FSA sets its sights on IT performance goal

UK regulator the Financial Services Authority (FSA) is aiming to be the best-performing IT department in its industry sector by September 2008.

The organisation is in the middle of a major transformation programme that will cost up to £8.5m, to overhaul IT services and legacy systems.

Darryl Salmons, the FSA’s information systems director, was recruited 18 months ago to design and oversee the project.

‘We are aiming to be on a par with our industry peers by September 2007, and to reach best class by September 2008,’ he told Computing. ‘We have given ourselves quite stretching targets to beef up the whole IT operation.

‘I was hired to transform information services, which was generally recognised prior to my arrival as not operating at its most efficient.’

Analyst Gartner advised the FSA on industry-level targets, and identified the UK government sector as the most appropriate benchmarking industry.

Salmon’s first task was an initial review, conducted with consultants, of the FSA’s IT effectiveness. The review results, along with proposals for the programme, were presented to the board, and the transformation programme – named Delta – was launched in August 2005.

The scope of the programme is wide and designed to transform all aspects of information services at the FSA, says Salmons.

‘There is the technology component, of course, but the transformation covers much more than that, including how we govern what we do and how we are going to provide resources to build new systems,’ he said.

‘It includes a governance framework, relationship management and interaction with the business, day-to-day operations, service-level standards, how we build new systems, the development lifecycle, and the support of systems once they have been developed.

‘There was a clear need for change, and it is a change that affects lots of people. The working and professional environment enables staff to develop their careers in IT.

‘The really big challenge is trying to maintain business as usual at the same time as making the transformation.’

The FSA was formed in the late 1990s through the merger of 11 separate smaller regulatory bodies, each of which had its own IT legacy applications, amounting to 60 in all.

The transformation project will bring all these together into a cohesive data-sharing system.

‘We recognised the need for a technology roadmap or architecture model as a key part of the transformation,’ said Salmons.

‘Our architecture model is based on concepts of reusability and common components, using middleware to make the best use of existing applications so that we can enable data sharing between existing applications without having to replace everything with a common portal that points to all of them.

‘The components for the roadmap we will be decided in the coming months.’

Last August the FSA announced contracts with development partners Tata, Xansa and Capgemini that are intended to strengthen IT services.

Salmons says that, by December, an infrastructure and service delivery partner will have been chosen, to which the FSA will outsource back-office functions such as helpdesks, a data centre and networks.

‘The framework agreements with our development partners are a hugely significant step for us because they all bring their own strengths,’ said Salmons.

‘The drivers behind the whole transformation programme are flexibility, capability and effectiveness, which we could not previously deliver. Signing up with these partners means we can now deliver on all of those.’

There are a number of separate projects in the programme, including what the FSA calls its Integration Regulation Reporting (IRR) programme.

IRR is intended to transform the way that companies interact with the FSA, and will allow the submission of electronic forms, meaning data can be managed more efficiently and effectively while providing regulated firms with the opportunity to streamline their reporting processes.

‘I think it is the project that will be the most beneficial to our external stakeholders, even though it is still under development,’ said Salmons.

Implementation of IRR was started four years ago, and is being introduced in phases. Salmons says IT should be considered as part of the core organisation, but that its remit is not to regulate businesses.

‘IT is increasingly very heavily integrated into the solutions we are providing as a regulator, so it would be completely wrong to think that IT is just back-office business and keeping the PCs running,’ said Salmons.

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Further reading:

FSA examines outsourcing

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