Tag Archives: shared services

Socitm deliberates: what’s the future for local government digital services?

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By Steven McGinty

Today, the Society of Information Technology Management (SOCITM) are having their 28th annual Spring Conference. The event provides business and technology leaders from across the public sector with the opportunity to discuss the future of government digital services.

A key issue up for debate is the development of ‘local public services as a platform’. This is based on the idea of ‘government as a platform’, a UK government policy which aims to provide:

“a common core infrastructure of shared digital systems, technology and processes on which it’s easy to build brilliant, user-centric government services”

The most high profile example of government as a platform is the use of a single website to provide digital services, known as GOV.UK. This was introduced by Government Digital Service (GDS), the organisation responsible for the digital transformation of central government services. It’s believed that the use of GOV.UK has led to more than £60m in savings, simply from replacing the DirectGov and Business Link websites.

How could local public services as a platform work?

To date, there have been two main approaches put forward. The first, proposed by Richard Copley, head of information and communications technologies (ICT) at Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council, involves the creation of a Local Government Digital Service (LDGS). This would oversee the development of a single website for local government services, removing the need for individual council websites. It’s argued that this would only cost each council £3,000 per year, allowing local councils to make substantial savings.

However, Socitm have rejected the idea of a single website for local services. They argue that a single website:

‘..ignores the independence of local authorities as organisations that have different democratic mandates and priorities… local government is exactly that. Local requirements, whether of geography, size, demographics or politics, must continue to drive council websites.’

Instead, Socitm suggests the use of a common platform for sharing local government tools and applications. This would mean that local government could promote and share examples of best practice. However, they do acknowledge that incentives would need to be introduced to encourage this.

Is there political support for extending government as a platform into local government?

There was certainly intent by the Conservative government to have this happen. Ed Vaisey, UK minister for culture and the digital economy, is an advocate of Richard Copley’s view of a ‘local government digital service’ (LGDS). He explains that having local government on one website is an ‘ambition’ and emphasises that it has the potential to save billions of pounds by providing a gateway, similar to GOV.UK, for local government services.

Similarly, George Osborne made the increased use of digital services a major theme of the last Budget. For example, the Chancellor has expanded the remit of the Government Digital Service (GDS), to include collaborating with local councils to develop ‘customer-focussed, digitally-enabled, efficient local services’.

Labour’s shadow Cabinet Office minister Chi Onwurah has also been involved in the debate. Last year, she was keen to see the GDS support the work of local councils, which indicates that there may be some agreement with the Conservative Party. Recently, she expanded on her view, explaining that if the GDS were to work with local councils, they should focus on major areas such as social care and benefits.

At the moment, the future of local government services is uncertain. However, it’s important that we continue to debate the issue in order to find solutions that will provide real value for taxpayers, as well as provide better public services.

Further reading

The renaissance of Building Control

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Post–recession, the building industry has begun a return to rapid growth against a background of changes in building regulations, continuing technical innovation, and raised standards and expectations for developers. Building Control (the process of ensuring that buildings are safe, healthy and efficient to meet the standards set by the building regulations) is a key component in this resurgence and it’s no surprise that the Local Authority Building Control technical meeting at Nottingham University scheduled for 23 and 24 March has a packed programme and is entirely sold out.

With over 3,000 professionals working in the field and faced with competition from private service providers, Local Authorities are coming together to make infrastructure investments that will improve services and ultimately reduce costs.  A good example is the North Yorkshire Building Control Partnership formed in 2001 and now grown to provide services for five authorities.  Latest figures from NYBCP show savings of over £1m annually through this scalable and flexible shared-service platform.

The programme behind this required vision and commitment to deliver and involved hosting arrangements for a new single system, local network and IT services with support, and data migration from five legacy systems.  A case study published by NYBCP describes the programme in detail.

And the key metrics:

  • £1M reduction in salary costs
  • 55% of all applications are born digital or received digitally
  • Major reduction in processing costs
  • Remote access and remote working for stakeholders and officers
  • Improved customer service delivery as administrators are able to validate and process applications within 3 – 5 minutes

A last word to Les Chapman, NYBCP Head of Building Control, who commented, “By adopting a no compromise approach and having clear goals which have been carefully monitored I am confident that we have improved our service, significantly reduced our costs and we have de-risked the provision and maintenance of our IT systems.”

References

Local Authority Building Control

NYBCP case study

Gloucester City and Stroud DC business case for Building Control shared-service

Big challenges – and rewards – for Big Data in the third sector

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Image from Flickr user JustGrimes, licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons License

Image from Flickr user JustGrimes, licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons License

By Stephen Lochore

‘Big data’ is big news! Along with its close relative ‘open data’, it’s part of the latest thinking about how managing information can help bring about better services. The rough idea is to use new technology and approaches to understand, analyse, link and where possible share large complex datasets to generate new insights and improve decisions.

In 2012, the UK government identified big data as one of eight ‘great technologies’ that support science and business, and since then has invested in a range of big data initiatives through the UK Research Councils. This includes the ESRC’s Big Data Network, whose current phase involves establishing four academic research centres to make data from local government and business more accessible.

In Scotland, an industry-led data lab, backed by public funding, is due to open late in 2014 to develop new data science capabilities.

Most of the focus has been on private sector innovation, higher education research capabilities and public sector datasets. Little has been said about the third or voluntary sector, which is surprising:

  • Third sector organisations provide a wide range of services – policymakers need to understand the sector’s structure and capabilities;
  • Many third sector organisations gather information that could help improve the design and delivery of services – they work directly with local communities including vulnerable groups who can be reluctant to engage in formal consultations.

Fortunately, there are a few initiatives which are looking at these issues.

On Monday 13 October I went to the first of a series of workshops organised by Scottish Universities Insight Institute into the opportunities and challenges of using data for Scotland’s third sector organisations.

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