A Hectic Three Weeks...

Today’s Socitm Board Meeting, at Camden Town Hall, was my last as President and Chair.
As always, the minutes will be published in due course, but some noteworthy items were:

· A revised base budget for 2009 was agreed, which provides for some investment from reserves to fully cover financial implications of expenditure agreed in resourcing policy and commercial development requirements.
· Adrian, David and I will be attending a Socitm Consulting Conference, at the beginning of next week, to get to know the Team, discuss further development of the business and share our plans, hopes and aspirations for the Society.
· Adrian presented a paper proposing organisational changes to support commercial and business development. This involved utilising Socitm Services Limited (SSL) which Socitm still owns but has been inactive, for all trading activities. SSL, as a company limited by shares, is the appropriate body for commercial developments, whilst membership services should continue to reside in Socitm Limited, which is limited by guarantee. We agreed that the Commercial Board should further develop the proposition.
· We also discussed the status of discussions on business partnerships. We agreed that we now have a good understanding of the ways in which we should work with business partners and that there is strong interest from a number of businesses in entering partnerships. The main concern, ‘though, was in ensuring that we are able to resource effective account management and ensure that we fully deliver the outcomes we commit to - a “chicken and egg” situation. We agreed to finance some additional work to develop that capability and generate the confidence to enter partnership opportunities as soon as possible.
· We also discussed our structure and branding to facilitate the different sectoral focuses that are evolving within Socitm, and the suggestion that there should be a “parent company” with sector-specific subsidiaries covering CITRA, web management etc. It was agreed that Adrian and I would develop the proposition, consulting Vicky on branding considerations (one of which is our transition to the .net domain).
· Sadly, the CMS development has further slipped, and I definitely won’t be able to present the “look and feel” at next week’s AGM, as I had hoped to! We agreed action to ensure the development is fully completed ahead of the annual conference, when we also aim to have completed structural proposals to support membership and professional development, which the CMS will be needed to support.
· There were a number of actions to be taken forward through a number of key meetings that are scheduled in the next three weeks – meeting of the National Advisory Council, the Membership and Commercial Boards and, of course, next week’s conference and AGM.

Aide Memoire

You may remember that I’m an admirer of New York Times columnist, David Pogue. (In fact, now I thought of it, I’ve added a link to his Blog – “Pogue’s Posts”.) His most recent video is about a “memory tool” called “reQall”. I’ve got the world’s worst memory – especially when it comes to remembering things to do with my personal life that I need to do in the working day – make a Doctor/ Dentist appointment, book a car service, buy a present etc – so I’m giving ReQall a try.


Yesterday I met Richard Quarrell at the IOD Hub in New Broad Street, and discussed progress with the Psikey development. A new version of Psider (the tool to produce Pskey) is being produced by the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at Southampton University, and will be available in a couple of weeks. The plan, then, is to test through the summer with a view to producing a production version in September. I’ll be meeting Paul Davidson and Ian Cooper, next week, and hope, with them, to identify prospective pilot sites. Richard will be at the Socitm National Spring Conference on 23rd April, which is where Richard Allan will be presenting on Government policy on reuse of information, and available to talk with interested parties about the project.


After lunch I went to 59 ½ Southwark Street for a Socitm/ Capital Ambition planning meeting, with Steve Pennant, Roland Waterhouse, David Tidey and Ray Whitehouse, for this year’s London Local Authority IT Benchmarking Survey. Many of the standard Socitm benchmark questions already align with the Authority-wide benchmark survey being developed by Capital Ambition (London’s RIEP), which is also developing a set of “Leading Practice Principles”. I suggested to Steve that CA looks at Socitm’s recent “What’s in a name?” report regarding suggested IT principles.

IT benchmarking is becoming more challenging in our converged and flexible world, and we recognised, also, the need to focus increasingly on benchmarking outcomes, rather than inputs. It was apparent that we can’t move very far in that direction this year, but agreed much of the work to be done for future years, and are looking at potential quick wins, this year, including whether we can include a Data Quality Survey based on the work led by Brent Council.


Since I’m very much concerned both with digital convergence and broadband wireless developments, this story, of Westminster City Council’s use of CCTV for traffic management, caught my interest, and will be interested to follow the outcome.

If you build it, they will come!

There were still Tamil protesters on the green as I crossed Parliament Square for the third day running, this week, to attend another meeting chaired by Tim Allen at the LGA. We were to discuss marketing and communications, business processes, roles and responsibilities related to the role-out of the proposed public sector licensing agreement. Details are still embargoed, but Andrew Gibson of “Buying Solutions” (as the former OGC Buying Solutions is now to be known), who was there along with Nathan Morgan, promised to call me as soon as Nigel Smith (OGC Chief Executive) has signed the contract, when I’m free to Blog it!


Then to Steria’s offices at Holborn for a final Caboodle Board meeting - to agree the filing of the Company’s accounts, and to recommend to shareholders the winding-up of the Company.


In this week’s “Local Government IT in Use”, Michael Cross wonders why public sector organisations find it so hard to learn from each other - especially when it comes to the implementation of new technology. To quite a large extent I agree with him, although I do think the scene is changing fast - q.v. many of the developments that I’ve been blogging about this year, which are genuinely innovative, market moving and will finally give substance to all the hype around shared services. I’d like to think that Socitm can take some credit for encouraging and supporting these developments as a “critical friend” to Government, as we set-out to do a year ago. However, of greater significance, I believe is the new focus on public sector infrastructure that facilitates the deployment of new technology, such as flexible and mobile working (which is the example discussed in the article).

Building Accessible & Secure Local Applications

James Lee and I met at Newham Dockside for a PSMP progress review. It’s planned to launch at the other four Olympic boroughs in July, and for the portal to simultaneously be made available in all other London boroughs, although local Council content will be dependent upon individual Authorities commissioning the requisite development work, if they want it. This can be procured from any developer, but if SNT Media Networks do the work, the cost will be capped at £38K. As well as TfL’s Local Journey Planner, new content will include “Report it” and Cinema Listings.
It’s also planned to provide localised data from DirectGov and the Job Centre Plus service.
A Stakeholder event has been arranged for 29th April, ahead of which James and I agreed to set-up a further strategy session to bring all three partners (SNT Media Networks, TfL and LB Newham) and their advisers up-to-speed with developments.


An EAS Board meeting was held today at the DfES offices in Great Smith Street. It was reported that the funding model for the wider service delivery model will be available within 6 weeks. Progress remains good with 62 MOUs for use in Contact Point now signed. Other “pipeline” applications/Service Providers include the DWP’s Customer Information System, the e-Common Assessment Framework, the Youth Justice Board, the Learning & Skills Council, the Qualification & Curriculum Authority, the DCMS (Olympic Boroughs) and DCLG Data Integration Hub.


Afterwards, I met with Anders Henrikson and a colleague from Verisec, who were visiting the UK from Sweden to promote the company’s “Authentication Appliance” which is one of the local authentication applications (others are from Microsoft and Thales) that can complement EAS, and is being implemented in Salford – the first EAS pilot site. Having negotiated the Tamil demonstration in Parliament Square, I met Anders in the St. Stephens Tavern, and we discussed how Socitm can help in promoting the Verisec solution.


ID cards and enhanced passports have moved a step closer with the announcement of supplier contracts. The CESG has today written to stakeholders suggesting an Identity Management Collaborative Working Group on 23rd April – the day of Socitm’s Spring National Conference. As the notice is rather short, I’m hoping that others will also be unable to attend, and an alternate date has to be found.

BT's Italian Job

Richard Carde and I met with Sean Harney and colleagues from Orange to discuss collaboration linked to Newham’s Telecommunications programme, and 2012. We agreed to work together strategically, and will develop a Memorandum of Understanding, and Non-Disclosure Agreement, under which we’ll share information, our business case and seek to agree a common roadmap.


Tim Allen hosted a meeting at the LGA’s offices in Smith Square to discuss the Collaborative Government ICT Procurement Strategy being worked-on by the OGC at the behest of the Central CIO Council. Pippa Bass, Director of Procurement Efficiency at the OGC, and Chris Kynaston, who is managing the project, also attended. Chris circulated the paper developed for the CIOC ahead of our meeting, which was agreed as being, on the whole, a reasonable approach to tackling obvious efficiency requirements. Tim called the meeting to ensure that the wider Local Government community were appropriately consulted, and in order that organisations like the LGA and Socitm can lend appropriate support to the initiative. We agreed to set-up a time-limited team with representation from the LGA, Socitm, Local Government Delivery Council and IDeA to facilitate these requirements.

Concerning the paper, my main concern was that it doesn’t seem adequately to reflect the fact that efficient procurement isn’t just about the least cost, but must facilitate market moving developments – rather than encourage stifling of innovation by encouraging suppliers to bid old technology, sweating their sunk investment, but delaying deployment of technology to benefit the wider public sector and communities it supports.


The fibre outage in Stratford, which resulted from 2012 contractors cutting through BT’s main fibre in the area, didn’t affect Newham’s main network, but feeder services to some small / outlying sites were lost.

Consolidation in Government IT

Somehow I missed this Guardian story on 1st April, but it still amused.


I’d be grateful for your support by completing this short survey on digital inclusion from David Clayden on behalf of Socitm & the CCitDG.


At Thursday’s Local CIO Council, a representative of OGC Buying Solutions was present to support my update on the proposed Public Sector Microsoft Licensing deal. The proposals were fully endorsed (and by the Central CIO Council, on Friday) and its hoped to make a public announcement soon, subject to finalisation of a few legal details and completion of the sign-off process.

Simon Norbury attended to agree proposals for benchmarking, by Gartner, of Government Connect infrastructure at four sites nominated by the LCIO Council versus previous intra-Government communications arrangements.

We broke into four groups to discuss the four business driver themes developed by Jos, Glyn, Mick and I – Public Service Efficiency and the Role of IT, Information Assurance and Information Management, Partnerships & Public Service Join-up, and Government Infrastructure Programmes – and were asked to decide if these were the right drivers, what were the underlying work stream requirements, and desired outcomes. You’ll see the results in the published minutes from the meeting but one required outcome was a CoCoCo – Common Code of Connection – which elicited suggestions of how this might become a CoCoCoCoCo – Comprehensively Co-ordinated Common Code of Connection etc, but most of the time we were very businesslike!

Roy Marshall gave an update from the DCLG, which he said has been ranked in the top quartile for IT, versus its peer group. Much of this concerned database rationalisation – not, it was stressed, for data sharing purposes, but for organisational efficiency. A Data Interchange Hub is at the heart of planned developments. There was some discussion, also, of the Operational Efficiency Programme, and expected radical IT cost savings requirements.

Kate Silver, Cabinet Office Transformational Government Lead on the Government IT Profession, attended to discuss how we should work together. The Government IT Profession is mandated for the Civil Service. Although the mandate doesn’t apply to the Local Public Sector, Socitm has joined “Partners in Professionalism” – the partnership of organisations involved in developing the profession, and Bernard Gudgin and Adrian Hancock have led for Socitm, to date. Rose and Kate arranged to meet to discuss how we should boost our engagement.

Andrew Stott spoke about plans to consolidate Government Data Centres, which together account for about a quarter of the Government’s £4 billion IT expenditure. Cost savings of 25-50% are thought to be realisable through consolidation, while delivering a better service.

The Group also agreed to review the recently published Government strategy on Open Source, for endorsement at our next meeting.


On Friday morning I teleconferenced with John Skinner and Chris Blenkhorn, from Cisco. Chris has produced an excellent “Connected Community Blueprint”, which Socitm would like to endorse. I had a few suggestions for a Section on building trust and describing security requirements, which Chris agreed to incorporate.


In the afternoon I attended Socitm South’s Committee Meeting, at Mole Valley DC offices in Dorking, to discuss support from the Centre, regional development, business partnerships and Socitm’s “USP”. Perhaps the key requirement to emerge was for centrally managed liaison with the regions - particularly with a view to effective events co-ordination.

We also discussed and agreed a stimulating agenda for the branch’s next meeting on 12th June but, unfortunately, I cannot attend as they’ve gone and booked it for 12th June, when I shall be in Le Mans!

April Fool's Apology

I thought this article about the Conficker Worm quite interesting. "This is very professionally architected design and development."

There are now over 300 members of the Socitm Web Improvement & Usage Community of Practice. (Registration required.)

The FAQs I referred to yesterday have been published.


After working at home, today, I enjoyed a leisurely drive to Sunningdale Park for this evening’s CIO Council dinner, and tomorrow’s meeting.


I owe PC World an apology. They ‘phoned first thing this morning to say I had booked a delivery time-slot on Thursday morning – 2nd April. I checked my order acknowledgement and receipt before ‘phoning, last night, but they didn’t include the booked delivery time. However, on checking my PC World account after this morning’s call, it did indeed say I booked for tomorrow. Why I did this, I cannot say, but have had a lot on my mind lately! Luckily, my daughter Kim will be home to take delivery as, thanks to the G20 Summit, the University of East London building where she studies, will be closed tomorrow.