Archived decisions

Item 5

HAMPSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL

Report

1. Purpose of the Report

1.1. This is the regular 6-monthly update on IT developments and performance. The last report was in January 2009. Key progress includes:

· The Corporate Services Review (CSR) of IT has been completed, and a number of improvements have been identified and are being actioned;

· Plans are progressing well on the migration of the main central Data Centre - one of the most complicated and risky projects the County Council has undertaken;

· IT and other staff have moved into the refurbished EII Court (formerly Ashburton Court), and the moves have been achieved successfully underpinned by new IT infrastructure;

· A shared service partnership for IT has been signed with all Districts, Boroughs and Unitaries Councils in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight;

· The Hampshire Public Service Network (HPSN2) contract has been let to ntl:Telewest, with a value of up to £200m over its period, serving all local authorities in Hampshire and being used as a national exemplar;

· A personalised Hantsnet portal has been developed for Members.

2. Contextual Information

2.1. IT has a critical part to play both as a service in its own right - being efficient and responsive - but also in the way it contributes to the efficiency and service improvements across the County Council. This lay at the heart of the CSR of IT which concluded that the key investment priorities for IT should be:

· Joining up the Council - improved information sharing, support for collaborative working, maximising value from corporate systems, standardising business processes, delivering organisational efficiency and improved frontline delivery;

· Improving access to the Council - linking delivery channels and increased self-service, support for personalisation of services and overall improving services and delivering organisational efficiency;

· Driving transformation - supporting transformational programmes of the County Council, corporately and departmentally, which deliver step change in efficiency, performance and service improvement. This includes in particular supporting corporate change programmes and providing strong business process improvement capacity in support of departments;

· Supporting service delivery - at a service level, helping departments to deliver the best possible value from their own service delivery and change programmes, ensuring IT is `fit for purpose' and IT involvement provides early and constructive challenge, innovation and advice;

· Improving the value-for-money of County IT activity - ensuring the maximum (benchmarked) performance of IT functions, and the most efficient provision of IT service. This includes appropriate sourcing strategies, improved project and programme performance, and moving IT from an `engineering' model to a problem solving/business value model.

2.2 In addition, never has the County Council's reliance on IT been greater. Its availability to support all frontline service activity, including Hantsdirect, is only too evident if there is a service interruption. The new Data Centre, the secondary disaster recovery services for IT and the tools which support mobile and flexible working are an essential part of the overall business continuity arrangements of the County Council. These will help to protect against the impact of unplanned incidents, such as swine flu.

3. Specific Questions Raised by Members

3.1. At the last meeting, Members asked for a number of areas to be considered:

· Details on the Children's Services' data sets, particularly relating to the Special Education Needs (SEN) database. A separate briefing on this has been provided to the former Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Select Committee. Copies can be made available to Members;

· The challenge for IT in supporting personalisation and self-directed services was discussed. Members will be interested to know that as a result of the CSR, a particular focus on the role of IT in supporting self-service has been identified, and proposals are being developed to support the further development of the Corporate Customer Service Strategy, efficient operation of Hantsdirect and web self-services;

· Members asked about the importance of the integration between Health Service and local authority services. This continues to be a challenge, but changes in the national approach to IT and the NHS are opening up opportunities for closer collaboration, particularly around information sharing in preventative healthcare;

· The importance of integrating web services, such as Directgov and `FixMyStreet' was noted by Members. Directgov is now integrated across Hantsweb, and has been particularly effective in joining up County and District services in a number of areas. The current priority is to ensure a consistent approach across County Council web services - branding, and design standard processes for common activities. A review of web governance will consider these;

· The ability for Members to submit and clear expenses claims on line was discussed. A separate presentation was given by County Treasurers' (Bevis Ingram) and plans are well advanced. Members will receive a demonstration at a future Member briefing.

4. Other Developments

4.1 Digital Britain - The recent report by Lord Carter in developing a digital infrastructure across the country has had much press coverage. Economic Development, Culture Communities and Rural Affairs and IT Services are working jointly on the County's response to this, especially exploiting the opportunities already opened up by the eHampshire partnership and the Hampshire Public Services Network (HPSN2).

4.2 Funding IT - A new Finance Model for IT is being introduced as part of the CSR of IT, retaining the `business unit' status of IT Services, but eliminating any unnecessary internal trading. Operating as a business unit has ensured strong financial management of IT across the County Council, as well as scrutiny and exposure of IT costs. The new model will not remove these benefits, but will lead to greater efficiencies and a better focus on the value which IT brings to the organisation, not just its costs.

4.3 New efficiencies - by the end of the last financial year IT Services had secured over a £1m worth of new efficiency savings, and have identified a further £700k efficiency savings in the coming year. These savings come from a number of areas including consolidation of technologies, streamlining business activity to reduce overheads and staff savings. Further efficiency improvements are expected as a result of implementing the CSR of IT.

4.4 Performance Benchmarks - IT Services regularly benchmarks its activities with both the public and private sector. The CSR scrutinised those benchmarks to compare service provision, customer satisfaction and base level costs. In terms of customer satisfaction, the County Council is close to or within top quartile performance compared with other County Councils and has improved 12% over similar external benchmarks undertaken two years ago. IT costs remain some of the lowest found in the public and private sectors, as reported last time. An area where improvements are targeted is the delivery of projects and programmes, although comparisons with the public and private sectors are difficult to make since data is often not available. This formed a detailed part of the IT CSR, and plans are in place.

4.5 Children's Services Department - Lord Laming's report following the 'Baby P' case, and subsequent replanning of the approach to the Integrated Children's System (ICS) by the DCSF, has provided the opportunity for Hampshire Children's Services to review its approach to client recording systems for vulnerable children. Work continues to fine tune the SWIFT system to better meet the needs of front-line social care staff whilst more detailed planning for the future of SWIFT and ICS takes place in conjunction with Adults Services. In parallel, preparation for the implementation of ContactPoint, working with partners across Hampshire, remains on track to meet DCSF deadlines.

5. Outlook and Priorities

5.1. The priorities for the next six months are focussed on:

· Putting in place the new management structure for IT and establishing clear development programmes for each of the workstreams from the CSR;

· Ensuring the successful migration of the Corporate Data Centre to the new purpose built facilities within EII Court North;

· Completing the detailed planning of the migration to the new HPSN2 services.

6. Conclusions

6.1. IT has been through a period of major technological change and organisational change, and this will continue with the implementation of the CSR.

6.2. However, despite this, IT continues to perform strongly, with a number of notable achievements being summarised in this report.

6.3. The immediate priorities for IT have been set by the CSR, in particular supporting the major work programmes (eg. Workstyle) of the Corporate Improvement Plan and the need to drive corporate efficiencies and to support the Corporate Efficiency Board.

CORPORATE OR LEGAL INFORMATION:

Links to the Corporate Strategy