UKAuthorITy IT in Use magazine - May/June 2012 issue

Technology & The Transformation of Public Services

ITU UKAuthority IT in Use May/June 2012

Cloud Cover - Security, flexibility and maturity

Discomfort Zone ITU • May/June 2012

- Could the Public Services Network change everything?

The Future, Today - Digital by default already delivered by Connect Digitally

Smart, Open & Shared - the NHS gets a brand new information strategy

UKA

PLUS: News Update, ITU Live, View over Westminster and Contracts Won. Won. Contracts

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Features

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Products

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Comment

May/June 2012 On the Cover Out of the Comfort Zone: PSN is rolling out. Will things ever be the same again?

ISSN 2046 7133

Publisher

See page 12.

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

Editor

Dan Jellinek E: Dan@infopub.co.uk T: 07748 988092

Special Correspondent

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

Special Correspondent

Michael Cross E: Michael@infopub.co.uk T: 020 8341 0910

Photography

Paul Clarke E: Paul@infopub.co.uk T: 07515 655932

Advertising & Circulation

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

Design & Layout

Informed Publications Ltd

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Contents Comment

UKAuthority.tv News Update

Special Focus: Communications

Editorial:

Connecting for the Future

Out of the Comfort Zone

© Informed Publications Ltd

May/June 2012

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It’s the ultimate immovable deadline. The whole world will be watching the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games - but only if one of the largest purpose-built telecommunications infrastructures ever set up is working on schedule.

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ITU Live: Delivering Digital by Default

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The ‘Connect Digitally’ programme led by Hertfordshire has delivered astonishing results for online school admissions and free school meal applications, with take up over 80% in many areas.

View over Westminster - Queen’s Speech lacks Digital Direction

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What has happened to the brave new world of technology pledged at the government’s creation? Tim Hampson reports.

Contract Roundup

To advertise in ITU call Informed Publications: 01983 812623 2

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The Public Services Network is rolling out – and the implications could be more profound than most realise, says Michael Cross.

Transparency and self-service are the information future for the NHS, says Michael Cross, reviewing its new ICT strategy.

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As public services continue their migration to the Cloud, questions about security and resilience continue to be asked.

Smart, Open & Shared

See inside back cover for details of FREE public sector subscriptions

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ITU Live: Locking Down the Cloud

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

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Commons clash over Universal Credit; Cloud-based early warning of vulnerable children; Open data ‘must be driven by need’; Data to be shared on ‘troubled families’; Town halls stuck in technology potholes, and more in our round up of the latest news.

Communications clarity for public facing staff.

Published by: Informed Publications Ltd, PO Box

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Round-up of the latest interviews on UKA.tv

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

Editorial for all UKAuthority titles is written in house by the editorial team: Helen Olsen, Dan Jellinek, Tim Hampson and Michael Cross.

Relevant news releases should be sent by email to: Dan@infopub.co.uk or Helen@infopub.co.uk

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Strong leadership, full and open engagement, a focus on interoperability and robust measurement of benefits all add up to successful data sharing - and yes, it can be done.

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COMMENT

A Better Share

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espite all the technological advances, and all the desperate imperatives to save money, the sharing of data both within and between public sector bodies has all too often been the immovable stumbling block to the development of usable, efficient digital public services in the UK.

UKA.TV

In their own words...

This magazine’s content is expanded and enhanced by our unique online TV channel UKAuthority.tv, bringing you the latest public sector interviews and debate. Current highlights include: CRACKING ID KEY TO DIGITAL BY DEFAULT: David Rennie, from the government’s Identity Assurance Programme, talks about Universal Credit and creation of a standard ID ecosystem to deliver this new transactional online service.

A silo culture, confusion over data protection law, and a lack of strong overarching leadership have meant that carving clear ways through for the citizen to access exactly what they need, when they need it, has too often proved impossible.

Now, however, we have news of two separate projects that point to potential ways through this impasse.

INNOVATION=SAVINGS FOR GOVERNMENT ICT: Mark O’Neill, head of Innovation at Government Digital Service, believes that technology and a relentless focus on user experience can transform participation, democracy and public service delivery.

First, the ‘Patchwork’ app, developed by social technology pioneers FutureGov and currently undergoing live testing in Staffordshire and Brighton and Hove, cleverly cuts the Gordian Knot of data protection by sharing the mere fact that data exists – but not the data.

Thus if a housing worker is working with a troubled family, for example, they could see that a social worker in the same area is also working with the same family. A few clicks can arrange a phone call or meeting, and the two professionals can exchange confidential insights and ideas for helping the family without ever once compromising confidential case files or sending sensitive data over potentially insecure networks.

KEEPING LONDON CLEAN: Nigel Tyrell, head of environment at Lewisham, talks to UKAtv about why the council pioneered its groundbreaking Love Lewisham cloud service - an innovative cloudbased reporting tool now rolling out across London as ‘Love Clean London’.

Of course, there are situations where the mere fact that a certain professional is working with a family might in itself be sensitive, but the team and its trial partners are working through these issues to create a system that can potentially achieve a huge amount more, ironically by doing less.

AGILE SMES COULD TRANSFORM PUBLIC SECTOR ICT: Mark Foden, from change management consultancy, Foden Grealy, believes that SMEs can bring much needed agility and diversity “into the gene pool” of public sector ICT supply.

The second breakthrough has been fought over the past few years by the Connect Digitally programme, which has quietly and patiently achieved real take-up of up to 100% in two key digital service areas: online school admissions and free school meal applications.

The secret has not been one single aspect of its work, but a few principles that seem likely to hold the key to all future success, including:

TRANSACTIONAL PUBLIC SERVICES FOR ALL: Paul Annett, a creative lead at GDS, tells UKAtv that we cannot carry on designing online transactions as we have in the past if we want to encourage those that don’t use the internet to interact with government online.

• strong leadership from the very top of government to bust down silo walls; • engagement with a wide range of third party software suppliers from the outset, to avoid interoperability problems later on; • trumpeting success when it is achieved, so other councils gain trust in the process;

A COMMON DIGITAL LANGUAGE: Kathy Settle, deputy director for Networks at GDS, will work with ‘Digital Leaders’ across government to gain consensus for a ‘common language’ and ‘transaction principles’ for use across gov.uk.

• clear measuring of financial benefits. The full range of principles is described in our ITU Live panel debate, this issue (see page 15).

Together, these two projects point the way to a future where all our public services really are digital by default. It has been proven possible: will others follow the lead?

Dan Jellinek, Editor dan@infopub.co.uk

Tune in now on www.UKAuthority.tv

UKAuthority IT in Use

May/June 2012

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NEWS UPDATE

Commons clash over Universal Credit

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ooming extra costs for local authorities from the switch to the Universal Credit benefit system sparked a clash at Westminster: Labour demanded answers about the help on offer when housing benefit is wound down and swallowed up within the new credit, from October 2013.

The party said that local councils would retain responsibility for processing housing benefit to some existing claimants for a further four years. Chris Leslie, a Labour treasury spokesman and former local government IT minister, said that 380 different IT systems in councils up and down the country would be replaced by a central government system. He asked: “What resources have been available for the transition for councils that have a residual responsibility for some activities over the period? How will councils be able to do this?

It will remain a significant burden for local government and local council tax payers need to know whether ministers will meet those costs.”

Leslie said that, for some smaller district councils, housing benefit was “25% of their

In reply, benefits minister Maria Miller acknowledged that “costs will be associated with that process and the wind-down of housing benefit”.

However, she suggested there would be no compensation, telling MPs: “Local authorities already know it is coming, so it would be prudent of them to be planning for the changes.

I think most of them will want to plan the transfer sensibly and avoid any unnecessary costs.”

Universal Credit will replace six working-age benefits, as well as all tax credits and housing benefit, consolidating about 11 million claims into eight million.

Fears have also been raised that town hall IT systems will not be ready for the task of administering council tax benefit from next January - while also meeting government orders to slash 10% from its cost.

Sign up to fraud initiative, Audit Commission begs Whitehall

Second round of broadband funding for rural England

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nly two central government bodies are making use of the Audit Commission’s fraud-detection application, according to a report by the soon-to-be-wound-up spending watchdog. It is calling for participation in the data matching programme to be mandatory for all departments.

The National Fraud Initiative (NFI) has helped local authorities to detect fraud, overpayments and errors totalling £939m since its launch in 1996, but “there is still scope to do better”.

According to the latest report on the initiative, the government intends to continue the NFI after the Audit Commission’s abolition.

However so far only two central government bodies - the department for Communities and Local Government and the Highways Agency - have signed up to the initiative, which is used by the vast majority of local authorities.

Even among bodies that are taking part “data matches are not seen by some participants as a valuable source of intelligence and therefore they are not being given appropriate priority”.

Data matches carried out include pension payments to records of deceased people, housing benefit payments to payroll records and payroll records to records of failed asylum seekers and records of expired visas. www.audit-commission.gov.uk/fraud/nfi/reports/ Pages/default.aspx

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turnover” - money they were in danger of gradually losing, while retaining administration costs.

May/June 2012

ommunities in the remotest areas could get funds to pay for superfast broadband to help transform their businesses and the wider community, farming minister Jim Paice has announced.

Farms and rural businesses will also be able to apply for grants of up to £25,000 to enable them to buy new machinery and develop green projects. The grants, totalling £40m, mark the opening of the second round of the rural community broadband fund and the publication of guidance to a second wave of applicants to the farming and forestry improvement scheme.

Paice said the government is transforming the business prospects of many more with new opportunities to get superfast broadband and boost their profits with new technology.

Defra’s rural community broadband fund complements the government’s £530m broadband delivery UK programme to provide superfast broadband to 90% of every county. The rural community broadband fund allows for communities in the remaining 10% to develop projects for a superfast broadband connection.

Applications for the rural community broadband fund close on 6 July : http://rdpenetwork.defra.gov.uk/funding-sources/ rural-community-broadband-fund UKAuthority IT in Use

Police proceed cautiously towards collaboration eicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire will become the first three police forces in England to share a back office under a collaborative agreement. Origin, a secure, shared system, will be run by Capita under a contract worth £2.3m over five years.

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The system will streamline three force HR systems into one. Origin was developed in partnership with the National Police Improvement Agency and is used by some 30 forces. It will manage all three forces’ data for HR, training, duty management, and health and safety. It will also provide the capability for other forces in the country to share the system.

Steve McGowan, head of HR for the collaboration programme for the region, said: “This is a groundbreaking area of collaboration that will save the three forces approximately £900,000 per year once fully implemented. It will mean that an HR employee will be able to deal with a request originating from any of the three forces.”

Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Nottinghamshire already work together in the East Midlands Collaboration Programme. However such efforts are still unusual.

Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, told the association’s annual conference that the inefficiencies resulting from running 44 police forces in England and Wales were unsustainable. He warned of “a patchwork quilt of sub optimal solutions which don’t provide the public with consistency or value for money. I have lost count of the number of private companies that tell me we are close to impossible to do business with, or at best extremely complicated.” However he also warned that collaboration on its own would not be enough. “While Scotland presses forward with a single command, based on a clear political decision to strip out separate organisational overheads and amalgamate, we will continue to deal with 21st century threats with a model of policing designed in 1962 before colour television was invented.”

CLOUDSTORE 2 GOES LIVE: The second version of the UK government CloudStore has gone live, offering public bodies registered with the Government e-Marketplace the ability to buy directly through the service, the Cabinet Office has announced. Other claimed improvements are better functionality for searching and comparing services and prices. The government’s chief information officer, Andy Nelson, said: “We had overwhelming interest in the first CloudStore. This iteration improves on the original in a range of ways - better functionality on searching, price comparison and payment are just a few examples.” http://gcloud.civilservice.gov. uk/2012/05/18/cloudstore-the-next-iteration/

NEWS UPDATE

ICT progress report: We’re getting there

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long awaited white paper setting out plans to create a “right to data” will appear next month, the Cabinet Office has told UKAuthority. A newly-published progress report, ‘One Year On, Implementing the Government ICT Strategy’, sets out progress made, including efforts to end the “oligopoly” of big government suppliers.

Highlights include creating the Government Digital Service in December 2011 and awarding the Public Services Network connectivity framework contract in March this year. Spending controls on government ICT contracts have saved £159.6m, the report claims, citing the restructuring of HMRC’s ASPIRE ICT services contract as an example of how the government is “working to ensure better value for taxpayers, break up large contracts, and create opportunities for new, smaller companies to enter the market”.

On the effort to encourage the use of open source systems, the update reports creation of an open source advisory panel to help overcome “technical and cultural barriers that have prevented greater usage of open source in central government”. It also claims that 57% of departments are already running one or more projects using “agile” techniques, seen as a way of avoiding project delays and cost over-runs.

A revised set of ICT strategy metrics plus a digital strategy building on the gov.uk single domain are due shortly, says the paper that acknowledges that there are still “challenges to meet”. The next three years “will need to see sustained effort to implement the strategy in full”, it adds, with the Government Chief Information Officer (CIO) and the CIO Delivery Board establishing new approaches to resourcing projects; and putting in place stronger programme and project management. http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk

BYO device policy takes two steps towards mainstream

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wo very different public sector IT schemes indicate a change of thinking about the acceptability of bring-your-own devices.

All schools in Northern Ireland are to have access to wireless services as part of a £170m Education Network Northern Ireland contract. Meru Networks is partnering with Northgate Managed Services to provide wi-fi connectivity to over 350,000 teachers and pupils in 1,200 schools, enabling superfast secure access via personal devices, including smartphones, iPads, tablet PCs and laptops.

© Alder Hey

Meanwhile two NHS hospitals, Alder Hey Children’s and Liverpool Women’s NHS foundation trusts are trialling tablet computers in a ‘bring your own’ scheme. The pilot, primarily based at Liverpool Women’s, involves clinicians and other staff using handheld devices. Ten staff at Liverpool Women’s have been using tablets that are secured by Kaseya’s mobile device management software, which allows the trust to wipe the tablets if they connect to the internet after they have been reported lost or stolen.

Responses to the latest Socitm IT Trends survey found that 90% of organisations allow employees to use their own devices for business purposes, including 30% which allow the use of smartphones - three years ago the idea was ‘fiercely resisted’ by the IT community.

Cloud-based early warning of vulnerable children oftware allowing public officials to let each other know when they are working with the same vulnerable children and adults - with a view to triggering warnings - could be available to all councils on the G-Cloud by the end of the year, UKAuthority has learned.

Wheatley, outgoing Patchwork programme director at FutureGov, told UKAuthority.com.

“Had they seen the whole picture the overall level of concern should have been higher, but because they work in silos, it wasn’t.”

Professionals, she added, “just want to know if another agency is involved, and if they are, they want to know who they are, and how to contact them”. http://patchworkhq.com

The ‘Patchwork’ system, which works using web apps, is being developed by social technology firm FutureGov, with early project partners and funders including NESTA, Lichfield District Council, Staffordshire County Council and the Nominet Trust. A new pilot was launched last month at Brighton and Hove City Council. “In a number of high profile cases such as baby Peter there have been tragic outcomes primarily due to the fact that a number of organisations may be working with a child or family but aren’t necessarily aware of each other,” Katherine

SINGLE VIEW OF CHILDREN: In Capita One’s survey of local authority children’s services staff, 84% said that their authorities were already working in or planning to work in multi-agency teams to help improve outcomes around children and families. The results suggest that many councils have actively responded to the government’s call for greater collaboration between agencies, highlighted in both the Munro review of child protection and Graham Allen’s report on early intervention.

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NEWS UPDATE

Transparency plans lack structure

Open data ‘must be driven by need’

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lack of structure in the government’s transparency initiatives could mislead potential users of newly opened data, claims the National Audit Office (NAO).

he open data movement needs to be driven and managed more by what people want to find out, and less by public bodies’ own agendas, the online democracy pioneer Tom Steinberg told last month’s inaugural Open-data Cities Conference in Brighton.

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© Paul Clarke

“A lot of the attitude around open data is what can we give away, what can we give out?” said Steinberg, founder and director of charity mySociety. “Then they say ‘no-one seems to be using it, let’s have a hackday, see if we can create incentives’. Meanwhile in the freedom of information department there is a pile of requests building up that won’t go away based on real desires - someone really wants to know something.”

The trick for councils will be to train staff right across the authority to spot information requests that could be handled by releasing new types of data, and then to empower someone to help make sure this happens, he said. Authorities must also work together to create new tools to make it easier to release data in manageable formats, Steinberg said. “A much bigger problem than ‘we don’t want to release data’ is ‘it’s really hard to’”, he said. “We need to collaborate in building tools that make releasing data in nice formats nice and easy. Not in a spreadsheet, in a live feed, then it will never need to be looked at again.” The key to convincing public servants that open data is a good idea, if they are not already convinced, is not by economic arguments - the hard evidence is not there - but by showing them it will make their own lives easier, Steinberg said.”Often public servants are some of biggest winners from open data, but they don’t know that until you remind them. Make mock-ups of sites they could use, and then show them you can’t actually create them because the government doesn’t release the data.” http://opendatacitiesconference.com

Age of the armchair auditor approaches

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embers of the public are to be allowed to access the new local government service and population statistics data benchmarking hub, LG Inform, giving them at their fingertips some of the same benchmarking stats as council managers as early as next year, UKAuthority.com has learned.

LG Inform was soft-launched last summer, and is now live for English local authority access only. The service - funded by the LGA’s grant for government to improve local services - is free for councils to use.

Following abolition of the Audit Commission, the government and the LGA are working to develop a voluntary system of benchmarking on local priorities. LG Inform provides a platform for the viewing of current data such as ‘nomis’ labour market figures from

the Office for National Statistics combined with service indicators such as the speed of processing housing benefit and council tax.

Data is cleaned up and standardised, and some new data is generated by combining sets. Councils can build and share reports with charts and graphics combining historic and live data comparing their own figures with all other councils of the same type or within a particular area. The next phase will involve seeing what other kinds of data can be collected from councils themselves to add to data from government and other official sources. Other public bodies such as fire and rescue could soon be included. Central government departments and the general public may be allowed access.

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here has never been a better time for IT to step up and make a difference, the incoming president of public sector IT professionals’ association Socitm told members at the start of her term. Urging members to adopt the rallying cry: “I am a member of Socitm, an IT professional and I can help you,” Kay Brown said that IT can “help you enable change, help you connect to customers and help you be more efficient. Who could turn this offer down? Who could not get IT?” Brown, who is also head of ICT at South Lanarkshire Council, one of Scotland’s largest unitary authorities, was confirmed as the new Socitm president at its AGM and spring conference, with the chain of honour handed over by outgoing president, Glyn Evans.

Brown said that that Socitm is now “at the table” on many change programmes thanks to the Local CIO Council, set up by Socitm in 2008. In Scotland, she noted, Socitm is representing the IT sector in the activity around Digital Futures and the transforming of public services. She said that her main area of focus in the coming year would be membership, including promoting Socitm as the society of choice for the whole public sector, and not just local government.

May/June 2012

The NAO report recognises the strength of the strategic case for greater transparency, and highlights progress across government in fulfilling most of its initial commitments.

However, it chides the government for not doing enough to assess value for money.

While the Cabinet Office has identified six types of potential benefits from open data, it is not yet using this framework to evaluate the success and value of initiatives. Many data releases have no accompanying statement as to their quality or reliability, running the risk of misleading potential users. “The government should develop a simple protocol for describing data sources, control procedures and known limitations,” states the report. It calls for: • A better understanding of the drivers and scale of additional costs of implementing different types of public sector information release; • Clearer ways of determining demand to support objectives of greater accountability, service improvement and economic growth, to prioritise the programme of data release; and • A structured, objective evaluation of the emerging effects of transparent public data, so that efforts are focused on high-value activities, with unintended consequences mitigated. www.nao.org.uk/publications/1012/implementing_transparency.aspx

(councils only) http://www.local.gov.uk/lginform

‘I’m a member of Socitm, and I can help’

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Government needs a better understanding of costs, benefits and use to assess whether transparency is meeting its objectives of increasing accountability, supporting service improvement and stimulating economic growth, the watchdog finds in its report, ‘Implementing Transparency’.

UKAuthority IT in Use

SMART BIRMINGHAM: Birmingham City Council has received a Smarter Cities Challenge grant from IBM, providing it with access to IBM’s experts and help developing a strategic decision-making tool to support city-wide planning, ensuring Birmingham becomes an even better place in which to live and work.

DFT HANDS OVER STREET DESIGNATION REPOSITORY: Government has handed over greater responsibility to local highway authorities for the management of the roads classification system and asked GeoPlace to act as the central repository for designation applications via the National Street Gazetteer. The company will collate the information, and distribute it to the designated contacts within central government such as the DfT and Ordnance Survey.

SPECIAL FOCUS: COMMUNICATIONS

Comms Clarity for Public Facing Staff The public today has very high expectations of service delivery from local authorities and other public sector bodies. Meeting these expectations with exemplary service delivery is a constant challenge for the public sector and the customer facing staff in the front-line. This is particularly true of staff working in call centre roles or who engage with the public via the phone.

The ability to hear clearly what is said and being understood without repetition can prevent an irritated caller becoming confrontational or even abusive.

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ennheiser has a legacy of 65 years as experts in acoustics and audio technology. The German company has a global reputation for high quality headsets and microphones used in professional broadcasting, music industry and aviation all of which demand high quality speech and audio. Using Sennheiser professional grade headsets avoids compatibility issues with existing equipment, reduces operator fatigue and diminishes the potential for confusion between the caller and operator. Sennheiser professional headsets have some unique design features that provide significant advantages for staff in public facing roles using the telephone.

One of the most important advantages of Sennheiser headsets is the company’s patented ActiveGard technology. It’s an unfortunate fact that public sector staff can suffer from malicious calls, which are usually harmless. But there are also aggressive calls made with the intention of hurting and possibly permanently harming the staff member’s hearing.

Blowing whistles or using more sophisticated electronic devices to deliver an acoustic

shock are rare occurrences, but can be devastating for the recipient.

ActiveGard technology is embedded in all Sennheiser telecoms headsets and detects unsafe audio levels and compresses the signal within milliseconds. ActiveGard doesn’t just reduce, but rather removes dangerous energy from an acoustic burst, eliminating the distortion from an excessive incoming signal and keeping the volume of a sound peak at a safe and comfortable level to protect the user’s hearing.

A busy office can be a noisy place and to address this Sennheiser offer a range of corded and wireless headset solutions featuring high performance ultra-noise cancelling microphones to filter out unwanted background noise. The benefits to public sector workers of high quality sound and the elimination of external noise which are offered by sophisticated headsets cannot be overstated.

The resulting improvement in intelligibility can greatly improve call efficiency, saving valuable time by reducing the risk of misunderstanding and average call duration.

Wearing comfort is another critical consideration, particularly in contact centre environments where workers may be wearing the headset for eight hours a day or more. Sennheiser has undertaken extensive ergonomic research to ensure that the design of its professional headsets are optimised to provide all day wearing comfort. Sennheiser recently introduced the CIRCLE Line series of wired headsets for call centre and office workplaces which incorporate all UKAuthority IT in Use

these important design and safety features. To withstand the stresses and strains of a busy call centre CIRCLE line headsets are fitted with a reinforced metal headband designed to last for years. Productivity features include a noise cancelling microphone to filter out ambient noise for optimum speech clarity, and Sennheiser HD Voice Clarity wideband sound to ensure a more natural sounding experience. The CIRCLE Line series has already been awarded an ‘Office Oscar’ by Office Equipment News magazine, which reported that “Sennheiser headsets excel in sound quality, durability and comfort which are essential in any environment where the user will have medium to heavy call usage.”

Many workers will benefit from mobility solutions which allow them to answer and participate in calls on their desk phone when away from their desk. Sennheiser’s DW Series of wireless headsets are the perfect solution, offering 180 metre range (line of sight), twelve hours of talk time and fast charging, with four hours talk time in just ten minutes and full charge in one hour. Sennheiser headsets are available in a choice of monaural (single sided), binaural (double sided) headband and single sided ear-loop wearing styles to suit the needs of all users. Sennheiser has also invested heavily in research and development to ensure that headsets are optimised for simple installation and are simple and intuitive to use.

Free trials of Sennheiser headsets can be arranged for public sector organisations. To know more call 0800 1303955, email info@sennheiser.co.uk or visit www.sennheiser.co.uk

May/June 2012

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NEWS UPDATE

Social media & re-usable data for Ireland

Industry set against Gove changes to ICT curriculum

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ll Irish public bodies are to draw up a plan of how they will make the most of social media to improve access to services. The policy appears in eGovernment 2012 – 2015, Ireland’s new government-wide strategy, which also promises breakthroughs in open data and in enforcing the use of a new public services identity card.

The strategy, published by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, marks a resurgence of interest in e-government. Although Ireland was an early leader in sectors such as online tax returns, e-services have taken a back seat in recent years while Dublin struggled with the country’s economic crisis.

While cutting costs is a major theme of new strategy, its message focuses on placing users at the centre. It claims to introduce “a new approach which aims to transform how citizens and businesses engage with the state”. This will involve more data sharing across public service organisations made possible by a “single customer view”.

The Single Customer View system takes identity data feeds from a range of national registers across the public service and seeks to match them. The system “will be

instrumental in helping public bodies to improve the quality of customer identity data, improve assurances around identity claims, remove duplication of effort from recording and checking processes, and facilitate the provision of online identity services”.

An essential component is the Public Services Card, introduced in 2011 by the Department of Social Protection. It combines a social security identity card with a concessionary travel card. Under the strategy, its use will spread across government. “Organisations must not use alternative cards without providing a very strong reason for not using the Public Service Card,” it warns.

Open data is another theme. The strategy requires all public bodies to publish data in machine-readable formats. “Initially this will include data newly released (in reports, on websites etc.). Over time, public bodies should identify additional data that could be released as open data. This action will enable individuals and businesses to use data in ways most helpful to them including developing applications relevant to their own needs and interests.” http://per.gov.ie/wp-content/uploads/eGovernment-2012-2015.pdf

Town halls stuck in technology potholes

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he growing menace of potholes has been blamed on town halls being stuck in the technology dark ages, as a report by the Department for Transport (DfT) warns that many councils “continue to rely on manual input of inspections”.

Meanwhile, the Cyclists’ Touring Club has managed to develop a smartphone application, combining a photograph of a pothole with GPS technology, to pinpoint and report the exact location of the hazard - all in less than two minutes, the report finds.

While it accepted that some councils, such as Somerset and Blackpool, are using technology well to identify problems and speed

up repairs, the DfT report urges all highway authorities to: • Use the internet - allowing the public to report highway defects, including potholes, at any time on its maintenance management system, also presenting the information to the public on a website.

• Use mobile hand-held devices - to enable highway inspectors to record defects immediately, linked via wireless to the maintenance management system. Such devices often include mapping facilities and cameras, so that defects can be plotted and recorded quickly and accurately. www.dft.gov.uk/publications/pothole-review

A smarter York

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ouncillor Julie Gunnell, York City Council cabinet member for corporate services; and councillor James Alexander, the council’s Labour leader, test out the new ‘Smarter York’ street problem reporting app on the city’s Bar Walls. York residents and visitors will be able to report a host of problems from graffiti to flytipping using the free app to take a picture and report the location. Residents will be able to check online to see whether an issue has already been reported, and check on the status of their query. www.smarteryork.org.uk

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May/June 2012

UKAuthority IT in Use

new organisation made up of UK IT leaders and educational experts has warned against education secretary Michael Gove’s proposals to reform ICT education in schools from September.

The current ICT curriculum, which teaches how to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations, is to be scrapped and replaced with one focused on computer science and programming. However, IT leaders from some of Britain’s largest companies have joined forces with educational experts to warn against the timetable of reform, saying that students will be left in a vacuum. Members of the Education and Skills Commission, a group established by the Corporate IT Forum, fear the removal of existing mandatory activities will result in some schools providing virtually no ICT education at all for two school years.

The gap between the best and worst ICT teaching in schools will open to an “unacceptable level” if the plans go ahead, says the commission. It is urging the government to keep the current programme of teaching in place until a new, more challenging computer science based curriculum is implemented in September 2014. www.corporateitforum.com WHITEHALL CLAIMS £75M SAVING IN LATEST ORACLE DEAL: Oracle is the latest scalp to be claimed by the government’s fight to renegotiate deals with IT suppliers. Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude says that a pan-government deal with Oracle will save £75m by 2015. “The days of the government paying different prices for the same goods or services are over,” said Maude. “We will no longer sign inflexible contracts that tie the taxpayer into unfavourable terms.” Oracle database technology is used in almost every department and agency across government, and maintenance and support charges have long been a source of discontent.

KNOWLEDGE HUB ARCHITECTS DEFEND COMMUNITY SWITCHOVER: The architects of the new local government Knowledge Hub, an online platform for exchange of ideas between council officers, politicians and the public, have defended the switchover from its predecessor Communities of Practice (CoPs) after criticism from some users. Following a year of testing, the Knowledge Hub’s owner, the Local Government Association (LGA), finally switched off the CoPs for good. Sarah Jennings, head of digital communications and knowledge at the LGA, said, “The CoPs were very good for the time, but they predated the social media explosion. The problem we found was that communities were quite siloed - if you went into a CoP you wouldn’t know what was happening in another community. The Knowledge Hub is open source and interacts with social media, public blogs and instant messaging.” www.local.gov.uk/knowledgehub

NEWS UPDATE

Data to be shared on ‘troubled families’

Round dozen win public service network contracts

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ouncils are to share data with jobcentres as the key to government plans to turn around the lives of ‘troubled families’.

significant savings by reducing the £9bna-year currently spent on the 120,000 most troubled families in England, Pickles argued.

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Communities secretary Eric Pickles says that he has struck a “ground-breaking” agreement with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) under which councils will be able to obtain the names and addresses of the families in their area on benefits who are considered to be causing specific problems.

For Birmingham, which has more than 4,000 problem families - the largest number of any local authority in England - it could be worth almost £14m over three years. The other authorities that have signed up to the scheme are: Lancashire, Kent, Manchester, Essex, Leeds, Liverpool, Bradford, Norfolk and Sheffield.

Pickles said that it would allow them to identify those whose children are missing school, or involved in crime and anti-social behaviour. He said the scheme would “strictly protect confidentiality”, although the idea is likely to provoke concerns that the privacy rights of benefit claimants are being invaded.

However, councils will receive the full payment only once they have delivered results and reduced the average £75,000-a-year these families cost the taxpayer.

The plans will see councils paid up to £4,000 for each child they keep in school and out of a police station, or each long-term unemployed adult they get into work. The payment-by-results scheme could produce

And there have been criticisms that such interventions typically cost £10,000, yet the government contribution only provides 40% of the cost. Cash-strapped councils will be required to find the rest, although ministers have insisted they only need to “refocus what they are already spending”.

DWP data could help electoral registration switch

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ersonal data from social security records could be used to identify electors for the new register of individual voters to be introduced in 2014, a study for the Cabinet Office has concluded.

An evaluation of 22 pilot schemes carried out by local authorities to test the value of existing databases to improve the register’s coverage finds a “high match rate” between the electoral register and DWP data. It proposes that the DWP’s database “could be useful for pre-verifying electors and ‘passporting’ them across during the transition to individual electoral registration”.

However the evaluation finds that extracting data from existing systems will not replace the need for a regular electoral canvass.

The 22 data matching pilots took place in 2011 in the run up to the introduction of electronic registration in 2014.

The Cabinet Office’s evaluation appears two weeks after a report by the Electoral Commission which found wide variances in the usefulness of data. The latest study likewise detected “issues in terms of the consistency of datasets” and formatting problems. It repeats the call for more use of UPRN identifiers for addresses.

The study also notes the difficulty of agreeing a system with Royal Mail to find data on people who have recently moved home.

However the pilots successfully demonstrated that 66% of the electoral register

could be strongly matched to DWP data “and indicated therefore the feasibility of automatically placing matched electors onto the register”. Doing so would free resources to identify electors who do not match other databases.

The Cabinet Office is expected to propose a strategy for moving to individual registration later this year. Opponents have argued that the move could cause large numbers of voters to drop off the register. www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/sites/default/files/ resources/FINAL-Data-Matching-EvaluationReport-new.pdf

fter a three-year design and procurement effort the Cabinet Office has named 12 firms to turn its dream of a shared IT infrastructure into reality. The firms will supply components of the new Public Services Network (PSN), which Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude described as “a fundamental building block of our ICT Strategy”. In a statement he said: “The 12 successful suppliers named in the PSN Connectivity Framework include small and medium-sized enterprises as well as major industry names, underlining our commitment to establish a more open and competitive ICT marketplace at the heart of the UK public sector.”

The full list of suppliers on the PSN Connectivity Framework is: Virgin Media Business Limited, Logicalis UK Limited, British Telecommunications, Cable & Wireless Worldwide, Level 3 (formerly Global Crossing), Capita Business Services Limited, Updata Infrastructure UK Limited, Fujitsu, MDNX, Enterprise Services Limited, eircom UK Limited, KCOM Group and Thales UK Limited.

Analyst TechMarketView sounded a note of caution. “As always with procurement frameworks, the question is how much business will actually be put through it. We expect central government, where the use of PSN standards is mandated, to come under pressure to use the Connectivity framework for procurements.

“Outside central government, where PSN is not mandated, it is a more open question.

But however much use the framework gets, it’s clear that competition for public sector connectivity services is about to hot up with all the suppliers listed keen to increase their market share at the expense of the incumbents.” www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/resource-library/ public-services-network

Buying cards dealing government procurement a bad hand

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he government’s use of procurement cards, dubbed the civil servant’s flexible friend, has yet to show value for money, the National Audit Office has found. When used properly the cards, mainly used for travel, hotel rooms and meals in restaurants, are a cost-effective way for government to buy goods and services, but staff lack guidance on how to use them, the spending watchdog concludes. While controls in five departments examined were operating as intended, there is no up to date value-for-money case quantifying the benefits of the cards. Last year, central government staff spent £322m with payment cards in more than 1.75m transactions with an average spend of £184. This amounted to 0.75% of total government procurement expenditure. Most of the money was spent by the Ministry of Defence (£237m), which accounted for three out of every four pounds spent. More thrifty were HM Revenue & Customs staff, who only spent only £205,000. Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, said that there were profound weaknesses in the system in the way the cards could be used. The cards can still be cost-effective, but “The taxpayer needs to have confidence that departmental staff are using it appropriately.” © Paul Clarke www.nao.org.uk UKAuthority IT in Use

May/June 2012

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ITU LIVE: G-CLOUD

Locking Down the Cloud

Denise McDonagh G-Cloud Programme Director / Director of ICT Delivery, Home Office

As public services continue their migration to the Cloud, questions about security and resilience continue to be asked. What are the answers? Our ITU Live panel examined this and other pressing questions in the run up to G-Cloud phase two.

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o discussion about cloud computing in the public sector ever continues for long before someone raises the question of security.

Clouds are all-powerful, cloud services can be switched on and off at will. But where is your data going, exactly? And who might be able to access it? Cloud computing’s biggest strengths of flexibility and omnipresence can seem like weaknesses when it comes to sensitive data, and UK public bodies are in enough trouble with the Information Commissioner as it is.

Participants in the recent ITU Live debate ‘G-Cloud and CloudStore - what impact on public sector technology?’ were clear that security does need to be considered, but that a balanced approach means there are plenty of areas where cloud technologies are at least as secure as any of their predecessors.

Mark Ferrar, national technology officer at Microsoft UK, said that the key security question is “which part of the Cloud?” With the use of private clouds, there is no reason why

public bodies can’t mix and match to create a hybrid system to suit their own risk and security needs and deliver services seamlessly.

“Understanding your needs will enable you to move parts of your business into the public cloud,” Ferrar said. “We are operating for many, many large customers, and we don’t want that to go wrong any more than our customers do, so we put a lot of work into making sure it’s reliable, and fault-tolerant.”

Jos Creese, CIO at Hampshire County Council, said that the type of system used should vary depending on data sensitivity, and that there may be some types of data that should not be moved into any cloud system for now.

“We’ve got a whole range of deployments into the Cloud, but there are certainly some datasets that I would not move to the Cloud at all,” Creese said. [For example] “We would not be moving the joint child protection register into the cloud.”

In principle, cloud could be used even for the most sensitive data, but to do so in a way that would be sufficiently robust and secure would be too expensive Mark Ferrar at the moment, he said. “In time, National Technology more will be available – the busiOfficer, Microsoft UK ness model will change.”

On the other hand, security is just as much a cost and consideration for in-house systems, Creese added. “We will be retaining some of our email in house for security, speed of access and resilience – there is a trade-off – but if you are moving to a supplier, they are providing resilience that you would otherwise have to provide yourself. Would I trust Microsoft with that? Of course I

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UKAuthority IT in Use

would – and it’s the same for any supplier that has been accredited.”

Denise McDonagh, director of ICT at the Home Office and programme director for the government’s G-Cloud programme, said that suppliers to G-Cloud were undergoing pan-government security accreditation, so that government bodies would be able to use suppliers with confidence that they had been tested up to a specified ‘Business Impact Level’ of security. “We have got something like 18 suppliers going through pan-government accreditation right now, and another 12 lined up to go through.”

A mix and match approach works well to cover security issues, said Creese, but it can bring other problems. In Hampshire, the county is developing the local public services network as a “cloud doorway” to a range of services for the boroughs, raising issues not just of security but of disaster recovery, integration, and the need for an exit strategy – “how you will recover the data if it is out there in the cloud?”

Above all, public bodies will need a system that makes access and support as simple as possible, he said. “There is something around avoiding organisations slipping into a patchwork of services where there are 200 services in the cloud and a different entrance to every one of them, each with a separate user name.”

Ferrar agreed that seamless integration is key, but added that identity integration and management were both possible to achieve using existing ID technologies.

Overall, some of the biggest benefits of cloudbased systems are to be experienced by small organisations, both on the supplier side and client side, the panellists said.

ITU LIVE: G-CLOUD

In looking to build in ease of access by small and conditions, she said. There was also a suppliers, setting up G-Cloud was “the only need for more education, awareness and procurement that I’ve even seen in my 30-odd training programmes for both suppliers and public sector users. years in central government which has been done in months, Paul Tomlinson Managing “Although we ran not years”, said McDonagh.

Director, IEG4 an accreditation camp [for supIn the process, tender docupliers] and a buy ments had been reduced from camp [for users], I the usual hundreds of pages still don’t think we to around 30, and the G-Cloud got enough inforframework was the only one she mation out there to was aware of where government everybody about bodies did not need to carry out what we were a further mini-procurement to doing, and... didn’t use services within it, she added. take on enough While Creese pointed out that the ability of feedback”, McDonagh said. public bodies to share services was “augmented” by the ability to run services in the Part of expanding awareness work will cloud – “that’s the utility nature of pay as you include bringing together different types of go” – Paul Tomlinson, managing director of suppliers – for example, ones that provide medium-sized benefits service software sup- technology infrastructure and ones that provide a service using that infrastructure – to plier IEG4, went one further. exchange ideas; and also to bring together “Cloud is a shared service,” Tomlinson said. suppliers and potential clients.

With every use of services in the Cloud, a public body is making use by definition of a “We’re going to do a lot more cost, resilience and skill-base that is provided what we call communities of Jos Creese in the manner it is, purely because it is being service,” McDonagh said. “We CIO, Hampshire provided to the whole sector at once – a want to start bringing suppliers County Council and the public sector together shared service, he said. to [say] ‘these are our business However, despite the project’s desire to problems’, and supplier saying make itself as open as possible to small sup- ‘this is what we’ve got to sort it pliers, Tomlinson said that the bureaucracy out for you’.” of engaging with phase 1 of G-Cloud had remained too daunting for a small supplier like In particular, a major culture change is still needed within his own company. the public sector to make sure “We do spend a huge amount of time in ten- that people understand how to dering, and (like all suppliers) it is a cost we make proper use of a cloud prohave to pass on. But we didn’t bid for G-Cloud curement system that is very different from first time around,” Tomlinson said. “It was a traditional procurement methods, McDonagh huge document, with loads of acronyms. As said. “I’ve still got people in the Home Office an SME, it was hard for us – we couldn’t put who think about doing things the old way, through big procurement – so I’m asking them enough time into working out what to do.” to ‘think cloud first’.”

Ferrar announced that Microsoft was to supAmong experienced observport its enormous ers, some of the current rush SME partner base Helen Olsen among suppliers to present their in the sector with Managing Editor products as cloud-friendly might the process of UKAuthority raise an eyebrow, said Creese. accrediting their solutions based “You will not find many supon Microsoft pliers telling you they do not technology, have a cloud service,” he said, and McDonagh but only some were genuaccepted that the inely shaped for cloud models. process could be Another area which can be improved. overhyped is that of dipping in and out of cloud services at “One of the chalwill – of using one supplier and lenges is around accreditation – what does it mean, how do then switching seamlessly to another, said you get it – and a whole new supplier base Creese. This is all well and good in theory, came through G-Cloud who have never but the licensing model is only one aspect of switching suppliers – changing backworked with government before,” she said. room business processes and training staff Accordingly, the paperwork needed to cut might also be needed, and public bodies down further on the use of impenetrable acro- do not want to be forced by cloud models nyms, or bureaucratic language in the terms to re-procure services every year when an UKauthorITy IT in Use

element of stability might actually be preferable.

“For some cloud services we want to use, we will want a longer term partnership with the supplier potentially, and as such will want a contractual relationship which will be longer than 12 months, so will be looking for a mechanism to do so if we choose to,” he said.

This kind of concern has been aired frequently since the G-Cloud project began, McDonagh said, and while the government was keen that G-Cloud services should be “easy to enter, easy to use, easy to exit”, it appreciates this may not be so easy – or desirable – for some services.

“One of the things we’re trying to do, because I do understand people don’t want to reprocure every year for something they know they want, is to have a tick box exercise offering an opportunity to extend a contract if the price is still right for you.”

Microsoft’s Mark Ferrar said that the costs invested by a public body in implementing a new technology system were often linked to organisational change and improving efficiency, “and that’s something you invest in for a considerable period of time”.

He said that the opportunities to change business processes that were now being made possible by making it easier to use technologies like cloud computing had been discussed many times in the past, but it was paradoxically only now that tough economic times were making action imperative.

“A lot of these things have been thought about for a long time – [but] in this case the government has not squandered a good crisis, they’ve actually made it work for them.”

www.UKAuthority.com/ITUliveCloud

ITU Live Sponsored by

For more information on G-Cloud visit: http://gcloud.civilservice.gov.uk

Heading for the Clouds?

UKAuthority, the G-Cloud Programme, Socitm and Microsoft are undertaking a major research project on the uptake of Cloud across the public sector. Look out for your invitation to participate or email Helen@infopub.co.uk for your personalised survey form.

May/June 2012

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PUBLIC SERVICES NETWORK

Out of the Comfort Zone The Public Services Network is rolling out – and the implications could be more profound than most realise. Michael Cross reports on a driver for transformational change whose effects might not be seen for a few years – but could change everything from costs to service models.

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ome public sector organisations seem to find culture change easier than others. Chris Chant, the former programme director for G-Cloud at the Cabinet Office, told Socitm’s spring conference that the newly launched cloud store has had some unexpected visitors. Irish government bodies, while unable to procure through the service directly, have started basing local procurements on products and prices from the G-Cloud catalogue.

There’s more to this than an amusing anecdote. Procurement transparency and the cloud have the potential to turn any public sector technology purchase into a global framework. In theory, every procurement negotiation could now begin along the lines of “I’ll take the deal you cut last month with the City of Amsterdam’s pest control department - of course with a discount to reflect the lower marginal costs of a call-off contract.”

Of course it won’t happen quite like that.

Even in the cloud, suppliers can be expected to differentiate between end users according to geography and local jurisdiction. They will also do their best to flatter local expressions of differences - “Uniquely in Europe, Amsterdam’s rat-catchers have a statutory responsibility to provide daily tallies to three tiers of local government” (I made that up).

The entire history of public sector computing and e-government on the web is littered with failings to cut and paste systems across administrative and political boundaries.

This time, however, the approach may just start to have a bit more traction. The key now is that the availability of new service models, in particular the cloud, is coupled with a “burning platform” imperative to cut costs. (I suspect the Irish interest in G-Cloud has a lot to do with the country’s austerity regime.)

An early test of the culture change is unfolding right now. This is the deployment of infrastructure based on the long-planned Public Services Network, for whose connectivity layer contractors were announced in April.

The PSN Connectivity framework aims to save £130m a year by realising the old and previously elusive dream of sharing network

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capacity across public sector bodies. The Cabinet Office has mandated that all central government organisations should be PSN compliant by 2014 and one official I’ve talked to says there is already “a very different level of conversation” being had about sharing networks.

No doubt. But there is also some uncertainty.

Research by the likes of network suppliers Level 3 and BT - who, like the other contractors have a strong interest in promoting take-up - suggests that around only a quarter of public sector IT executives are planning to adopt PSN. While nearly everyone agrees it will be significant, and more than half of respondents said that it would enable more inter-departmental collaboration and new services to citizens, there is scepticism about the timing of the initiative and the resources available to make it happen. In Level 3’s research, when asked about the barriers to PSN deployment in their organisation, 50% of the senior IT executives cited cost, 45% lack of human resources to manage migration, while 60% cited internal cultural challenges.

Fortunately there is ample history to show that such challenges can be overcome. PSNtype arrangements in Wales and Kent show that when the timing is right and the leadership is there, shared infrastructures can be made to work across diverse organisations.

In Wales, the situation was helped by health, education and local government all procuring networks at the same time. Despite its reputation elsewhere for reluctance to share IT infrastructure, the NHS in Wales was “an early adopter, accounting for a large part of the initial order,” says Mark Coleman of the Welsh Assembly Government.

A promising new initiative is the East Midlands Public Services Network (emPSN) to be run under the connectivity contract by Kcom. The anchor tenant is education - the network transformation is timed to coincide with the expiry of the current East Midlands schools network service contract in October.

However the key question is whether the lead organisations have the clout to persuade other services to come in.

And research suggests that, outside IT departments and the Cabinet Office, there is UKAuthority IT in Use

© iStockphoto / kaili wu

still a lack of awareness of PSN’s importance - in BT’s research nearly six in ten non-technical respondents had never heard of PSN. One problem is the old one of those people who do understand the possibilities of the new way of working being sidelined as techies. Another is that the transformational possibilities of collaborative working still represent an act of faith. BT’s Neil Rogers adds that it is time to “stop talking technology” and focus instead on the wider benefits: “We have a job to do on communicating the citizen benefits. PSN is an enabler, not the end point.”

However, in the words of TechMarketView analyst Tola Sargeant: “The bigger potential benefits associated with innovative new services running across the PSN will not be seen for a number of years yet.”

Driving through disruptive changes now on the basis of such a vision is difficult. Central government has a role to play - only two of the 101 executives responding to the Level 3 survey said that supporting the deployment of PSN at a local authority level was not the responsibility of central government – but the initiative will have to come from the local level.

In his Socitm speech, Chant identified the main barriers to change as lock-in to inflexible contracts, the sheer scale of the public sector and the lack of skills, lost through bad outsourcing. (Some organisations had even outsourced their IT strategy making, he said. “I find it rather difficult to imagine how they came to make that decision.”)

He also cited supplier resistance - perhaps understandably where some are supplying services under long-term government contracts at much higher prices than identical services advertised through G-Cloud. And of course there is culture - Chant spoke of the Cloud taking officials out of their comfort zone.

Significantly, however, these are predominantly the problems of Whitehall and its agencies. As Kent and others are beginning to show, local government with its placebased role may be most suited to take the lead. As Chant said: “Things seem to get done in local government for about half the price of central government.”

OLYMPIC COMMUNICATIONS

Connecting for the Future It’s the ultimate immovable deadline. The whole world will be watching the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games - but only if one of the largest purpose-built telecommunications infrastructures ever set up is working on schedule.

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he London Olympic and Paralympic Games are the first to be held in a mobile, permanently connected digital world.

London is “the most connected games in history”, says Stuart Hill, vice president London 2012 Delivery at BT. The challenge is literally an order of magnitude greater than Beijing 2008: thanks to the demands of high definition TV and consumer devices like tablets and smartphones, demand for data has risen 10-fold. At Beijing, only 30% of TV transmission was high definition. In 2012 it will be 100%.

Gerry Pennell, CIO of LOCOG

Stuart Hill, vice president London 2012 Delivery at BT

Geoff Connell, CIO of the London boroughs of Newham and Havering

Steve Whatson, Metropolitan Police ICT director for the Games

three emergency services, working together.

“It is definitely an improvement on a siloed approach which is pretty much what happens otherwise,” says Whatson. He is confident that the habit of close technological collaboration between the emergency services will continue afterwards - especially in an era when everyone is looking for efficiencies.

to its massive bandwidth ICT infrastructure, will become a major business location.

Another organisation likely to be changed for ever by the games is Transport for London.

Clare Springett, head of travel demand management at TFL, says that the organisation has started making huge amounts of data available to help the general public and business. Members of the public will get inforLikewise, the host local authorities are conmation from LOCOG’s Spectator fident that new ways of working in Experience App and TfL’s webthe preparation and conduct of the site GetAheadoftheGames.com.

Games will carry through to the future.

“We hope there will be a lastGeoff Connell, CIO of the London bor“It’s the largest logistical operation this couning legacy in terms of people’s oughs of Newham and Havering, try has ever faced in peacetime,” says Hill. says that the Games mean a huge Clare Springett, head of travel travel behaviour,” Springett says. amount to the local community: “One demand management, TfL People will learn the possibilities BT and its partners have built a resilient fixed of working from home, operating hundred years of the investment that and mobile broadband network to cope with out of a different office or teleconferencing would have happened without the Olympics the unprecedented challenge. It will underpin rather than commuting. has happened in seven years.” Broadband a joint effort by public services to keep the capacity in the Olympic Park is equal to that events on schedule - and the rest of London All this assumes that the systems will funcin the whole city of Manchester. “It’s a phemoving - during the Games. And it will create tion throughout the Games. Gerry Pennell, nomenal opportunity,” says Connell. a legacy for the future regeneration of East CIO of LOCOG, says that the challenge is London - backed by more flexible and joined quite unlike that of a normal IT implementaNewham’s immediate challenge is to ensure up public services. tion. “Conventionally, you might roll out IT that essential services keep functioning to an organisation and fix the teething trouduring the Games. He predicts that, despite BT’s telecoms installation for the Games bles later.” There will be no such option with warnings of travel disruption, many staff will covers the Olympic Park - at 550 acres, the London 2012: “What we go in to at the beginwant to come in to the office for a few days, largest park to be built in Europe for 154 ning is what we’ll come out with, so we have but after that they will make use of remote years - and 94 locations across the country. to get it right first time.” and flexible working - enabled by technology.

“We’ve put in the underpinning technology One option is to work from offices in neighfor the wide area network, the local area netNot only will there be no scope for tweaking bouring boroughs, a habit that Connell says work, 16,500 fixed phones and 14,000 mobile and improvement; the system must have the will stick beyond the Games. “That will be a phones,” says Hill. Not to mention 5,500 km of resilience to cope with all challenges thrown useful legacy post-Games... people knowing cable, 80,000 connections and web hosting at it. Pennell says that BT is one of the very that they can just drop in to other organisacapacity which at its peak will handle 30 milfew organisations in the world capable of tions and the technology will work for them.” lion continuous concurrent transactions. running such a project at the required scale.

“BT are probably the delivery partner I have For many staff it will be their first experience There is also the daily logistics challenge the most effective relationship with.” of working from home. Connell says the time faced by BT’s 2012 delivery director, Howard is right. “It’s the first time that the Dickel, of transporting, accomBT itself is hoping that its Olympic team ethos technology in people’s pockets and modating and feeding 850 BT can be re-used. Hill describes the project people’s homes is better than the staff on site. For the past two as “the best I’ve been involved in... we can technology that we’re providing in years, the IT programme has use these skills elsewhere”. He is impressed the office. This is the greatest chance been one of “test, review and by the way rivals have pulled together, with we get in our lifetimes to make a step rehearse”, with complete resilHoward Dickel, London companies working together for the benefit change in the way people work and ience and redundancy.

2012 Delivery Director, BT of UK Plc. “There will be no second chances how they operate.”

- just the opportunity of a lifetime.“ No organisation is more aware of the need Beyond the Games, Newham - and the entire for resilient communications than the East London corridor from Shoreditch to the Metropolitan Police. The key, says Steve Connecting for the Thames Estuary - is looking at a transformaWhatson, Metropolitan Police ICT director for Future, is a UKauthorITy. tive regeneration. Investments already made the Games, is to hardwire all communications com documentary range from higher education to the Westfield using BT’s fibre infrastructure. “We wanted to sponsored by BT. shopping centre. Post-Games, all eyes are on guarantee that we would be able to get through www.ukauthority.com/Olympic the press and broadcast centre which, thanks when we need to.” The network will serve all UKAuthority IT in Use

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HEALTH

Smart, Open & Shared Transparency and self-service are the information future for the NHS, says Michael Cross, reviewing its new ICT strategy. © Paul Clarke

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heekily, the Department of Health chose the title ‘The Power of Information’ for its latest information strategy for the NHS in England. The choice of title was a departure from ‘An Information Revolution’, the title of the consultation document on which the strategy was based. Indeed the new document is billed as the government’s response to the Information Revolution consultation.

If it succeeds, the strategy will achieve a revolution involving patients taking control of their health information to pick providers and manage their care. Equally dramatically, data on the outcomes of treatments will become routinely available for re-use.

If the 115-page document has a headline theme, it is information-empowered patients taking part in decision making about their care. The target is by 2015 for patients to be able to access their GP record, including test results, online. From April 2013, practices that offer online access will be identified on the NHS Choices website or via a new “single, trusted health and care portal”.

Also by 2015, all data on clinical outcomes will be put in the public domain in anonymised form.

While this is a big departure from previous NHS information strategies, there are recurring themes. Like its predecessors in 1998 and 2002 it bewails the current disjointed state of the information picture, in which paper records get lost. However unlike its predecessors it does not propose large-scale information systems to solve the problem. In a reference to the NHS national programme for IT it notes: “Previous approaches to health information have often pursued perfection at the expense of progress, through detailed national programmes.”

Another familiar theme is information quality, or lack of it. However rather than improving the means for clinicians to record information at the point of care with better IT systems, the onus is now on patients.

“Improving and enhancing our access to our own health and care records and facilitating the accurate recording and use of information by clinicians and professionals will lead to much needed improvements in the quality of information.”

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Finally, like its predecessors in 1992, 1998 and 2002 the strategy stresses the need to adopt a single NHS number for all records of health and social care. (It admits that there will remain “a small number of cases” where temporary identifiers will be needed, for example some services where patients wish to remain anonymous.)

Here too there are hopes of putting the solution in patients’ hands, suggesting that as patients we should “become increasingly aware of our own NHS numbers we can help those providing our care by, wherever possible, knowing and being ready to quote our own NHS number”.

A big jump in the strategy is the leap to social care, which was largely ignored by previous strategies. It notes that across social care, “a myriad of paper and electronic systems have been designed primarily to monitor administrative activity. Local authorities typically have electronic records, but the information they contain cannot be easily shared with other authorities or health services.”

Fifteen years after the Information for Health strategy set out the ambition to create joined up electronic care records, the strategy observes that there is no single overall record of our entire health and care history. “Many different systems, using diverse data structures and definitions are in use across primary, secondary, community and social care, and by individual specialties in secondary care. As a result, the quality of the data held is variable, often conflicting in content, and difficult to synthesise into a safe and useful record that is focused on us as the individual at the centre of that care.”

Despite shortcomings, the availability of technology often runs ahead of willingness to use it. Over half of general practices have IT systems capable of providing access to records, less than 1% actually offer the service; while 70% have systems that allow online booking of appointments and ordering repeat prescriptions, only 30% of practices offer the service.

In future such transactions must be routine.

However in a nod to the digital inclusion agenda the strategy says that, while supporting the cross-government approach UKAuthority IT in Use

to “digital by default”, health and care needs to take a “digital first” rather than a “digital by default” approach. This means making it clear that “face to face contact with our health and care professionals will remain an essential, core part of our care”.

To tackle professional qualms about giving patients access to their records, especially when they see ‘Normal for Norfolk’ - type notes that were not intended for lay consumption, the Royal College of General Practitioners is reviewing guidance on access to records.

The most controversial aspect of the strategy and another departure from its predecessors is the emphasis on transparency. Reiterating previously announced government policy, the strategy states: “All clinical outcomes data will be put into the public domain by 2015.” It says the process has already begun with the publishing of national clinical audit data from last month.

Data will be anonymised and disseminated by the NHS Health and Social Care Information Centre.

There is some acknowledgement that parts of this will be highly controversial. However the section on information governance says that the NHS Future Forum consultation “received a clear message that not sharing information has the potential to do more harm than sharing it”. It stresses that the data held in our health and care records “is a valuable source of information, which can be used for the benefit of wider society, as well in our personal care”.

To deal with the thorny issue of informed consent, the strategy proposes a “rights and responsibilities” consent deal for the NHS and patients, including a promise “to take all reasonable steps to protect your confidentiality”.

Details are to appear in the report of an independent review led by Dame Fiona Caldicott, to be published “later in the year”.

That report, like the Power of Information Strategy, can expect closer scrutiny and a rougher ride than its predecessors.

The Power of Information: Putting all of us in control of the health and care information we need. http://informationstrategy.dh.gov.uk/

ITU LIVE: DELIVERING DIGITAL BY DEFAULT

The Future, Today The ‘Connect Digitally’ programme led by Hertfordshire County Council has delivered astonishing results for online school admissions and free school meal applications, with take up over 80% in many areas. With the government pursuing ‘digital by default’, what lessons can be learned from this pioneering project? Our ITU Live panel has the answers.

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he Connect Digitally programme, which was led by Hertfordshire County Council in partnership with the Department for Education, was aimed at digital transformation of two services: applications for school admissions, and applications for free school meals.

Emer Coleman Deputy Director, Digital Engagement, Government Digital Service

Amanda Derrick Programme Director, Connect Digitally

worked with suppliers, central government and local authorities.”

This it most certainly achieved. For online school admissions, national take-up levels in England are now averaging 67%, and a third of local authorities are achieving more than 80% take up – the magic level now defined by government as ‘digital by default’.

For free school meal application, for example, people were being asked for proof of residency as part of the eligibility process, and the team realised that an automated back office check could remove time delays and social stigma. “The problem was data sharing – nobody had worked out how it was going to be possible, or legal, to get that central government data shared with local authorities, let alone allowing users to check against it,” Derrick said.

With online application for free school meals, almost all councils in England and Wales now offer the service, with take-up running at around 60% - a big achievement for a service delivered to people suffering relatively high levels of social exclusion. An application process that used to take three months can now be processed immediately, thanks to online eligibility checking.

In fact, different bits of key data for the project were held by the DWP, HMRC and the Home Office, “and just to add to the excitement it is a DfE policy area, but the local authority is statutorily responsible”. Joining all these dots took a long time, “until Cabinet Office stepped in to help us, and the Treasury Solicitors. You really do need strong central government sponsorship.”

Lorna Peters, business improvement manager for Connect Digitally, said that the potential was now there in society for many more services to be moved online in their entirety. “Six or seven years ago, 50% of people when asked said that they would prefer to conduct these services online. Now in some authorities, 100% are conducting them online. There’s been a change of opinion and activity among the public.”

Another problem was working with a large number of different technology suppliers to schools, said Derrick. “We had 15 suppliers involved right at the beginning, and worked very closely with them to agree minimum features and draw up a relationships document, which specified what the outcomes should be, for interoperability. Once you have got standards set up and agreed, it is possible to transfer data between them.”

The key to realising this potential is usability, Peters said. “Who’s responsible for user experience? Is it the customer service unit, or is it an organisation, or is it across organisations? Where it really works is where you get people working together, not just one area or one department; it has to be pulling together across the whole piece.”

Emer Coleman, deputy director for digital engagement at the Government Digital Service in Cabinet Office, said that Connect Digitally had shown that the most successful development method for digital public services was iteration: “Putting it out there, and changing the product in response to feedback. That’s where government needs to go, moving away from projects scoped out in advance over a long time, so they are no longer relevant.”

Amanda Derrick, Connect Digitally programme director, agreed that success was a partnership effort, “When we started we looked at who was involved – commercial suppliers, local authorities, central government – and we looked at what were the barriers to getting where we wanted to go.

Then we took those barriers one by one and asked, ‘how are we going to solve them?’ We

Government agencies must open themselves up to other new ideas like using open source software or small businesses as suppliers, but “the whole notion of agile and lean can be alien to a culture where they are used to having five to ten year contracts,” she said.

UKAuthority IT in Use

Helen Olsen Managing Editor UKauthority

Lorna Peters Business Improvement, Connect Digitally

Often, for example, government departments are sceptical that small businesses can scale up to deliver major government projects, Coleman said. To which her response is: “Really? I think PayPal has scaled very well.”

Another key to success is the ability to clearly demonstrate the cost savings from taking the digital route, Peters said. “It was very important for all partners to see what difference was being made as we went along, right from the first year of Connect Digitally: people reducing staffing by half, reducing office space, reducing the number of paper booklets that had to be printed.

“There were real quantitative figures giving proof that this worked, and that there were real financial benefits to be gained.”

It is important to understand that these savings are possible in all areas, Peters said, even in those where digital exclusion is perceived as a barrier. “We see the proof that 50%-60% of people will use it, if you give them the opportunity.”

Some individual parents have initially said an online service is not for them, ‘I’m not smart enough’, but once they were shown how it worked, had been surprised and delighted.

“Then they say ‘I really didn’t think I could do that, I feel good about that now’. It’s about confidence, not technology.”

From this perspective, access using smartphones is critical as they are so widely used, Emer Coleman said. “I think the pushback of the digital divide is becoming weaker and weaker as an argument. Often this can become an excuse for ‘we don’t really want to do this’.”

Above all, said Amanda Derrick, the key to the success of Connect Digitally has been trust – among the users, but also the service providers. “We had to work to build up that trust.

If a local authority said to us ‘we can’t do that, we can only get 5% of our users online’, we said ‘Okay we will work with you’, and the following year 84% were online. Then others see that, and it builds up trust, and the following year another 15 local authorities with that demographic would make the changes.”

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VIEW OVER WESTMINSTER

Queen’s Speech lacks Digital Direction © Paul Clarke

There were a few technology-related laws in among the government’s new parliamentary programme – but not that many, and not that radical. What has happened to the brave new world of technology pledged at the government’s creation? Tim Hampson reports.

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an it really be two years since Cameron and Clegg, or Dave and Nick as we called them then, stood in the rose garden of Downing Street, full of smiles and promises for their new government?

It was the brave, fresh dawn of a new administration. The prime-minister and his deputy looked hopeful and fresh and sounded for all the world like managing directors of rival software companies announcing a joint venture. With their new haircuts and smart suits they laughed and bantered their way through a shared services agenda.

Now the only way is Essex. Twenty-four months on, the pair chose a tractor factory in Basildon to relaunch their political fortunes.

It was an appropriately Stalinesque location for the launch of a five year plan. Though their waists were broader, their smiles were less broad and even their suits looked rumpled and careworn.

As they made a joint speech above the sound of a noisy production line, they declared there would be “no going back”, though the overall impression was less of government on the front foot than government on the hoof. The event followed vicious criticism triggered by May’s disastrous council elections in which Labour won more than 800 seats, mostly from the two coalition partners, and took control of an additional 32 councils in England, Scotland and Wales.

Both leaders have come to realise that their worst enemies weren’t the people opposite them barracking them in the Commons but those behind them and alongside them on the government benches, who are publicly cheering their every move.

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What was on offer? New laws to bring down electricity bills for millions of home owners, force supermarkets to treat farmers fairly and make Britain more business-friendly - as well as reform of the House of Lords - were at the heart of the Queen’s Speech.

Other laws among the 19 new pieces of legislation for the parliamentary year ahead included plans to monitor information relating to emails and text messages, with the Communications Data Bill. Already called a “snooper’s charter” by critics, it is a new fierce political row waiting to happen. The police and security services will be given powers to spy on people’s internet browsing history, and see who they have been emailing, texting, Twittering and Facebooking; when; and for how long.

Internet and phone providers will have to keep people’s communications data for up to 12 months, though the Information Commissioner has yet to be convinced, as he wants to see strong and convincing safeguards and limitations to accompany the proposed laws.

The Electoral Registration and Administration Bill heralds the way for people to sign up online if they want to vote in elections. From 2014, it is expected that individual registration will become compulsory for new voters and anyone voting by proxy or post. The new laws will also allow for “data matching” checks with other public databases to verify applications and confirm existing entries to help maintain a complete list during the transition to individual registration.

Standing in the Fiat-owned factory Cameron and Clegg stressed that the government’s main focus over the coming year will remain on bringing down the state deficit and promoting economic growth.

The Crime and Courts Bill will setup the National Crime Agency and allow broadcast cameras into certain court rooms under highly controlled circumstances. Other proposed measures include allowing data to be shared between HM Courts and Tribunals Service and other agencies to allow fee exemption applications to be checked electronically.

They said that the primary task of the government remains ensuring that “we deal with the deficit and stretch every sinew to return growth to the economy, providing jobs and opportunities to hard-working people across Britain who want to get on”.

When the current government came to power, however, there was a hope that the use of technology would feature a bit more strongly than this. Cameron had promised “the most radical decentralisation of power this country has seen for generations”. He

May/June 2012

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attacked “Labour’s bureaucracy, running everything from Whitehall, denying people control over their lives and undermining the professionals in our public services.

He said that he would create incentives and use the best technology to encourage and enable people to come together, solve their problems together and make this society stronger.

So what has become of the digital revolution and where were the plans for it in the proposed legislation?

A new report by Akamai has revealed the top 100 fastest cities in the world based on average broadband connection speed - and the first six are all in South Korea.

In fact, the top 50 is an exclusively Asian affair, with the exception of just two cities in Sweden - Umea and Gothenburg - in 14th and 50th places respectively. Daegu leads the way with an eye-watering 21.8 Mbps average speed registered in the fourth quarter of last year according to the US company’s State of the Internet report.

Seoul is 5th with 17.8 Mbps, while the remainder of the top 50 is made up of Japanese cities, including Yokohama in 10th with 12.8 Mbps. The remaining next 50 cities have a more worldwide feel, with the US featuring heavily, as well as Switzerland, Australia, Canada and even Latvia and Romania. But where is the UK? The Netherlands was the best performing European nation, coming fourth with an average speed of 8.2Mbps, while the UK trailed behind in 16th place across the region.

Indeed, the report finds the average UK broadband connection speed fell during the last three months of 2011. Given these figures it is not surprising that not a single UK city made the global top 100, despite the government’s pledge that Britain will have Europe’s best broadband network by 2015.

Like some of its other early pledges in the field of technology, it may yet be overtaken by much more pressing political imperatives – like staying in power.

CONTRACT ROUNDUP

SHARED SERVICES DARTFORD, SEVENOAKS, DACORUM AND NORTH WARWICKSHIRE councils have become the latest local authorities to join Liberata’s CapacityGRID. Launched in 2011, CapacityGRID is a rapidly expanding market place where local authorities can connect, collaborate and share resources and work.

ENVIRONMENT AGENCY has launched what is claimed to be the world’s first Facebookbased flood warning system as water levels have been rising across the country. Live data from the agency is being continually processed to deliver real-time and personalised updates to users of the world’s biggest social network who might be affected by recent flooding. FloodAlerts was launched on Facebook by Shoothill, on behalf of the Environment Agency. Updates from the agency’s network of flood warning systems and staff are gathered and plotted using Microsoft’s scalable cloud technology.

ASSOCIATION OF GREATER MANCHESTER AUTHORITIES has signed an agreement with Contensis which could see up to 18 councils and other local public bodies signing up to use its web content management system. A CMS solution was initially procured for both Wigan and Trafford councils, with the opportunity to open this up to any of the other AGMA member and associate organisations – enabling significant discounts to be secured.

EAST MIDLANDS PUBLIC SERVICES NETWORK (EMPSN) is to be built by Kcom.

Kcom has also been awarded positions on the emPSN framework agreement including provision of access services and, in partnership with RM, supply of application services.

The first partner set to join the new network is Lincolnshire County Council, in a deal that also covers the seven district councils and broadband services for 349 county schools.

PRO5 PUBLIC SECTOR BUYING CONSORTIUM has selected Softcat, alongside just eight other suppliers, to provide software and associated services to over 200 local authorities and other affiliated public sector organisations in the UK. The framework is potentially worth between £50-£80m over the next four years.

NINE WEST LONDON COUNCILS hope to achieve £16m of savings by 2015 through a joint procurement board that will have strategic overview of all major purchasing, collaborative procurement and relationships with major common suppliers.

It will initially focus on new property projects, environmental and business services areas.

Boroughs taking part include Barnet, Brent, Ealing, Harrow, Hillingdon and Hounslow.

Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster - which form the existing tri-borough partnership in London will also join the board on a project-by-project basis. The authorities involved spend around £2.3bn a year on goods and services.

GOVERNMENT & AGENCIES NATO CONSULTATION, COMMAND AND CONTROL AGENCY (NC3A) has signed a Basic Ordering Agreement (BOA) with Bull.

The BOA provides the framework between the two parties to quickly do business together. The deal specifically mentions the following products and services: computer servers, electronic data storage equipment, radio systems, transmitter and counter IED, ‘securised’ hardware, crypto, security software, prefabricated structures and container units and consultancy.

PARAGON COMMUNITY HOUSING GROUP has implemented a new converged communications system from Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise across its two main sites in Surrey and Middlesex. The new system upgrades Paragon’s internal network by replacing all of the data switches and deploying an advanced contact centre that enables the Housing Group to interact with residents more quickly.

THE ARMY’S RECRUITING PARTNERING PROJECT is being delivered by Capita in a contract valued at around £44m a year for 10 years. The Army says the contract is expected to deliver benefits in excess of £300m and will release military recruiters back to the front line. Capita will work with a range of partners, including advertising agency JWT, to support recruitment marketing, and Kenexa, to support the assessment process and the recruitment technology component of the ICT platform.

WIRRAL PARTNERSHIP HOMES is enhancing its services with a corporate Workflow and EDM system from Civica. In a five-year contract worth over £300,000 Civica will implement a corporate customer relationship management, electronic document management and workflow system. The new integrated platform will help to set up common business processes and enable all staff to access and manage information more effectively across all different departments.

YOUR HOMES NEWCASTLE, which manages social housing on behalf of Newcastle City Council, has selected NDL for its first mobile working project. The project forms part of a wider strategy to introduce mobile working across the organisation. The housing provider will use NDL’s corporate mobile platform, awi, which takes data from multiple back office systems and allows end users to access it via a mobile application on their smartphones and tablets. The platform allows staff with basic development skills to quickly and easily build and distribute line-of-business apps to devices using Android, BlackBerry or Windows operating systems quickly and easily.

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EDUCATION UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL will shortly be implementing Lumesse TalentLink 12 to increase the efficiency of its candidate recruitment system and help it to contend for talent in an increasingly competitive academic environment.

Intuitive app-based technology will provide the university with a career portal enabling candidates to track their application status and so significantly reduce the administrative burden.

CLASSROOM 2000, Northern Ireland’s IT procurement body for education, has awarded a £170m contract to Northgate Managed Services for the provision of cloud services. The five-year deal will see the services delivered to 1,200 schools across the country. Classroom 2000 will use a private cloud from Northgate to store a range of teaching resources, previously hosted locally, along with ‘immediate data’ including work produced by pupils.

LEEDS CITY COLLEGE has appointed Allied Telesis for a £100,000 network upgrade following the merger of three of the city’s colleges.

SOUTH WEST GRID FOR LEARNING has partnered with Sophos to provide cost-effective IT security for schools in the south west of England. Wiltshire schools were the first to benefit from the cost savings, with nearly 20,000 Sophos endpoint licences purchased by schools in the county. Schools from Somerset, Cornwall, Swindon, Bristol and other local authorities are also purchasing via SWGfL. UNIVERSITY OF DUNDEE has migrated to Microsoft Office 365 with Salford Software – saving £1.2m over the next five years - without any downtime or disruption to users. Student demand for an improved email tool which could offer collaboration and increased mailbox size drove the university’s IT department to explore the move to the Cloud. The new solution means it no longer has to consider the financial and resource implications of providing the email on premise, while making huge strides towards improving student services.

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CONTRACT ROUNDUP

LOCAL GOVERNMENT ARGYLL AND BUTE COUNCIL has chosen Microsoft’s communication and collaboration technology, Lync 2010, to create and manage a flexible working programme. The council has introduced Microsoft Lync to 2,000 of its staff to help them work flexibly across 60 separate sites - with IT services extended to another 350 locations - and provide a more cost effective solution that will synchronise more effectively with the council’s infrastructure and services. The council has already adopted video conferencing to help cut the amount of time staff spent travelling.

DERBY CITY COUNCIL has embarked on a plan to make location central to all its work.

The council’s infrastructure partner, Serco, procured the UK based software developer, Cadcorp, to provide its Spatial Information System technology as a new approach to the existing GIS and mapping technologies currently in use. The move is part of the council’s “one Derby, one council” transformation programme in which the consolidation of core ICT systems is anticipated to lead to more cost effective and integrated service delivery.

DUNDEE CITY COUNCIL has installed WatchGuard next-generation firewalls and content protection appliances. WatchGuard’s XTM 810 and XCS 770R solutions are securing over 100 Dundee council sites, all connected to dual data centres linked by fibre cable to provide resilience and high availability.

The solution will provide high-performance firewall, application control and intrusion prevention to protect against data theft, malware and security breaches.

ELEVATE EAST LONDON, which provides customer services on behalf of the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, has contracted Netcall for a call handling solution. It will use the solution for the council’s main switchboard. Following this agreement, Netcall is now engaged by half of London’s councils: other recent wins include Brent, Wandsworth and Croydon.

ESSEX COUNTY COUNCIL has become the first council to introduce Eckoh’s speech recognition technology to enhance customer service. The contract, won in partnership with Azzurri Communications, will see Eckoh develop and implement a hosted speech recognition solution across the council’s customer service operations. The core aim of the implementation of these services will be to reduce call waiting times, free up contact centre agents to deal with more complex enquiries and achieve significant cost savings.

LEEDS CITY COUNCIL has selected MobileIron to manage and secure mobile devices and apps across the organisation.

MobileIron is securing the council’s fleet of corporate-owned devices, supporting a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) program, and paving the way for the provision of

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May/June 2012

HARLOW COUNCIL’S joint venture with construction, services and property group Kier, Kier Harlow, is using Bluesky’s solar mapping to support a scheme to install solar panels on council-owned properties in Essex. Aiming to save residents money on their energy bills, provide a valuable income stream for the council and reduce carbon emissions, the scheme offered free installation for qualifying properties. specialist third-party apps to help streamline public services. Leeds is currently testing the productivity benefits of mobile applications, enabling specialist third party apps to employees in the highways department and housing association teams.

NEWCASTLE CITY COUNCIL has teamed up with Ordnance Survey to demonstrate how 3D mapping can help make Newcastle one of the most sustainable cities in Europe.

The new partnership will demonstrate how 3D city models can provide valuable information to enable effective solar power generation. Both organisations are members of the European project consortium i-SCOPE (Interoperable Smart City Services through an Open Platform for urban Ecosystems) which will run for three years and involve 11 cities across Europe.

NOTTINGHAMSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL and Capita IB Solutions have developed a comprehensive online solution to help adults navigate their options for funding the cost of full-time care. The system went live in February 2012. It consists of three portals, one for the public, one for care homes and one for the local authority. The public facing portal has information on local services, and about paying for care.

TOWER HAMLETS COUNCIL has signed a seven-year strategic partnership with Agilisys to deliver more than 1,000 local apprenticeships to help create jobs and develop skills in what is one of London’s poorest boroughs, as part of a deal to run the council’s ICT service.

Under the terms of the £70m deal the council will secure over £29m in back office ICT cost savings while creating 250 permanent jobs alongside the vocational training opportunities. The deal will also implement the council’s new back office finance and HR systems, as well as support its broader transformation programme.

VALE OF GLAMORGAN COUNCIL, with the help of Capita’s software services business, is offering its residents and local businesses a one-stop e-shop for council payments. Local citizens can opt to receive e-bills rather than paper bills, cutting down on paper waste and streamlining local services. They can also now provide details of a change of address online, simplifying the process for citizens and council staff alike. The details only have to be entered once and they will be sent to each relevant council department.

ROCHDALE METROPOLITAN BOROUGH COUNCIL is investing in a new wide area network supplied by public sector network specialist Updata Infrastructure. The new network will provide improved broadband access to an initial 130 sites, including all primary schools and council corporate sites in the borough, and will be ‘PSN ready’.

WAKEFIELD COUNCIL has extended its partnership with MidlandHR to expand its use of iTrent - a web solution for skills management, workforce planning, HR and payroll.

The council, which employs more than 13,000 people, successfully implemented the first phase of the project comprising HR, selfservice and payroll, in the six months to April 2012. The remaining modules, including rostering, learning and development, performance management and web recruitment, will go live by May 2013.

SUFFOLK COUNTY COUNCIL has completed an £11m programme to link up schools, libraries and county council buildings with a single high speed network. The work was undertaken by MLL Telecom and Customer Service Direct (CSD) and was finished in January.

So far 219 schools and 48,815 children have been linked into the Next Generation Network (NGN) programme. A total of 318 schools including new academies and free schools across Suffolk have signed up.

WELWYN HATFIELD BOROUGH COUNCIL has deployed an Extreme Networks convergence solution across its entire network to increase flexibility and to support future technologies and increases in user demand. The company has provided the council with its versatile Summit X250e-48p stackable switches and Summit X450a fixed switches for the core, complemented by a new LAN extension circuit to provide a segregated WAN infrastructure and to support a Voice-over-IP (VoIP) system.

UKAuthority IT in Use

CONTRACT ROUNDUP

BLUE LIGHT METROPOLITAN POLICE SERVICE has entered into a four year contract with Capita for the supply, delivery and support of radio managed services and peripherals for use under the Airwave Radio Service. The multi-supplier framework, which has an estimated value of up to £160m, is being supported by and is open for use by public sector bodies using the Airwave service via the Bluelight portal. The framework allows customers to benefit from the convenience, choice and value for money derived from purchasing goods and services through a single, pre-competed national framework.

NORFOLK CONSTABULARY AND SUFFOLK CONSTABULARY have awarded a new contract to Star Traq to help with traffic enforcement. Raw data from offences captured by Norfolk safety cameras will be sent to Suffolk for uploading to the shared StarTraq system, from where it can be accessed securely by central ticket office personnel from either Norfolk or Suffolk as appropriate. Offences committed in Norfolk can still be accessed and verified by staff in Norfolk, who will now be able to process a higher volume of offences and reduce the so-called “justice gap”, where offences are rejected, lost or timed out.

HUMBERSIDE FIRE AND RESCUE SERVICE has contracted Stone to provide 120 desktop PCs, working together to ensure that the agreement not only saves HFRS money, but also improves upon the current ICT capability. HFRS agreed to receive 120 units by the end of March 2012 with Stone providing a saving of approximately £100 per unit.

HEALTH WEST MIDLANDS AMBULANCE SERVICE has signed a contract to deploy Microsoft Office 365 and SharePoint 2010 to its entire workforce. It is the first Microsoft Cloud deal to be transacted under the government’s G-Cloud Framework and one of the first to be secured overall from any supplier. By moving to the Cloud, the service will simplify communications and enable staff to collaborate more easily.

RIVERSIDE SURGERY in Evesham, Worcestershire has selected PCTI’s Docman EDMS and a Kodak i2400 workgroup scanner solution to improve access to patient medical information at the point of care. The scanner integrates with PCTI’s Docman electronic document management and workflow solution to provide all clinical staff within the surgery access to patient information directly Radiology reports in minutes for Medway from its iSOFT he Radiology Department of the Medway Foundation Hospital, part of the Synergy clinical Medway NHS Foundation Trust, has reported improved efficiency and software. reduced turnaround times for its reporting procedures F O R T H following implementation VALLEY AND of the TalkingPoint voice B O R D E R S Boards recognition solution. The NHS hospital has reduced report- have recently ing times from an average of gone live with from two days, using traditional Adastra methods, to just minutes, A d v a n c e d offering significant benefits Health & Care. product, given the production of more The than 14,000 reports a month. designed specifically for

T

out-of-hours, urgent and unscheduled care, is now used across all 14 NHS Boards in Scotland.

NHS SCOTLAND is to introduce a new electronic document management system from PCTI for 16 Scottish prisons at a contract worth £100,000 over the next five years. The move aims to replace the manual processes for prison staff, and allow the electronic transfer of important medical documents when patients are either transferred between prisons or released.

SUSSEX PARTNERSHIP NHS FOUNDATION TRUST has signed a new contract for all its ICT services with services provider 2e2.The contract runs from April 2012 to 2019. Lisa Rodrigues, chief executive of Sussex Partnership, said: “This vital programme will make these services fit to support our staff whether they work in hospitals, clinics or patients’ own homes.”

NHS INSTITUTE FOR INNOVATION AND IMPROVEMENT has deployed the Skydox platform across the NHS in England. The move, the latest effort to break silo working and make it easier for staff to work with the NHS Institute, is easing email inefficiencies and reducing costs associated with its legacy project collaboration system. With SkyDox’s file-centric approach to collaboration, the NHS Institute can now ensure that all team members are accessing the most updated version of a document, eliminating problems such as duplicated work and version control.

AINTREE UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST has selected RES Software for desktop management and service improvement. It will manage and control desktop settings and personalisation for its entire user base of around 3,500 staff. RES Software will help the trust to provide a consistent desktop experience for users wherever they happen to log in from, while enabling improved performance and reduced support costs.

SHOWCASE MAYRISE

GGP

Medway radiology features Martin Mitchell

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May/June 2012

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