The most recent articles from IT Week

Environment Agency leads the way to greener IT procurement

Matthew Lake — 2008-07-11T12:07:00.000Z

Matthew Lake, IT Week, Friday 11 July 2008 at 12:07:00

New IT chief reveals plans to use outsourcing deal to promote sustainable government procurement

The Environment Agency has this month entered the final short list phase of a £750m IT outsourcing deal that it plans to use to promote sustainable procurement practices across the government sector.

In an interview with IT Week, the Environment Agency’s newly appointed head of corporate information services, Simon Pitt, said his main objective is to come up with the most environmentally sustainable government IT contract ever, which could then be used as a template for all future public-sector outsourcing procurement deals.

“We are designing the contract with the hope that other government agencies and departments could benefit from it, especially around the area of sustainability – but we still need to define the parameters for this,” Pitt explained. “Possible options range from government bodies and agencies joining this contract, to using the principles from our contract as the foundation for setting up their own contracts with similar terms and conditions. We will discuss these options with the Cabinet Office’s Green IT Working Group and with the three suppliers that we have short-listed.”

Pitt said that negotiations were ahead of schedule and had now entered the detailed dialogue stage. He added that the agency should be able to reveal its final choice of service provider by the end of December.

“If we get the contract right and cascade it throughout the governement sector, it would be a real coup,” he said.

Details of the 10-year deal were first revealed at the close of 2007. It will see around 170 IT-related jobs transfer to the chosen service provider, which will be responsible for the day-to-day running of the Environment Agency’s systems.

“My priority is to ensure that we get the best value possible, that we meet our sustainability goals and that we can offer the adaptable, flexible and agile IT that the Environment Agency, our customers and partners need in the future,” Pitt said.

Ministers admit government must do more to improve its data-handling procedures

Rosalie Marshall — 2008-06-27T12:02:00.000Z

Rosalie Marshall, IT Week, Friday 27 June 2008 at 12:02:00

Minister for Justice Michael Wills acknowledged public disquiet over plans for massive government databases

Technology is developing too fast for organisations, both public and private, to form lasting data handling principles, Minister for Justice Michael Wills told a House of Lords Constitution Committee gathering on Wednesday.

The Lords met to question Wills and Tony McNulty, the Minister of State for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing, on issues surrounding the Surveillance Society report, a Lords public inquiry into the principles and technology by which the public sector administers public data. The inquiry followed numerous data losses by public and private organisations and growing public anxiety surrounding the government's data collection and sharing policies.

“It is clear we need a radical change in government in how we handle data,” said Wills. “Over the years the government has become scrupulous about how it handles money and has put lots of checks and balances in place, but the case for data is less clear,” he added.

Wills acknowledged the government needs to give the public more confidence that it does not intend to become a data hound, collecting as much individual data as possible. “I don't think anyone wants to see huge databases where anyone can go and search,” he added. “The security implications of that are horrendous.”

McNulty denied claims made by the Information Commissioner that Britain is “sleepwalking” towards a “big brother state”, but he acknowledged a government “struggle” between striking a balance between the duty of the state to protect the public and the individual's right to privacy, as well as “how to deal with the positive benefits of new technology”.

Also debated was the possibility of a privacy impact assessment for new government data-sharing legislation, which would require the government to clarify exactly what individual data would be sought and shared when putting forward new legislation. McNulty said it was an idea that was “worth exploring”.

Case study : Council speeds its way to convergence

Dave Bailey — 2008-06-23T13:38:00.000Z

Dave Bailey, IT Week, Monday 23 June 2008 at 13:38:00

Faced with a looming deadline, Oldham Council needed a telecoms provider that could accomplish a swift migration to IP telephony

Oldham Council recently upgraded its telephone system, replacing separate voice and data connections across its various sites with a modern IP telephony system. The council also faced a challenging timescale in which to make the transition, owing to the impending expiry of its current managed service contract.

Oldham Council covers 55 square miles and employs 10,000 staff who service a population of over 219,000 people. In early 2004, the council started work on upgrading its voice and data network infrastructure across all its sites, with the aim of delivering a robust, scalable IP network for staff, visitors and the general public.

Responsibility for what would eventually become a full rollout of IP telephony fell to David Honeywell. Originally head of IT support for the council, he was transferred to an organisation called the Unity Partnership as programme manager. Unity is a joint venture involving the council and business services group Mouchel, with another private company Agilisys acting as the main ICT subcontractor.

Oldham’s existing telephone system was based on an Ericsson MD110 PBX, delivered as part of a five-year managed service contract. However, during the lifetime of this system, the council had invested in IP telephony on a piecemeal basis, introducing technology from communications provider Mitel wherever it was seen as appropriate. “There were some parts of Oldham Council’s business where IP telephony became a valid approach, so we were rolling out the odd Mitel controller here and there for specific remote sites,” said Honeywell.

It was then decided that the council should implement a converged solution to replace its existing infrastructure before the managed service contract ended. “About 18 months before the five-year managed service contract was due to expire, we looked at various options and decided there was only one choice and that was to extend the Mitel solution we were already deploying to cover the rest of the network,” Honeywell added.

The council put together a request for a tender that was sent to five Mitel Gold partners, of which three responded. Of these, only communications services specialist Bailey Teswaine said it could deliver the project within the required timeframe, which turned out to be a lot shorter than was originally envisaged.

“The formation of the Unity Partnership kept getting delayed, and was not completed until May 2007 very close to when our five year managed service contract was due to end,” explained Honeywell. This meant Bailey Teswaine had only five weeks to deploy the new system before the PBX service contract was due to expire. “Bailey Teswaine put their money where their mouth was they said we can do this and you will not need to sign an extension to the managed service,” said Honeywell.

Quality of service

During the rollout, 75 Cisco switches were commissioned by the Unity Partnership to deliver quality of service across the 29 main telephony node sites. These were a mixture of 24-port and 48-port Cisco 3560 and 3750 models with power over Ethernet capability.

The upgrades took place out of hours and before deployment of the Mitel infrastructure. As part of the rollout, nearly 100 obsolete Cisco, Bay Networks and Netgear switches and hubs were swapped out, and cabinets and cabling were stripped out and re-patched.

About 2,500 extensions had to be migrated from one platform to another during the rollout. “We’re predominantly a Cisco house, but we also had a smattering of legacy equipment that was incapable of running voice over IP over the Mitel infrastructure,” said Honeywell.

Most of the council sites had 10/100Mbit/s connections, while the core network is gigabit Ethernet. The Unity teams ran tests to ensure that the bandwidth and performance across the network was adequate. “We were fairly familiar with the Mitel solution since we’d already rolled it out across a number of remote sites, so we knew what bandwidth was required. That was the key reason for going with Mitel we wouldn’t have to check whether it would work,” said Honeywell.

Management of the Mitel IP telephony system is quite dispersed, but the main administration site is located at Oldham Civic Centre, while there are 60 Mitel 3300 IP Communications Platform (ICP) controllers managing voice traffic across all schools, libraries, social services sites, and other local authority buildings.

“Some of the larger schools have their own controllers so they’re using them to manage their own telephony network on site. Some benefits from the rollout are that all the calls are routed back to the central site to take advantage of corporate telephony rates and also free inter-organisation calls,” said Honeywell.

Savings and efficiencies

Honeywell said the project has led to significant savings. “One of the biggest challenges in the public sector at the moment is driving through efficiencies, and one of the largest potential savings is through economies of scale,” he added. Going forward, one of Unity’s key goals is to enable more flexible and remote working.

“We’re testing handsets running over people’s home broadband connections and we’re also trialling contact centre agents working from remote locations,” said Honeywell. “As a result of the rationalisation, we have people who are hot-desking, and they need to be able to seamlessly migrate from one office to another easily. An extension of the telephony system to their mobiles would be something we’d be very interested in.”

For Honeywell, the most satisfactory part of the project was that it became a collaborative venture with Bailey Teswaine, with the Unity Partnership almost matching the firm in the number of staff dedicated to completing the work.

“The stark choice was between signing an extension to the managed service, which was not particularly palatable, or throwing every effort we had behind the IP telephony migration,” he said.

Honeywell added that he was personally grateful that Bailey Teswaine stuck to its commitment. “I remember being sat in a meeting and all heads turned towards me when someone asked, ‘Can we do this?’. Looking at our partners, I said we could, and after that it was a case of my neck on the block.”

Kewney: Will IT ever get our vote?

Guy Kewney — 2008-05-21T14:28:00.000Z

Guy Kewney, IT Week, Wednesday 21 May 2008 at 14:28:00

The recent elections in London provided yet more evidence of problems with electronic voting kit

Elections held five years ago saw electronic voting systems being piloted “as part of the government’s efforts to get everyone and everything online by 2005”, wrote Madeline Bennett at the time. Of course, we knew about “hanging chads” then. But did we wonder about dazzled scanners?

It would seem that complacency about the likely future effectiveness of voting equipment is a reflex. “We’ve thought of five problems, so we’ve covered everything” is the mindset. But in reality, as we’re now seeing with scanners, the opportunity to perpetrate fraud doesn’t require technology to be used in a sophisticated way.

Encryption was a problem five years back. There was an option to log onto the voting site with your web browser. Obviously, the link had to be safe – so 128bit crypto was fed in. And most people, it seemed, discovered that they didn’t have a browser capable of supporting that, or hadn’t set it up right to use it, so they couldn’t vote.

This year, in London’s elections, monitors were astonished to discover that the system didn’t need to be rigged to be dubious. At one counting centre, boxes of completed ballot papers showed up overnight. Nobody knows when they arrived, but when the counting people appeared to start work, a majority of those boxes were already open.

Had someone tampered with them? It seems unlikely, but it’s definitely possible. Equally possible, and far easier, would be to shine a diffusing light on ballot scanners in areas where your rival is expected to poll well. The light increases errors, causing a closer result than expected. “Do you know what colour light works for this purpose?” I asked one monitor. “No idea” was the response.

The surprise this year was that someone deemed it to be illegal to perform a manual check of voting scanners. The argument was too daft to repeat, but nonetheless, it was accepted. So if the result was crooked, we’ll never know. Not even in a vaguely statistically significant way, never mind specifically.

I suppose it’s a good sign that we trust our technology – and our officials – so completely. I am right, aren’t I?

OGC wants workers to shut down PCs

David Neal — 2008-05-21T11:44:00.000Z

David Neal, IT Week, Wednesday 21 May 2008 at 11:44:00

Nightwatchman will help the OGC boost its carbon cutting credentials

The Office of Government Commerce has launched a new campaign designed to lessen the environmental footprint of government departments. The OGC is backing Nightwatchman, software that helps businesses better manage power consumption.

The OGC wants to foster an environment in which public sector workers do more to decrease energy consumption, and estimates that by simply switching off PCs when not in use it could save energy costs of up to £10.2m and cut carbon emissions by almost 56 tonnes.

Nightwatchman, which is one part of the plans, is software that lets administrators monitor daily PC consumption, and gives activity reports, it will also allow for the automatic shutdown of machines at the end of the business day.

Nigel Smith, chief executive at the OGC said, "The challenge to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions across the government estate is only going to be met by a number of measures… The new strategy to encourage public sector workers to switch off their PCs together with the new deal for IT power management solutions will play a small but important part in meeting the Government's sustainability targets."

Interview : Viglen chief predicts uphill struggle for Vista

Dave Bailey — 2008-05-14T11:58:00.000Z

Dave Bailey, IT Week, Wednesday 14 May 2008 at 11:58:00

As head of a PC vendor with a big presence in the public sector, Bordan Tkachuk sees little appetite for major Vista deployments

Bordan Tkachuk is perhaps best known for his appearance as one of Alan Sugar’s three lieutenants in the BBC hit show The Apprentice. In the final episode of the series he is one of three business associates tasked with grilling the finalists to uncover any hidden weaknesses, before Sugar stamps the winner with his seal of approval.

As chief executive of Sugar-owned PC and laptop maker Viglen, Tkachuk is well placed to know what it takes to succeed in a highly competitive business. Tkachuk said the company has undergone a major transformation following the scramble for market share during the 1990s that saw many vendors go to the wall. It was, Tkachuk said, a case of get big, get niche or get out. “At Viglen, we decided that it was far better to get niche. If you go back six or seven years, some of our competitors were jack of all trades, but master of none. Our position was to focus on public-sector IT, particularly education, and make that our specialist sector,” he said.

Tkachuk pointed to the commoditisation and cut-throat competition that has affected the mainstream PC industry. While the average cost of a system price has continued to fall, so too have the profit margins for vendors, he explained. “We used to sell a powerful PC for over £1,000 with gross margins of around 30 per cent - so you made £300. Today we’re selling a more powerful PC for maybe £400 with a gross margin of around £40, or 10 per cent if we’re lucky,” he said.

In market conditions like these, it soon became apparent that if Viglen was to survive it had to sell to large customers such as the government, Tkachuk said. “We’ve walked completely away from the retail sector and we don’t really focus on the small and mid-sized sector either,” he added.

One of the biggest issues relating to client computing today in all sectors of the market is Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows Vista, and the c hallenges that migrating to this complex new platform presents. Tkachuk believes that Microsoft has a difficult task ahead of it convincing customers to upgrade. “I think one of the issues with Vista, and this applies both to the large business sector and the sector we’re in, is that lots of user organisations are running very large fleets of equipment, anything between 5,000 to 10,000 units,” he said. “Typically, these organisations look to replace a third of their fleet each year. It becomes very difficult to support different platforms when one requires much greater hardware to run.”

Tkachuk said that customers have been jittery about deploying new operating systems, particularly prior to the first service pack release, and that upgrading to Vista will be hard work in both the corporate and public sectors. “It’s going be a long haul for Microsoft, it’s not going happen overnight. It’ll require some compelling arguments for organisations to be confident that the product will meet their expectations and be stable,” he said. “We’re seeing with our customers that they’re not yet voting with their chequebooks.”

Tkachuk believes Vista’s pain could be Linux’s gain, particularly on entry-level systems in the public sector. “Currently, we’re seeing a spate of these e-book type machines: cut-down laptops with smaller screens, which have less performance as a result, and so need a light-footprint operating system. Certain Linux derivations will be right for that type of product, because the cost parameters are also quite important there,” he said.

Low-cost mobile devices

The small but growing market for mini notebooks that cost about £200 should be fertile ground for open-source vendors, Tkachuk said. “People looking to buy these low-cost devices are not going to want to spend another £60 or £70 on top for an operating system. I think that application sets using the office suites that run under Linux give adequate functionality for the majority of users,” he explained.

Another sector in which Viglen is active is the high-performance computing (HPC) arena, where it specialises in clustering together off-the-shelf equipment to deliver powerful number-crunching systems at relatively low cost. These HPC systems are very often Linux-based, and a major reason for this is because the people building and operating them tend to come from a Linux background, Tkachuk said.

Asked if Microsoft’s clustering solution has a chance of breaking into this market, Tkachuk said, “Microsoft’s HPC solution will have a hard time following [Linux]. Having said that, if you’d asked me that question 18 months ago I’d have said it had no chance, while today there is some interest, and we have sold Microsoft-based [HPC] systems to some sites.”

With businesses becoming more interested in energy efficiency and the environmental impact of their IT operations, Viglen’s Green IT strategy has become increasingly important to the company. “Public-sector organisations are very aware that they have to look at conservation and recycling as a package,” he said, adding that it is an interesting area because there are business benefits to be had. “On an ethical level, in terms of power consumption and disposal, there are obvious reasons why organisations have to do this, but on the business side, if we can produce products that use less power and run cooler, then the side benefits become the prime benefits,” he said.

Surfers shine at studies and salaries

David Neal — 2008-05-01T10:45:00.000Z

David Neal, IT Week, Thursday 1 May 2008 at 10:45:00

Government must do more to reach the un e-enabled, finds report

According to a new report, called Economic benefits of digital inclusion, people with computer and internet access are likely to both do better at school, and earn more in the future.

The report, which was commissioned by UK online centres, a digital inclusion body supported by Learn Direct, found that said users were likely to earn between three and ten per cent more in salary than their less-technically advantaged counterparts and would earn better grades in academic qualifications such as the GCSE awards.

UK online centres urged the government to ensure that no part of the UK population was deprived of the opportunities offered by the internet, also offering it evidence of money it could save itself through the use of online mediated interaction, for example.

The report was launched as part of the National Digital Inclusion Conference, which is subtitled Reaching the Final Third.

Brent Council sends PCs to Africa

Rosalie Marshall — 2008-04-22T00:00:00.000Z

Rosalie Marshall, IT Week, Tuesday 22 April 2008 at 00:00:00

A partnership with Computer Aid International makes compliance easier for Brent

Brent Council has introduced an innovative IT disposal strategy, which helps it comply with regulations, while boosting its social credentials. It has donated 500 old PCs and laptops to charity.

The redundant equipment is being distributed to African schools and hospitals through charity Computer Aid International. This ensures the council complies with the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) regulations, as well as boosting its corporate social responsibility programme.

The charity also guarantees that all data is removed from the equipment before it is passed on. “This is a high priority because of the sensitive information we hold,” said Prod Sarigianis, Brent council business support manager.

A spokeswoman for the charity said Brent Council is just one of the 15 councils it is working with.

Government urged to introduce data loss controls

Rosalie Marshall — 2008-04-15T00:00:00.000Z

Rosalie Marshall, IT Week, Tuesday 15 April 2008 at 00:00:00

New losses of data revealed

Losses of sensitive personal information by public sector bodies will persist unless the government introduces stronger controls security experts have argued.

Recent Freedom of Information requests have highlighted the frequency with which data is being lost: 13 London councils admitted to having lost or wrongly revealed public data in the last year.

The unrelenting loss of sensitive data is likely to weaken trust in public bodies, argued Gary Clark, vice president of security solution supplier for businesses and governments, SafeNet. “Taking serious, legislative steps is the only way to rebuild it,” he said.

At Kensington and Chelsea council there have been two instances of social workers loosing files in bars in the past year. The files contained court reports, statements of special educational needs and names of young people in care.

The fundamentals of good data policy are not difficult, argued Dennis Hoffman, vice president of data security at RSA: organisations need to know what data they have, where it is kept and who has access rights. A good first step is the introduction of data classification technology, which can help business leaders identify sensitive information. "That helps make IT smarter," he said.

Devin Redmond, senior director of product management at Websense said that IT professionals should focus on auditing their data and introducing policies to restrict what information can leave the organisation. "There is frequently a gap in the understanding of what sensitive data is and where sensitive resides. You then need to look at how it is used and what policies are in place governing that."

The Local Government Association (LGA) is apparently working on new data protection guidelines for councils, but details remain vague. “I think there is some kind of guidelines being pulled together,” said an LGA spokesman, who also said individual councils should form their own set of concrete guidelines. “It is not our job to tell councils what to do,” he added.

In addition, the LGA spokesman disagreed that councils had a relaxed attitude in their treatment of people’s data. “There are no systematic problems,” he said. “What we can’t legislate for are people who don’t follow the rules,” he added.

The LGA said London council staff are involved in regular data management meetings to discuss security issues, once every five to six weeks.

OGC hits back at public sector overspend claims

Rosalie Marshall — 2008-04-11T00:00:00.000Z

Rosalie Marshall, IT Week, Friday 11 April 2008 at 00:00:00

The Office of Government Commerce does not waste money, it counters

The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) has argued against claims that public sector outsourcing contracts are wasting tax payer’s money, costing the public 75 per cent more than they should.

An OGC spokesman pointed to this year’s Budget report. Since the 2004 Spending Review’s efficiency targets for departments and the wider public sector, £23bn efficiency savings had been made, which included over £8bn from procurement efficiencies, he said.

Discrepancy exists between the government’s figures indicating public sector procurement savings and those held by public sector consultancies and thinktanks.

According to Compass Management Consulting, the public sector pays 75 per cent above average for an outsourcing contract, while the TaxPayers’ Alliance notes that government projects, including those involving IT, are £23bn over budget.

The OGC has been criticised for lacking scale and expertise to procure for the sector, but claims that it is at the forefront in helping the government and wider public sector improve procurement and deliver value for money. “OGC is an expert in providing guidance and standards on procurement best practice, fostering productive partnerships and realising the benefits of collaborative solutions to meet the buying needs of the public sector,” said the OGC spokesman.

However, outsourcing providers agree with the criticisms levelled at the OGC. Gurmeet Singh, director of Europe outsourcing practice, Sapient, said because the public sector lacks expertise in the areas being outsourced, a dependency develops on the vendor that is not in the interests of either party.

Singh gave advice to organisations looking to outsource: first identify the range of services needed before going to any supplier with a project; second, have at least a two to three year plan with the provision of revising the terms of the proposal at the end of each year; third, have a clear conversation with both parties together about their exit strategy, and finally, ensure you are working with the right sized company: too large and you may not receive the attention you require, too small and you may not have the flexibility for an agile business model.

In addition to building the terms of a contract, Singh said to build a governance model for executing the contract. “In many ways, this should be seen as important as completing the contract itself,” he said.

The governance model can help administer the contract, Singh added. “This body should meet at regular intervals – at least once a quarter – to ensure the value of the contract is clearly demonstrated.”

Technology vendors offer advice in response to police reform strategy

Rosalie Marshall — 2008-02-12T00:00:00.000Z

Rosalie Marshall, IT Week, Tuesday 12 February 2008 at 00:00:00

Vendors have advised the government to move slow on police IT plans

IT vendors are advising the government to undertake its police IT plans with caution and to consider previous project disasters.

As part of the government’s police reform strategy, the Home Secretary recently announced a new project that will streamline police IT systems making them more compatible.

“Police IT leaders need to tread carefully,” said Jim Close, Software AG vice president, adding “Ripping out existing technology and replacing it with shiny new equipment simply doesn’t work—just look at the NHS’ IT disasters or the £2bn wasted on government IT projects in the last seven years.”

The new project was announced by the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, after Sir Ronnie Flanagan presented the final report of his review of policing he undertook as part of the government’s police reform strategy.

Flanagan’s report focussed on the need for better risk management to reduce crime, advising the government to concentrate reform on strengthening systems and structures and improving performance.

Specific recommendations he made in the technology area were for the current receipt based system for stop and search to be enhanced once new technology is developed, and for more mobile data technology to be brought in.

Close welcomed the government’s recognition of the Police’s inherent technology problems. “43 police services have developed their own IT infrastructures, and whilst these work locally, they simply do not exchange information seamlessly for effective national policing,” he said.

But Close said the modernisation programme needs to be gradual and should not throw away the investment already made in technology. “Decades of intelligence and proven practice reside in these disparate infrastructures,” said Close, adding “Re-use of technology assets and non-disruptive integration between systems will enable our police service to revitalise its IT systems efficiently.”

NOMIS marks another government IT failure

Rosalie Marshall — 2008-01-10T00:00:00.000Z

Rosalie Marshall, IT Week, Thursday 10 January 2008 at 00:00:00

Another government IT project gets chalked up to experience

The National Offender Management Service Information Technology programme (C-NOMIS), will now be introduced in prisons only and no longer extended to the probation service as originally planned, according to a Written Ministerial Statement published on January 8th.

The C-NOMIS computer system was intended to centrally manage and track offenders through the prison system, from courts to prisons to probation services. The plan is for the system to store details on offenders, such as their nationality, ethnicity, education and employment.

But now, the computer system will not be delivering offender end-to-end management. A strategic review process that Minister of State David Hanson commissioned in August said instead “arrangements will be made to allow sharing of information between prisons and probation areas through a new mechanism ‘data share’ which will give read only access to core case information to support offender management.”

Reportedly the new arrangements had to be made because of the project’s escalating costs.

This news comes as a Guardian survey reveals that the cost of failed government computer projects since 2000 has reached almost £2bn. The survey did not take into account the C-NOMIS project reduction in size and the Guardian reporters note that the survey is not exhaustive and is likely to be an underestimate of the actual costs of failed projects.

Examples of other failed government projects include a system intended to streamline benefit payments and a management system aiming to help with the Home Office’s immigration casework.

The Shadow Justice Secretary, Nick Herbert, said, “With typical Government incompetence there has been a total failure to manage the costs of the project, which have exploded, and to deliver it as promised.”

“This is not only yet another Government IT fiasco but also a serious setback for the aim of reducing re-offending and making our communities safer,” Herbert said.

In a letter Herbert sent to the Secretary of State for Justice, Jack Straw, on August 9th, he asks the government how much money it has spent on the system so far.

“Napo (the Trade union and professional association for family court and probation staff) claims that the costs of the project have quadrupled in five years, from an estimated eventual capital cost of about £234m to the latest estimate in the region of £950m for national roll-out,” Herbert adds.

In 2007, the Home Office confirmed that over £69.5m had been spent on the project out of a budget of £99m. Mike Manistry, C-NOMIS project head, said “we can’t even get the basics right,” adding that “the whole thing is actually very badly thought through.”

In response to the recent news, a Ministry of Justice spokesman said “Prison NOMIS will continue the roll-out of C-NOMIS with a version that builds on the one currently running successfully in three prisons, preserving the financial and business benefit work completed to date.”

Modernisation puts paid to mainframes

Martin Courtney — 2007-11-26T00:00:00.000Z

Martin Courtney, IT Week, Monday 26 November 2007 at 00:00:00

A two-phase project will see Stoke-on-Trent city council completely overhaul its financial systems.

Faced with a pressing need to update its e-procurement and financial management systems, Stoke-on-Trent City Council recently gave systems integrator Civica the task of implementing a four-year, £1m modernisation programme.

Council project manager Paul Atkins said the existing mainframes hosting the local authority’s ledger, creditor and debtor systems were over 20 years old and long due a refresh.

“They are slow, inefficient and do not provide the management information that a modern council requires, like being able to report on expenditure, income or output at a neighbourhood level. Also, the skills and expertise needed to run them are diminishing,” Atkins said.

The update will progress in two phases, the first involving the replacement of the physical systems by March 2008, followed by an update of the business processes, which should be completed by December the same year.

A Fibre Channel storage area network (SAN) built on EMC equipment will be installed, with dual failover between two database servers. Three application servers will handle load balancing, and the council will use Citrix for thin-client application presentation.

Based on Civica’s Authority Financials and eProcurement systems, the implementation builds on the initial stage of the authority’s drive for modern procurement by integrating with the I&DeA eMarketplace procurement system. This automates all purchasing, payment and debt recovery operations involving the authority’s suppliers and creditors, and will be used by up to 1,000 council staff.

The contract was arranged through the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) regulatory and contractual framework procurement process, under which Civica was already approved.

“There was a mini competition, and we looked at several different solutions based on the OGC framework, including Fujitsu. We chose Civica because it knew our current systems better than the others and was best placed to migrate the required information off the old mainframes. Plus they were effectively the lowest cost,” Atkins said.

While he does not envisage the systems upgrade presenting too much of a challenge, Atkins knows that staff training and modernising the business process is likely to take longer. “The challenge comes in changing business behaviour, but I think that is something we are well equipped to take on. It will not all happen before the next financial year, but we will continue to improve over time,” he said.

Atkins expects return on investment on the systems upgrade within three years, and expects further savings going forward.

“The revenue costs of running those mainframes through a service contract are £400,000 a year alone. When we upgrade the finance system we can pull out of those agreements. And that is before you look at the internal efficiencies made possible through better procurement, streamlined purchase-to-pay processes and financial planning,” Atkins said.

‹ www.civicaplc.com/uk

UK moves up e-government rankings

Rosalie Marshall — 2007-09-21T00:00:00.000Z

Rosalie Marshall, IT Week, Friday 21 September 2007 at 00:00:00

UK ranks fifth place for sophistication and availability of online government services

The UK ranks fifth place in Europe for sophistication and availability of online government services, according to the annual e-government benchmark study by Capgemini.

The survey assesses the online capabilities of more than 5,000 public agencies in 31 countries across Europe. Austria performed the best, followed by Malta, Slovenia and Portugal. The UK has improved slightly from its performance last year, when it came sixth.

The area where the UK performed particularly well was in the delivery of sophisticated online services for all users. Capgemini said that the online services available for individuals in the UK were almost as well-developed as those aimed at businesses. Across all countries, the average consumer online service in Europe was classed as 20 percent less advanced than the average online business service.

Graham Colclough, vice president of the Global Public Sector division at Capgemini, said, “Public services are thinking about the customer and thinking about what it means to work together.”

Factors for the UK’s high achievement in providing accessible services included the level to which shared services had been developed; the focus the government had given to tackling the digital divide; and the establishment of multi-channel access to services, according to the report. Four of the nine “pro-active” services in the UK also attained a 100 percent score, which also helped to improve the rating. Pro-active services are those which automatically pre-populate certain data fields.

The UK portals to public services information, Directgov and Business Link, were also held up as best practices in Europe for personalised services and accelerating them towards web 2.0 standards.

A reason for the UK’s achievement in this area could be because of the good relationship government agencies have now established with the private sector firms supplying e-government systems. The public sector held an assumption five years ago that the commercial world would come in and steal money from them if they were contracted to build e-government systems, said Colcough. Now, there is a more mature relationship, with a lot more communication between the two sectors and the voluntary sector, he added.

Central government has the highest spending on online services per capita in Europe and the UK is now beginning to see a return on the investment, Colcough said. Local government started its transformation journey later but there are pockets of excellence which are having a snowball effect, he added

When asked why the UK had not risen higher in the ranks, Colclough said that the UK has performed particularly well considering its large size. Size is a barrier to implementing online services and a smaller country will be able to deploy online services easier, he added.

Gillian Merron, minister for Transformational Government said, “I am delighted that the hard work we have been doing in this area has made a positive impact on people’s lives. However, there is still more to do to address the challenges citizens and businesses face. We need to continue this drive to ensure services are joined up to improve the experience of the customer.”

A particular area the UK needs to concentrate on to improve online government services is data management where cultural acceptance among British people is proving difficult, Colcough said.

Strong leadership, commitment and evaluation is what is needed for countries to progress in online services delivery. This is the main reason for Austria doing so well and Portugal’s huge improvement from last year, Colclough added.

ID cards on track for 2009 as procurement begins

James Murray — 2007-08-13T00:00:00.000Z

James Murray, IT Week, Monday 13 August 2007 at 00:00:00

Procurement process finally gets underway but questions remain over the technical "nuts and bolts" of the project

The government has confirmed that it remains on track to deliver the first ID cards by 2009 after it finally began the procurement process for the £5.5bn project.

After months of delays, which had led to speculation that the controversial project would be further downgraded following the decision last year to ditch some of the biometric data originally planned for the card, the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) has published a notice in the Official Journal of the European Union inviting expressions of interest from potential suppliers.

The move paves the way for a Framework Agreement, which will see the IPS settle on a list of pre-qualified suppliers and contract terms for the ID card project and related Home Office initiatives to enhance passport security.

The IPS said it was seeking suppliers with "the ability to deliver large, complex, secure systems; to manage these systems to deliver reliable performance day after day; [and] to respond flexibly as requirements and priorities evolve" .

IPS chief executive James Hall said that the procurement strategy had been developed following lengthy consultation with potential suppliers. "Feedback from the supplier community has shaped our approach to procurement and will ensure we have a competitive process that enables innovative solutions and value for money," he said. "I am confident that the supplier community will step up to the mark in helping us construct this key national asset."

A spokesman for IT trade body Intellect welcomed the move, claiming the start of the procurement process should bring to an end damaging speculation about contract size and terms and deliver "greater clarity to the market".

"We expect there will be significant interest from companies of all sizes in this procurement and we hope that all involved in the scheme continue to engage with the industry to ensure the successful delivery of this programme," the spokesman added.

However, any businesses hoping that the start of the procurement process would herald the release of more information on how they could exploit the ID card project are likely to be disappointed, according to Simon Davies, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics' Department of Information Systems and a staunch critic of the government's ID card programme.

"The procurement document leaves a great deal of scope for alteration and doesn’t tell us a great deal about the nuts and bolts of the project," Davies observed. "It could be argued that this is right and proper as it should be more of a feasibility assessment at this stage, but the impression is that the people running the project still don’t exactly know what the real world applications will be."

Davies added that until more details are disclosed on the technology's functionality and how businesses and public sector agencies can interface with the register, IT chiefs will find it impossible to ascertain how their organisations can make use of the ID cards.