Council seeks partner to improve poor performance

Local authority looks for partner to go from worst to best

North East Lincolnshire Council is to outsource its IT to improve performance, after coming close to bankruptcy.

The council was rated by the Audit Commission in December 2005 as the worst-performing in England, and believes the best way to turn its fortunes around is with a business transformation project.

Dave Shaw, deputy director of strategic business support for North East Lincolnshire, says the council wants to work with an organisation that has IT expertise, business process re-engineering experience and programme management skills.

He says the council is keen to share the risk associated with innovative IT projects.
‘We are looking to replace our core corporate systems – things such as customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning – and re-engineer them to get as much of our back office into the front office as possible,’ he said.

Shaw says the council expects to spend £20m on IT over the next 10 years, and to see a return of about £39m.

‘We don’t want a traditional outsourcing partner who will just pick off the usual suspects, such as revenue and benefit or finance,’ he said.

‘We want someone with more of a coaching style to help our organisation transform itself, improving its performance and efficiency.

‘Doing what everybody else is doing will not get us ahead of the pack.’

The council is mindful of the pitfalls associated with outsourcing.

Walsall Council cancelled negotiations over a £650m outsourcing deal with Fujitsu Services last month and kept its IT in-house (Computing, 19 January), while Bedfordshire County Council last year terminated a contract with vendor HBS (Computing, 25 July).

Shaw says North East Lincolnshire’s aim is to climb from the bottom of the performance ladder to the top, in the shortest possible time.

‘The authority needs to be turned around and we can’t do this ourselves. We don’t have the capacity, the skills, the track record or the experience,’ he said.

‘We want the successful bidder to transfer skills to the authority, so at the end of the engagement the partner will walk away and leave us standing on our own two feet.’