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Emergency service availability and business continuity - What arrangements are in place?

Planning for disaster situations needs to take into account both how likely it is that the event will occur, and what the impact would be if it did. Actions then fall into the two categories of firstly reducing the likelihood of the event occurring or of causing significant damage if it does occur (risk mitigation), and secondly having action plans in place for if it does occur and causes significant damage (business continuity and IT disaster recovery).

Recent actions and plans in place for reducing the likelihood of an event or containing its impact if it does occur include:-

· New UPS - battery power to sustain electrical supply in the event of mains supply failure. Replaced this year; has sufficient capacity to see the systems through short power outages (which are the most likely kind) without service interruption.

· Fire Detection and Suppression - sophisticated fire detection and suppression system, compartmentalising computer suite into contained zones. Procurement complete; implementation planning in progress; expected to complete in next 3-6 months (depending on scale of works to create and "seal" zones).

· Physical Security - the physical security of the computer suite is the first line of defence from malicious activities. Doors and windows being strengthened; additional CCTV monitoring.

· Generator - to provide electrical supply through sustained power outages. Being reviewed in conjunction with possible relocation of the computer suite and other business continuity activities. Report and/or business case, as appropriate will result from this work.

Business continuity is about making sure that the Council's services can still be delivered in spite of an adverse event. Strictly speaking, this is not an IT function - for example, the disaster could be a fire at a Council premises without any significant impact on IT. However, IT is generally so inextricably linked with delivery of services, that overall business continuity planning must include planning for a loss of IT service. IT disaster recovery is the process of restoring IT systems in the event of a significant IT service affecting incident. During the time it takes to recover the systems, the business will need to operate its business continuity plans.

Technical plans for the rebuild and restoration of systems after a failure exist, are tested and are audited. However, these plans rely on the availability of a site to house equipment and on that equipment being available. Currently, the Council has no arrangements in place for a recovery site and limited arrangements with regard to replacement of elements of the overall equipment making up the Council's considerable IT infrastructure.

Through the Risk Management Steering Group, a list of those applications most critical to the business has been drawn up and their resilience reviewed. "Quick wins" have been identified and plans are in place to implement those. In addition, an IT Systems Resilience sub-group has been established to review and prepare the business case for a

recovery site or possibly a more active second computer site. This second option is likely to be a higher cost but gives additional business benefits with regard to system, and so Council services, availability (e.g. enabling continuity of IT services during maintenance and upgrades) which the business case will consider.

Author: Lynn Cox

Lead: Lynn CoxHampshire Public Service Network (HPSN). What are the expected benefits? Are they being realised? If not, why not? What are the charging arrangements for HPSN? What about the new SOHO system?

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The HPSN contract was originally let to Unisys to refresh the county wide network ready for deployment of the Hantsnet desktop service (now complete). The primary objective was to move from an old-fashioned, mainframe-based computer and separate telephone network, to an integrated voice and data network, offering broadband services with no increase in overall costs before growth. This has been achieved.

The contract also included various other service enhancements such as `Voice over IP' to selected sites, provision of phone lines and call charges, a refresh of main site phone systems (245 new systems, excluding `The Castle'), 1,200 mobile phones, and management of the service. All of these have been rolled out and are fully operational.

The initial "Core Contract" basket of services was provided within the existing ICT networking spend of County Council departments, although inflation charges have been applied to this over time (see explanation of charging in section 2 below). In addition, HPSN has been adopted by all local authorities in Hampshire (negotiation near completion with Hart District Council) and discussions are underway with the NHS.

Following the roll-out of the Core Contract services there has been considerable HPSN growth, e.g. new phone systems and data connection bandwidth increases, as demand for IT generally increase.

The contract provided for periodic reviews of pricing. In early 2004 IT Services carried out an internal benchmarking study of Unisys' value for money. This concluded that Unisys provided good value for most services although charges for mobile phones and fixed phone call charges were identified as areas requiring attention. Unisys were slow to respond to this but eventually proposed the following 2005/06 reductions:

· Mobile rental charges down to £66 pa from £231 pa

· Standard phone call charges down:

Local 1.0 p/min (no min charge) from 1.9 p/min (min charge 2.8p)

National 1.5 p/min (no min charge) from 2.4 p/min (min charge 2.8p)

There is probably still some room for improvement in these prices but they are competitive. Further benchmarking is now underway. Mobile rental is slightly more expensive than County Supplies T-Mobile offering, but the HPSN phones are integrated with the HPSN phone network and have cheaper call charge rates for internal calls.

The Core Contract with Unisys defined a specific basket of services which would be delivered for the 7 year duration of the contract at £2.8M per annum. When the contract was signed, a split of the £2.8M was agreed across County Council departments. In addition to the initial £2.8M IT Services funded some early roll-out charges for HPSN, which have been recouped through adding 2.5% each year to the annual Core Contract charges paid by departments and external customers.

As new services are delivered from HPSN outside of the Core Contract provision these are charged against an agreed schedule of prices. New or upgraded services are billed as an additional annual charge less any Core Contract provision which a site may have.

In late 2003 Unisys became concerned that their schedule of charges for new managed services would fail to recover capital charges for new equipment over the remaining HPSN contract term (ends Nov 2006 unless an optional 3 year extension is agreed). As a result Unisys began to quote new supply as POA (price on application). At this point the option was given for customers to continue with managed service payments or purchase services outright (the latter is often better value for money).

Many of the County Councils phone lines were not included in the Core Contract (especially schools) and many new lines have been purchased. For these Non-Contract lines the BT rental and call charges are passed straight through to the County Council by Unisys without any mark-up and are billed quarterly to customers by IT Services. In this way we benefit from Unisys' discount deals on call minutes and lines.

The HPSN/Hantsnet SOHO service provides direct connection to the Hantsnet desktop service over an ordinary (ADSL) broadband line. This is similar to the Passport service which uses customer owned Internet connections, although SOHO Hantsnet is an end to end service managed by IT Services with the advantage of providing local Hantsnet printing. It can be used to connect offices with up to 5 desktops although it may be possible to connect more depending on line speed and what customers require to do. SOHO can certainly be used to provide Hantsnet services for small sites and replace more expensive dedicated HSPN lines. Following IT Services trials it is due to be further tested in the Winchester Register Office and in Adult Services Romsey Area Office. The latter is as a back-up service for the main HPSN connection; if the main line goes down the office will still have 5 desktops available via SOHO.

It is anticipated that small offices may switch to SOHO from dedicated HPSN connections, but this may not be economic where sites have a Unisys Core Contract provision (which cannot be cancelled until November 2006).

Author: Iain McIntosh

Lead: Lynn Cox

Geographic Information systems (GIS). What were the expected benefits? Are they being fully realised? If not, why not?

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The County Council implementation of GIS began in the late 1980's, at a time when the industry as a whole had not yet fully understood the potential or the limitations of GIS applications. Alongside some reasonably well defined objectives, there were some less well thought through ideas of how GIS would affect the way we work. Some thought, for instance, that a map-based view of the world would become our primary interface to Hantsnet.

The primary objectives

The initial work on GIS was led by the Planning and Surveyor's departments, and intended to meet some specific departmental objectives.

· Atlas of Environmental Information

· Addition of spatial data to departmental databases (historic buildings, sites and monuments record, land availability)

· Spatial data as an aid to highway network management

The organisation as a whole had a number of objectives:

· To achieve better management of map data and licenses from the Ordnance Survey

· To improve our ability to produce management information relevant to specific areas of the county.

Benefits achieved

Each of these objectives has been reached.

Spatial databases are now used extensively to produce management information. There's a great deal to be done to improve this - and our management of information as a whole but it has made a significant difference to a number of departments and services. In addition:

· Rights of way data managed through GIS

· GIS used to determine pupils eligible for free school transport

· Land Searches in development control faster and use up to date information from other departments

· Chief Execs use GIS to manage commons and village greens

· Environment Department share archaeology and historic buildings data with Basingstoke and Deane BC through a County Council GIS application.

· PBRS use GIS to manage their data - currently looking at integrating GIS and SAP.

· HantsMap delivers OS data to everyone on HantsNet

· Rights of Way about to publish their data on HantsWeb

The bigger picture

In addition to the immediate benefits brought about by specific applications, there are some less tangible outcomes from our GIS developments. In particular, they've encouraged departments to think about how information can be shared across traditional service boundaries, based on shared geographical views.

What's perhaps most striking over the past 15 years or more is how our understanding has matured of the role of geographical and spatial dimensions to information. These days, GIS is less likely to be seen as a separate system, but rather as a tool which can be used to squeeze greater value out of existing information, and to make data more relevant to the daily task of planning and managing services.

However, our understanding needs to develop further. For instance, we tend to think of GIS as being a way of viewing and analysing statistical data - reporting on numbers aggregated within specified boundaries. There is a great deal of scope for applying geographical information to wider fields. For instance, it would be helpful to be able to classify a council report according to the are it most affects.

Conclusion

It would probably be fair to summarise as follows:

· Some original expectations were reasonably clear, and have on the whole been achieved

· In common with most GIS users, we have invested in the development of both technology and our understanding of how the technology can help us

· As a result, our understanding has become much more mature, and we can expect to derive even greater benefits as a result

Author: Andy Holdup

Lead: Hugh LangfordCustomer relationships management and call centres - where are we with this? What do we want to achieve? What benefits do we expect? How are we deciding what system to adopt?

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A business case and project definition for the implementation of a corporate customer service centre have now been approved by the Corporate Management Team, and work is underway to develop a proposal to the Cabinet

The aim will be to develop a professional customer service centre operation with well trained staff delivering quality services to Hampshire's constituents.

The Contact Centre will handle telephone calls (about 2M calls per annum), e-mail, and possibly at a later stage letters.

The Contact Centre will have extended hours of operation, 8am to 8pm weekdays, some weekend opening, and 24/7 access for emergencies.

The Contact Centre will form part of a three-pronged approach to handling customer contact - contact centre, face-face access through Information Centres and other outlets, and self-service over the web. All channels will be underpinned by a common customer relationship management (CRM) system which will capture customer contact history across all channels.

The Contact Centre will provide information and handle service requests. A high percentage of calls (aspirational target 80%) will be resolved at first point of contact (i.e. within the Contact Centre, without having to be transferred to the back office).

The common perception of many contact centres/call centres is that they offer poor service - lack of human operator, navigating complex menus, long wait times, customers passed from pillar to post etc. This is often because they have been poorly designed, or because they are poorly managed, or because efforts to cut costs have been at the expense of good customer service.

Calls to the Contact Centre will be answered by people, not machines.

Call answering standards will be set, the Contact Centre will be appropriately resourced, and call management technologies will be used to ensure that performance standards are met.

The Contact Centre will be designed around user needs. Some agents will focus on specific areas (e.g. Children's Services), others will multi-skill across relatively simple service areas (e.g. libraries, blue badge). Some of the more complex areas may have supporting specialists working within the Contact Centre in a second tier.

It will not be a sweat shop - i.e. a highly pressurised environment with staff treated as a commodity. The Contact Centre is being designed and sized to allow agents to handle a reasonable number of calls in a day, with appropriate breaks and emphasis on training and professional development.

It will not be an operation that achieves cost reduction at the expense of excellent customer service.

Benefits

The overall business case is based on:

Improved customer access and customer experience: The Contact Centre achieves this by extending opening hours, simplifying customer access to services, designing the customer interface around user needs, joined-up working across departments and with other agencies, consistent experience across access channels (phone, web, face-face), being more responsive, one contact gets things done, fixing things faster, more efficient, more accountable.

Performance management and continuous improvement: The Contact Centre will extend the Council's existing performance management arrangements to the measurement and improvement of customer contact (e.g. call abandonment rates, time to answer, % of calls resolved at first point of contact, end-to-end service resolution times).

Improved means of public engagement: MORI surveys have indicated that Hampshire County Council is seen by the public as somewhat distant and remote. The Contact Centre will provide a more effective means of engaging with the public.

Building the Hampshire brand: Through appropriate branding and promotion, the Contact Centre will help to re-enforce the County Council's public service and community leadership role in the eyes of the public.

The modernisation agenda and ODPM expectations: ODPM are expecting local authorities to have implemented contact centres by December 2005. Priority Service Transformation Outcome targets relating to customer contact and customer relationship management are central to local authority obligations under the e-government agenda.

CPA - increased service user/citizen focus: Increasing emphasis will be placed in future CPA assessments on the extent to which we are addressing service user needs and creating a citizen focussed approach to doing business.

Efficiencies and the Gershon agenda: The programme will deliver £1M/annum of cashable efficiency savings once the Contact Centre has been implemented. Centralising telephone-based contact management (if combined with rationalisation of function-based area office face-face reception points) also has the potential to make it easier to implement accommodation strategies aimed at reducing costs.

Shared services agenda: The Contact Centre will deliver the strategic management capacity to undertake District, County and Regional front-office functions. Without this capacity, the Council will struggle to engage in shared services relating to the broader citizen focus agenda. Specific examples include the recent regionalisation of trading standards contact management (Consumer Direct), the Home Office/ODPM Single Non-Emergency Number, and the opportunity to provide an out of hours contact management function on behalf of the Districts.

Supports partnership working and Local Area Agreements: A corporate and more customer-focussed approach to contact management will facilitate partnership working and potentially contribute to LAA initiatives.

Releases capacity in professional service teams to help cope with rising demand: OT Direct demonstrated the benefits of a County-wide contact centre approach to handling customer contacts, releasing professional occupational therapists from more routine duties, and reducing waiting lists for equipment by one third.

Lower cost option relative to further segmented departmental development: Fragmented development across departments as existing arrangements reach capacity and obsolescence, will result in duplication of development costs, higher operating costs, and different technology platforms and standards across the Council.

The Contact Centre programme is a business change programme enabled by IT. It is not an IT project per se. However, technology has an important role to play, both in terms of telephony to support effective call handling and in terms of the customer relationship management (CRM) system that will underpin customer contact across all channels. Business requirements are being defined, against which suitable products will be evaluated. SAP will be our starting point, based on the capability of the product and the desire to standardise on application platforms wherever possible. However, integration costs may be an issue (integration with telephony and line of business applications such as SWIFT, EXOR etc) which may require us to consider alternative CRM packages. In this event, a formal competitive tendering exercise is the most likely procurement route.

Author: Hugh Langford

Lead: Hugh LangfordSAP - to what extent should we invest further in making SAP more user-friendly? How do we decide what more to do? What is the focus and expenditure limit?

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When IT Services was asked to take over the overall management of the SAP programme in 2004 and integrate SAP technology management with other IT solutions of the County Council, one of the first priorities in addition to concluding the wider roll-out was to focus on the usability of SAP from and end-user perspective.

From discussions with the new users across the County Council, analysis of calls volumes to the Help Desk, and feedback from the monthly IT services IT satisfaction survey, it was clear that the richness of functionality and complexity of some of the screen designs in SAP needed revision. It is also the case that some of the underlying business processes need evaluation.

A SAP Usability Improvement project is therefore underway, as described in the Head of IT Annual Performance Report. Details are on Hantsnet, and there is wide involvement across the County Council.

Essentially this programme is broken into two areas:

· Identification and delivery of `quick wins'. Much has been achieved over the last 12 months, and there is a continuous delivery of improvements, again documented on Hantsnet.

· Implementation `SAP Portal' technology, which aims to make SAP to `look and feel' like the rest of Hantsnet, so simplifying the image. This programme will take 12 months to complete but is now well underway.

In addition the Managers Desktop (MDT) are being upgraded to Manager Self Service (MSS) providing a friendlier way of accessing management and supervisory related SAP functions.

As this work progresses more areas will come to light based on discussion with system users and feedback from other organisations using SAP. Consultation and feedback from training is also an important part of the programme as is the the SAP `Learning Zone' on Hantsnet.

The investment for this work is limited by existing resources, but is believed these will be sufficient to deliver the improvements required. All of the `quick wins' are being funded from the ongoing SAP support revenue streams, and SAP Portal project is being funded from within the overall SAP charging model introduced from April 2005. It is expected that the total cost of this programme will of the order of £200,000, and all costs will be absorbed in the existing budgets without effecting the benefits realisation savings on SAP. This will be achieved by focusing priorities on SAP for developments and may mean that some business cases for developments in IT may be delayed if necessary.

Author: Julie Waddilove

Lead: Steve Collins

Desk top support - how do we decide parameters? Is low cost per hour necessarily the best?

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Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is an industry standard for measuring and managing IT Costs. It is intended to be an all-encompassing collection of the costs associated with IT investments, including capital purchases, licensing fees, disposal costs, leasing costs and service fees, as well as direct and indirect labour expenses.

TCO often shows that acquisition or purchase price of an asset represents only a small fraction of its total cost. It is essentially a metric for calculating the cost of IT infrastructures such as distributed computing, data centres, storage, telecommunications, and internal processes such as change management and operations.

TCO and other parameters used to compare our performance are specified by the benchmarking organisations, along with definitions of how they should be calculated. The figures compared in the Annual IT Performance Report were from a benchmarking process specified and managed by SOCITM (Society of IT Managers) and industry wide standard figures from Gartner (leading independent IT Research analysts).

The figures compared in the Annual IT Performance Report are those of TCO per annum, rather than the cost per hour, and have been used because they are industry standards which allow a fair comparison.

With all benchmarking activities it is important to note that qualitative data, external factors and all performance indicators need to be taken into account to ensure that the figures being compared are a fair representation of actual performance.

For example:

· Inconsistent findings - i.e. it may be possible to show a very low desktop support figure, but actually have a very high figures for other parts of the IT infrastructure

· Different service levels - i.e. it may be possible to be comparing two organisations with very different levels of support, quality of service, flexibility of service, ability to respond to change etc

· Spending Cycles discrepancies - i.e. benchmarking figures are normally collated over an `example' year which may hide factors such as peaks and troughs in spending such as for technical infrastructure upgrades which are often on 3 to 5 year spending cycles

Based on analysis of these wider parameters the figures used in the Annual IT Performance Report and provided in the recent Members' Seminar are a good comparison of overall performance.

Author: Dave Reynolds

Lead: Lynn Cox

Forward Plan for IT Projects - How will projects be prioritised and decided on? What was the forward plan 2 years ago and how much of it have we achieved?

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There is no single forward plan for all IT project across the whole of the County Council - there are just too many IT activities and projects to make that feasible. However all IT projects are set in the context of service plans:

· There is an overall e-Government and IT strategy - `Transforming Through Technology'. This was endorsed by cabinet and launched two years ago, and progress is being tracked. It is being revised this year with a new strategy launched from 2006/7. The `Transforming Through Technology' strategy links overall IT and technology developments at a corporate level to the overall aims and corporate strategy of the County Council.

· Each department is expected to produce a strategic IT plan. These plans contribute to the overall strategy, identifies departmental IT project priorities, and in particular supports the service improvement plans of departments.

· There is a Route Plan of IT projects and developments being developed by IT Services, supporting specific departmental needs and the overall corporate IT requirements. This plan is managed and monitored by IT Services on behalf of the IT Development Group.

· Linked to the overall e-Government Strategy there is a published `IT Blueprint' which identifies the main infrastructural technology projects which need to be undertaken in order to support the overall e-Government programme.

· Additionally, there is an overall Implementing Electronic Government (IEG) plan which is to be published and submitted to the Office Of The Deputy Prime Minister each year. Priorities and progress is available on Hantsnet and routinely reported to the e-Government and ICT Steering Group.

Major proposals for Corporate projects come to the e-Government and ICT Steering Group for approval, which has agreed a policy and guidance (including a check-list) for reviewing and approving all business cases for IT projects, including how these are prioritised with competition for limited resources.

In addition to the above, priorities are determined by feedback from the Customer Satisfaction Improvement plan, as described elsewhere and agreed also by the IT Steering Group.

Above all, the business basis on which IT Services operates helps to ensure priorities are appropriately set by departments and budget controlled. Projects are only begun when a business case has been agreed and a funding source determined. This encourages a business-led approach to IT investment and forces a discipline of ensuring IT investments can be afforded, represent best value for money and delivers real value to the public. This approach avoids an artificial competition for priority between investments which can otherwise exist - a specific IT investment proposal must demonstrate it will deliver service improvements more effectively that other uses of the same money.

The monitoring of progress against these agreed plans takes place in a number of ways. In addition to annual departmental monitoring of progress against departmental IT plans, the Head of IT Annual IT Performance report concentrates on overall progress,

and sets the broad priorities for the coming year. These priorities are typically already included in the overall strategic direction has been agreed, or at a more detailed level in describing how those priorities will be delivered in practice.

Author: Jos Creese/Paul Day

Lead: Jos Creese

Staff retention - are we having problems retaining staff in technical areas

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In some technical areas and some management areas IT Services has difficulty in recruiting and retaining staff. The IT marketplace is currently relatively buoyant, and IT salaries have increased in the marketplace (and indeed in the public sector) faster than they have within the County Council.

On the other hand, IT Services has put considerable effort over the last few years into maximizing the non-monetary reasons why people would wish to work in and stay with the County Council, with an award in 2003 for the best place to work in public sector IT, run by Computer Weekly. Partly as a result of this, overall turnover of all IT staff is relatively low in the County Council (currently 9%) and this is to be welcomed.

The Head of IT believes that the most appropriate way to ensure continuation of a strong in-house IT team, addressing some specific areas issue on recruiting and employing the best people, is to ensure a flexible pay structure and application of IT salary supplements to reflect the largest gaps currently existing with the marketplace, where these are creating particular difficulties for the County Council. Typically these lie at senior management levels and a number of specific technology areas. It is hoped that these will be addressed through the pay and benefits review. This should be seen in conjunction with continuing promotion of the non-monetary and other benefits (such as pension) offered by the County Council.

Author: Jos Creese

Lead: Jos Creese

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Structure of the ICT in the organisation - what are the functions of ICT staff within departments and how do they relate to the central ICT department?

Each main department across the County Council has a departmental IT `client' lead. This role may or may not be supported by a devolved IT group, dependant on the size of the department.

The intended role of the IT/e-Government leads in departments is broadly:

· To support departmental management teams (and preferably as part of that management team) in the strategic deployment of IT within the department, looking for and securing efficiency and service improvements

· To work closely with IT services and external suppliers to ensure departmental needs are best matched by the sourcing of IT solutions and services

· To ensure effective business cases are drawn up for all IT projects, and that these are business led, deliverable and benefits are secured

· To work closely with the head of IT and the Corporate e-Government Group in the development and implementation of corporate strategy, standards, policy and best practices in the use of technology

· To support wider change management programmes and business transformation in departments, typically underpinned by technology

In practice, there is some variation and different functions being undertaking in some departments. The single largest is the schools IT department, EdICT, which operates as an IT supplier business unit in its own right. Other examples include PBRS, which has an IT group supporting local IT services and systems. IT Services is working closely to ensure economies of scale and efficiency through closer collaboration between all these groups, whilst protecting the core `client' IT lead in departments.

Author: Jos Creese

Lead: Jos Creese

Benchmarks and priorities - where do we get benchmarks for ICT Services? How do we decide what our priorities are? How do we measure success? Do we sometimes find that people say the systems do not deliver what was promised, but that the customer service statistics suggest that all is well?

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IT Services currently use two main benchmarking organisation, The Society of IT Managers (SOCITM) and The corporate Infrastructure Forum (Tif). Both of these organisations gather benchmarking data across a range of service offerings, the main distinction being that SOCITM gathers exclusively from Local Government whereas Tif collects data across all industry sectors. IT services undertakes benchmarking exercises annually, alternating between SOCITM and Tif.

In addition, IT Services have used a wide range of ad hoc benchmarks to measure specific aspects of the service. These have included industry analysts such as Gartner, Compass and Bloor and benchmark data reported in the Press.

IT Services also runs a monthly electronic survey of 500 IT users across the County Council in addition to a bi-annual independent customer satisfaction survey run by SOCITM. Further more, IT Services Account Managers regularly discuss performance with Service Managers, and all work is signed off formally with a satisfaction rating.

The results of these activities are included in the Satisfaction Improvement Plan agreed with the IT Development Group, as described in the IT Services Annual Performance Report of the Head of IT.

IT development priorities are determined in a number of ways. These include developments in technology, customer requirements, the changing service environment and through comparison with other organisations. Benchmarking is used to identify or confirm where we suspect that we are performing less well than the best. This information is used to produce a series of development proposals which are taken into consideration during the service planning process. Plans are drawn together both in strategy and specific proposals and taken to the e-Government and IT Steering Group.

The bi-annual customer satisfaction survey was used to develop an action plan consisting of 10 discreet service improvements which are currently being implemented.

Success is measured primarily through feedback from users and benchmarking. The monthly sample of user satisfaction, which typically achieves a 30-40% response, is used to monitor reactions to service developments.

IT Services also produce a range of regular performance reports which indicate success in meeting Service Level Agreements, financial targets and performance targets. These are presented to the IT management team on a monthly basis.

Customer service statistics present an average performance metric which may not reflect the experience of particular users. It is necessary to delve under the surface of these metrics. This is where the regular monthly survey and face to face contact with users is most useful. Specific issues are exposed which enables a targeted response, e.g., the SAP improvement programme in which IT Services have actively sought to explore the individual user's experience and thereby develop a range of measures to improve the service.

Author: Rory Fitzgerald

Lead: Rory FitzgeraldMobile working - what benefits do we expect from it? What are the costs and are they proportionate? What are the possible risks?

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All services of the Country Council depends on IT to some degree. Most staff require access to electronic information email or systems at some time. New technologies mean that they can now access these computer systems from other places:

· They can access them from other County Council offices

· They can access them securely from home, with the right equipment and connections

· They can access them securely anywhere, with the right equipment and (wireless) connections

This opens up the world of "flexible" working (spending some time in your own office, some time in other offices, some time at home) and "mobile" working (working anywhere - on a train, in someone else's house, sitting in a cafe....)

There are numerous examples in both the commercial and public sector where mobile technologies can provide real value in both the effectiveness and quality of delivered services. Hampshire County Council are already deploying truly mobile technologies in a limited way, and have well established flexible working solutions enabling access to systems from a variety of static locations. The mobile working pilot with Adult Services will further inform the development and deployment of technology solutions to assist in the transformation of the Council's services.

Examples of mobile solutions include:-

· Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) - small scale hand held devices enabling staff to have local copies of their email and calendars wherever they are. Wireless versions of the product enable remote synchronisation with the central systems, so that email and calendars can be refreshed without a return to the office. Widely recognised as a productivity tool for managers, and also having real benefits for those professional staff who are frequently away from their office environment.

· Highways Inspections - use of hand held devices to record inspection/problem data, meaning that the engineers spend less time at their desks and more time on the road. Currently, the data collected is uploaded to the main system when the engineer "returns to base". The engineers are having some difficulties with the PDAs (too small), so alternate devices are being sought to improve the effectiveness of the solution. The solution is being extended to Waste Site inspections, but with a wireless version enabling real time review and update of relevant data.

· Nursing Care Homes - use of mobile devices (hand held tablets and trolley mounted devices) for recording and tracking drug dispensing and for clinical care records. Pilot in progress. Benefits include work efficiencies with data collected and recorded simultaneously - that is, removing the need to re-enter data collected on paper, with its inevitable delays and data copying quality issues.

· Office Wireless Hotspots - IT Services is currently seeking approval to tender for a framework contract for the provision of office-based wireless solutions, which, where appropriate, will enable more flexible use of office accommodation than standard cabling would permit.

In addition, the already well established solutions enabling staff to work more flexibly include:- the ability for any member of staff to access their full Hantsnet desktop from any network connected Council office, and Hantsnet Passport permitting connection to Hantsnet from a non-Council PC over the internet. It is worth noting that the ability to use IT effectively from any County Council office has always been a fundamental part of the design of Hantsnet.

Some benefits are less obvious (or measurable) - people like the freedom this gives them, to plan their day better, achieve a better 'work-life balance', avoid wasted time on cancelled meetings, unnecessary journeys, etc. The technology costs have come down, and many organisations are now adopting mobile working practices, primarily for those parts of their workforce that have to be mobile, like salesmen and field service engineers (Social Workers are the biggest group in Local Authorities). Many organisations are also adopting flexible working (ie sometimes at home) for general office workers. It enables them to adopt 'hot-desking' arrangements, thereby making better use of expensive office space. If properly implemented, this is again popular with staff, since they can be at home when the gasman calls, or flex their hours to do the school run. It is cost-effective, in that staff output is at least as high (often higher), and there are significant savings in office costs to more than offset technology costs.

However, mobile technology also brings with it additional technology risks and associated costs.

· Physical Security - mobile technology is both highly portable and highly saleable making it a high risk commodity with regard to theft. Staff will need to take care to physically secure their devices, not leaving them unattended or visible to a passer-by (e.g. locking in boot of car when not in use).

· IT Security - the information being accessed and stored on the mobile device needs to be protected, and the central systems need to be protected from malicious or inadvertent attack through these mobile routes. This involves software locks and passwords, data encryption, anti-virus, securing the network connection, firewalls etc. Such measures all have associated costs, both in the cost of acquiring the software and infrastructure to implement them, and then its on-going delivery, support and maintenance.

· Technical support - Most mobile devices have local processing capability ("fat clients") which require more support and maintenance than the standard Hantsnet desktop device (a "thin client") and so are inherently more expensive to operate. In addition, the support and maintenance costs for a device that is not physically connected to the network are considerably higher than for one that is. Therefore the cost for the technical support and maintenance of the mobile working infrastructure will be much higher than for an equivalent static office based solution. If mobile technology is deployed simply as an alternative to the office based solutions without a corresponding change in how the business delivers its services, it will be a high cost option.

The risks are not all technology based. Mobile working is mainly about business change, with the technology being an enabler, so there are also risks with regard to business processes, communication, staff management, human resources, corporate knowledge and culture, and others. None of these business risks are insurmountable - many organisations run highly effective mobile workforces - but they need to be managed as part of the overall business change programme.

Any change in working practices needs careful planning and consultation, and must have the 'buy-in' of staff and their management. The measurement of work needs to change, to be focused on output (what is actually achieved) rather than simply being seen to be present in the workplace - no bad thing! People do like the social contact afforded by the workplace, and this must still be allowed to happen - there are lots of ways this can be achieved. There are various ways to minimize risks, including studying the experience of other Local Authorities (some of whom are much further down this road than Hampshire), and piloting schemes before wider adoption (carefully comparing costs and benefits during these trials with the prior situation).

Author: Paul Day/Lynn Cox

Lead: Paul Day