Putting IT at the heart of local government strategy How IT and business teams can work together to achieve digital transformation

A research report by Eduserv

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Contents

Foreword 3

Executive summary 4

A positive swing in opinion towards technology – how can IT leads capitalise? 6

Meeting new demands on infrastructure 8

Tackling the skills and capability gap 10

Making sure IT and the business work together effectively 12

Conclusion 14

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ForewordOne of the most fascinating insights in this report is the growing belief among council business leaders that technology is capable of delivering on the promises of ‘transformation’ it has failed to fulfil in the past.

This is great news. Demand for services may be growing year on year, but it seems there is now real hope that IT can provide the solution that will enable councils to continue operating effectively, even with static or declining budgets.

Unfortunately, our research also suggests that hope is being tempered by a real fear that IT won’t be backed by the investment or skills needed to deliver the changes required.

In my experience, these are often problems with perception rather than reality. If left unchecked, however, they could be a real threat to the progress towards digital government.

In this report, we look in more detail at what can be done to bring the hopes of the business and the reality of IT closer together.

Andrew HawkinsBusiness Development DirectorEduserv

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Executive summaryLocal authorities are currently working harder than ever to change the way they manage and deliver their services. With budgets unlikely to improve for years, and citizen expectations rising all the time, the need to maintain or improve service levels through new efficiencies and better digital engagement is right at the top of the agenda.

This report explores how councils are tackling these challenges through changes to the way they approach and manage their IT. In particular, we look at how IT leads can bridge

gaps in knowledge, infrastructure and skills to ensure that their organisation is fully focused on a new era of digital government. The report is based on a survey of 108 council IT and business leaders in partnership with Local Government Chronicle. In addition we carried out in-depth interviews with IT and business leads in three local authorities, all of which took place in January 2015.

We’re also grateful for additional input from Socitm President Nick Roberts. Overall, the output provides insight and practical steps that councils can use to make more effective use of IT to enable strategic change.

The key findings are:

1 2IT is getting the basics right, but future investment will need to focus more on areas like information sharingWhile business leaders are satisfied their infrastructure is helping to support initiatives like flexible working, they have doubts that IT can support the bigger vision of information sharing with other services and councils.

While it may be tempting to wait for the much mooted Government as a Platform vision to resolve this, IT can start tackling the challenge sooner by shifting some of its workload and responsibilities to the cloud, and then focussing on the development of open systems that support new service innovation more effectively.

Business leaders have high hopes for the future of IT, but success depends on their willingness to invest in business change programmes Council business leaders now seem to have a firm grip of the extent to which technology will be integral to meeting the challenges they face in the next few years, but they also fear that underfunding could see efforts fall short. CIOs need to address this perceived problem by backing any new investment in technology with better communication, more inter-team working and a well-planned approach to business change.

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3 4Councils are worried that IT skills won’t keep pace with Digital Government, but CIOs say the solution lies in an IT structure that supports business-wide strategy.Non-IT specialists say there is an IT capability gap which will prevent councils from achieving their strategic objectives. In response, CIOs argue that the focus should be more about breaking down silos and restructuring IT – making it fit for the purpose of genuine business transformation.

New business and technical skills will be needed as well, but much of these can be developed and nurtured in house, or should be transferred from key suppliers.

The way IT is structured within some councils is already changing, which means CIOs also need to consider new management structures and processes.One of the most common themes that cropped up throughout our research is that many of the challenges and perception issues highlighted could be solved by IT and business teams working together more closely. CIOs can make real progress supporting this drive by restructuring IT into cross-business transformation teams; defining IT’s relationship with the business more clearly; and using agile processes that are more responsive to the business’s changing needs.

Each of the sections that follow expand on these points in more detail. We also provide quick at-a-glance tips that will help inform local authorities to achieve business transformation through technology.

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A positive swing in opinion towards technology – how can IT leads capitalise?

There are high hopes for the future of IT, but it’s essential that you also invest in business change programmes.

In recent years, business leaders within councils could be forgiven for thinking IT programmes have been focussed purely on cost cutting. They’ve seen kit, and even entire server rooms disappear as services move to the cloud. At the same time they’ve witnessed a drive towards online services that removes much of the need for physical manned operations.

But is that it? Do they think that a reduction in overheads is all that IT is trying to achieve?

Thankfully not. One of the most encouraging findings from our research is that 79% of senior decision makers now believe that the main focus for IT is on improving services, rather than simply cutting costs. In particular, the majority of local government managers are bought into the idea of online service delivery.

The question now is, can IT capitalise and achieve the transformation that business leaders believe it promises?

A need for better communication – and a rigorous approach to business change Despite the positivity, there is one big fear that remains – and it’s that lack of investment in IT will ultimately see new hopes fall flat (in our survey, we found that 76% in senior decision making roles still think that underfunding in IT currently undermines their council’s services).

According to the IT leads we interviewed in depth for this report, the problem needs to be

At a glance:IT is now seen as a strategic enabler that will revamp services:

79% of all senior decision makers say the focus of IT

is on improving services, and only

48% say the focus of IT is merely on cutting costs

But there are concerns investment isn’t strong enough to deliver real change.

76% also say lack of investment in IT is undermining the

quality of current services.

77% say it makes it harder for them to do their job.

CIOs need to change these perceptions by supporting new technology with rigorous business change programmes.

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solved by investing more in business change, not just technology.

“The real problem is that councils aren’t doing enough to reconfigure their whole mode of operation around a digital model, often choosing to apply ‘more or better’ IT to out of date and inefficient working practices,” says Jos Creese, interim Digital Lead for Hampshire County Council. “Much of this is because of the fear of the unknown and limited capacity to manage business change programmes. Whilst this will mean more upfront investment in business change as well as technology, the potential benefits in terms of both cost-savings and improvements to service delivery are just too great to ignore.”

John Jackson, CIO for London Borough of Camden, says the answer lies in IT and business leaders working together more closely.

“You need to make people realise it’s not the amount that’s invested that’s going to count, it’s how you work together to meet real business needs and how you manage projects,” says Jackson. “You need to break down departmental or information silos; and make sure everyone is focused on and understands the citizen outcomes you are trying to achieve. And don’t be afraid to stop a service if it isn’t delivering that value, and divert the money to programmes that have the most effect. When the business has clear visibility of you doing this, it has more trust that your investment programme is going to be targeted and responsive enough to make a genuine difference to service users.”

In short, CIOs need to back any new investment in technology with better communication, more inter-team working, relentless focus on the needs of service users, plus a well-planned but flexible approach to business change.

The real problem is that councils aren’t doing enough to reconfigure their whole mode of operation around a digital model, often choosing to apply ‘more or better’ IT to out of date and inefficient working practices..

Jos Creese, interim Digital Lead for Hampshire County Council

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Meeting new demands on infrastructure

Support for areas like flexible working is becoming a given – now there must be more focus on open systems that encourage information sharing across services.

Currently most business leaders are reasonably satisfied with how IT supports desktop level IT, and in particular how it supports new and more flexible ways of working. Overall 70% of business decision makers say they are satisfied with the ability to work remotely. More than three quarters are happy with hotdesking arrangements.

However, there is far less satisfaction when it comes to more ambitious aims. Principally, this dissatisfaction stems from current difficulties sharing information with other services, such as healthcare, social care or charities.

A need for Government as a Platform todayAt the end of 2014, Government CTO Liam Maxwell outlined the government’s digital transformation vision of delivering “government as a platform” (GaaP). The plan is to move to common, shared technology platforms that will end silos and enable information to be shared more freely and productively to the benefit of the citizen.

The challenge that councils face is that Whitehall’s GaaP appears to still be at least three years away. This is too long to wait for councils that are facing ever higher demand for services. This means that CIOs who want to fulfil their business leaders’ ambitions sooner need to start working on open, interconnected systems now.

At a glance:

67% of councils want to be able to share information with

other service providers freely.

However more than half (54%) are currently unsatisfied with their ability do so.

CIOs that want to enable common and shared services – a cornerstone of the digital government vision – need to start working on open and interconnected systems today.

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We are passionate about open systems, open source and APIs. These are the foundations of the future of technology in government. We could all wait with baited breath for Whitehall’s government as a platform, but we already have our platform, it’s here and it’s working now.

John Jackson, CIO for the London Borough of Camden.

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According to John Jackson, CIO for the London Borough of Camden, this is perfectly possible, and is already happening.

“In local government, I think we already have people who are developing the blueprint for digital government that is flexible, open, interconnected and scalable and we need to make more noise about it,” says Jackson.

“Our blueprint at Camden, for example, is a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and open source responsive user interface; we’ve been working on this since the start of our digital journey. We are now moving towards a mobile first principle. We are using the platform to build standard web services and APIs that can be shared, so government doesn’t need to pay for things lots of times and authorities can realise benefits quicker.”

Camden’s platform is already consuming open source applications and third party services that enable interoperability, saving more money while improving services.

“Of course we’re not perfect and we still have a lot to sort out and resolve in digital, but we and other councils are already passionate about open systems, open source and APIs,” adds Jackson. “These are the foundations of the future of technology in government. We could all wait with baited breath for Whitehall’s government as a platform, but we already have our platform, it’s here and it’s working now.”

How the cloud can help

One of the factors that prevents IT teams focusing on the new world of digital government is that many of them are still too tied up with the management of in-house infrastructure. According to Socitm President Nick Roberts, much of this can be solved through strategic adoption of cloud services. 

“At the moment you have a situation where council IT teams are spending too much time on managing things like mail servers that can be more simply and flexibly provisioned from the cloud,” says Roberts. “Another problem is that the business is often completely unaware how complex these in-house management tasks can be, which is where gaps in understanding can occur.”

“If these services are moved to the cloud, IT suddenly has capacity to work on more strategic projects. IT then stands a much better chance of satisfying the business’s demands for things like data integration, open systems and the ability to make more effective and informed decisions about services such as those based on Big Data analytics.”

“Of course, moving to the cloud isn’t just like flicking a switch. You’ll need to manage the change and consider things like integration with legacy systems, but the long term benefit and how it will free up IT resources to satisfy both business and service user demand has to be considered.”

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Tackling the skills and capability gap

Councils are worried that IT skills won’t keep pace with Digital Government, but the solution lies just as much in a centralised structure that supports business-wide strategy.

While business leaders say that technology is core to the future effectiveness of their councils, in many cases they don’t believe that their IT teams have the capability and skills they need to deliver a new era of local digital government.

Overall, 74% of non IT specialists say there is an IT capability gap that will prevent them from achieving their strategic objectives.

Clearly, councils are worried that this gap risks their ability to make an impact on the digital transformation agenda.

The need for a new approach Again this could be a problem with perception. While CIOs are definitely thinking about the need to recruit new skills in some areas, the bigger need, they say, is to change the way IT is structured to support the business.

“The most important thing is to get away from the model where IT simply responds to piecemeal requests from various parts of the business, or where IT is seen as the solution to business problems in its own right,” says Jos Creese, interim Digital Lead for Hampshire County Council. “Digital planning breaks down silos. It also provides clearer corporate and business priorities to which IT can then respond. This moves us away from piecemeal approaches which often result in IT teams becoming over worked, poorly focussed and therefore a bottleneck to business improvement.”

At a glance:

74% of non IT specialists say there is an IT capability

gap which will prevent councils from achieving their strategic objectives.

55% of all staff say they are not confident their

council will increase IT capability to support new objectives.

CIOs can tackle the skills gap by both investing in existing people and changing the way skills are transferred from suppliers – but more importantly they must reconfigure the way their IT team is structured to position it more strategically within the business.

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John Jackson, CIO at Camden, agrees.

“What’s most important is that you retain central control over IT budget and align it with your business’s digital strategy, and of course the needs of the citizen,” says Jackson. “That way we can help to focus our existing skills on the underlying infrastructure needs that matter most right now, which in turn will improve perceptions in the business as to how you’re delivering on digital.”

This is not to say that no new skills are required – they will be, especially as more councils move basic infrastructure management tasks to cloud providers and start to focus on new frontiers such as Big Data analytics. There will also be a need to develop new cloud-specific skills, especially when councils move on towards more strategic cloud adoption that includes applications as well as infrastructure.

According to Socitm President Nick Roberts, there’s no reason why many councils shouldn’t try and develop skills from within, but this is an area that will also require greater commitment and investment.  

“We’ve seen some fantastic examples in councils where IT teams have been transformed and people have developed an entirely new skill set,” says Roberts. “Good examples include developers who have been used to a waterfall methodology moving to an agile approach. However I would also say that reskilling is something that councils needs to get better at, especially if they are serious about wanting a technology department that is fit for the future. It may seem like a tough decision when budgets are tight, but it’s about being brave and investing in people development to get the long term payback.”

“As councils consider transforming using digital thinking, the IT service must also be ready to

The most important thing is to get away from the model where IT simply responds to piecemeal requests from various parts of the business, or where IT is seen as the solution to business problems in its own right. Digital planning breaks down silos. It also provides clearer corporate and business priorities to which IT can then respond.

Ian Gale Bristol City Council

support such a move by developing a more detailed understanding of the business’s processes, more agility in their development cycle, and a wholly citizen centric mentality. Many staff will need support and development to achieve this.”

In addition, CIOs can also consider maximising relationships with suppliers to build in-house skills where they will inevitably fall short. According to our CIO panel this will mean implementing a more formal skills transfer strategy that works across local government, because at the moment skills transfer is usually written into contracts but not enforced. This needs to change if CIOs want to fill the skills gaps, and gain full confidence from their business leaders in their ability to deliver.

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Making sure IT and the business work together effectively

The way IT is structured within councils is changing, which means CIOs also need to consider new management structures and processes.

The most common recurring theme that cropped up throughout our research is that many of the challenges and perception issues highlighted in this report could be solved by IT and business teams working together more closely.

But is this as simple as it sounds?

Our CIO panel suggests focussing on a few key areas:

● Working in cross-business transformation teamsFirst and foremost, the CIOs we spoke to stressed the need to restructure IT to focus primarily on true cross-business transformation opportunities. Lambeth Council’s IT, for example, has recently been reconfigured around four strategic portfolios: Customer Access, Integration with Healthcare, Shared Services and Internal Efficiency.

Camden, meanwhile, has created four key teams that work across the business in the following areas: Flexible and Mobile Working; Channel Shift and Customer Access; Business Intelligence and Open Data; and Master Data Management.

This approach is dedicated to removing the departmental and information silos that have held councils back in the past.

At a glance: Council CIOs looking to foster better relationships with business partners need to consider:

● Restructuring teams to remove project silos and deliver cross-business transformation.

● Formal governance that defines new relationships with the business.

● Agile project methodologies that are more responsive to change and are likely to rapidly bring new services to market.

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● Formal governance and business partnerships Of course, these new cross-business teams will only be as effective as the way they interact with the rest of the business.

That means CIOs also need to introduce a rigorous approach to early engagement in commissioning cycles (from both sides), formal governance that sets parameters and responsibilities, plus the appointment of business partners that act as mediators and ensure that business needs are both reasonable and fully taken into account.

● The SIAM modelThe Service Integration and Management (SIAM) model co-ordinates and consolidates the management of individual services from your service providers (internal and external), providing end-to-end service management.

If councils are still considering technology adoption at a tactical level, then the model is largely irrelevant. However, when that adoption becomes part of a broader alignment to strategic goals – as the findings of this report suggests is happening – then SIAM becomes important, if not critical. It is there to ensure that services consistently meet business objectives and requirements for performance, quality and cost.

● Agile managementSome councils are increasingly becoming big advocates of agile processes to foster better relationships. They see it as helping to increase interactions between IT and business teams, increasing transparency on

all sides, staying close to the customer and responding quickly when projects aren’t going as well as planned. One of the councils we spoke to has taken things a step further and chosen to co-locate IT and business teams in the same room, which it says enhances the effectiveness of the agile methodology that it uses even further.

● A change in name and roleThe CIOs we spoke to all mentioned that they feel their role is changing, along with their job titles. There is a growing trend for IT people to be recast into Business Transformation roles, or even as Chief Digital Officers. One of the CIOs we spoke to said they have become more of a ‘roving’ business consultant than an IT leader. This is a good thing. It helps drive perceptions that IT is fully engaged as a true business partner that is co-designing new services.

But could it also mean the title of CIO is in danger of disappearing for good? At least two of the CIOs we spoke expressed the opinion that lines between IT and business are blurring so rapidly that this could well be the case within the next 10 years.

Only time will tell. The most important thing for CIOs to remember is that their business counterparts – at least on the evidence of this report – are growing more receptive to the influence of technology as a strategic enabler than ever.

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ConclusionThe most striking finding from this research is that local government leaders now seem to have a firm grip of the extent to which technology will be integral to delivering on the challenges they face in the next few years. This is really encouraging, and shows that many leaders have got over the idea that any kind of ‘transformational’ IT initiative is inevitably doomed to failure.

Of course, there are still many challenges to come. Our research has also shown that many councils will still need to play catch-up in the way they approach IT to support the future needs of their organisation. Many say that although the councils may be investing in technology to support service change, they are not committing enough resources to achieve it.

There is no doubt that councils find themselves in a difficult position, having to balance budget cuts with service innovation. Technology will play a pivotal role in solving that conundrum, but what’s also clear from listening to the CIOs we interviewed is that councils will need an effective strategy to make sure IT teams and the business work together more effectively.

New technical skills will of course be needed, but what is equally important is that IT in local government is reconfigured and restructured to enable true transformations. This also means that new business orientated skills are what’s needed most. If they are developed correctly, there will be confidence within the business that IT really is going to deliver this time.

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To find out more about how digital transformation and cloud computing can help your council visit www.eduserv.org.uk

We are a not-for-profit Managed Cloud Services provider specialising in helping the public sector and charities use IT more effectively.

We have our own UK data centre and provide a range of managed cloud, consultancy and colocation services. We also have a large team of digital consultants and developers.

Our customers include Bristol City Council, Brighton and Hove City Council, the Department for Education, Guide Dogs and the British Red Cross.

Moving to the cloud isn’t just like flicking a switch. You’ll need to manage the change and consider things like integration with legacy systems.

Nick Roberts, Socitm President

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