UK IT Industry Awards 2009: Public Sector Project of the Year

The Public Sector Project of the Year award has produced some outstanding candidates in recent years, and the latest shortlist is no different. The winners will be announced at the lavish prize-giving ceremony for the UK IT Industry Awards, to be held at the Battersea Park Events Arena in London on Thursday 12 November 2009.

To view the full list of finalists for each award, and to book your table at what will be the biggest night of the UK IT calendar, visit our web site at: www.computing.co.uk/awards

West Sussex Accessible Services Partnership ­ Street cleaning tracking at Crawley Borough Council
This local government project delivers service improvement and cost efficiency for street cleaning and removes all the usual town hall red tape. Using a combination of e-forms, customer relationship management, mapping, text messaging, email and a series of web calls, information from the customer is passed to the team that will sort out the problem with no paperwork or administrative overhead. Progress can be tracked online and citizens are informed of outcomes on completion of work.

The Rivers Agency, Northern Ireland ­ Strategic flood map
The Rivers Agency launched a new online service to provide local authorities, residents and private organisations in Northern Ireland with improved, comprehensive information about flood risks. The strategic flood map has made this information readily available for the first time and uses innovative geographical information system technology from supplier ESRI.

Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals ­ BloodTrack
Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust has 30,000 units of blood transfused each year, at £130 per unit, equaling £3.9m per annum. The BloodTrack electronic blood transfusion system project was implemented across 80 clinical areas on budget and on time within 13 months, using Prince project management techniques. Now 98 per cent of transfusions and blood samples are carried out using the system, and benefits include improvements in patient safety and significant cost savings.

HM Revenue & Customs ­ Self Assessment Online
The new Self Assessment Online service is HMRC’s largest web release. A new user-friendly application and state-of-the-art infrastructure ensures system availability during peak use. The project was completed at the end of January 2009, on time and to budget. The new infrastructure enabled a 50 per cent increase in tax returns filed online to 5.8 million. The new service received positive customer feedback and delivered significant efficiency savings to HMRC in its first year.

Kent Connects ­ Kent Public Services Network
Kent Public Services Network (KPSN) is a single IT infrastructure for Kent Connects’ alliance of Kent and Medway authorities, Kent Police and Kent Fire & Rescue. Serving 1,100 sites and 250,000 users, KPSN has increased IT capacity, resilience and security to deliver faster, more accessible, and better services to residents, saving £9m already.

Leicestershire Constabulary/Point to Point ­ Mobile data
Leicestershire Police was awarded funding in 2008 to provide officers with access to mobile data. Leicestershire’s interpretation of this was to turn the police car into a mobile office with a device that could be removed from the vehicle. Supplier Point to Point delivered the force desktop to these mobile users in a secure and optimised fashion.

NHS/Concentra ­ Cancer Commissioning Toolkit
The Cancer Commissioning Toolkit is the first of its kind in the NHS, bringing data from disparate systems, owned by different organisations, into one central, easy-to-access location for a wide range of users. The one-stop library of cancer information enables the benchmarking of performance against similar organisations, and will be an important tool to drive improvements in service quality and national consistency, reducing the “postcode lottery”.

Northern Ireland Department of Finance and Personnel ­ Shared service centre
In March 2009, the Northern Ireland Civil Service completed the migration of the last department to IT Assist, its IT shared service centre. IT Assist provides common IT services such as helpdesk, email, infrastructure, server hosting and desktop support to 18,500 users across the 11 Northern Ireland departments and their agencies. The project was delivered on time and within budget.

Norfolk Constabulary/enCircle Solutions ­ Intelligence briefing & tasking
Norfolk Constabulary radically changed how it disseminates intelligence information to its 2,000 officers. The tasking and management process was also improved, enabling officers to focus on the tasks and intelligence information relevant to them. This was achieved by using an innovative business process management system called enAct, implemented by enCircle Solutions within budget a week early.

Ministry of Defence/Capgemini ­ Defence Travel Online
Defence Travel Online (DTO) is the online element of the MoD’s Defence Travel Modernisation Programme, which enables British forces worldwide and MoD workers to book business travel online. DTO also cuts administrative costs and enables the MoD to negotiate better rates with suppliers, achieving 20 per cent savings against annual travel expenditure of £300m in its first year.