacy is now

May/June 2010

Local Government IT In Use

frowned upon. Thus far the government has held back from any major reforms to Whitehall departments, but most expect an axe to be wielded as it gets into its stride. The policy briefs within each department remain largely unchanged. New ministers have been told they must work largely within the current departmental structures. Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg’s office will take on political and constitutional reform and could take responsibilities from the Ministry of Justice. The policy unit, a Downing Street office of political researchers employed to help the prime minister formulate policies, is to be scaled back. But it really is the calm before the storm. Labour’s plans for national identity cards are already on their way to the recycling bin as one of the first acts of the coalition government. Taking a hatchet to the £5bn identity card and its associated databases was a manifesto pledge of both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Continuing to pick the low hung fruit the government also said it would abolish ContactPoint and biometric passports. An emergency Budget will happen on 22 June and the new cabinet promises that it will be ruthless in pushing through cuts. Eric Pickles, a jollier version of Labour’s John Prescott and a former leader of Bradford Council, is the new communities secretary. A moderniser by inclination, his first announcement in taking up the job was a pledge to tackle “fat cat councils”. When things get tough, central government always flails out at local government. And even though prudent authorities have already been drawing up plans and budgets for more austere times, the next 12 months will be painful. In the last few years the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have been the major forces in local politics and even though Labour made gains in the local government elections and won control of 15 more councils, this still remains the case. The Conservatives still have more councillors (almost 10,000) than Labour (5,100) and the Lib Dems (under 4,300) put together. The discussions between members of the Lib-Con coalition and their colleagues in ‘fat cat councils’ could certainly be interesting.

SPECIAL FOCUS: PERSONALISATION

Time to Market Local and regional information hubs point the way for creating online marketplaces for adult social care services, says Open Objects director, Gavin Cameron.

he new coalition government has put personalisation firmly at the core of future plans for sustainable social care. A new commission on long term care for older people is due to start work imminently and ongoing commitment to ‘Putting People First’ was confirmed in a coalition agreement.

This year, therefore, local authorities and their partners will continue getting to grips with adult social care transformation. After a few false starts, a consensus is emerging that access to free and reliable information about services is at the heart of the agenda on choice and personal budgets. Adopting a clear online strategy opens the way for a self-service approach among social care users that drives service change and generates significant efficiencies for adult social care teams. The Department of Health’s Social Care Reform Grants, though generous, are only intended to pump-prime and it is widely recognised that real sustainable change will come through the emergence over time of online markets for social care services.

Getting Started The list of authorities going live with local or regional information and service directory hub websites in support of social care change is growing by the day. Sites such as Barnet’s Social Care Connect (www.socialcareconnect.barnet.gov.uk) provide a single point of entry for members of the public seeking out social care services and referrals across the borough. Built in consultation with local service users, the site provides a simple means of signposting users to services across the full spectrum of need. In Worcestershire, Carewise (www.whub.org.uk/carewise) is intended to be the golden source of care and wellbeing information for local residents. The services covered range from small local voluntary groups to larger commercial services and those offered by Social Care, Health and other public bodies. According to Worcestershire Programme Manager, Andrew Morley, “It’s all about connecting people with products and services in the most effective and friendly way. The site uses the same search and

browse interface that people are familiar with when they shop online at Tesco’s or book a holiday, even though many services are actually free.”

can self-assess anonymously (just to try out) or submit it through the Hub directly onwards to the back-office case management system.

Both sites use Open Objects’ Adult Social Care Hub system to provide the core signposting to all care services that are available locally. The Hub incorporates a data harvesting technology which automatically scoops up information about services from available online and backoffice database sources, and provides a single universal view to all user groups. The information hub quickly establishes a site with the depth and breadth of coverage to provide those looking for services with a rewarding experience.

Secure personalised homepage

Gaining focus The Hub becomes a focal point for service users and service providers alike. Users are empowered to discover answers and service offerings for themselves. Providers are furnished with a new channel to communicate with and attract new service users. For contact centres the Hub is a new resource for resolving inbound queries and providing online referrals. The local authority and partners have a pivotal role in enabling this free exchange of information, and can exercise a moderating role if required to protect the vulnerable. It creates a dynamic that already has many of the positive core attributes of an e-marketplace without the dangers of an unregulated model driven by pure commercial interest.

Social Messaging The option to enrol invites users into a deeper level of engagement with the Hub, offering possibilities to review services and share opinions with other users and to save shortlists. Most important of all, it provides the way for users to open a secure dialogue with service providers to evaluate their options. Users can test the water, revealing details of their requirements and personal data as and when they are ready. Providers benefit from new online referrals and valuable opportunities to promote their services directly to their target audience.

Online Self Assessment A Hub is the natural point through which to channel online self-assessment. New users with a potential social care need Local Government IT In Use

Thereafter, the enrolled social care user or broker has a secure personalised homepage to pick-up recent messages, to view and update their care assessment, to review their agreed support plan, and keep tabs on their budget. The Hub acts as conduit and information gatherer for onwards delivery to case management systems placed securely behind corporate firewalls.

And so to market In this model, the Hub becomes the market, bringing providers and service users together for a free exchange of information about needs and capabilities. It combines the full range of free and paid for services in a common network so users and their advisers can make their own choices. The users have their logins, and so too do the providers, for updating their service information, updating tariffs and booking procedures, collecting service referrals and messages. Users with managed budgets can have their purchases routed back through the managing authority to be paid and accounted for from existing finance modules, while users with cash budgets pay providers directly from the Hub through to their payment processes (online, by ‘phone, direct debit etc.).

Call to action With Social Care Reform Grants into their last year and fiscal tightening on the near horizon, now is the time to act. An online Hub strategy provides local authorities with a vehicle to achieve real behavioural change, and unlock efficiencies and savings by bringing people and services together in a self-service environment.

Online Demonstration Open Objects is offering readers the opportunity of a free demonstration of the Adult Social Care Hub. For further information regarding this offer contact Karine@openobjects.com quoting LGITU. May/June 2010

STRATEGY

ICT Under Scrutiny Michael Cross looks at what the new government means for public sector technology. ith the notable exception of Nick Clegg, the team of coalition government ministers installed in the Cabinet Office is an all-Tory line-up. This has important implications for the new government’s IT policy: the team, under veteran Francis Maude, will have a free hand to apply Tory thinking to the running of the government machine.

Significantly, none of the Cabinet Office ministers appointed by the new government has been officially handed the transformational government portfolio. With the Cabinet Office looking for savings of £79m, and cancellation of the national ID scheme announced in the Queen’s Speech, much of the CIO/transformational government agenda appears vulnerable. However the position is more complex than that. In the new government the ‘free data’ agenda and other digital society issues fall under the purview of Nick Hurd, minister for civil society in the Cabinet Office. The Conservative Hurd (the fourth generation of his family to be elected to parliament) had been shadow minister for charity, social enterprise and volunteering. He is likely to be the front-line ministerial face of the coalition’s ‘big society’ programme, which will include the use of web technology to open up central and local government - provided it can be done for very little money. One clue to the direction being taken is the retention of Martha Lane Fox, appointed by Gordon Brown as digital inclusion champion. Her remit has now been expanded to that of ‘digital champion’, with a brief to advise the government on how to employ digital engagement more broadly, especially where it can lead to cost savings. In a letter to The Observer this month Lane Fox strongly defended the use of IT to modernise administration. “Today’s economic climate lends both urgency and inevitability to the reform of public services. Rapidly accelerating its use of technology will allow government to realise the same efficiency and productivity upswings every other sector has seized as a result of the information revolution and to deliver the kind of responsive, user-friendly and joined up services citizens expect of every other interaction in the 21st century.” 11

May/June 2010

Other clues to the direction of policy lie in the Conservative Party’s IT manifesto, published earlier this year, with its commitment to ‘a level playing field for open source software’ and for large ICT projects being split into smaller components. The coalition’s programme for government published in May made several ‘free data’ requirements, including a new ‘right to data’ and for new sets of data on healthcare and crime to be made available. All such data will be required to be made available in an ‘open and standardised format, so that it can be used easily and with minimal cost by third parties’. Several new transparency measures apply specifically to local authorities, which will have to publish meeting minutes and local service and performance data, as well as all items of spending above £500, and ‘contracts and tender documents in full’. However the programme’s only reference to electronic health repeats the Conservative manifesto pledge to put patients in charge of making decisions about their care, ‘including control of their health records’. Other promised measures include extending the scope of the Freedom of Information Act. This is likely to include taking in bodies such as the Local Government Association, Maurice Frankel, head of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, told a conference on information governance in London. The main hallmark of the coalition regime however is ruthlessness with suppliers. Even before the election, the major contractors were already working on the assumption that they need to offer 20% savings to win new contracts. The Treasury is now looking for claw-backs of 30% on existing deals, either by reducing projects’ scope or extending the length of contracts. This has implications for a number of major IT procurements, both in central and local government, including the county-level procurements at Cornwall, Northamptonshire and West Sussex. Here, the communities and local government ministerial team lead by Eric Pickles is likely to be looking for much more emphasis on shared services. Local Government IT In Use

©iStockphoto.com/Konstantin Inozemtsev

However time is running out for the government’s highest profile shared services scheme, the Public Sector Flex desktop deal signed by the Cabinet Office with Fujitsu. Three years on, only five organisations have taken it up - Cafcass, HM Treasury, the Office for National Statistics and Crossrail - along with the Cabinet Office itself. Fujitsu has beefed up its public sector team to win more call-off deals by the time the framework expires next year. One focus is police forces. However the firm has conceded that Flex is not suited for local government - the ‘restricted’ and ‘confidential’ levels of security insisted upon by the Cabinet Office are seen as unnecessarily high for local authorities. In the slightly longer term, major suppliers are also interested in the possibility of supplying the much talked about G-cloud though any procurement of a purpose built system is a distant possibility. Instead, suppliers such as HP see an opportunity for pay-as-you-go systems operating under the procurement radar. Although ministers see IT contracts as a politically pain-free target for savings, the new hard line will create new risks. One is that, by freezing new procurements and extending the period of existing contracts, the government will actually entrench inefficiencies and inflexibilities. An interesting manifesto for a bolder way forward appears in the paper Open Government, published by the Centre for Technology Policy Research. It makes a familiar case for ‘web 2.0 government’ (without using the term), in language that chimes with the ‘big society’ agenda, pointing out that publishing public data in open, machine readable formats is vital to enable collaboration between public bodies and the commercial and third sectors. However it also calls for a bit more daring from IT projects, suggesting that departments be ‘expected to allow a percentage of their operational budget to be spent on innovative application development... some of which, inevitably, will fail’. The hard men now in charge of central government IT policy are unlikely to look so positively on failure.

SPECIAL FOCUS: INNOVATION & CHANGE

New Government: New Ways of Working The new coalition will usher in an age of ambition, innovation and austerity for the public sector, says Prelini Udayan, head of public sector marketing, Adobe UK. he deep cuts in public spending announced last month will be felt across the sector – from central government to frontline services. Yet the coalition agreement still expects great things from public services in its aim to create a ‘future fair for all’.

It will be a difficult circle for local government, police, fire and health to square. How will services be improved and innovation unleashed when £95m savings in IT spend are targeted sector-wide? For, in truth, many transformation and change programmes are underpinned by technology; many of these new, efficient ways of flexible and collaborative working are only made possible through the power of IT. Undoubtedly, technology will still be purchased by the public sector. However a new spirit of business-case led investment will rightly tie suppliers down to realistically priced, benefits-tracked projects with a close eye on rapid returns. It is imperative that public sector organisations look to preserve and reuse existing assets. There is neither money nor appetite for the ‘rip and replace’ that has traditionally been the approach to IT change. The real need now is to get the public sector working together without having to reorganise physically or build new systems. Here the latest generation of engagement technologies and eForms, such as Adobe LiveCycle Enterprise Suite 2, can be deployed to quickly add an integration layer on top of existing assets.

Unleash innovation & efficiency Technology needs to be seen as a tool to unleash innovation and create agile, cost effective ‘virtual’ teams, swiftly cutting across the traditional organisational boundaries and silos to fundamentally redesign the delivery of services. Technology can enable this change but the vision needs to come from those transforming the services – not, as in the past, the ICT suppliers dictating the possible from the confines of their offerings. Indeed, with the latest generation of engagement tools much of this development can be done in house – back office systems can be woven together

using intuitive technology and business processes. In Southwark’s case, for example, citizen service reps were directly involved in the design of easy to use intelligent forms and automated processes proactively offering citizens multiple services, including housing benefit, from one contact. Once proven with the call centre reps, serving the citizen via the phone, the same forms were made available online for citizen self service. One infrastructure, one service, many channels - creating a new paradigm of public service delivery. The ICT estate across government is extensive but the monolithic contracts of the past should stay firmly in the past. This fundamental rethinking on the approach to technology should be welcomed as an opportunity to put localism at the heart of operations and develop agile solutions accordingly. All ICT spend will be scrutinised like never before. Value for money and return on investment are therefore crucial, as is the innovative reuse of existing systems and data assets in meeting this challenge to drive both efficiency and cost savings. And yes, judicious investment will need to be made. Technologies such as LiveCycle do have a cost, but they enable the value of existing systems to be mined – to make the whole more valuable than the sum of the individual parts – and a flexible, agile platform created for the future.

Virtual teams and collaboration There are areas where obvious cost benefits can be gained. For example, the government has targeted £1.15bn in discretionary areas like consultancy and travel costs. One easy way to reduce travel – and the organisation’s carbon footprint – is to use web and video conferencing tools. The latest generation of these tools allow rich, secure collaboration between individuals and groups in different locations. Adobe’s Connect is the next best thing to meeting in person and is widely in use. For example, the US Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) used this web and video conferencing solution to create a single, secure portal allowing US military personnel on land, sea, and in the air to collaborate and communicate around the clock. The scope of this project is Local Government IT In Use

enormous. It supports 5.3 million users 24 hours a day, 7 days a week around the globe, including airborne pilots and ship personnel. It has hosted the largest ‘live’ meeting in the history of the US Dept. of Defense. Security, availability and quality are paramount for this project. Closer to home, Mid Essex NHS is using Connect to enable multi-disciplinary team meetings and case discussions and maximise the use of specialist skills – consultants can log into the meetings from home if need be. Plans are also in progress to live stream operations to the local university as part of a sophisticated e-learning pilot. Again, security, quality and reliability are key when sensitive patient data is being discussed. And the National Centre for Work-Based Learning Partnerships at Middlesex University is using Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Connect in an award winning eLearning system delivering fully interactive web-based courses - filled with rich multimedia – to students worldwide. In doing so they are saving thousands of pounds in no longer having to travel abroad to deliver training.

A journey of change The biggest challenge now facing the public sector is that of taking people with us on this journey of change. Delivering the cultural change to embrace new ways of working – how we work, how we collaborate with others, how we spend public sector budget and how we deliver public services – requires a shift in mindset for the whole organisation. In the past, all too often, people had to fit their ways of working to the technology – they had to adapt to it, to learn to use it. But technology has now evolved to the extent that it is an ‘intuitive’ tool to be harnessed within that overall change process – part of the journey, a means to engage – rather than an activity, or dark art of its own. Technology today can provide not just the engine for innovation and change, but also the means to engage the organisation with that change. If you would like to discuss how Adobe can help your organisation meet the challenges ahead, email Prelini Udayan: pchiechi@adobe.com May/June 2010

ELECTRONIC VOTING

Election Night Chaos Would electronic voting have stopped the scenes of chaos at some polling stations on election night? Tim Hampson investigates. stonia has it. The US and Indonesia are planning to use it more; and India has had it for some time.

After the chaotic scenes on election night when some constituencies saw unprecedented queues of people trying to vote turned away – even though previous years have seen a higher turnout of voters - there has been a call for an alternative way for people to vote. Could the time have come for electronic voting? SOLACE, the association for local authority chief executives, is urging parliament and the Electoral Commission - that both oversees the voting system and promotes the electoral register - to not only review the situation but also to “rethink the system”. The local government leaders will also be establishing the facts of what happened in areas where people had difficulties voting. There will certainly be some hard talking between them and the Electoral Commission. David Monks, who heads the SOLACE election panel, spoke out strongly against the flawed system under which returning officers had to operate during the election. “We shouldn’t make excuses; some mistakes were made on election day. But given the state of the system despite all our warnings - and the millions of people who did want to vote, we can say that the professionalism of returning officers saved our democracy from an even more severe beating,” he said. SOLACE says that political parties have continuously refused to change the system. It has put forth areas which it believes should be immediately examined. SOLACE wants longer opening times and more days for people to vote. It says that individuals should be able to vote at all polling stations within the same constituency. It is also calling for e-voting, an electronic register, the tightening up of postal voting and registration, and establishment of a professional standard for returning officers. David Clark, SOLACE director general, said, “We have said for many years that this way of voting is flawed and is in danger of abuse. “Yes there were problems at the general election and those will be investigated 13

May/June 2010

and sorted out. The priority is to rebuild and radically reform this antique system.” Meanwhile, Ovum predicts that the problems at polling stations will lead to a reinvigorated push for e-voting. According to senior analyst, Mike Davis, “What we currently have is a nineteenth century process for twenty-first century population. A 24-hour society requires 24-hour voting to meet the aspirations of the electorate who now have an expectation of always on and always available.” He continued: “There are two new elements in the voting population of 2010: those who have learnt to do things just in time and online, and those whom appear to have it in their DNA – the so-called Generation Y.“ Davis is convinced that Generation Y has arrived and it will want e-voting. “It is a fact that in the UK in 2012, every young person leaving school will have had broadband access in their classroom for their whole school life. With the UK’s 61 million population using in excess of 77 million mobile phones to access and pass information, the society that an elected parliament represents will not tolerate pencil and paper and constrained hours.” Davis is convinced that now is the time for the UK to really look at how electoral services are delivered. “There were mixed results in previous e-voting experiments in the UK - and in other jurisdictions around the world - and of course there is the perennial fear that e-voting technology is prone to tampering and fraud. But technologies move on and the fact that many of us will trust our credit card details to the likes of eBay and Apple potentially illustrates that there is new opportunity for e-voting technology.” He also points out that referenda – which the new government seems likely to undertake – can be “more easily and cheaply delivered using e-voting technology alongside the traditional ballot paper”. Meanwhile, the Electoral Commission report into election night chaos focused solely on what happened on the night. Its recommendations resolutely ignore the technology issue, recommending instead that the law be changed to allow people arriving at polling stations by 10pm to vote; improved planning and resourcing Local Government IT In Use

by councils and returning officers, and a reform of the way in which elections are managed. In the past the commission has expressed concerns over the security of electronic voting yet called for the issue to be explored further. A commission spokeswoman said, “We do not believe e-voting can be introduced in a piecemeal fashion. Rather, there should be legislation to introduce a package of changes. “That might include weekend voting, advanced voting and telephone voting, or other methods to make voting more attractive to people.” Key to any of those changes is the rolling out of individual registration, something the previous Labour government resisted because of fears that turnout would plummet - particularly in its own workingclass areas. Nevertheless, it did agree - eventually - to phase in the change, by 2015. It has been suggested that the new coalition might speed up that timetable. But electronic systems are not in themselves a panacea for chaos. At the last US presidential elections the electronic voting and counting machines gave rise to serious concerns. In one county in Ohio about 200,000 voters tapped their choices onto the county’s 5,729 touch-screen voting machines. Election staff collected electronic copies of the votes on memory cards and then fed them into the server that counted the votes. Late at night the server froze up and stopped counting votes. Worse was to come; as the vote was so close, a recount was demanded. A paper copy of each vote cast was demanded, but the volume to be printed was so high that the printers jammed and there was no way of showing how each vote had been cast. The May 6th General Election showed how angry people can become if they feel they are being disenfranchised. How much angrier will they be if a relatively simple, if flawed, paper based system is replaced by something electronic that doesn’t work. The anger expressed by voters in Sheffield and Hackney might be nothing to what could happen if an e-voting machine crashed.

OPINION

Back to the Hybrid Future Michael Cross finds that Microsoft’s vision of the 21st century organisation has a 1990s feel ©iStockphoto.com/UGUR KOBAN

ere’s a tip. If you’re trying to win approval for an IT-based innovation in public services, make sure it has the word ‘hybrid’ in the project description. Lately, the word has evolved from a vaguely pejorative term to one that sums up a flexibility of approach that will be very much in vogue as we try to apply web 2.0 thinking to the public sector.

(The other essential is to ensure that your innovative project requires absolutely no up-front budget, but you knew that already.) Among technology gurus, hybrid seems to have become the buzzword for a fluid organisation that is no longer constrained by organisational or physical structures, where IT has broken down the distinction between being at leisure and at work, and staff are assessed by their outputs, not inputs. There’s much talk of needing to cater for ‘digital natives’ and ‘generation Y’. If that conjures up visions of dotcom-era offices with beanbags and table football in the corner, you’re right. But now, apparently, the hybrid culture is being created by the demands of austerity rather than the temptations of IPO-fuelled plenty. And, unlike in the 1990s, the technology is available to support it. One organisation that’s going big on the idea is Microsoft, which knows a bit about losing market share to more agile organisations. It has published a series of papers* on hybrid organisations - in the public as well as the private sector. Among its predictions is the growth of ‘third spaces’ - places in between the home and corporate centre, where people can work on an ad-hoc basis. The model is Microsoft’s ‘campus’ at Schipol airport, used by 800 people without personal desks. ‘Everyone uses a laptop and the space has no fixed phones at all... The workplace is almost paperless, with people printing on average only one page each per day.’ Since the move from conventional workspaces, Microsoft sales have risen by more than 50%, the company claims. That’s all very well for a homogenous sort of organisation like a software firm. But not every corporate workforce consists of

well-heeled IT-literate types, or operates in neighbourhoods where it’s safe to pull out high-end laptops in coffee shops. This is a world away from the front line of the public sector. Nonetheless, we can expect several of the ‘hybrid’ themes to find resonance. Not least because the Microsoft papers’ authors provide several sticks which the politically attuned can use to attack the public sector - repeatedly characterised as the worst example of the pre-hybrid world. In the words of one: “The public sector still takes a very centralist, top down approach to budgeting and controlling everything from Whitehall. It is endemic. We need to appreciate that there are new ways that citizens and employees want to engage with the government.” For local authorities this means more emphasis on ‘self service’ and ‘cocreation’ of public services. The initial target seems to be in healthcare where, coincidentally, Microsoft is making a big push. ‘The ability to perform remote diagnoses through telemedicine systems will become pervasive, entering the home, just as life-saving remote vital sign monitors are already being used on board aircraft and vessels around the world. And the benefits of online, self-service health records are also being explored, to minimise errors and provide higher, more customised levels of service across different healthcare providers or departments.’ The papers also attack entrenched professional cultures. ‘People who have been doing the same job for any length of time tend to defend the status quo.’ More attractively from a public management point of view, it offers the prospect of near term savings. These come from property costs and, more intriguingly, IT. The property savings resemble the conventional business case for flexible and mobile working. ‘Offices of the future will be smaller, shared spaces for essential networking, with employees encouraged to work in different locations - whether that’s on the road, at home or in local communities.’ However the move to a mobile, hybrid Local Government IT In Use

culture is not enabled just by equipping staff with access to office systems. Rather, says Dave Coplin, Microsoft’s national technology adviser, organisations should embrace consumer-led trends in technology and “Look to enable a strategic IT infrastructure platform that supports a diverse, but seamlessly integrated ecosystem of computing devices and modes of interaction”. A first step is to end the ban on social networking technologies - even if they are “abused” for personal purposes. However the hybrid organisation goes further, embracing the blurring of technology for use for work and in the rest of our lives in general. It’s a familiar moan that in the age of high-speed broadband and entertainment systems like the Wii people have access to better technology at home than in the office. ‘Even though the computing systems we use at work can no longer be thought of as ‘dumb terminals’, their functionality is far more locked down and impersonal than those of our home computing systems.’ The obvious next step is to port organisational systems onto consumer technology by, among other things, making full use of the cloud. The obvious saving, which Microsoft doesn’t quite spell out, is to dispense with desktop systems entirely and require at least white-collar staff - yes, including IT managers - to provide their own kit. Just as they would provide their own briefcase. There’s an idea that might have political traction. However even Microsoft warns hybrid enthusiasts of the need for caution. ‘New initiatives should never be mandatory offer choice and accommodate it. After all, you don’t want to force people into blurring their private and professional lives if they don’t want to.’ The paradox for the public sector is that the only way it can afford to realise the cash saving economies of hybrid working is by being a bit more ruthless and central in enforcing it. * Creating the Hybrid Organisation: Making Public and Private Sector Organisations Relevant in the New Economy. Microsoft 2010. May/June 2010

PRODUCT NOTES

CONTRACT ROUNDUP

IS can save money: GGP Systems has announced a cost saving innovation to its GGP GIS that aims to give councils the ability to save money by employing centralised ‘datastores’. This cuts out data duplication and maintenance of multiple datasets; improves access to accurate and up to date information and helps to deliver significant improvements in operational efficiency, claims GGP. www.ggpsystems.co.uk

losing the gap between health and social care: Liquidlogic has accomplished proof of concept witness testing of a health and social care link for adults’ services under NHS Connecting for Health’s standards for systems integration. The company is working with System C Healthcare, Microsoft and Orion Health to provide a discharge summary from health into social care teams. www.liquidlogic.co.uk

ocial care transformation: Corelogic and Open Objects are providing end-to-end solutions for councils and trusts in delivering adult social care transformation projects. Close integration between Corelogic’s workflow based frameworki case management system and Open Objects’ Adult Social Care Hub portal provides a solution that spans the full remit from back office case management and financial planning right through to public facing web portal with personal budgets management capabilities.

www.corelogic.co.uk

olicing platform innovation: Steria and SAP are partnering to offer SAP’s Investigative Case Management (ICM) for Public Sector, an industry package designed specifically to support police and other related authorities in their efforts to prevent, detect and investigate crime. Steria’s STORM Command and Control application will be integrated with ICM to further extend capabilities with developments for case preparation and custody to address the complete investigative lifecycle and enable agencies with multiple systems and databases to consolidate on one operational policing platform.

www.steria.co.uk

ombat identity fraud: The Cooperative Bank has formed a strategic partnership with GB Group to promote anti-fraud services and identity management initiatives to local authorities and other public sector organisations. The solutions are led by GB’s identity verification solution, URU.

www.gb.co.uk

May/June 2010

EMERGENCY SERVICES

HEALTH

reater Manchester Fire & Rescue has arts and the London NHS Trust has G B signed up to MidlandHR’s iTrent selected Lumension Device Control to software solution in a bid to achieve help protect patient data against virus and greater efficiency in its HR, payroll and talent management processes. ondon Fire Brigade is deploying Lachieve Chloride’s 80-NET UPS systems to continuity of services in its fallback centre in Stratford. The brigade responded to over 32,000 fires between 2008 and 2009, and its continuity of services is guaranteed by maintaining both a response centre and a fallback centre that is used if the primary control room suddenly becomes unavailable. cotland’s eight S fire and rescue services have

malware infections while safeguarding confidentiality and integrity. The software prevents patient data loss or theft by enforcing security policies onto all mobile storage devices and enables the IT team to centrally view and control every device that connects to the trust’s PCs, workstations or laptops. asildon and B Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has gone live with Real Asset Management’s integrated asset management solution, Asset4000, enabling it to improve the accuracy of its asset register. asildon and B Thurrock University Hospital NHS

become the first in ©iStockphoto.com/Phil King Foundation Trust has Great Britain to rolled out BigHand begin operating the Voice Software to 600 users across all Firelink digital communication system. clinical sites. Its implementation has The system is now operational in over allowed the trust to start the process of 1,100 fire service vehicles and 368 fire removing outdated and costly analogue stations with Scotland being first to tapes and to help improve document coordinate emergency responses using workflow. both voice and data communication.

loucestershire Police has installed a oventry PCT, City of Hackney PCT and G C CyberTech Pro voice recording George Eliott Hospital have all signed contracts with EMC Corporation for solution, providing rapid access to all telephone and radio communications that may have taken place with the force’s central control room and contact centre. The CyberTech system is also helping to identify and track the incidence of malicious 999 callers. ancashire Constabulary is Ldesktop implementing Quest Software’s virtual solution, vWorkspace, to manage police officer access to its restricted and confidential networks. Control of sensitive data such as crime scene images, criminal profiles and case details has now been centralised, with the technology ensuring that individual officers receive access based on their level of authorisation. otorola is to supply Airwave with an M eTETRA dual-band solution providing additional capacity to emergency services in the UK. The upgrade to the core emergency services network allows users to expand network capacity if they have access to additional spectrum in neighbouring bands, and makes use of wideband TETRA terminals already deployed in the field. Local Government IT In Use

provision of enterprise content management and archiving services and products, to enable document virtualisation and automatic management. ospedia has contracted JAOtech to H renew patient bedside terminals in over 150 NHS hospitals across the UK. The initial contract is worth $3.25m over 12 months. The JAOtech terminals form the front end for the new Hospedia T3 system which will offer over 20 TV channels and free unlimited outbound calls in addition to free radio, email, web browsing and games. ottingham University Hospitals NHS N Trust has contracted SRC to deploy WinScribe digital dictation solution to a further 1,100 users, across eight clinical directorates. The initial pilot involved over 250 users in the diabetes, infectious diseases, renal and cardiology departments, which span two hospital sites. Within one month of the pilot being rolled out, 21 days had been shaved off some turnaround times and urgent clinical correspondence letters were being completed and sent within 24 hours.

CONTRACT ROUNDUP

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

outh Derbyshire District Council has S selected Northgate Public Services as partner to help improve its corporate

lackpool Council has become the first to adopt Lagan’s new Adult Social B Care application. The solution is based on

services. Under a seven year £22m contract Northgate will take on direct responsibility for finance, organisational development, IT and business improvement, revenues, benefits and customer services. A total investment of £1.9m has been pledged to upgrade IT systems and services. Northgate is also guaranteeing cashable savings to the council of more than £2m.

arnet Council has installed a new EDRM system and Kodak scanners and Morse plc’s Wisdom electronic document and records management system to handle case files in key service areas: children services, adult services, housing, environmental health and human resources.

Lagan’s Enterprise Case Management (ECM) platform and has been designed from a citizens’ rather than government agencies’ perspective, to provide a more joined up and streamlined experience for users. olton Council has awarded Fujitsu a three-year contract worth £7.6m to provide ICT services. The contract builds on an existing seven year relationship and is a continuation of the previous work that Fujitsu has carried out with the council in supporting and servicing its IT department.

ristol City Council has appointed Exor Management Services to manage the process of ensuring supplier compliance. Contractors and consultants working on the council’s properties, housing stock and local highways will be able to demonstrate their continuing compliance with the council’s financial, health and safety, insurance and other standards via Exor.

products to enable analysis and identification of trends regarding who is accessing the council’s services and why, and use this information to commission, remodel, develop and review targeted services. orset County Council is to spend up to D £6m on a real-time passenger information system for bus and rail users. The county has agreed a framework contract to supply the new system with Cambridge-based ACIS. It will be in place for the 2012 Olympic Games during which Weymouth and Portland will be hosting Olympic sailing events. undee is using a computer generated D model of its historic waterfront area from Bluesky to help planners, architects and the public visualise its multi million pound transformation plan to reconnect the city centre with the riverside area.

ast Lothian Council has awarded a aerphilly County Borough Council is management contract to Canon. ETheprint saving an estimated £25k a year using C council’s PrintSmart project aims to its new XMA print solution. Council network development officer, Wayne Turner, said: “Statistics show that we are saving an average of 42,524 sheets of paper per week. This equates to a saving of £8,800 per annum on paper alone.” alderdale Council, acting as client on behalf of the Academy Trust, has selected Carillion to design and construct the new Trinity Academy school, including the provision of ICT infrastructure, in a £27m deal.

arlington Borough Council has awarded a three-year contract to Capita Software Services for its housing

reduce environmental impact by cutting paper consumption by 40% in the next year, and halving expenditure on printer cartridges and associated consumables. Through the managed print service the council is targeting a 30% reduction in its overall print volume and a reduced expenditure of £95k by the end of 2010.

ssex County Council has selected Asset4000 from Real Asset EManagement (RAM) to control its £2.4bn worth of assets, in an order worth in excess of £50,000. The solution integrates fully with an existing e5 accounting software package from COA Solutions.

ounslow Borough Council’s data H centre has been designed and built by Comms Room Services over a period of four months. Most of the data cabinets were moved over weekends in a series of controlled outages but some which could not be moved were lifted while still live; work continuing beneath. and E2BN have jointly procured JEastaANET new regional infrastructure in the of England for HE, FE, schools and local authorities via a £6m three year contract with Easynet. Bob Day, CTO at JANET(UK), says “JANET very much supports the government’s Public Sector Network initiative and its emphasis on driving down costs by more efficient engagement with the market. We see this approach as essential in continuing to provide the best possible services to UK education and research in an increasingly challenging public funding environment. Regional shared service initiatives such as that in the East of England, and elsewhere, are to us the key enablers of this wider PSN vision.” ondon Borough of Bexley has LSiemens outsourced its CCTV requirements to for the next 10 years. The arrangement is claimed to reduce the long term costs of security across the borough whilst guaranteeing improved performance and support. It also offers the council fixed costs, simpler budgeting and savings in procurement costs, with investment in new technology to improve efficiency. Borough of Bromley and Ltheondon Arun District Council have adopted SunGard Transaction Network’s (STN) Money Market Funds portal to help manage their short-term investment requirements. STN’s Money Market portal is a global, multi-currency trading and connectivity solution for institutional money market investors. It provides treasurers with a single platform to research, analyse, trade, and report on more than 200 money market funds.

sle of Wight is using IT from Mayrise Systems to prepare for a £1bn project set to transform the Isle of Wight’s highway infrastructure. Following recent approval of the council’s outline business case for the Highways Private Finance Initiative, the government has allocated an initial £364.6m of grant money to the project.

Local Government IT In Use

May/June 2010

CONTRACT ROUNDUP

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

(CONT’D)

aidstone Borough Council has M adopted an Arqiva management software system for its parking services operations. Introduction of the new parking gateway and permit gateway management support systems from Imperial Civil Enforcement Solutions means that the council can now use digital images and the web to help administer around 30,000 penalty charge notices a year and process resident, business and visitor parking permits. orthampton Borough Council is using N NSC Group’s DataNovata, to develop new, open applications to access an extensive archive of data migrated from its obsolete Fujitsu VME Nova mainframe. All relevant data on the mainframe has been migrated to SQL Server databases, and is now easily accessible by users of the council’s modern order processing, payroll, council tax and benefits applications.

infrastructure – single ‘virtual’ service desk, technical infrastructure support, and business continuity - with the ultimate objective a single, integrated, management structure. oyal Borough of Kensington and R Chelsea is adopting a more automated approach for the distribution and employee acceptance of workplace policies. Following the successful deployment of NETconsent policy management software by the IT department to achieve GCSX compliance, the borough has identified possibilities for extending the use of NETconsent throughout the council.

uneaton & Bedworth and Rugby N borough councils have appointed DeskSuccess to lead an eight-month project to create a shared IT service desk. The councils have worked closely for many years, but a three-year business plan has formalised this collaborative working across three service areas of elsh Assembly Traffic Officers in W South Wales response times to road traffic incidents have been greatly assisted following the introduction of a vehicle tracking and navigation system from Masternaut Three X. A fleet of specialist Traffic Officer vehicles are monitored using the web-based system. The always-on system constantly feeds back live data, displaying vehicle locations on a large panoramic screen located in the control room of the South Wales Traffic Management Centre, giving a bird’s eye view of operations at all times.

May/June 2010

database from Cloud Amber, keeping an eye on street works and other information, such as car park occupancy, CCTV and journey times. The combined Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) provides up to the minute information helping traffic controllers to make informed decisions about traffic signal timings, messages on electronic signs as well as updating travel news channels.

ushmoor Borough Council has R upgraded its server room and made the location watertight. A new, modular comms room was specified and built by Comms Room Services – in a live environment – within the existing space using ‘Modusec’ modular room panelling system with a waterproof layer over the top of the whole structure.

ottinghamshire County Council has lough Borough Council has invested in N invested in Hornbill’s Supportworks Sophos Web Security and Control to S ITSM to support over 8,000 staff and 350 improve online security across 48 nursery, schools across the county. The ICT service is using the solution for incident, problem and change/release management to replace three existing systems – enabling the council to reduce support and maintenance costs by over £30k a year.

xfordshire is using Mayrise software O to help power its Argonaut Urban Traffic Management Control (UTMC)

primary and secondary schools. outh Staffordshire Council has S purchased the ContactCentre 59R customer-focused call handling solution from Telephonetics VIP, combining automation with live operators in one seamless application. outhampton City Council and its S partners, Hampshire County Council and Portsmouth City Council, have implemented uCreate and uEngage from Objective Corporation, enabling greater collaboration between the different authorities, more efficient production of their Local Transport Plan (LTP3), and better consultation on the joint plan once it has been drafted. urrey Strategic Partnership – S comprising the county, 11 district and borough councils, Surrey Police and NHS Surrey - has contracted Fluent Technology to build a Local Information System (LIS) based upon its ORIGIN platform. This will provide a countywide networked data and information store and library complete with data analysis and survey tools to help the county’s public sector organisations work together even more closely. The system “will be both a shared management tool to help us make sure that the people of Surrey get maximum value for money from their public services and a public web-portal for residents and communities to use,” says Jenny Smith, research and intelligence manager at Surrey. “Having a single, shared source of statistics will enable us to identify joint priorities and develop better ways of working together for the benefit of our communities.” Local Government IT In Use

urrey has selected Liquidlogic’s PROTOCOL ICS and eCAF to streamline reporting processes and improve its care planning within the council’s Children, Schools and Families directorate.

urrey Heath Borough Council and ITO World have released high resolution aerial photography for all of Surrey to OpenStreetMap under an open licence that allows reuse. The project has the financial backing of nine other Surrey districts all of which will benefit from processed aerial imagery tiles that can be used internally. The imagery will also be available to OpenStreetMap users so they can contribute to a better map of Surrey.

endring Business Against Crime has ‘gone live’ with NBIS (National Business Information System), a webbased data sharing technology from Hicom. TENBAC is now able to track and monitor the activities of offenders and produce detailed reports and analysis in order to reduce levels of crime in the area.

est Valley Borough Council is implementing a financial management system with integrated cash flow forecasting, budgeting, planning and electronic procurement functionality from COA Solutions The integrated system will also comprise electronic document imaging and data capture software (using Version One’s technology).

rafford Council’s Children and Young People’s Service has gone live with Liquidlogic’s PROTOCOL Integrated Children’s System (ICS).

SHOWCASE

MAYRISE

GGP

News and views everywhere.... Don’t get lost in the information maze. UKauthorITy.com is the expert filter delivering just the essential news headlines on the transformation of frontline service delivery. Sign up today. It’s free for the public sector.

www.UKauthorITy.com

Subscribe Now! Get your own copy of LGITU

www.UKauthorITy.com is a free news and information service for the public sector from the publisher of Local Government IT in Use and the Tomorrow’s Town Hall subscription service. Registration is free for all frontline officers who need to keep up to speed with developments in transforming local service delivery. Commercial organisations may obtain alerts via Tomorrow’s Town Hall. www.UKauthorITy.com

• Local Government Officers: Register for your FREE annual subscription! • Commercial: There is a charge of £49 per annum for non-government personnel

Call 01983 812623 for details or email: Ann@infopub.co.uk 18

Tomorrow’s Town Hall

An informed eye on the people & the technology delivering tomorrow’s public services

• Keep in touch with the Quick Contact Email & Telephone Directory of all chief executives, finance directors and heads of ICT in frontline service organisations (local government, police, fire & rescue, PCTs and NHS trusts)

• Nurture an informed perspective with the fortnightly digest of news, informed analysis, contracts won, new products and supplier news • Stay on top of the news with real-time news alerts of the key stories direct to your inbox via UK.authorITy.com

• Research the background with access to the UKauthorITy.com news archive back to April 2001. • Plus FREE personal subscription to LGITU magazine.

Call 01983 812623 now or visit our website to subscribe online: http://tomorrowstownhall.co.uk