Signing off...

Today is my last working for Newham and so, for now at least, after well over 300 entries since starting at the beginning of 2007, it’s time to retire my Blog.

Many thanks for the many warm wishes and compliments that I’ve received, and thanks, also, to those who’ve shared their less than complimentary views in various ways (‘though I personally think that name-calling, febrile comments and anonymity from some, diminish their value!)

I was again reminded of the need to keep things in perspective, when I heard the sad news, this week, that Socitm’s Auditor, Christine Peacock, lost her fight with cancer last weekend, and I’m more than ever looking forward to redressing my own work-life balance for a bit.

So I guess that the value of my views may also be diminished, as I take the money and run, but I really do think that the current economic environment and the drive for Government efficiency and savings create the best opportunity that there will ever be for ICT to show how truly transformative it can be. My greatest disappointment, as Socitm President, was in the realisation that a few of my peers prefer to criticise and obstruct rather than get involved, find solutions and make a difference, but there are many who truly inspire and whose influence, now, is increasingly holding sway.

May you continue to live in interesting times!

Under A Cloud

Wednesday started with a self-inflicted headache after I attended, on Tuesday evening, 2e2’s annual reception hosted by Lord St. John of Bletso on the House of Lords Terrace. I’d decided to leave the car behind – bad move – and clearly I overdid the vino tinto!


Socitm’s Board meeting was held at Camden Town Hall. I’m glad to say we agreed a contract for non-Executive Directors, setting-out responsibilities and commitments, and a code of conduct.

We were rightly taken to task by the NAC for having requested it to change the date of its meeting to facilitate board representation, and then failed to ensure adequate representation. This clearly was unintended, and happened because of the shifting requirements of, and commitments to, Directors’ employers. In fact, our calendar has become rather a mess; I’ve struggled to keep-up. We’ve resolved therefore to reset a logically ordered calendar of meetings, and then stick with it – accepting that sometimes key individuals may need to miss the occasional meeting.

The decision to recruit of Heads of Membership Services and of Business Development was confirmed. These are two crucial appointments to continue to build capacity and expand our membership. The appointments will require some investment of reserves in the short to medium term, but ultimately should be self-financing. Finances are continuing to hold-up well, although we of course recognised the need to continue to monitor the position closely in the adverse economic environment that we’ll all continue to face for some time into the future.

Neil Harvey, from the NAC, did a really great job on reworking our draft Value Proposition, and this should now provide the basis for marketing/public relations collateral going forward. Frances Kettleday also provided us with seminal advice on how to make our briefings and reports work better for us - by including information about who we are and how to get in-touch, for example!

Conference bookings are down a little, at this stage. Edinburgh is traditionally our most popular venue, and we have a great programme – reinventing local public services – radical thinking, practical solutions – so, if you haven’t already, book-up quickly before the early bird discount runs-out!


I had to leave the Board Meeting before lunch to go across to a Public Sector Infrastructure Team Executive Board meeting at the DWP’s offices in the former Adelphi Hotel, in the Strand, where I was both representing Martin Ferguson, who’s on holiday in Turkey, and feeding-back from the Unified Communications sub-group meeting that I recently hosted at Newham Dockside.

At the UC meeting we had first defined what we mean by “Unified Communications” – fixed and mobile, covering voice, e-mail, messaging, and video, encompassing desktop and advanced business applications and, crucially, presence – and then proposed a vision statement… “This transformation agenda requires that services, processes and information are extended across the traditional ‘machinery of government’ silos, integrating service delivery around customer needs and cross-government policies, whilst also exploiting economies of scale and commonality in key areas”, backed-up by a list of key requirements.

The PSIT Executive Board will incorporate other key considerations, such as Information Assurance, and “secure telephony” (which is surely missing the point… unified communications obviously mean that all communications are now just bits and bytes, and must be managed accordingly). The vision, when ratified, will be published in due course but, in the meantime, my presentation is in the Socitm Futures GovX space, for those who have access, and the detailed paper is available in the Cabinet Office Government e-Room for those who have access to that.

The main business of the meeting was a presentation by Martin Bellamy, from the Cabinet Office, on “Government Data Centres, the G-Cloud and the Apps. Store”, followed by discussion and feedback from us all. This is mooted as a new programme responding to drivers such as the Operational Efficiency Programme, the Green Agenda and Digital Britain. It’s likely to become a major strand of the new Government IT Strategy (see John Suffolk’s new Blog) and to launch early next year.


I wonder whether this might provide an alternative to G-Cloud?


At the PSIT Executive Board we again alluded to the need for pan-Government security vision, supporting role-based access, ID management, authentication etc etc. I’ve always felt that identity should be federated so individuals don’t have to cope with different systems for different sectors and suppliers, and this story therefore caught my interest.


I read in Municipal Journal that “the Internet giant has launched a website in partnership with DirectGov and Socitm… http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/landing/localgov/

Continuing my Swan-Song...

Geoff asked me to review ICT pay and allowances in the light of the present economic environment, so that’s what I’ve been doing, this week, and have arranged to discuss the prognosis and recommendations with managers next week.


Socitm’s Events Group met, on Friday, at David Wilde’s new offices in St. John’s Wood. Andrew Unsworth, from Edinburgh City Council, joined us to help in planning for the annual conference (being held in Edinburgh) which provided most of our agenda. Elaine Davis joined us by video-conference from her motor-home, now in Oregon, where it was 2.00 am as we started our meeting. She informed us that sponsorship and exhibition bookings are holding up very well, despite the recession.

We discussed final agenda items to enable an updated flyer to be published during August. Scottish content will include the national citizen card (later, the London Regional Committee discussed a new feasibility study for London) approaches to the Cloud in Scotland and an Edinburgh contribution to different approaches to/ perspectives on outsourcing.

Prospective innovations for this year include the facility to provide conference feedback via an IVR (Interactive Voice Recognition) system provided by Oni – one of the confirmed sponsors – online meeting facilitation from “MustMeet” and a simultaneous virtual conference through HBL.
We also discussed a spring event, next year, with the NEC, or Motorcycle Museum, as possible venues. I am to get a steer on this and other issues from next week’s Board Meeting.


After lunch, David gave me a lift to the Socitm London Committee meeting at 59 ½ Southwark Street, which, as a storm broke, I was most grateful for. We dropped Andrew Unsworth and Martin Fuggles at their stations on the way.

Damian Acklam, of Cidway UK, was invited to address the start of our meeting. Cidway have produced software enabling two-factor authentication on any Java-enabled Cell ‘Phone. There was a lot of interest from Committee members – no doubt, hastened by the imperative to facilitate self-service for Council services as part of the efficiency drive.

As mentioned above, Steve Pennant advised as that Capital Ambition is tendering a feasibility study for a London Citizen/ Smart Card, hopefully capitalising on developments such as Hillingdon’s, and the earlier efforts from Newham and South-East London.

The next Socitm London Branch meeting will be on 17th September. That should provide the opportunity to feedback from the special CIO Event being held on Public Sector Network earlier in the week, and considerations for the London PSN development. Digital telephony convergence/ security will also be on the agenda.


Some of the stories that caught my attention in the last week are…

Telecare offers crucial opportunity to help save health and social care systems which refers to Professor Sue Yeandle’s report at http://www.bowgroup.org/harriercollectionitems/telecare%20final.doc

Also, Too late for CIOs to get lean and agile? And…

(Global CIOs:) Why CIOs without Customer Engagement Will Fail. I liked this CEO/CIO conversational scenario, but didn’t see why it referred just to “global” CIOs.

Too much flexibility!

On Monday Glyn Moody wrote in Linux Journal of his having agreed with Microsoft to cancel the planned discussion of the OXML ISO standardisation process. He says this was because the meeting was only being held for my benefit. Actually, I neither sought nor expected to gain any benefit from the meeting. I invited the two parties to discuss the process out of interest, and because I thought it quite likely that many others would also be interested, but expected any benefit to accrue to one or both of them.


I rather liked the recent ZDNet article by Glyn’s mate, Mark Taylor. His analogy with the US Car-Makers is similar to others, like the US Railroads losing out to airlines because they thought they were in the rail business rather than the travel business, and could be configured to apply to other potential pitfalls for our profession; CIO’s thinking they are in a technology business rather than the creation of value through knowledge management, perhaps? I don’t, however, think there’s much evidence that major IT vendors (like Google and Microsoft) have any intention of holding on to inflexible business models. This article in Information Week, and this, on the BBC News Website, are among many that discuss how they are reacting.


The Socitm Futures Group met at Siemens’ offices, in Old Bailey, on Monday. There was discussion of our recent response to the Digital Britain report, and whether this was sufficiently radical. Views were mixed; my own being that it said all that it needed to in a measured and dispassionate way, but the Group would be pleased to hear other Socitm members’ thoughts. Andrew Stott, the new Digital “Czar” was attending, in the afternoon, to discuss his new role, and how the Society can support his work, but I was unable to stay for that.

Some of the discussion, led by the Chair, Glyn Evans, which I thought most useful, was of ICT service typology – supporting regeneration and developing SME capacity, for example – not just personalisation of Council services etc.

We also discussed a draft response to the Operational Efficiency Programme. The report considers short, medium and long term actions, urges avoidance of knee-jerk reactions that could damage services, and effective use of benchmarking to substantiate best value. We resolved to add a checklist of the all things we recommend that all organisations should be doing.

We received updates on information assurance/ resilience work and pan-Government security vision. Mark Brett has so far responded to over 400 queries related to the Government Connect CoCo from local public sector colleagues. Overall, ‘though, we think we’re rather more compliant than central government, having achieved all the “should”, as well as the “musts”. Mark advised that we should now be thinking about how to label e-mails in accordance with security classification requirements. We agreed that the next Socitm Futures meeting would include a session on secure e-mail. Mark has also made great progress with regional engagement with security matters through “WARP”s (Warning, Advice & Reporting Point). Only the NW now does not have one.


On Wednesday, following rescheduling of the Socitm National Advisory Council, I was double-booked, and was therefore not able to attend that meeting, which would have been my last.

The other meeting, which I attended, was the Commercial Board, held at Camden Town Hall. Initial discussion among the select group, of the Chair, David Bryant, David Houston and Suzanne, taking notes, and myself was of the need to sort-out the scheduling of Socitm meetings, which has gone awry, and is adversely affecting attendance.

Considering the economic climate, the performance of our Consulting and Insight services is holding-up very well, and both are on target to achieve budgeted returns to the Society.

A major concern was that progress on the Software Supplier/ e-Governmment Index merger had stalled, and we asked for this to be urgently addressed by the main board.

The other major discussion was of Adrian’s report recommending the recruitment of a Commercial Manager; (he joined us at lunchtime, from the NAC, which was meeting at Euston Square, and which had already endorsed the report). We also agreed that this is now a priority.


Finally, I thought it worth flagging-up an ICT good news story from Britvic, which has a factory and Depot in Newham, and also Cliff Saran’s report of Easyjet’s planned use of Windows Azure.

Reinvigorating PSUC

There’s been a lot in the computer press, this week, about Google’s announcement that it will launch its “Chrome Operating System”. E.g. “Google OS a worry for Linux”. Whilst there’s an interesting debate around who’s threatened more – Microsoft or other Open Source product vendors – I think the real interest is in “Chrome may eventually become a dominant Linux distribution but it will take time for Google to iron out the kinks”, and “creating a cool software product is a good thing, but enabling it on a hardware platform is another thing”. It seems to me that a shared challenge for both Microsoft and Google is creating reliable and effective products for generic hardware from a multitude of suppliers - unlike Apple, whose Mac hardware and software are made for one another.


London’s shared DR procurement process has been completed with the disappointing result that no tender met the quality threshold. However, the boroughs involved are still keen to work together to find a means of achieving the requirements. They decided to separate data backup from application server provision within the original specification. In the short term they will look at using a more dedicated Buying Solutions Framework to procure data backup individually, and in the longer term at designing a possible shared application server solution. There were valuable lessons learned, and these will be compiled and sent to Buying Solutions. All existing documentation, including the shared DR specification is available on the LPSN GovX space.

Oops – I misremembered the new PSMP branding. It’s “MyLoMo” (not “MyLoBo”). This is the logo…

On Friday I hosted a meeting at Newham Dockside to “Reinvigorate Cross Government Unified Communications Strategy” as part of the Public Sector Network. The HMRC’s Jim Boyle organised the meeting, and we were joined by representatives from the CESG and NHS, with input from Andy Williamson related to unified communications network procurement in Wales. We reviewed and updated a vision paper circulated by Jim in advance of the meeting, which I’m to present at the next Public Sector Infrastructure Team Executive Group on 29th July. I’m attending as Martin Ferguson will be on holiday, so this will be part of my “Swan Song”.

We agreed we should focus on the long-term UC requirements, covering all infrastructure – fixed and wireless - flagging practical considerations, many of which related to the need to accommodate multiple devices and presence states, but not allow these to compromise the vision. Mobile operators haven’t yet been represented in the consultative groups, which we resolved to address.

Mobile Media Is Key

Capital Ambition’s “London Mobile Portal Event” at Prospero House (241 Borough High Street), on Tuesday, was a “sell-out”. There were excellent presentations from Geoff Connell on the PSMP (which I understand is to be rebranded “MyLoBo”), Gill Elderfield on Mobile DirectGov, Gary McFarlane on “Blue Badge Finder” and accessibility, Hans Grefte on ReportIT, and Vince Tooke on TfL’s perspective on the future of mobile information services.

The presentations, except for Gary’s (which I believe is to be added) are on the London Councils site at http://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/capitalambition/events/event.htm?pk=62 There is an excellent short video about the “BlueBadge Finder” and “BlueWatch” applications at http://www.bluebadgefinder.com/ These will shortly be featured on the PSMP. Gary highlighted the overwhelming advantage of mobile portals for people with disabilities. Whereas 32% use a PC, 85% use mobile ‘phones.

In her presentation, Gill demonstrated that mobile media is key. Over 30% of the UK population are using mobile media every month, and the latest year-on-year growth of mobile search is 36%, compared with just 8% for PCs.

Following coffee, discussion groups were formed to consider the general mobile portal requirements of Londoners, and collaborative opportunities and next steps. Each group presented its feedback, which is providing the initial content for a new GovX Collaboration Space (membership required) to continue to discuss and develop ideas.


The Identity & Passport Service published its Safeguarding Identity Strategy two weeks ago. This is an important and overdue contribution to the Information Assurance and Security agenda, which I urge IT professionals to familiarise themselves with; not least, because it’s among the tools we have to better inform the public about what identity is and why it’s important to protect it. There’s a useful timetable of next steps on pages 26/ 27.

Ian Cooper helpfully summarised, among other things, the “key selling points” in the Socitm Futures GovX Space; I hope he doesn’t mind my plagiarising his summary:-

In future, everyone should expect to be able to:

• register their identity once and use it many times to make access to public services safe, easy and convenient;
• know that public services will only ask them for the minimum necessary information and will do whatever is necessary to keep their identity information safe;
• see the personal identity information held about them – and correct it if it is wrong;
• give informed consent to public services using their personal identity information to provide services tailored to their needs; and
• know that there is effective oversight of how their personal identity information is used."


“Northgate passes public sector 'late payments' on to own suppliers.” No (further) comment.


I forgot to mention that, at last week’s Local CIO Council, I resigned and nominated Geoff Connell as my successor, which was agreed.


On Monday, I wrote to Glyn Moody & Charles Eales with regard to the debate that was to have happened on Tuesday night, saying “in the circumstances (of my impending retirement) I would prefer that you continue with the planned debate in private. I will not be in a position, or think it right to, influence any decisions in Newham going forward... Obviously, you must deal with any reporting from the meeting in whatever ways you think fit”. Glyn replied to let me know that he was just drafting an e-mail to Charles about how to take things forward, and Charles later replied to say Glyn had cancelled the meeting, but still planned to write a piece on Open XML and the ISO process, but offered sight of the article before publication, and to include a Microsoft response – which seems very fair.

Moving On

Friday’s combined Central & Local CIO & CTO Councils meeting was mainly about ICT and the Operational Efficiency Programme. How can we cut 20% from all Government ICT spending? In a series of mini workshops we considered the decisions we could make immediately, those that may need a little more (a few weeks’) consideration and what strategic actions we could take in the medium term (ahead of an election). We came-up, I thought, with an impressive list of actions, and John Suffolk rounded the day off with the positive message “our time has come”. I really do agree with that, provided, of course, we won’t be into the crude top-slicing of budgets that too often happens in these circumstances - punishing the prudent, and rewarding the profligate.


The OEP puts ICT Centre Stage; it is a great opportunity, and I’m already having slight misgivings, therefore, about my announcement, today, that I’ll be retiring early from Newham.

When I started on the Socitm secondment, many colleagues expressed the view that I wouldn’t go back to the “day job”, although I had every intention of doing so, at that stage!
Still, a lot can change in a year. I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of working with Socitm colleagues to turn-around the Society and, although there’s a lot still to do am proud of what we achieved. I’ve also enjoyed working with Central Government, and believe we’ve come a long way in the last year, after years of inertia. But, earlier this year, I really felt I needed a rest, and I’ve also been saddened by the premature loss of former colleagues. Life, as they say, is not a rehearsal.

I’ve loved my time with Newham, and been very proud of its ICT Service. As Socitm’s President I got to see, or hear about, all sorts of Council organisations, but few could match Newham’s ICT accomplishments – especially now we finally have our shiny new offices. Even so, it was going to be difficult returning to local government bureaucracy after such a different year, and with such a talented team in Newham demonstrating that they can do very well without me, thanks very much, it somehow seemed unfair, in any case, to return and cramp their style. Many congratulations to Geoff and the Team on doing such a great job.

I’m now looking forward to taking two or three months off to spend some time with Chris catching-up with all the things we’ve let or go or meant to do, and to take time to reflect on what to do next; despite the economic woes, there are a lot of opportunities out there, and I’ve had some interesting offers.

I’ll be working until the end of July, when I’ll also be signing-off this Blog.


Here’s that Socitm Digital Britain response that I mentioned last week.

Dining with the Father of the Web

Over the last week, I’ve had one or two conversations with Microsoft and Buying Solutions colleagues about what was to happen to the PSA09 licensing deal. The introductory offer was initially available until15th June, which was always going to prove challenging for some to take advantage of, especially considering the compressed window of opportunity resulting in slippage in getting the contract agreed and signed. Several colleagues contacted me to say that, although they would benefit from the deal, they had insufficient time to get purchasing authority agreed by the deadline. A colleague from Buying Solutions ‘phoned me yesterday evening to let me know, “hot off the press”, that it had been agreed to extend the deadline to 15th December, which is great news. He was at today’s meeting to report on progress, and also to get LCIO Council input to the terms of reference for negotiation of an Oracle Public Sector Licensing Agreement, and representation on its Governance Board.


Today’s Local CIO Council meeting reconfirmed its commitment to openness – publishing its minutes publicly, and not just in Socitm members’ pages, so I’m not going to say anything about it here.


However, I intended, last night, to mention the mind-blowing statistic reported by Christine Connelly – that the NHS has amassed 10 petabytes (that’s 10,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) of images in the 18 months since it switched to digital imaging for X-rays – (but forgot until now).



This (Thursday) evening there was a joint dinner for the Government CIO & CTO Council communities. Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt were guests; John Suffolk introduced Tim, who made a pre-dinner speech in connection with his new role as an adviser to UK Government on public information, in which we were all challenged to identify data that we could liberate to facilitate mash-ups, research and reuse. Andrew Stott, in his new role of Director of Digital Engagement, seems to have planted his people on tables to collect our deliberations.


As a senior local government officer I cannot comment on political aspects of “Opposition to the philosophy and practical implementation of Transformational Government is emerging as a key element in Conservative Party policy as the Tories gear up for the next election”, but I will say that, whatever your views about national ID cards and a”database state”, joined-up public sector infrastructure remains a key service enabler and a critical efficiency objective.

Actually, one of the things we did discuss at today’s LCIO Council meeting, was consideration of party policies and a future item to discuss how we’d effectively engage with Government of whatever persuasion, after next year’s election (but we had to send Roy Marshall out of the room because he’s not even allowed to think such thoughts!)

Help beat this Microsoftie!

Here’s an interview with Phil Pavitt, who will shortly be moving to the HMRC, which I’m expecting will be one of the most transformative events in Government IT this year, if not decade!


The Local CIO Council is meeting at the School of Government on Thursday, and there is a joint meeting of the Local and Central CIO Councils here on Friday.

Christine Connelly, the NHS CIO, was our after dinner speaker on Wednesday evening. We were impressed with her candour and refreshingly open approach. All the questions were about how the local public sector can engage effectively with what’s generally seen as an immovable public sector silo, and she convinced us that change is afoot. If she’ll at least participate in the CIO Council, unlike her predecessor, that will be a step in the right direction.

In the bar, afterwards, Jos Creese, Glyn Evans, Martin Ferguson and I chatted about how to challenge (many of) our peers to engage more proactively in driving Government transformation, and how to encourage the next generation of leaders – fired up and ready to take-on and change the world – to take-over from our generation, and those of us who persist in seeing ourselves as technologists, rather than business leaders. I observed that, unlike many who seem to prefer to sit on the sidelines criticising and throwing brickbats, some of us find the time to get involved, are prepared to stick our heads above the parapet and work for change, but someone else observed that we all are becoming weary, which I think is possibly true!


I see that Glyn Moody is calling-on his colleagues for back-up to counter the not inconsiderable resources that this “Microsoftie” can bring to bear next week’s debate!


Speaking of Microsoft, this article is about its Data Centre developments to support Azure and Cloud services, I guess, but not the Government Cloud?

Investing in our future...

Earlier this week, Richard Carde (by teleconference) John Stockwell and I were involved in a discussion with Andre Tytheridge (2e2) about progress in the NTC programme. Richard is working on the updated business case, as part of which we felt a further brain-storming/ SWOT analysis is called-for - given the degree of change since the original vision was established.

For example, the realisation of some infrastructure objectives, as envisaged in 2005, is still proving elusive. Whereas, at that time, Gartner was forecasting that “WiMax access solutions that are suitable for enterprise users that telecommute from rural areas (or urban areas where no alternatives exist) will be available by 2006 and may offer lower costs and multivendor interoperability, compared with other proprietary solutions”, in fact, genuinely broadband wireless solutions, such as WiMax, have been much slower to develop. We are therefore considering other technology, such as LTE (Long Term Evolution).

Other changes include, of course, the economic recession, changes in government policy, leadership changes, supplier positioning and the potential challenge to the exercise of Well Being powers as happened in Brent.


I had the opportunity to review and comment on Socitm’s response and policy briefing on the Digital Britain report, which I think is excellent. Look out for its publication next week!


On Wednesday evening I attended “A Shared Vision for Smarter Services”, chaired by Socitm’s President, Steve Palmer, hosted by Andrew Miller, MP, in the House of Commons Dining Room, and presented jointly by Socitm and Global Action Plan supported by Logicalis, IBM and CA. The event was held to launch a consortium of diverse and influential organisations calling on Central Government for a £1 billion IT stimulus package that will lead to smarter, more environmentally efficient, higher quality public services.

Steve stressed that we weren’t looking for a Government handout; the proposal is that funding be provided strictly on an invest-to-save basis, with agreed repayments being deducted up-front from future budgets as now practised by many local government organisations.

Following Steve’s opening remarks, Andrew Miller spoke in support of the proposition, having just come from the floor of the House where he had been speaking on the just-published Cyber Security Strategy. Andrew chairs PITCOM (the Parliamentary IT Committee) and, as you can see from his biography, is otherwise well positioned to support our cause. He spoke with particular enthusiasm about the innovation of UK companies such as Miniframe in developing products with efficiency and environmental benefits.

Trewin Restorick, Director of Global Action Plan, also spoke, highlighting the economic pressure on future generations that follows from the recent public expenditure commitments to stave-off economic collapse, with the double whammy of the accompanying increased pressure on public services. He highlighted the fact that the Government commitments to 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 (34% by 2020) and the tax of £12 per tonne of emissions on organisations with energy bills above £1m, with accompanying rewards to the most efficient, could result in some interesting cross-subsidies.

There followed a Q&A session for the panel, which included representatives of the sponsors. I asked a question about the rationalisation of supply implied by all this transformation and efficiency and how this can be squared with supporting a thriving, competitive economy and full employment. The answers seemed to imply that I was concerned about protecting public sector jobs; they concerned generating the capacity, through efficiencies, to invest in serving unmet demand (new jobs, I guess) but what I was really getting-at was the effects upon the supply side.
However, this was an interesting event, with unanimous support from the capacity audience and, besides; I always love visiting the Palace of Westminster!


There was lots of news, this week but I’ll confine myself to highlighting the appointments to these two important Cabinet Office IT posts. I wonder if they’ll be at next week’s CIO Council meetings?

Short enough for a Tweet

It’s great to see that Martin Ferguson and others are continuing a lively Socitm Blog. For me, this represents the best means of keeping up-to-date with Society developments, although I also like the format of the new weekly newsletter.


Apologies, once more, if you’ve been affected, as several have told me they have been, with the continuing problems with the Newham ICT Team’s Byte Night site at JustGiving.


I’m sure you’ve all read about the “Seer Android Beta” in use at Wimbledon, this week? There’s some more stuff about “Augmented Reality”, here.

Meantime, the New Scientist has this story of how e-mail patterns can provide advance warning of an organisation reaching crisis point.

Information, Innovation & Improvement

The problem with e-Government was always that Government somehow created the impression that this was the opportunity for a supplier "feeding frenzy" whereas, as I commented on many occasions, the reality should be quite the opposite; it always had to be about rationalisation. I assumed that the quandary that Government found itself in was the need to encourage efficient public sector services while at the same time maintaining a buoyant economy for IT suppliers.

In this recession, however, it appears that any pretence that service transformation through ICT can be achieved without rationalisation of supply has been abandoned. Whilst, as many commentators have observed, the economic climate is creating opportunities for CIOs to step up to the plate, seize the initiative and require services to use corporate ICT infrastructure effectively, the outlook for suppliers who are unable to innovate to keep market share in a less diverse, and much more competitive, market are bleak. John Suffolk's post about a "Government App Store" is just the latest in a series of pronouncements that no longer equivocate, but finally make clear some of the potentially less positive realities of e-Government.

The banks, not unreasonably, have come in for a lot of stick recently, but well done First Direct for its "Social Media Newsroom".


Socitm has been deliberating branding revisions to reflect the way that it has evolved in the last 18 months, and announced the changes on Friday. The announcement includes a link to downloadable versions of how the new branding will be used, which includes the following, which incorporates a new tagline emphasising our focus on the "I" for information.


Apologies to anyone who has tried to use the Newham ICT Byte Night Team's JustGiving site and had difficulties. It was "upgraded" early on Saturday, which seems to have caused all sorts of problems. The performance was very slow, my Blog widget wasn't being updated, and I couldn't log-in. A lesson in how not to do it! Using Twitter was the only way to find-out what was going on, until JustGiving e-mailed me early this evening. The site now seems to be accepting donations, but other difficulties remain. All in all –this is a pretty poor service to the many charities that increasingly rely on this business.

An Important Customer Service Channel

On Tuesday 7th July there’s to be a London Public Mobile Portal event at Prospero House (241 Borough High Street), which will include presentation of the TfL/ Newham Public Sector Mobile Portal (PSMP), with Phil Pavitt as a keynote speaker. You can view the agenda and register through Capital Ambition at http://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/capitalambition/events/event.htm?pk=62

Earlier this week Richard Carde and I met with James Lee for a PSMP progress review.

Three more London boroughs are now “under construction”, and six are expected to be live within the next three months. Many more boroughs have expressed interest and more than half London’s boroughs have already booked for the above event.

Much needed clarification of the PSMP development phasing has now been provided. (Basically, the phases are Information, Interaction & Transaction.) We realise that we previously created some confusion over what’s available now versus what’s in the pipeline, and now aim to be more precise in our communications.

A number of exciting developments are in-hand, including the ability to pre-reserve parking places, track the availability of park and charge, and blue badge spaces, and a journey planner for roads.

We expect PSMP to play quite an important part in Newham’s new Customer Services strategy.

All Change...

The racing at Le Mans was great, with Peugeot diesels winning for the first time, and a great performance from a new Aston Martin LMP1 Team, but my travel arrangements were a bit of a disaster. After having spent a lot of money getting my car done-up, it had electrical problems until we broke-down on the motorway just outside Rouen. I have European break-down cover, but the journey home still involved four trailers, a lot of hanging around in depots and at the Calais dockside, and we got home at 2.00am on Tuesday. TVR – Totally Variable Reliability!

Sadly, whilst at Le Mans, we heard that Peter Wheeler, who presided over the marque’s most successful years, has died - in a year that so far seems to me to have been dominated by untimely deaths.


In a week that was busy with reshuffle news we heard that Tessa Jowell would pick-up the Digital Engagement portfolio vacated by Tom Watson, and Tim Berners-Lee will head a panel of experts advising Tessa on how the Government can best use the web to maximise information reuse. We also heard that Lord Carter is to step-down. Yesterday, the Government published its Digital Britain report – its strategic vision for ensuring that “the UK is at the leading edge of the global digital economy”. We heard that Martha Lane Fox is to become the UK’s digital champion but, although responsibility for digital inclusion has passed to Lord Mandelson’s new “Department for Business, Innovation & Skills”, it wasn’t clear whether there was to be a new minister for digital inclusion.

The COI is to audit government departments’ website usage and present comprehensive figures on the cost, quality and use of them by June 2010.

One in five adults who don’t currently have the Internet at home will have within the next six months, but two in five don’t want it.

A possibly radical, market-moving development from Google was announced; it’s set to launch “Fusion Tables” that will sidestep the limitations of conventional databases.


On Wednesday I overslept but thanks to unusually light traffic arrived at the RAF Club, in Piccadilly, for the BCS’s latest CXO Network breakfast. This was a debate under Chatham House rules, with John Suffolk asking questions of the network. Unattributed notes of the meeting will be published in due course; meantime, the notes of the BCS Thought Leadership debate on “The Death of the IT Profession”, which I recently attended, have been published. I do enjoy these debates, which are stimulating and, I find, help clarify and shape thoughts about the subject matter; there is an archive of past debates.

Another Sleepless Night, Please!

We’re used to the occasional story of how, after 50 years, a war-time letter eventually finds its way to the intended recipient. Well I think I’ve just experienced the e-equivalent. A Socitm e-mail, sent at 16.07 on 09/06/2002, turned-up in my (junk) mail-box yesterday morning!


Socitm strongly agrees with research by Coleman Parkes and Parity suggesting that lack of awareness of online public services is hampering take-up. As Martin Greenwood commented, “we have lots of evidence to back this up. Council are generally poor at marketing and promotion - although, having said that, we know that up to 30% of the population still visit council websites each month.”


The first British Standard for Data Protection – a specification for a personal information management system – has been produced by the British Standards Institute, and the Information Commissioner’s Office has published new guidance on privacy impact assessments.


On Friday 2 October, The Newham ICT Management Team will be joining hundreds of other professionals in a sponsored sleep out on the streets of London. Byte Night raises money to help Action for Children tackle the root causes of youth homelessness and get thousands of children and young people off the streets and into secure accommodation with education and training opportunities that can change the course of their lives.

Each year, at least 75,000 children and young people experience homelessness. One in 3 attempt suicide and 1 in 7 young runaways are physically or sexually assaulted (this figure rises to almost 1 in 2 after a week).

Byte Night is a unique event that takes place across the UK. In 2008, it raised £470,000. Now in its 11th year, it is one of the single biggest fundraisers for Action for Children. Our support of Byte Night is vital to ensuring it continues to support the thousands of vulnerable young people Action for Children work with each year.

Please help us to have a sleepless night!


I’m on a week’s holiday from today, during which I’ll be attending the World’s greatest motor race.

Recently I was notified that I’d been voted onto the Silicon CIO50 list for the third year running. Alas, I will again be unable to attend the Awards Dinner because it clashes with Le Mans!

Musical Chairs...

Congratulations, Phil Pavitt on your move to the HMRC. Thanks for the great work at TfL. I hope we can sustain and build on that, and continue a productive relationship in your new role.

Tom Watson may have resigned his Cabinet post, but his 1m + followers will be glad to hear he is not leaving Twitter.

Jerry Fishenden has also announced that he is moving-on from Microsoft, but will also maintain his great Blog and Tweets.

On Wednesday I attended Cisco’s launch of its Blueprint for Communities and Local Government at its offices in Finsbury Square. I contributed, slightly, in reviewing the drafts, and Socitm is supporting this great piece of work. The overall framework is reproduced below.

At the event, Steve Palmer, Hillingdon CIO and Socitm President, gave a great presentation of the work done at his borough to turn-around the ICT infrastructure, and position the Authority to achieve the Connected Council and Communities vision. In the next couple of weeks they are issuing 190,000 Citizen (Smart) Cards, but the other things that impressed me most were some of Steve’s previous career responsibilities, which included the coroner’s court, and the incontinent laundry service!

On Thursday I joined Adrian Hancock and Martin Ferguson, who “officially” started work as Socitm’s Policy Officer on Monday (having already got involved in a number of initiatives) to contribute to a briefing and handover of work I’ve been involved-in – particularly membership of Government Working Groups.

Adrian showed me a beta of the new Socitm website, which is looking good, and the format for a new proposed weekly broadcast to consolidate our communications and reduce e-mail clutter – an equally important development! We also discussed the new branding proposals that are under consideration, and we look close to a decision for implementation ahead of the conference, and in conjunction with our domain name change.

Taking breaks from Strategy... to Strategise

I see that the Government has committed to funding research into ultra-fast broadband. This can’t be about squeezing still more capacity out of copper, so we are talking about upgrading the equipment connected to our fibre? It’s all about photonics – multiplexing light wavelengths – I think I remember from a Gartner, or could have been BT, event, many years ago, which seemed to imply this would be a “piece of cake”, once the fibre infrastructure was in place. On the whole, I’m inclined to agree with “some experts” who would rather see the money spent on improving existing fibre networks.

However, since I’m on a mission to evangelise ICT as our saviour from recession (nice set of theological metaphors, don’t you think?) I was taken by this report – Nanotech, super-cities and Robotics to push UK out of recession.


When chatting to Glyn Moody and Mark Taylor during their visit to Newham Dockside last Tuesday, I was again struck by their level-headedness, knowledge and courtesy as well, of course, their passion for Open Source - or rather, as I think they see it, breaking the establishment’s fixation with proprietary software. I think it was Mark who said that Open Source zealots do their cause a disservice - or words to that effect. For Glyn, a particular complaint about Microsoft was the way it “bought votes” at the International Standards Organisation to get its OXML ratified as a standard. Now this was all news to me (although if I had followed his blog as I now intend to do, I bet I’d have known all about it) so I asked a colleague from Microsoft for its perspective, which was quite different. In fact, Microsoft saw another major supplier as the villain of the piece. I therefore suggested a meeting to discuss either viewpoint, which both “sides” would be free to report as they see fit, although it would be great if we were able to achieve, and report, consensus. Both Glyn and Charles Eales, on behalf of Microsoft, have agreed to this, and we’re aiming to confirm an arrangement early in July, which is the soonest that can be managed because of current diary commitments.


I worked at home on Monday, on strategy which, as expected, has grown into a much bigger project, but which I’m now starting to feel is coming together.

In the afternoon I was involved in another teleconference to agree the agenda, speakers and stream leads for the Local Government, Ocean and PSN Conference at the National School of Government on 15th and 16th September. This will be an Extraordinary Local CIO Council meeting limited, unfortunately, to 50 people, but we are planning for the outputs from this event to be featured in Socitm’s Annual Conference in Edinburgh (11th to 13th October). The introductory sessions will include presentation of the Gartner Benchmark Analysis of Government Connect versus Local Authorities’ prior arrangements/ alternatives. There will then be facilitated discussions on Strategic Investment Management, Identity Management & User Authentication (which I am leading), Transition & Transformation Management and Information Assurance & Security.

In the evening I drove into town for a Chemistry Club Dinner, where Lord West, Minister for Security and Counter-Terrorism, was the guest speaker. Lord West joined the Home Office in 2007 to ensure an effective and coordinated response to the threat of terrorism. This follows a distinguished navel career including commanding HMS Ardent during the Falklands conflict. He went on to hold senior roles in the British Armed Forces including Chief of Defence Intelligence, First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff. As you may imagine, he made an interesting speaker.


Today, Tuesday, I attended a Buying Solutions IT Services Procurement Workshop, with a number of other representatives of different parts of Government. This was held in a sort of tower room, with great views of Westminster, reached by a spiral staircase, in a Horseguards Parade building. The opportunity, we were told, was to contribute to Innovation in Public Sector ICT Procurement. “Over 500 separate procedures were launched through OJEU in 2008, costing over £200 million for the procurement process alone. Each procurement took 18 months (on average), almost twice as long as comparable procurements in Germany (although some would say that’s because the UK sticks to the rules). Across those projects, over 50% of code and infrastructure was reusable, but most projects started afresh.

We spent a fair amount of time brain-storming the requirements, and discussed some initial ideas for services. I am really keen on effective aggregation of procurement, public sector frameworks and pan-Government contracts but, as I was once more compelled to point-out, our ambitions would be considerably easier to achieve if they could be shaped through the availability of pan-Government Vision and Strategy that helped us all to aim in the same direction.

Safety in Numbers?

Today, along with a number of other Newham colleagues, I was at the funeral of Paul Bull, our Printing & Reprographics Manager who had bravely fought cancer for the last 14 months. Gary Sussex gave a eulogy, mentioning Paul’s vision for the Council’s printing service that has now been realised at Newham Dockside. Paul and his wife Evonne, who worked alongside him at Newham, shared a love of Ballroom and Latin American Dancing, Gary said, as well as of travel. Paul will be sadly missed, and our thoughts are with Evonne.


On a more cheery note, there will be at least a 400% increase in public sector representation at this year’s Byte Night London Sleep-out in aid of Action for Children, as Geoff Connell, Gary Sussex, Shane Mills and John Friend will be joining me in a Team.


Private sector companies’ work on behalf of the public sector will become subject to FOI, Legal experts have warned.


With the publication of this story – IT leaders oppose large-scale outsourcing – I feel I, too, can finally speak openly. I agree with David Tidey and Phil Pavitt, and would go further; I don’t think it’s possible to identify any successful IT outsourcing (when compared to the same operation run by an efficient internal service)! “I’m a serial insourcer”, says Phil; “I run things cheaper than any outsourcer can”. He should know, as he was involved in setting-up ITNet (now part of Serco) when at Cadbury Schweppes!


Well, the sun’s out, and the forecast for the weekend is great. Have a good one.

Onwards & Upwards!

Well, I completed a first draft of updated Newham ICT Strategy, yesterday, but I’m anticipating a lot of feedback requiring more work on detail…


The Socitm Board of Directors met today. Steve skilfully chaired, keeping us to topic and time.

The budget is looking pretty healthy, with Consulting and Insight both performing well. There was a fair amount of discussion about the presentation of financial data (a bugbear of mine is that we don’t have commitment accounting, which would simplify analysis) financial regulations, and “banding” of reserves investment, which are to be resolved online.

Thankfully, now that the finances are looking to have stabilised, we can start to take the brakes off investment in much-needed resources.

Steve Hopson fed-back on member consultation he has undertaken on our behalf (all non-attributable) which reflected a fair amount of negativity about developments. Communications is clearly a continuing problem area, which was born-out by our own monitoring of whether broadcasts are opened or links are followed, which we’re able to monitor from the new CRM. We agreed the need for a properly crafted communications strategy (i.e. crafted by a communications expert – which ruled us out) and, probably, the creation of a Communications Manager post, but will be commissioning some professional work to shape these requirements.

Rose, who couldn’t make today’s meeting, is being asked, as Chair of the Membership Board, to tell us what resources are required to complete the work on professional development and member services. Adrian and Steve Hopson were authorised to agree a proposal for the latter to pick-up work on product development and sales, reporting to the Commercial Board.

Between us, we get a great many invitations to speak or participate in events, supply editorial or be interviewed. We need to co-ordinate these better, and Pam agreed, initially to undertake this role.

Mark Brett’s appointment as Head of Information Assurance was confirmed. We are asking Martin Ferguson (Head of Policy) to the next Board meeting to greet him, and discuss how we can help one another.

Adrian was authorised to conclude negotiations with GBTV and e-Learning to create a pilot “Socitm TV” and social media service.

Revised Socitm Director monitoring roles were agreed, covering Events, Information Assurance, Insight, Green IT, IST, Marketing, Membership, Professionalism, HR, Regions, International, Management, External Relations, Finance, Consulting, Commercial Oversight, Audit, Business Development, Third Sector and Social Responsibility.

Adrian and David Houston are half-way through updating Socitm Strategy.

We need to change our constitution to enable electronic voting at AGMs, which we agreed to do (at the October Conference EGM) and are considering its use, which may, or may not be in conjunction with a 2010 Spring event.


Frances Kettleday, last year’s Graham Williamson Award Winner, attended the Socitm Board to take-up her role as our new Board Advisor. She wrote a Blog of the Microsoft-sponsored Study Tour of Sweden, awarded as her prize, which she said, and obviously, was hugely enjoyable. Didn’t understand references to “Ice Queen”, ‘though!

Frances will write-up her thoughts about our meeting, and post them to our GovX space for discussion. She did, however, re-emphasise her views about the need to support personal development.


The Socitm President’s Blog, I am pleased to say, has now become the “Socitm Blog”. I had always intended for mine to be a team blog, and hope that the new incarnation will be well-supported.

Socitm is also on Twitter!


Finally, here’s another report of a report on how many see investment in IT as the way to weather, and survive beyond, the recession, which I certainly hope the new Newham ICT Strategy will facilitate.

Please don't put the kibosh on transformation

The Cabinet Office published its annual Transformational Government Progress Report, last week. It has produced this useful poster to highlight examples of progress made in 2008. I do think that last year saw some real progress, but I am by no means convinced that progress is yet sustainable.

Government Connect finally delivered, thanks to very robust programme management, with strong support from Socitm and the LGA, and considerable goodwill from Local Authorities despite proscribed timescales being completely out of kilter with their budgetary planning constraints, and frequent problems of contradictory and inconsistent technical advice.

The Public Sector Network tantalises with the promise of genuinely transformative infrastructure to join-up the whole of the public sector, but I already have concerns about resourcing and whether the opportunity is realisable in the absence of clear vision and demonstrable commitment to provide the level of resourcing that’s required.

Although late, Contact Point is now operational, and good progress is being made with Employee Authentication Services, but had we started with a vision and strategy, I think we could have made things rather easier for ourselves.

Transformational Government strategy must be guided by an over-arching vision of public sector security, enabling role-based access to services across a single public sector infrastructure.


The other key lesson, I think, is – if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well and you must stick with it. I really like the idea of the “Dragon’s Den” approach to seeking innovation and ensuring good ideas are taken-forward. “Monitoring the situation to see that the plan maintains momentum and making sure it’s implemented on the frontline” is vital; the reality, to date, has been that there has been no commitment to nourish and sustain new ideas, and it seems Government bores quickly if radical results aren’t immediately delivered. Hence we have seen ideas like “Tell Us Once” hailed in the Transformational Government Report, and also cited as innovation in the Innovators Council announcement, recycled time and again in different guises.


Although Martin Read is worried whether there is the political will to carry-through the reforms proposed in the Operational Efficiency Programme report, also published last week, I worry that it will, and that will put the Kibosh on sustainable transformation of Government services. There’s a lot of common sense in the report but I do worry about the approach to execution of the recommendations. We can’t afford to be led by hype, assume that one size fits all, top slice budgets or realise all the savings without making the investments, or that will inevitably derail transformational government. The commitment by Socitm to engage with Government, to be “inside the camp” lobbying for effective policy is, I am convinced, the right one.


I was therefore pleased that Martin Ferguson, our new Head of Policy (although he doesn’t start formally until 1st June) led a session to start planning our response to the OEP at Monday’s Socitm Futures meeting held in Siemens offices in the Old Bailey. We split into pairs to discuss ideas, then captured them on a flip-chart back in plenary. I’ll provide a summary within the next few days.


Craig Pollard, of Siemens, presented on the NPIA (National Policing Improvement Agency) Identification and Access Management contract won by our hosts. The contract is effectively in two lots – the first providing the central service, and the second the access framework to appropriately connect all other stakeholders. There will be a single route to access any of the 20+ applications, which include the new Police National Database, ensuring that all access is fully audited. It will be possible to search across all the applications and, ultimately, across all local intelligence systems to provide aggregated results.

Colleagues’ main concerns and questions were around the fit with emerging national infrastructure and, of course, PSN. We were advised that it will work with other security infrastructure, but provide an additional authentication overlay to ensure it isn’t possible to bypass the central logging and auditing. We agreed this is something we need to keep an eye on; here, again, clarity is required within an overall Information Assurance vision.


Paul Davidson, from Sedgemoor District Council and LeGSB, presented the approach that Sedgemoor has taken to the development of an Information Asset Register (IAR). Few public sector organisations yet have anything that could reasonably described as an IAR, but it’s a logical requirement stemming from information reuse regulations and the Power of Information Taskforce as well, of course, as good housekeeping and the facilitation of corporate knowledge management – so well done to Sedgemoor for a very constructive and realistic approach.

Richard Quarrell from “Psiphon” attended and, in the afternoon, we discussed how “Psikey”- which is aimed at automating the production of a basic IAR – might work, and could align with the requirements identified by Paul. The planned pilot, by a number of Socitm member organisations, will take place over the next three weeks.


On Tuesday, Glyn Moody and Mark Taylor again visited to further our review of Newham’s ICT infrastructure with a view to proposing how the same can be achieved using non-proprietary technology. This time I’d arranged for Chris Losch to join us as my technical adviser. We spent a couple of hours in quite enjoyable discussion, and I have come to understand some of their points of view – not at all fanatical - but still doubt they’ll be able to convince me of realistic alternatives for Newham.

Not "nil points"...

There were several good news tidbits to round-off my week.

On Thursday, I was at an IAEAB meeting (which I’m not allowed to report) and was heartened to find signs that the requirement of pan-Government security vision is starting to be recognised in high places.

It’s great that, finally, Alastair Darling has committed the government to bringing digital broadband communications to most communities in Britain. Coincidentally, further research was published, this week, demonstrating that computer technologies can help people move out of poverty. At the very least, we should ensure that ICT is equally accessible to all our communities, and not just another advantage for the affluent.

Well done to Kent Connects for becoming the first partnership to connect all its sites to Government Connect (especially as they will have had to bring the network monitoring that was undertaken from BT’s 24 hour facility in Sao Paulo back to the UK in order to do so).


When I was at GBTV, a few weeks back, the Executive Producer, Dominic Moran, proposed developing a customised programme for Socitm – Socitm TV. Adrian called me on Friday afternoon to let me know he has followed-up in a very positive meeting with Dominic and, subject to Board approval, we will soon be able to get the project up and running.


On Friday, Chris and I spent a lovely evening with Britta Karin and Gert Olson. Their daughter is Anna Karin Jönbrink, who I I first met in her home country, Sweden, where she presented on Green IT at the Kommits Conference. Anna was accompanied by Britta to New Zealand where she presented at the ALGIM event, Chris and Britta palled-up while Anna and I were working, so when Britta and her husband were planning a break in London, she got in-touch. New we’re looking forward to arranging a visit to their remote holiday cottage!


Well done to Newham’s own Jade Ewen. It was always going to be hard to win-over a Eurovision audience that voted Lordi a winner, but you did a great job, and you’re the champion in my eyes.

More Engagement, please...

There are often complaints about late distribution of papers for meetings but, I’m sorry, Andrew - 1.00am for a meeting later in the morning takes the biscuit! :-)

The meeting, at Admiralty Arch, was the second meeting of the Public Sector Infrastructure Team (PSIT) Executive Board. I managed not to know I was on this select group, and missed the first meeting! The HMRC’s Andrew Bull chaired, and there were half a dozen colleagues from the NHS, Home Office, Ministry of Justice, OGC, Cabinet Office and myself.

In introducing the meeting, Andrew explained that the PSIT had some success over the last three years and had achieved good cross-government representation, with a network of participants who now knew one another and were able to work together but, over the last year, progress had been slow, with response to data losses and Public Sector Network plans taking most of its time. We need to involve more of our teams and to clarify components, descriptions, definitions, ensuring clear boundaries to facilitate procurement of commodity services that would make-up the evolving PSI..He had circulated draft terms of reference, which were broadly agreed and, I was pleased to see included “engaging in the creation of the vision and development of strategy that PSIT is responsible for”. We discussed this at some length, clarifying that, at the highest level, vision must be about the purpose and required outputs, and the criticality of role-based access though ID management and authentication to enable appropriate access to information held in purpose-built systems, obviating the need for file transfers.

I enlarged upon the Local Authority context – that although Councils are sovereign organisations, and not subject to Central Government decree on how they should organise and operate - through Socitm, we seek to assimilate Government policy and standards in areas such as security and information assurance, if we can substantiate that they represents best practice – but will do so only once. At present, there are different protocols for each department that we deal with.

We also discussed “Turkeys and Christmas” – that our success in driving greater efficiency through common infrastructure and standards would mean reduced requirements for the technical architecture roles that presently exist – but noted that there already are not enough good people to go ‘round, and our tasks include change management and people development – generating the capacity to exploit common infrastructure to support service transformation. That led to consideration of what other representation and skills, such as HR, we should bring onto the Board.

Public Sector Teams to be overseen by the PSIT Executive Board cover:
· Infrastructure
· Application
· Process
· Information
· Channel
· Strategy
· Service Management
· Integration
· Information Assurance

The Board is responsible to the Architecture Review Board (ARB) (see “Enterprise Architecture for UK Government”) and the CTO Council. Terms of reference for the ARB and, generically, for each domain team were also circulated.

The Infrastructure Maturity Model used by the NHS was posited as a basis against which to measure our progress.

Today’s meeting covered a lot of ground, which I won’t attempt to report in detail. There were concerns around resourcing, however – both the adequacy of resourcing key commitments, such as Ocean/ PSN, and of the engagement of public sector colleagues in the work that needs to be done. We discussed how to tackle these issues and regarding the latter, accepted direct responsibility for ensuring the engagement of both our peers and own teams in supporting PSI developments.

I think that our discussion of “G-Cloud” is also worth reporting. I am concerned that we need to develop the understanding and strategy for the development of what will essentially be a shared services infrastructure across the PSN, before colleagues, particularly in Local Government, commit themselves to generic Cloud services that will make it hard to comply with cross-Government architecture requirements. A report has been produced for the CTO Council, but is to be further refined.


Congratulations to Andrew Stott, who has been appointed as the Government’s first Head of Digital Engagement. I was told that his job as Deputy CIO was advertised yesterday, and also that a Government CTO position is being advertised, but couldn’t find them anywhere in the brief time I was prepared to spend searching.


In case you missed it, up to 800 frontline practitioners will start to use ContactPoint from next week.

Showing-off Newham Dockside

On Monday I attended an Equality Impact Assessment Training course, in the City, with other colleagues from across Newham and Waltham Forest Councils. The main case study was on the EQIA conducted for Newham’s proposed Queens Market redevelopment.

This morning I hosted a party of visitors from Brent Council, which is planning its own development of new corporate accommodation, to Newham Dockside. It’s nice to be able to show-off such a nice working environment, and I felt rather proud of the ICT infrastructure, which was favourably commented upon by everyone we met on our tour. I’m learning a lot myself, too; especially from the questions I couldn’t answer, but concerning which promised to check upon and to respond by e-mail with the requested information!

Recession brings-out innovative CIOs, analysts claim. I certainly hope so, as I’m working on our updated strategy!

In a similar vein, I was also interested in this report of a report from Intellect, which I think is a positive move and certainly reflects some of the thinking I’ve heard from suppliers when I’ve been at Intellect for meetings.

ICS to be fixed!

On Thursday, I took a day's holiday to attend Linda Griffith's funeral. It was "standing room only" at the moving service for this lovely lady who will be sadly missed by many, many people.


Newham colleagues who saw me in the office this week may be reassured to know that this wasn't a figment of your imagination! I'm now officially back with the Council, but taking a little time to get up-to-speed with developments, handover Socitm commitments, and use the luxury of some time to review strategy before I get back into the thick of things.


Problems with ICS to be fixed. Well - that's alright, then! But, really, this looks like very encouraging news.


George. Thanks for your comment. There is comprehensive information about the Microsoft Agreement at http://online.ogcbuyingsolutions.gov.uk/mou/softwarelicence/microsoft You need to be registered to access the commercially restricted information, but I believe that anyone with a valid public sector address can register.

The site includes a statement about maintaining competitive pricing There is a cost calculator to enable you to model your own package, and FAQs, which will, no doubt be updated with any, as yet, unasked questions. Among the questions is "Can I still buy packages in the old format? i.e. MS Desktop Pro." (Yes you can. However, we would encourage you to look at who you are purchasing products for and see if there is a more economic way of selecting your software.)

A New Deal for the Public Sector

Hurrah! This afternoon, Andrew Gibson 'phoned, as he promised he would, to let me know that the new Public Sector Licensing Agreement with Microsoft had just been signed. I won't go into the details that I've been itching to report, here, as they will have been reported on the Buying Solutions, and other, websites, by tomorrow, when you read this, but I do want to make the point that I think this marks a step-change in collaborative UK public sector IT procurement.

The agreement incorporates a number of "firsts", including licence transferability within the wider public sector (i.e. including most of the voluntary sector) and more granular licensing. For the duration of the contract, if anyone gets a better price, we all get a better price.

Congratulations to the Buying Solutions Team - and also to Microsoft, which has now set the benchmark for future public sector deals with major software suppliers to Government. This is the first of these new deals, but negotiations with another major supplier have already started.


Yesterday, together with John Jackson, Camden’s Head of Corporate IT, I met Moira Gibb, the Camden CE who chairs the Social Care Task Force set-up by the Government post “Baby P”. The Task Force was set-up to look at the barriers faced by Social Workers that prevent them from doing their jobs properly. A review of IT systems, which Lord Laming said in his report hamper the progress of the Integrated Children’s System project, was prioritised, and it’s in that connection that John and I were consulted.

I think there’s little doubt that IT systems for Social Care are complicated – both to use and to maintain. As each new piece of Government legislation comes along, new facilities are bolted-on to comply with the new requirements. The systems, which are now far removed from what they started-out as, would ideally have been redeveloped from scratch, but issues such as time pressure, maintaining continuity of service and cost invariably mean suppliers (the few of them that specialise in this complicated market) try to adapt.

It seems that the complication is added to by the fact that, whereas Social Workers mainly work with family groups, the “Every Child Matters” agenda requires child-centred record keeping, and trying to fulfil both objectives entails extra documentation and duplication, and the feeling that too much time is spent filling forms, and too little looking after children.

My Hobby Horse – the need for a single pan-Government security infrastructure - is also relevant, particularly when dealing with disabilities or special needs requiring extensive multi-agency working. Here the DCSF development of EAS, linked to Government Connect is helpful but, again, if you wanted to start-out on the development of well-integrated, secure, effective and easy to use systems you wouldn’t start here – you’d start with a single comprehensive enabling infrastructure.

My own experience has been that Heads of IT have been slow to engage in understanding and meeting the requirements of ICS and CAF (the Common Assessment Framework). Social Services has been one of those services that tended to rely on in-business ICT support, rather than the corporate service, and this inevitably encouraged silo working. It’s an example of how CIO’s and Heads of Corporate ICT needed to pop their heads above the parapet to advise executive colleagues of the cross-cutting and integration issues based on their helicopter view of Authority’s services.

Lord Laming called for a feasibility study into a single national integrated Children’s System. Newham’s own Kim Bromley-Derry, President of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, said such a move would backfire. "It is right that professionals should have quality recording systems and share information effectively. The integrated children's systems are not delivering for us. Some are working better than others. They are a barrier rather than an enabler to effective work - but experience of national IT systems is not good. The several years we would need for a national roll-out would repeat the teething problems of ICS locally but on a national scale."

I’m afraid I agree. We need a period of consolidation, to refine and effectively implement current initiatives, whilst working on a properly thought through strategy that enables tactical development, where appropriate, informed by an agreed vision, rather than knee-jerk tactics in the absence of a guiding strategy. The starting point is a comprehensive enabling infrastructure.


Plans for stress-testing Newham ICT Remote Access Portal, which can support 1,000 concurrent users and unlimited Outlook Web Access, ensuring that we are well-prepared for the impact on working arrangements of any 'flu' pandemic are well-advanced.


Julie Holden sent me the group photo taken at the IRRV function she hosted at Claridges on Red Nose Day, so I thought I'd post it here. Where's the waiter's red nose; that's what I want to know!

My Generation

On Thursday evening I attended a BCS “Thought Leadership Dinner Debate”, on "IT Futures: the death of the IT Profession, as we know it?" - at the Royal Society, in Carlton Terrace. I argued “yes”; IT is a one generation thing that starts and ends with my own generation. How conceited is that?! IT is an artificial construct mixing a science and an art – engineering and information management – it’s really two professions. We talked about the tremendous rate of change, and made analogies with other professions, such as farming and medicine, which have all been driven by technology – but we don’t have a Faming Technology profession? In my sector – government – the emphasis is on information, but in manufacturing, say, it’s on engineering.

Not everyone agreed with me but, if they had, I may have argued something else!


Friday was a catch-up day, working at home.

Janet de Rochfort brought my attention to a piece of work being undertaken by the “Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology” on Technology for the Olympics, of which I was unaware. Many thanks, Janet. I’ve got in-touch with the Leading Adviser, and we’re arranging to meet.

I finished at 4.30, planted a tree that was delivered in the week, cut the grass, and had a beer in the evening sunshine; a nice way to start the holiday weekend.

Accredited

Adrian and I met at Intellect’s offices with Vaughan Shayler, Gary McQuade and Leanne Johnson regarding the Accredit UK professional certification programme. “Accredit UK” is now a separate company within the NCC Group, with Vaughan as its Managing Director. Following our previous discussions, Socitm Consulting has designed a Consultancy module for the programme, and is bidding to develop others. Twenty-one of its consultants are training as assessors.

In effect, the Accredit UK programme provides an Operational Process Manual enabling a business to determine which areas of its operations it must focus on and which can be left to others. It was designed with smaller organisations in-mind, but is scalable, with an emphasis on continuous improvement. Existing customers, such as Richard Tubbs, of Netlink, have testified to the effectiveness of the approach.

We agreed Socitm would further work with Accredit UK in promotion through our Regions, arranging to explore, with Socitm Insight & Consulting, the potential for further developing our benchmarking products by building-in appropriate parts of the Accredit UK standard, and would facilitate engagement with the Local CIO Council, and Buying Solutions. We will also explore enrolment in the programme of Socitm member sites and premium partners, with a view to enabling endorsement from “personal” experience.


I met with Richard Paugh and Stuart Roberts of the CEO Board at their offices in Bloomsbury Square, and explained that Adrian is developing an output-based specification of requirements, to be ready in 2-3 weeks, which we will ask the CIO Board and others to respond to. In the meantime, we remain very interested in the CIO Board proposition, and discussed how this may work with the Local CIO Council, for the benefit of the Society generally, and its national events programme, and how it can be funded.


Back at base (Newham Dockside) I joined Geoff and Richard Carde for a meeting with Vince, from TfL and his colleague Matt Wright to discuss our NTC programme, the way we’ve approached office automation in Newham Dockside, PSMP, and opportunities for collaboration, including in procurement.


Becky Furnell and I discussed possible IT links to the Newham – Barnsley partnership, and we agreed to proceed with the suggested workshop to consider what synergies there may be in our IT programmes and infrastructure developments.


It’s great that Newham Dockside visitors, such as Glyn Moody, are impressed by our new offices (and quite a change from the previous position!) There’s no doubt that the accommodation is very nice indeed, but it is also far more efficient to maintain than the 27 premises it replaces, so represents a great deal for Newham’s communities, as well as its staff.

Glyn has rather misinterpreted my comparison of e-mail and instant messaging (or perhaps I didn’t explain it well). Instant messaging is a conversational medium, where as e-mail is “on the record”. Anything that’s on the record is subject to FOI, but that does not, for example, include the process of developing policy. We do not use IM to “sound off” – but for conversational exchanges and much of the power, as I tried to explain is in the availability of tele-presence information that lets you know a colleague’s availability and preferred means of communication. This is a huge boon, especially in remote working by enabling disparate teams to work effectively together.

The Mad Hatter's Tea Party

Socitm's National Advisory Council, held today at Friends' House, in Euston, was an interesting affair, described by the Chair, at one point, as "like a Mad Hatter's Tea Party", with which I concur! That's not intended to be in any way derogatory, but reflects the enthusiasm with which the debate was joined.

The "meat" of the meeting was in discussing papers, presented by Adrian, positing a number of questions on membership structure.

I have to confess to some frustration at the number of times colleagues declared themselves uninformed (or words to that effect) about issues under discussion - as we have striven to keep all our membership up to speed with Society developments (as in this Blog, for example). I guess this situation is another demonstration of the reality we now have to face; our members are under intense pressure in their "day jobs" and it's only when you can get them away from the office to meetings like this that they're able to really engage in Socitm's business; then it's like letting the genie out of the bottle!

We agreed, however, proposals for roughly half of regional meeting content being provided through corporate policy themes, with the remainder representing local priorities. There was agreement, also, on proposals for moving towards a “Socitm Group” type of structure with divisions focussed on different membership interests, such as Web Management or Information Assurance.

The meeting was overwhelmingly in favour of maintaining "Socitm" as the master brand, but with a slight change of emphasis - the "Society of Information and Technology Management".

There was a view that most public sector employees are reluctant to pay their own Socitm membership fees because they know that their employers pay their managers' (true, I believe, in most cases) and, not unreasonably, expect the same treatment, even 'though they are happy to pay membership fees to other organisations, such as the BCS. This presents us with quite a challenge, especially in the belt tightening environment that now prevails, given our ambition to drive up membership, and it suggests we must prioritise development and implementation of our corporate membership scheme.

There was some discussion of Directors' portfolio responsibilities, which are currently being reviewed, and which Steve plans for us to discuss at our next board meeting. I was reminded of what I had wanted to raise at the last meeting, but forgot - that, given the pressures on members' time, we aspire to ensure they are supported by paid Socitm officers, when representing the Society in meetings, who ensure that agreed actions are taken-forward. Linked to this, nominated Directors should monitor our various representative activities to ensure effective engagement with Government & other key stakeholders, among their other portfolio responsibilities.


The day finished with a PSMP partners' meeting, held at the RICS Board Room at 12 Great George Street, which has a terrace overlooking Parliament Square to which, at the conclusion of our meeting, we adjourned for celebratory drinks in the evening sunshine. How the other half live, eh!


Finally, today, here is alarming news from Pinsent Masons – “Workers name their price for Company secrets” – which I guess is an increased problem in the present economic downturn.

Comparing Sauces

The last of this Socitm (Past) President’s reports is here.


Frank Moyer and Mark Bailey of EzGov met me at Newham Dockside, this morning, to explain their “Virtual Government Assistant”. This is a natural language search assistant (Avatar) that has just been implemented on Tandridge Council’s site. (You need to enable pop-ups.) They reckon that this technology has been proven to reduce contact (via ‘phone, Contact Centre) by 10 to 30%, and will offer a SLA guaranteeing it covers its costs. I was interested on several counts – one of which is whether it could complement Socitm’s Customer Access Improvement Service.


Glyn Moody and I had our first meeting to plan our comparison of Newham’s Microsoft-centric infrastructure versus the same functionality and capability deliverable with “Open Source”-centric infrastructure. Glyn was accompanied by Mark Taylor, as his technical adviser. Mark specialises in advising clients on how they can exploit Open Source software in their infrastructure, and is a Socitm member, who was previously active in the Open Source Group that was set-up by Bob Griffith. (This was disbanded some time ago, but the topic remains on the Society’s radar, and is likely to be rekindled as and when we are able to prioritise resourcing further research.) I was supposed to have arranged my own technical adviser, but forgot, and he was at lunch when I needed him!

I overviewed our desktop environment, stressing flexible working, office automation and telepresence requirements, but needed the technical backup to get into the server set-up, where Glyn and Mark say Open Source really makes a difference versus proprietary infrastructure.

I think we agreed that the term “Open Source” isn’t particularly helpful, and is misused. The real issues are Open Standards and interoperability.

Today’s meeting, at least enabled us to meet and agree our broad goals (as above). Mark took some notes, and will copy them to us with the initial queries he has on our server configuration, and we’re arranging a fuller (probably half-day) meeting to develop the detailed specification against which we’ll benchmark, as soon as possible.


After lunch, I was at BERR’s One Victoria Street offices for an initial ALIP2 partnership meeting following our successful bid to the Technology Strategy Board. I blogged about this last October, when the bid was under preparation, and will provide fuller information in due course. For now, suffice to say that Newham is to lead the first work-package, which is to produce specifications of requirements and target pricing. The project is expected to start on 1st June.


Following which, I sat in BERR’s Reception for a Teleconference with other members of the Government Connect Benefits Realisation Fund Ratification Committee (if I correctly remember what we call ourselves!) We approved circa a dozen further bids, exhausting most of the funding pot. We are content that the bids funded will exploit the GC infrastructure, are replicable/ transferable and cover a lot of ground, with little duplication. There’s a possibility of one further, final, review to ensure we’ve covered all the bases.