Issue 4 | Winter 2015

a publication

Good to share: knowledge platforms in Singapore

PLUS: A big year for federated ID | Socitm Assessment ServicesPersonal view, with Ralph McNally | Spring Conference preview

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Editor: Dan Jellinek

Editorial advisers: Guy Barnett, Martin Ferguson & Vicky Sargent

Production: Carl Newton & Mark Evans

Designer: Mark Evans

Contents5 11

Federal identity: national online ID programme ‘Verify’ among topics covered at Socitm’s two most recent major events

News

17 Rapid and flexible: Socitm Assessment Services offers digital tools for cost, quality and maturity measurement

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In our four-page News section: Spring Conference preview, third party software, open data cities

Year of optimism and initiative: Nick Roberts’ President’s letter

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Feedback:inourview@socitm.net

Advertising and sponsorship: nigel.bragg@socitm.net

Published by Socitm8a Basset Court

Grange Park Northampton

NN4 5EZ

ISSN 2055-7892

1915

22Opening up digital: Spring Conference dates plus full national and regional events round-up

Good to share: Lessons on knowledge-sharing from wired-up Singapore, researched by Socitm Graham Williamson Research Award winner Rachael Mfoafo

Information governor: Q&A with Socitm Member of the Year 2014 Ralph McNally

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President’s letter

I look back over the past year with a mix of emotions: pride at representing Socitm members in so many ways; frustration at the financial mountains we have had to climb; and amazement at the ingenuity members show in finding new ways to improve services while reducing costs.

Reflections on 2014 for me bring many highs, with collaborative progress with our colleagues in the Government Digital Service on the Public Services Network (PSN), performance analysis, identity assurance, design standards and more. We have also seen significant progress in joint working with health thanks to the hard work of pioneer areas, and valuable contributions through the health and social care events Socitm facilitated with ADASS and the Department of Health. We have seen the effects of digital disruption with appointments of several CDOs and an unprecedented holistic focus on changing citizen experiences, alongside the reality that making such fundamental changes to our organisations is tough on governance, structure, people, and processes. Big data is coming of age too, particularly around “smart places”.

The past year also produced two of the best conferences I have attended in a long time: Socitm’s Annual Conference at Old Trafford and the Scottish Conference at Edinburgh’s Dynamic Earth. At both events, I was truly impressed with the value derived from networking among our digital leaders. Scotland in particular demonstrated the enormous value of representation from all authorities across the country in one place.

The coming year brings optimism. The LG PSN Programme Board is already facilitating a route to simpler PSN compliance processes for single and shared service authorities. Health and local government networking strategies show signs of better alignment. And I believe we will also continue to see ever better collaboration between central and local government including increases in shared assets, knowledge and smarter procurement. Work continues this month to help align G-Cloud more with local public service needs.

Finally, I look forward to two major initiatives in 2015: the Socitm Technology Board, a vehicle for co-operation to encourage development of effective ICT solutions to shared problems; and development of #opensystemsalliance, a collaboration of the willing to share good practice and open up our business systems. Both initiatives have the potential for a profound impact on the maturity of relationships between buyers and suppliers to build services of lasting public value.

Best wishes for a happy, healthy, and successful New Year.

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Year of optimism and initiative

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News

Spring Conference preview: extreme collaborationHow far can councils share IT networks, applications and systems before losing their local autonomy? This timely and potentially heated debate forms the centrepiece of Socitm’s Spring Conference this year, set for Tower Hill, London on 23 April.

As part of a session on ‘The rise of the network’ covering the future of cross-public sector ICT and data sharing, Eddie Copeland, head of the technology policy unit at think-tank Policy Exchange (pictured right), will present his new report “Small pieces loosely joined: how smarter use of technology and data can deliver real reform of local government” (http://bit.ly/1D8Qg8z).

“Around the UK there are clearly many examples of exceptional best practice when it comes to local authorities using technology and data”, Copeland told In Our View ahead of his talk. “However, the sector currently lacks the mechanisms to spread the benefits of the best ideas.

Many councils have implemented major service reforms to deal with recent budget cuts, Copeland said, yet most have exhausted their options for acting alone to make efficiencies.

“I will argue that the time has come to look at things that the whole sector can do collaboratively to enable further reform that benefits everyone”, he said. “I believe that entails putting in place the core building blocks on which digital reform depends: compatibility with open standards, a common data network, clear legal advice on data sharing, citizen control of personal data, interoperability of IT systems, a dynamic and flexible marketplace for online services, data analytics capabilities that cross public sector boundaries, budget flexibility and freedom to design local services to meet local needs.

“It also requires an acknowledgement that some of these cannot be effectively implemented at a local level. Instead, the sector needs to adopt the principle of subsidiarity: the idea that a central authority should perform only those tasks which cannot be performed at a more local level. I will therefore outline ideas for what I believe could be done by central government (or the public sector as a whole); by local government collectively; by regions; and by local authorities.”

Specific recommendations in Copeland’s report include merger of the Public Services Network (PSN) with the NHS network N3 to create a Single Public Services Network (SPSN); and the establishment of

a Local Government Digital Service, owned by the sector, to create and manage a Local Government Data Marketplace (LGDM). “The LGDM would be a competitive online marketplace that brought together local authorities that needed particular online services (transactions, apps or data) with individuals, businesses and other organisations that could provide them”, the report says.

Joining Copeland on the stage will be Philip Virgo, vice chairman (policy) at the Conservative Technology Forum, who will call for more resilient communication infrastructures to underpin the vital role of ICT in modern society, including public service delivery.

This calls for better enforcement of interoperability standards; addressing fixed and mobile broadband not-spots; and improved standby routings and local digital exchanges to kick in when primary routings are overloaded or fail, Virgo told In Our View.

“We need to move from a 20th century, pre-internet world of fragmented, application-specific, semi-incompatible voice, data and video communications networks to a 21st century, post-internet world of secure, ubiquitous, any-to-any, fully inter-operable meshes that are collectively fit for purpose as a critical utility, on which lives and businesses depend. The result should be no more subject to outages or traffic rationing at times of peak load than the power supply.”

Other topics on the Spring Conference agenda include health and social care reform; workforce development – building and maintaining skilled, multi-agency digital teams; and innovation in service redesign around user needs. For more information, see:www.socitmspringconference.com

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News

President’s update: board strategy and member surveyLast year I commissioned a member survey to get a strong steer from the membership on what’s important to you, what we should keep doing, and where you think we could improve or change, writes Socitm president Nick Roberts.

Among an excellent 228 responses, I was pleased to see that 99% felt that Socitm and its services and publications were either very useful (34%) or somewhat useful (65%), with professional development, peer support and organisation maturity cited as the three most valuable areas.

The survey then asked: if there was one thing about Socitm you could change or improve, what would it be? As you can imagine, we received a wealth of valuable insight into your priorities and frustrations. The largest single issue mentioned was engagement and relationships with third sector, health sector and private sector and overall we have been able to group the topics under themes such as engaging members, research and inclusion of services within subscription. Detailed work to address all these issues will be carried out in due course.

Alongside the survey, I commissioned a Socitm Board review in which an independent adviser surveyed all board members to consider skills available and needed, and key objectives for their work. One outcome was a recommendation that the Board should hold a vision and strategy workshop to plan for the next three to five years.

We held this session on 20 January 2015 and had the member survey results available as valuable input to our thinking.

The workshop enabled the board to discuss and create a new vision and we will be sharing this with members at the forthcoming AGM at Spring Conference where we will invite your views on our developing plans.

Through all this, member needs and priorities are at the heart of all we do in steering the society and I continue to value your feedback on proposals we make. Stability of our core services is key, as is transparency of our activities and decisions, and we will be developing and improving these aspects as the year progresses.

Meet the boardSocitm’s board is made up of executive (paid staff) and non-executive (unpaid) directors.

The non-executives are currently Nick Roberts (president); Steve Halliday (immediate past president); Nadira Hussein (Tower Hamlets), Geoff Connell (Newham and Havering); and Nick O’Reilly (Derby), all vice presidents, plus David Clayden (third sector expert), Lynette Ground (third sector representative) and Peter Gallon (past president), The executive team has Adrian Hancock (CEO), David Bryant (finance and commercial director), and Martin Ferguson (policy and research director).

Nick Roberts: Stability of core services is key

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News

Third party web software ‘major problem for councils’ Integrating third party software into council websites is a “major problem for all web teams”, delegates heard at a Socitm event in London in November.

All council websites depend on third party modules for key tasks such as online library catalogues, planning application databases and bill payments, but integrating these into the main site design often leads to a disjointed user experience, delegates heard.

The main problem is usability, Martin Greenwood, director of the Socitm Insight programme and event chair, told In Our View. “People have to jump from council web pages to third party software, with no consistency of design”, Greenwood said.

“In some service areas certain suppliers dominate the market as well, so web managers feel they have no influence over them. Or suppliers say if you want to influence the design, you will have to upgrade to the next version.”

The event was opened by Richard Beards, web team leader at Northamptonshire County Council, who earlier in 2014 had convened his own “third party summit” for all suppliers of software used within his council’s website.

Greenwood said. “We are not talking about them doing a lot of different work for each council – we are just telling them mobile is important, or trying to cut down the number of pages on websites.

“Suppliers do not get the opportunity to talk to councils and their customer is often not the web team: they might work for the planning department or library department, and part of the problem is those people are asking for customisation for this and that, but then it is a nightmare for the web team to manage.”

One or two major suppliers are engaging with councils and with Socitm and the situation is improving marginally, but there are still major problems, Greenwood said. He said often it is left to individual web managers to tackle suppliers, but progress can be made “if an individual is passionately committed to user experience and committed to battle to put it right you can make a difference.”

All council websites depend on third party modules for key tasks, but integrating these into the main site design often leads to a disjointed user experience”

“ A key step in improving software integration is to ensure usability is built into procurement”

“

The summit was convened so Beards could share his plans for website development with the suppliers and gain their input, Greenwood said. “He said: ‘Here are our plans for improving customer journey, we want you to help us.’ Integration is all about communication: usually there is no communication, a council puts out a tender for third party software and it is handled separately. Here, there was a chance for dialogue in a non-contractual situation, and the feedback was good.”

Meetings like this can open a dialogue and can be just as useful for the software suppliers as for the councils,

A key step in improving third party software integration is to ensure usability standards and compatibility with the council’s main website design is built into the procurement process when the software is bought in the first place, Greenwood said – a topic covered at the event by Amanda Wilde, digital services manager at East Riding of Yorkshire Council.

Wilde told delegates she has ensured service departments cannot procure third party web systems without sign-off from her department, to prevent problems occurring down the line.

The problem of third party software integration is perennially highlighted in Socitm’s annual Better connected review of all UK council websites, of which the latest version is set to be published on 2 March.

For more information see: www.socitm.net/research/socitm-insight/better-connectedAnd presentations from the third party software event can be downloaded at: www.socitm.net/events/use-third-party-software/presentations-use-third-party-software

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News

EU open data city project seeks to expand UK membershipA smart city network helping councils share open data tools is seeking new associate members from the UK.

The ‘Citadel on the Move’ project helps authorities build mobile apps, which use open data to improve access to public services, and share other open data tools and information. Apps built using Citadel tools include one showing drivers real-time parking availability in the city of Ghent in Belgium; a ‘Treefinder’ app tracking urban tree cover in the Paris suburb of Issy-les-Moulineaux; and an app to help voters in London find their nearest polling station.

The project was set up four years ago with the intention of helping urban local authorities share open data experiences and currently has 102 European associates in 46 countries.

Associate status and access to project tools and resources is free, with optional extra services such as consultancy offered for a fee as the non-profit project seeks financial sustainability beyond its 4m euro EU-funding period.

“It is a great network to join for local authorities who are just starting the open data journey”, Julia Glidden, managing director of 21c Consultancy and project advisor, told In Our View.

“We help them set out a road map for opening data,

from getting started to publicising it, then help them troubleshoot; engage senior management; and write business plans.”

One of the project’s pilot cities was Manchester and about 20 UK local authorities are now associate members, the greatest amount in any single country, Glidden said. “Initially there was not as much interest in the UK as in other areas, but in the last few months there has been so much focus on smart cities in the UK that interest has grown rapidly”.

Just before Christmas the project published results of open data research from more than 120 cities worldwide which found that 41% have little or no track record of publishing open data. A further 47% did have some experience of open data publication including a city portal or systematic release, but no clear policy on open data publication and updates; and just 12% had advanced experience of open data including a portal or systematic release and a policy of open data publication and updates.

Authorities interested in becoming an associate city should contact the project using the form at:www.citadelonthemove.eu/en-us/cities/becomeanassociate.aspx

Citadel on the Move: www.citadelonthemove.eu

Citadel pilot: Manchester from the air by Daniel Nisbet, Wikimedia Commons

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Integration Personalisation Guardianship Facilitation Citizen

In a rapidlychanging world, standing still is the fastest way of moving backwards

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Special feature

This year will see a key stage in the development of the government’s new online identity management system GOV.UK Verify (https://identityassurance.blog.gov.uk/), with publication promised of a first model of how local government will be able to use the system.

Verify, already in live trials by central government agencies including HM Revenues and Customs, is a federated identity service – a new approach to public sector user ID that was the focus of much debate at both Socitm’s Annual Conference and Socitm Scotland towards the end of last year.

Under the system, third-parties such as private sector firms Experian and Digidentity manage authentication by validating people’s driving licence and passport details. Once authenticated, users are then able to access any other system within an approved network of federated organisations, such as other government agencies or approved software suppliers.

The Verify identity federation project is founded on SAML 2.0, an XML-based protocol using security tokens to identify individuals. It is currently aimed solely at users within the Public Services Network (PSN), not citizens, so a key goal is to support shared services – though it can also be used to access Internet services from inside PSN.

At the Annual Conference (http://www.socitmconference.com) Johan Henrikson, chief executive of security specialists Verisec, told delegates that federated ID is the logical solution to user authentication given the growing use of public cloud IT services by public sector staff. The trend of service departments buying cloud applications without referencing the IT department has become so widespread it has generated the new term “shadow IT”, Henrikson said.

“We have already seen major banks moving their back office to Google and councils beginning to move

This year, the government will publish a plan to include council services in its national online user identity system ‘Verify’. As delegates heard at two major recent Socitm conferences, this represents a milestone on the road to digital service transformation.

Federal identity

Secure future: federated ID is logical step to handle the growth of public cloud use, the Annual Conference heard

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Special feature

desktops to Office 365 – it is happening”, he said. “This leads to proliferation of usernames and passwords in the organisation which will not be subject to your internal policy, because these passwords reside with Google or Microsoft or whoever it might be. Fixed passwords are inherently unsafe.”

Identity federation on the other hand – with authentication provided by third parties – allows people to use one password for different applications in a single session – “one of the rare security solutions that makes life easier for the user”.

Henrikson showed how the system works in practice by logging on as a user who is then shown a series of cloud application icons such as Gmail and Dropbox which share a federated security arrangement. A click on any icon takes the user automatically out to a federated identity provider and then back into the application, after which any of the icons can be used directly.

“You are bringing the identities back home and controlling them yourself instead of letting the providers control them for you”, he said. “We can’t live with a million passwords, because it won’t work.”

A similar approach to authentication, this time for the citizen, was presented to Socitm Scotland in Edinburgh (www.socitmscotlandconf.co.uk).

The “mygov.scot” portal for online public services in Scotland, which is currently undergoing initial (alpha) testing (https://alpha.mygov.scot/), has its own single sign-in for online services known as ‘myaccount’.

Run by the Improvement Service with help from the private sector – unlike the Verify system which will be handled

directly by third party providers – the system is designed to join up back office systems and deliver services from a single point.

For organisations, the service will match their existing user data either case by case or in bulk to national registers, returning matches or probabilistic matches, and will also notify organisations back when data changes occur such as changes in name or address, or if someone dies. For this, it gathers information from a range of sources, including citizens themselves.

Once people are registered as myaccount users they can pass through a series of security checks and levels, after which it is up to each council or public body to decide what online services they will offer at each level of clearance.

For example, Level 0 users who are anyone self-registered might be allowed to report a missed bin collection; Level 1 users who have undergone basic data checks may be allowed to pay their council tax online; and Level 2 users who have passed a face-to-face validation process might be allowed to claim benefits.

“The single sign-on is embedded within a service provider’s website and then redirected to myaccount, where it checks user name and password and sends the result back to the service provider account”, says Cameron Walker, the service’s head of operations.

“It is a very thin set of data we hold in the centre. We authenticate people, but our bit ends there and service providers decide if they want to allow you to do something, and provide accountability – tracking what you did. We have no knowledge of what people do.”

As with Verify, sign-in is based on SAML 2.0, although the system is not currently compatible with Verify, and there are no plans for it to be used elsewhere in the UK.

Another key cross-sector ICT project in Scotland was presented to conference by Lorraine McMillan, chief executive at East Renfrewshire Council. Socitm in Scotland has worked with SOLACE and other partners to build a Collaborative Hub, which is beginning to reach critical mass, McMillan said.

Cloud champion: Verisec chief executive Johan Henrikson

You are bringing the identities back home and controlling them yourself. We can’t live with a million passwords, it won’t work”

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Special feature

Operational IT is Scotty making sure warp power works. That is different from embedding IT”

“

Though the project had a slower start than expected – “it took us a wee while to get our programme manager in place” – one year in the pace has ramped up and there are now up to 200 people involved across local government, she said.

Once fully operational the hub will allow councils to share ideas and applications more easily, leading to shared innovation across all service areas that should be embraced by all, she said.

“It should be the policy people in the council that are talking and driving digital as well as the ICT people”, McMillan said. “It is as fundamental as the discussion we have about prevention, or community engagement. But I am not sure it is getting onto the agenda with managers as much as it needs to.”

Another Socitm Scotland speaker, Hampshire County Council chief information officer Jos Creese, said the move to become a digital business represents a fundamental shift not just for policy staff but for IT departments themselves, away from operational IT.

“Operational IT is Scotty in the engine room, making sure the warp power works well”, said Creese. “That is different from embedding IT, acting as a digital champion. Can a chief information officer do that? Absolutely, but they will have to have the credibility that they are

not coming from an operational IT camp, and that they understand the challenges our managers face.”

Socitm’s role in facilitating this is to share best practice to help its members understand how they can make this shift personally, Creese said.

Ultimately, all parts of an authority will have to embrace entirely new business processes enabled by technology to cope with extreme levels of ongoing budget cuts, he said.

“In the first wave of cuts in 2010 we were stopping doing things we didn’t have to do and salami slicing”, said Creese. “The next wave was transformation stuff such as contact centres, flexible working, and self service for common activities to reduce pressure on help desks. But that is not going to get us through to 2018 and beyond.”

A fundamental service review was now needed to ask: “How can we define and deliver this in a completely different way, working with the private sector and doing common things across our organisation?” he said.

You can now start up a new business overnight, said Creese – what would or could that type of approach mean for new health and social care arrangements? What is needed is sovereignty of digital approaches in every part of the organisation: “digital programmes need to be owned at board level by chief officers as part of their own performance plans.”

This message chimed with one delivered to the Annual Conference by Mark Thompson, senior lecturer in information systems, Cambridge Judge Business School and director of Methods Group.

True digital services are about new business models and

Time for a change: fundamental service review needed, Jos Creese told Socitm Scotland

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Special feature

sharing platforms in the manner of private sector pioneers such as Uber and lastminute.com – the disintermediaters, Thompson said.

“We have got to start rethinking our business models. Maybe we should focus a bit more on infrastructure and open standards and reuse, not just about the agile approach and building stuff.”

Not one to mince his words, Thompson said: “Everyone

is still in their silos in this room. We have hundreds of versions around the country doing the same thing. But if we are able to start standardising those capabilities, that will ... stimulate supply by eager suppliers, contractors and investors. We need to get to a shared local government platform.

“It is turkeys voting for Christmas. But the people who thrive out of the silos, who work in bureaucracies, have to go.”

“It is turkeys voting for Christmas. But the people who thrive out of the silos have to go”: Mark Thompson

‘Opening Up Digital’

Thursday 23 April 2015, 9:00 - 17:00Dexter House, 2 Royal Mint Ct, London, EC3N 4QN

Key issues to be discussed include:• Local public services as a platform: a local GDS,

collaboration across regions or a different way forward?• Network security: what will follow the PSN and N3?• Delivering health and social care reform: how can we

ensure local public services are integrated?• Workforce development: how can the public sector

develop and maintain skilled, multi-agency digital teams?• The role of leadership: how are political influences shaping

the drive to go digital?

www.socitmspringconference.com

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Personal view

You graduated in law. What drew you to IT?

When I left school there were relatively few computers

Information governorRalph McNally, head of local public service ICT integration at Leeds City Council and winner of Socitm’s member award in 2014 for his work on health and social care integration, talks to In Our View about his career.

around and you had to be a Physics ‘A’ level student before you were allowed anywhere near them. I could see though that computer skills were extremely important, so at the point I realised a career in law wasn’t for me, I took a post-graduate diploma in computing and communication technology which led directly to a job working within the IT service at West Yorkshire Police.

West Yorkshire Police were quite a long way in front of most other forces in England and Wales at that time in developing innovative ICT solutions. I was exposed to a wide range of disciplines during my time there including programming, systems developing and analysis and then project managing everything from small ‘stand-alone’ system developments through to enterprise applications such as custody, case, crime and operational intelligence systems. It was a really interesting place to be.

After I had been at West Yorkshire Police for around 12 years, e-government initiatives were beginning to emerge with local authorities really leading the way and this looked really interesting so I moved to Calderdale MBC to become directly involved and lead their e-government activity. This included everything from handling IEG statement production to major infrastructure and applications development such as CRM and GIS. After about seven years with Calderdale I moved to Sheffield City Council, first as a solutions architect specialising in information and then running the Council’s information and knowledge management function.

How did you come to work on health and social care integration?

While I was at Sheffield, we created a dedicated information forum across South Yorkshire together with our main partners. This led us to work directly with health service bodies, and was the first time I came across the Information Governance (IG) toolkit. The toolkit draws together rules and guidance for health bodies and a range of other organisations such as local authorities (at the time delivering social care services). It was initially produced by the Department of Health and is currently operated by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC), and during this time I started to work with these colleagues to tailor the IG toolkit to local government requirements.

Health has a strong informatics governance framework and from a local authority perspective we also have much in place such as the Public Services Network (PSN) code of connection as well as our own separate policies and information governance processes so it made sense to converge and consolidate wherever possible.

The national IG Toolkit project from 2014 aimed to deliver this convergence building on the work started in South Yorkshire to create a local government version, and looking specifically at what we needed to do to get information

16

Personal view

Ralph receives Member of the Year award from Steve Cliff, IBM, with comedian Tom Binns (far left) and Adrian Hancock, Socitm CEO

flowing to support the rapidly developing health and social care integration agenda. This accounted for my move to Leeds City Council who were leading the project on behalf of a wide range of stakeholders.

Where is this work headed now?

There is a fair way to go but our work was a vital step to eradicate a lot of duplicated effort, time and money. It

Our work was a vital step to eradicate a lot of duplicated effort, time and money”

“was also laying down the groundwork for how local government and health were going to manage integrated care information requirements, and has wider implications across the whole public sector.

Having delivered really the foundation layer we are now involved scoping out a new IG programme, which is being led by our health partners to take us to the next level.

What is your role as Socitm Yorkshire & Humber regional executive member?

My Socitm member award also recognised the work we do within Yorkshire and Humber regionally. This encompasses operating regional Socitm meetings, working very closely with the Yorkshire and Humber Partnership Management Board and also operating our regional Warnings Advice and Reporting point (or WARP).

In this region as with other Socitm groupings we tend to organise our learning and strategy development work and deliver this through our meetings. The function of the executive in the region is to determine and shape the agendas of our meetings and our activities and to work with Socitm at the centre to keep the society vibrant in the region.

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Socitm services

Socitm’s own SAS is preparing for its first mission. The ‘SAS’ package comprises digital, self-service tools for service cost assessment, service quality assessment, and digital maturity and ICT maturity assessments, each derived from aspects of Socitm’s principal advisory and consultant-supported services, such as Benchmarking the ICT service, Benchmarking user satisfaction and the Digital and ICT maturity advisory services.

“The top level advisory and consultant-supported services require significant cost, time and effort from both the service participants and Socitm to deliver”, says Socitm head of research Dr Andy Hopkirk. “While these are obviously of high value to those who participate, not everyone has the time, or the budget, or the ready need when the calls for joining the cyclical services kick off.

Socitm Services’, p15, In Our View, Issue Two, August/September 2014).

“The idea of the SAS package is to offer four digital online services which subscribers can mix and match to use whenever they want to. The package subscription will be significantly cheaper than multiple separate, ad hoc ‘one-time’ use of each individual service.”

Beyond SAS, a single simplified version of the SAS package components is in development for trialling as a new ‘Annual Membership Profiling Survey’, Hopkirk says. This member-only survey will gather, and offer back, basic profiling data - such as organisation size, ICT budget size and ICT staffing/user support FTE levels - about each other to Socitm members.

In time other free-to-use, online taster versions of SAS services may also be developed and trialled, he says. “One of our ambitions for such services is that they can act as a shop front and entry point for non-members who then might like to become members and take advantage of our more sophisticated services offerings,” Hopkirk says.

The SAS subscription package and its four component services have each been put forward for inclusion in the next version of the Digital Marketplace (previously CloudStore + G-Cloud framework), with a full launch at the Socitm Spring Conference in April. Watch this space…

For more information contact: andy.hopkirk@socitm.net

The package subscription will be significantly cheaper than multiple ad hoc use of each individual service”

“

Assessment options to mix and match

Who dares, wins: Will Socitm’s SAS be as rapid and flexible as its military namesake?

“Members have asked for service variations at a lower price that are available as required. Our providing self-service, digital access allows us to do that.

“Our online Service Quality Assessment (SQA) is the first example of this new approach in practice (see ‘Overview:

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19

World view: Singapore

Anyone involved with creating a public sector online knowledge-sharing community is likely to have found their main problem has nothing to do with technology, and everything to do with people. How do you persuade managers and staff to share hard-earned knowledge and insights when they are busy, cautious and simply unused to sharing?

It was such ponderings that led Rachael Mfoafo, then communication lead for the Scottish Local Government ICT Strategy Programme at the Improvement Service, to apply for and win the Socitm Graham Williamson Research Award (http://www.socitm.net/membership/professional-development/socitm-graham-williamson-research-award) for 2013.

Mfoafo’s proposal focused on exploring cultural and technological issues behind successful online knowledge-sharing platforms by mapping the public sector “knowledge ecology” in the highly wired-up nation of Singapore, travelling in 2014.

“It was through supporting the LG ICT Strategy Programme in Scotland (http://lgictstrategy.org.uk) that I first got a sense of some of the frustrations around knowledge-sharing in the public sector, particularly using online collaboration platforms,” Mfoafo told delegates at the Socitm Scotland conference in Edinburgh late last year.

“I felt that there was some level of acceptance that public sector officers are IT-shy, making a lack of participation on collaboration platforms acceptable.”Despite this, demand for online collaboration tools and services throughout the public sector is “skyrocketing”, she said. Recognised benefits include collective problem solving, the potential to drive innovation, and time, space and cost savings at both strategic and operational levels.

Mfoafo chose Singapore as a research subject from its reputation as a highly wired-up nation – all households have high speed broadband and people on average own more than 1.5 mobile phones each – and as a pioneer in many areas of e-government, including knowledge-sharing.

How do you encourage public sector staff to share their knowledge online? Rachael Mfoafo, winner of the Socitm Graham Williamson Research Award, travelled to Singapore to learn from this smartest of city states

Good to share

Smart city: Singapore’s urban island geography creates perfect conditions for a wired-up society

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World view: Singapore

The fact Singapore – an island city-state with a population of about 5.5 million – is so compact and urbanised has contributed to its development as a wired-up nation and the UK Government’s current intention to devolve power to cities and city regions make its example even more useful, she said.

Not all aspects of Singapore’s experience read across to the UK – for one thing, because of its size the nation does not actually have local councils, with everything run through central departments and agencies. But its experience in creating online tools and portals has strong parallels with UK projects, Mfoafo said.

“Singapore’s Government website and portals are designed to encourage citizens’ interest in contributing to creating the public sector they want”, she said. “Its REACH citizen engagement portal (www.reach.gov.sg) for instance, was created in 2006 to lead the push for better engagement with citizens. The portal team works closely with communities and grassroots organisations to obtain feedback on national issues and policies as well as putting forward topics for discussion in the portal.”

The government also organises crowdsourcing challenges such as app development competitions and hackathons to tap into citizens’ knowledge and ideas to solve problems and issues that Singapore may be facing, she said. There are also plans to create “avatars”: online profiles for all citizens allowing them access to personalised digital services in a similar way to modern video game devices. This builds on Singapore’s current e-Citizen portal (www.gov.sg), which allows users to create personalised pages, saving favourite topics and services.

As for the country’s public sector knowledge-sharing platform “Cube”, a key focus of Mfoafo’s research, this was created last year with basic structures and

Organisations must look for creative ways to ensure sharing is purposeful and objective-driven”“

functions very similar to that of the UK Local Government Association-founded Knowledge Hub, she said.

The Cube team sits within the Public Service Division of the Singapore Prime Minister’s Office. Cube currently has about 15,000 users, and its managers emphasise content development, with customisation features to make it visually appealing.

“As facilitators, they produce engaging content that stimulates conversations on Cube,” Mfoafo said.

“Where digital platforms are concerned, organisations must look for creative ways to ensure sharing is purposeful and objective-driven yet draws on emotional elements associated with experiences. The challenge is to bring professional and social together in a productive way such as organisational storytelling, which can then be summarised and shared online.”

The team runs competitions and urges senior managers to use the platform to encourage others to use it, she said.

Passport to research: Rachael Mfoafo with her Graham WIlliamson Award

They also produce a monthly newsletter called JAM, which asks public officers a question directly related to issues that other agencies also face. These questions are often mirrored on the REACH portal to probe deeper into the issue from the citizens’ perspective.

Along with supporting leaders to use the platform to share insights, the team have also identified key people in different government organisations who are active

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World view: Singapore

in online communities within their organisations and on social media in general and use them to support content development on Cube. But despite all this, changing organisational culture to encourage widespread sharing remains a big challenge, Mfoafo said.

“Having been a facilitator on Knowledge Hub, I could relate to the difficulties in creating a vibrant group and sustaining it,” she said. “Overall it seemed to me that facilitators are very important to support all knowledge management tools, particularly in tying together content from key platforms and [presenting it] in an engaging format that drives further collaboration.”

Ultimately, it will be our success in cultivating a public sector learning culture, making knowledge-sharing everyone’s responsibility, on which success of our sharing platforms will depend, says Mfoafo.

“People will do something if they need to, but if they hang around on a platform, it is because they want to.”

Once high levels of usage are being achieved, another key layer of modern knowledge-sharing platforms is intelligent data analysis, helping managers analyse complex patterns of data across live sources such as citizen feedback.

Singapore is taking a lead in this field as well with its international smart cities project iCity Lab at Singapore

Management University, a joint initiative with IT specialists Tata Consultancy Services.

“Data management is critical, as smart cities of the near future will need to be operated based on decisions supported by a big data approach,” Alfred Wu, iCity Lab director and a contributor to Mfoafo’s research, told In Our View.

“This analyses different sources of data from government, enterprises and citizens, to make informed decisions in near real-time to ensure operation efficiency, citizen satisfaction, security and resilience.”

Better use of data will help city managers focus services around individual citizens, said Wu.

“Data, information and opinions shared by citizens through different formal and informal channels will provide feedback to government in terms of performance of urban services as well as programmes and policies to drive those services.

“If city managers are able to acquire the right data, design the right model, and perform the right analysis at the right time, they will be in a better position to respond to their citizens.”

To make sense of such a mass of data from multiple live sources, new tools for data visualisation would be essential, said Wu.

“We are surrounded by data in ever-increasing volumes. Visual analytics will allow city managers and other stakeholders to retrieve the most important insights. City managers lacking visual analytics capabilities will not be able to respond to challenges and capture opportunities for improvement in the complex and fluid modern urban environment.”

If city managers can acquire the right data and perform the right analysis at the right time, they will be in a better position to respond to their citizens”

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Dazzling platform for culture-sharing? The Helix Bridge in Singapore

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Events view

Our next major national event, the Socitm Spring Conference, will focus on the theme of ‘Opening Up Digital’: enabling councils, the NHS, the emergency services and third sector bodies to implement digital initiatives. The conference will take place on Thursday 23 April at Dexter House in London.Booking and further information: www.socitmspringconference.com

And please see the map below for the dates of your forthcoming regional meetings and other Socitm events.Booking and further information: www.socitm.net/events

North East

27-03-2015 17-07-201516-10-2015

East Midlands

13-03-201510-07-201509-10-2015

East

24-04-201523-10-2015

London

20-03-201515-05-201517-07-201518-09-201520-11-2015

North West

24-02-201528-04-2015 23-06-201510-11-2015

Northern Ireland

27-03-2015 12-06-201525-09-2015

Scotland

20-03-2015 19-06-201502-10-2015

South

17-04-2015 01-07-201506-11-2015

South West

17-04-2015 10-07-201509-10-2015

Wales

21-05-201524-09-2015

West Midlands

05-03-2015 10-06-201507-10-2015

Yorkshire & Humber10-03-201507-07-201503-11-2015

Socitm 2015

19/20-10-2015

Socitm Spring 2015

23-04-2015

Socitm Scotland 2015

17-09-2015

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