ICT STRATEGY

31st January 2017

Introduction to the ICT “strategy”

We have taken care that we do not produce a document that is only read once and

never sees the light of day again. It is simple and clear. The six component parts of

the ICT “strategy” are supplemented with a document on the staffing restructure of

the ICT service. We need to reframe our view of the current workforce in terms of

the deliverables (or outcomes) of this “strategy”.

The word “strategy” is often abused in documents: hence the use of parentheses

each time the word is used. Sometimes “strategies” are set as a list of actions and

sometimes a commentary on history: sometimes both.

“Strategy” is a process by which we overcome obstacles to achieve a goal – often

through choices. It is not a plan it is a process. It is fluid and evolving. What we

write down today (particularly in relation to ICT) will be rapidly eroded by the

technologically advanced world we inhabit.

Moore’s law is the observation that, over the history of computing hardware, the

number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two

years. From careful observation of an emerging trend, Moore extrapolated that

computing would dramatically increase in power and decrease in relative cost, at an

exponential pace. There are many articles now saying that Moore’s law is coming to

an end, but considering the gap existing between local government and Silicon

Valley, perhaps Councils will still feel the pace for a few years yet.

We therefore need to be realistic about what 20 people working in an ICT service

can do. This has been the problem in the past: we haven’t been realistic. Neither

have we been realistic about the cost of improving our ICT output. The Town Centre

Regeneration and other major projects secure funds for feasibility leading to renewal,

because we want to see long term improvements to the way people work and enjoy

leisure time. This should be no different in ICT terms. Major investment is needed

to ensure Council business is operated in the most efficient and modern way.

In developing our plans for action we must understand our adversaries and

understand ourselves. We have understood ourselves to make the judgement that

we are not good enough to deliver the previously described technological world.

Therefore we must employ good people to meet stakeholder expectations. The

enemy is time and pace. This document says that we aim to be the best within four

years. The restructure is fundamental to delivering the six component parts of the

ICT “strategy”.

We must evolve and learn from what we have now to where we want to be.

The key movements for us will be:

The encouragement of mobile, flexible and agile working. The investment in

Unified Communications will enable selected recruitment, any place workers,

reduced travel to meetings, collaborative working and facilitate renting surplus

office accommodation. The change in ICT structure allows for out of hours

support – critical if we are to maximise flexible working benefits.

More self-service. For example, i360 for the Customer Service Centre

alongside Revenues Services, as well as integration with our website.

Support improvement in customer service by collaborating on the relationship

between the website and the Customer Service Centre. (This will feature

more prominently in the forthcoming customer service “strategy”).

Act as commissioners for services, from simple systems to macro-scale smart

cities for example.

Pay more to get more done quicker. (Following the example of the successful

Planning Pre-App on-line service, Time Recording system for Licencing and

PAD system in Asset Management).

Complete, through collaboration, more functional systems such as booking

systems (with Elmbridge Borough Council) and Cash Receipting (with Epsom

BC, Elmbridge BC and Mole Valley DC), amongst others.

Look for partnerships with the private sector to drive smart cities and other

major digital services.

Improve our knowledge and reliability, which does not mean doing.

Become procurement-smart: or Rightsourcers.

Safeguard the Council’s information and protect against cyber crime. (Our

major suppliers know more about the security of data than we ever will and

work with UK Government to deliver accredited secure solutions).

Due to the fluidity of planning the future, we will need a regular review process,

which should be at least 6 monthly.

Steve White Adrian Hudson

Director of Resources ICT Manager

25 January 2017

The Strategy. ICT is not just about technology; it is about the ways in which information and technology are used to deliver better services to our residents and enhance trust and confidence in Guildford Borough Council. Our vision is to provide an agile, flexible, integrated technological environment, which sustains and strengthens the Council’s ability to deliver its strategic objectives, enabling change where appropriate, collaboration and efficient business processes to improve the lives of our residents, visitors, customers and staff. We aim to be a leading digital Council through our innovation, partnerships and the use of technology to achieve continuous service improvement within 4 years. Our leadership style will be open, honest and constantly challenge our delivery outcomes to ensure we achieve quality in everything we do and improve our customer care by placing our customers at the heart of everything we do. We will work collaboratively with our partners to commission, deliver and manage solutions which augment our in-house staff on our journey to be One Council.

Executive Summary. Our strategy has been grouped by themes which are explained in more detail in the relevant sections of the full document. Each of the ICT strands links to a theme in the Corporate Plan 2015-2020 shown in Appendix A.

ICT Themes:

1. ICT Infrastructure – maintaining and rationalising ICT services.

2. Business Transformation – transforming customer services and access to those services.

3. Information Management and Security – continuing to improve information management and security.

4. Cost Effectiveness – achieving Value for Money, maximising income generation, transforming procurement and driving service transformation.

5. ICT Governance – the effective management of ICT resources.

6. Partners and Suppliers – the effective use of ICT partners and suppliers in providing services.

1 - ICT Infrastructure. Maintaining and rationalising ICT services. Aim - The provision of excellent ICT services is vital to Guildford Borough Council’s service delivery. The level of dependency on ICT will continue to grow to the point where the Council cannot function efficiently without ICT for even short periods of time. This essential ICT includes corporate infrastructure such as email, voice and data networks, servers and personal computers and increasingly mobile working, internet and other e-channels. The provision of such a level of capability requires a robust and dependable technology infrastructure that is maintained and updated on a regular basis. It also needs to have an appropriate level of resilience and scalable resources to reflect organisation changes.

Outcomes and Success Measures • Successful management of desktop computing as evidenced by user satisfaction and flexible working performance monitoring.

• Continued adoption and use of current server & desktop operating systems and productivity software to support transformational opportunities.

• The development of local-area and wide-area networks across our estate including support for smarter ways of working for remote and mobile users.

• The continued adoption of cloud based and virtual server technologies with an increasing proportion of Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions.

• The development and strengthening of the Council’s ICT security framework with annual approval and accreditation by CESG/GCHQ.

• Improved ICT business continuity plans for the Council’s website and all major line of business systems.

• Continuous assessment and consideration of alternative technologies and delivery models as part of the ICT lifecycle.

2 – Business Transformation. Transforming customer services and access to services. Aim - The provision of cost-effective customer access channels is a key objective. The linking of front-office customer requests to back-office service processing systems is a key part of this. The Council’s Customer Service Strategy will describe the on-going plans to achieve customer service excellence with access across a wide range of channels including web-based and other self-service approaches with transparency in all our activities.

Outcomes and Success Measures • Development and exploitation of automated Interactive Voice Recognition, chatbots and proactive social media channels to reduce demand on traditional telephony based customer service.

• Replacement of the Mitel telephony system including the Contact Centre telephony platform with a Unified Comms (UC) solution.

• Continued development of self-service, automated payment processing and web-based forms for all high volume customer transactions.

• The use of the corporate website, social media and apps as the principal channels for customer communication with customised personal “push” content replacing traditional pull transactions.

• The increased use of mapping and geo-spatial facilities to enhance the overall customer experience.

• Increased technical resilience for the Council’s website to minimise risks of internet disruptions and peak demands.

3 - Information Management and Security. Continuing to improve our security and information management standards. Aim - Information is one of the Council’s key assets. Effective data and information management is vital to decision making and providing appropriate levels of security to maintain public confidence. This builds upon the local and corporate achievements that have been made in improving information management and create a compliant framework for the new General Data Protection Regulation by May 2018 including a full information management and reporting environment. The foundations of the Council’s Information Systems schema are summarised in Appendix B including the strategic aim of utilising master data management and improved data handling to reduce risk.

Outcomes and Success Measures • Implementation of the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation including an Information Asset Register and associated Information Security policies and guidelines.

• Development of an ICT System Lifecycle Plan to show the roadmap for infrastructure, operating systems, software and services.

• Upgrades or replacements to a range of critical business solutions including financial, human resources and asset management systems seeking consolidation and collaboration with partners, wherever possible.

• Increased web-based customer self-service facilities using e-forms and transaction engines.

• The adoption of a single enterprise solution for digital information storage and search with an enterprise bus linking with line of business systems to allow single views of all relevant data held by the Council in real time.

• The implementation of data warehouse approaches including public website data publication to support greater transparency.

• Continued compliance with the Government Connect Code of Connection and CESG/GCHQ(1) requirements.

(1) CESG - The Communications-Electronics Security Group is the UK government's national technical authority, the for

information assurance (IA). It protects the UK by providing policy and assistance on the security of communications and electronic data, in partnership with industry and academia and operates within GCHQ. GCHQ - The Government Communications Headquarters is a British intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance to the British government and armed forces.

4 - Cost Effectiveness. Achieving value for money, maximising income, transforming procurement and driving business transformation. Aim - The Council is committed to continuous service improvement. Its value for money approach is based on reducing overheads, eliminating duplication, maximising assets and service reviews. ICT has a key role to play in the success of all of these strands. The next two years will see the increasing adoption of new ways of working. This will necessitate changes to the way ICT services are delivered to staff. These demands will continue to increase as Councillors, staff and partners continue to adopt new and modern approaches to delivering services.

Outcomes and Success Measures • Provision of a standard catalogue of computer hardware and software, including Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), to suit all categories of staff and their working locations.

• The use of “thick and thin” client computing to maximise the opportunities for flexible working.

• The adoption of hot-desking to reduce the use of traditional office space and generate income.

• Increasing our use of Crown Commercial Services framework agreements to reduce procurement lead times and costs.

• Deployment and support of Unified Comms, Smartphones and laptop or tablet devices for staff to support the adoption of smarter ways of working.

• The use of technology solutions to optimise staff and partner collaboration and productivity.

• The engagement of appropriate in-house and third party ICT resources to support transformation projects, plans and targets in the most cost efficient manner.

• The design of all ICT new Services will incorporate strong cost, efficiency and quality themes as part of the business case process.

5 - ICT Governance The effective management of ICT resources. Aim - The effective management of ICT resources is critical to overall business transformation and success. This ICT Strategy is intended to ensure the Corporate Plan is delivered by using ICT resources effectively and that all ICT activity is aligned with strategic requirements and outcomes.

Outcomes and Success Measures • Development of Corporate and Directorate level ICT governance arrangements providing a strong “gate keeping” role and enforcing compliance to agreed ICT standards and procedures.

• Unambiguous ICT advice, guidance and service level agreements to ensure successful corporate delivery and transformation programmes.

• Management of ICT partner development resources in accordance with approved ICT Strategy projects.

• Adherence to the corporate project and programme management methodology across the Council.

• The review of current and future ICT resource management, monitoring and improvement arrangements to ensure these remain relevant to the Council’s needs.

• The adoption of robust change management processes to ensure effective stakeholder engagement in the planning and execution of all technical change with a reduction in incidents resulting from failed change.

6. Partners and Suppliers The effective use of ICT partners and suppliers. Aim - The Council successfully works with a range of partners and suppliers to maximise the agility, flexibility and benefits realisation derived from ICT projects. These include other public sector bodies, other government departments, the third sector, voluntary organisations and a wide range of suppliers. As services develop, the Council’s mixed economy of service provision will also develop. It is vital that appropriate ICT arrangements are in place to support the growing range of strategic partner and supplier relationships.

Outcomes and Success Measures • The development of joint working arrangements with other public sector partners such as other local authorities, the NHS, Police, Universities, the private and third sectors in line with statutory, value for money and other service requirements.

• The development of shared service arrangements and support of emerging shared service opportunities.

• Optimisation of the use of the main ICT Services contracts and the maximisation of the benefits of these partnerships.

• Close working with other outsourced service providers and partners across all Council service areas.

• Continued use of proven third-party software solutions and avoidance of local bespoke development.

• Close working with external ICT service providers to help deliver a right-sourcing and procurement strategy supporting the Government’s Cloud First approach.

Delivering the Strategy

Resources and gate keeping. Resources are fundamental to the delivery of this ICT Strategy. Existing budgets dedicated to ICT are restricted to the Council’s main budget for ICT (approximately £3.0m in 2016/17) and the ICT Renewals budget (annual contributions of around £1.0m) that is used to fund ongoing third-party payments and as a contribution to the periodic cyclical refresh of ICT infrastructure. In addition, service areas use approved budgets or grant monies to fund service-based ICT projects. The Council will establish an ICT Steering Group to provide a range of ‘gate keeping’ criteria for requests for new ICT projects and oversee partner software support and development. The Council’s continued drive for efficiency and transformation will require this Group to implement new governance arrangements to drive efficiency and savings programmes including ICT developments, as appropriate. The commitment to invest in ICT to enable the realisation of our Corporate Plan and our aim to make Guildford the best place to live, work and enjoy leisure time means the ICT delivery model will need to change significantly during the life of this strategy. The department will increasingly move to a change lead commissioning model with vendor and project management rather than hands-on delivery becoming the key skills. The use of third parties will enable us to adopt a flexible resourcing model to support multiple projects simultaneously including input to large external infrastructure projects such as Smart Cities.

The Corporate Management Team, Executive, Full Council and Oversight & Scrutiny Committees consider a range of strategic decisions on a structured and frequent basis. ICT will continue to form part of the overall corporate decision making and scrutiny processes.

Now

In-House Maintenance Third Party Maintenance

In-House Change Third Party Change

Future

In-House Maintenance Third Party Maintenance

In-House Change Third Party Change

Supporting Appendices

Appendix A summarises the enabling role of ICT in delivering the Council’s Corporate Plan.

Appendix B - the Council’s Information Systems schema based around a goal of master data management and best in class software solutions with enhanced website, corporate and service reporting.

Appendix A Guildford Corporate Plan The enabling role of ICT in delivering the Corporate Plan

Appendix B

Guildford Council’s Information Systems Schema