Local government faces the same big IT issues as the
corporates
E-businessWhile local government may not be at the bleeding edge of
e-business, it probably leads all other sectors in the proportion
of organisations which are developing firm e-business (or
e-government) strategies. That is thanks to the impetus provided by
the Modernising Local Government white paper and the targets set by
the Government for electronic service delivery in the public
sector.
"Most authorities are looking at formalising their e-government
strategies," says Karen Swinden, a director of public sector IT
consultancy Kable, "although they are all at very different stages.
For example, Tameside and Three Rivers are ahead in that they have
implemented customer contact centres which allow citizens to
contact the authority face-to-face, through a call centre or by
fax, letter, home PC, internet, public kiosks and so on. But most
authorities have only just started developing interactive Web sites
or installing call centres."
Outsourcing
Market research by Kable suggests local government spends about
£180m a year on outsourced IT services, with the total value of
outsourcing contracts standing at around £1.3bn.
Swinden thinks demand for traditional outsourcing will grow but
the evidence of invitations to tender currently appearing in the
Official Journal of the European Union suggests new contracts will
be focused on the provision of IT infrastructures to support
customer contact centres. This will include customer relations
management systems, Internet, intranet and extranet solutions,
kiosks and call centres.
"In addition, the managed service market is increasing and the
numbers of these contracts will grow as authorities adopt the
principles of Best Value and test all of their services against the
market," Swinden suggests.
Security
Swinden thinks online security will be a major issue for local
authorities. However, with few councils currently offering online
transactions such as paying council tax, it is an area which has
not been explored in much depth by most.
One exception, Swinden points out, is Bracknell Forest, which is
starting to offer information and transactional services accessed
through a personal account protected by an individual code and
password and dual-key encryption.
Skills
Most sectors are experiencing difficulty recruiting the IT staff
they need, especially for e-business projects. However, this is
nothing new for local government, where skills shortages have
always been a headache.
Research by Socitm, the society for local government IT
managers, suggests that around half of all local authorities have
problems with retention and recruitment of IT staff. The main
reasons seem to be an inability to offer competitive rates of pay
and career packages.
Integrating process and IT
The drive to e-government has had a profound impact on the way
councils are viewing IT and its role in delivering services.
"Most authorities are starting to recognise that e-government is
not about implementing a series of IT projects but about business
process re-engineering," says Swinden.
This requires an enormous shift in culture and that local
authorities have to answer the question: how do you persuade an
organisation steeped in decades of tradition to behave more like a
dotcom? "Those authorities which have been able to grasp this
agenda have been those with a champion able to drive the process
through all areas of the authority. But that champion has needed to
be very senior within the organisation, typically either the chief
executive or the elected council leader," Swinden warns.
Useful URLs
www.info4local.gov.uk - A gateway for local
government-related information published on the Web sites of
central government departments and agencies
www.idea.gov.uk - The Improvement and Development
Agency, tasked with developing and sharing best practice in local
government
www.lga.gov.uk - Local Government Association
www.socitm.gov.uk - Society of IT Management for
senior IT staff in local government
www.e-envoy.gov.uk - The office of the e-envoy is
responsible for detailed work in support of the e-government
agenda, including emerging standards and frameworks in areas such
as interoperability
www.citu.gov.uk/research/viewqueue/index.htm -
Electronic Government: the view from the queue, an invaluable
report on public attitudes to electronic service delivery
www.kablenet.com - News and research on public
sector IT.
The necessary skills
The push to e-government means that all kinds of mainstream Web
skills - including design and animation as well as technical skills
such as HTML and ASP - are in great demand within local government,
according to Paul Wise, a recruitment consultant with Robert Half
International, which recruits IT staff for both public and private
sectors.
However, despite the social inclusion agenda of the public
sector, which may eventually make it one of the strongest advocates
of non-PC devices such as interactive digital TV and Wap phones, he
has seen no demand for these skills as yet. "There are definitely
some councils looking at those technologies, but it will probably
be two or three years before the technology comes within their
budget," Wise suggests.
The public sector is recruiting in networking, support and,
increasingly, integration. Wise attributes these requirements to
the large user bases and diverse infrastructures typical of local
authorities. Wise says the range of technologies and large number
of projects and roll-outs taking place within local government make
the support roles particularly attractive to candidates.
This bucks the general IT recruitment trend in local government,
where relatively low salaries make it hard to attract most skills.
Another hurdle is the tendency for councils to work with versions
of products that are a year behind the mainstream. This means that,
although there may be plenty of people with these skills, they are
reluctant to come on board because they would rather be involved
with the latest releases.
The typical hardware and software ecosystem
A survey of software used by local authorities carried out by
the Society of IT Management (Socitm), has identified applications
across 50 different functional areas, including housing, social
services, education, leisure, planning, regulation, burials and
crematoria, highways, direct labour, financials, personnel,
revenues, democracy, supplies, assets, legal services, libraries,
environmental health, general management and property
management.
The survey suggests that while local authorities are still
developing some applications in-house, they are increasingly moving
to packaged solutions, with hardware consisting of a now stable mix
of ICL mainframes and Unix or NT servers, with Windows on the
desktop.
In the "front office", Socitm has found that almost all
authorities now have Web sites and many are promoting e-mail as an
alternative means of communication with the public, as well as
using it internally. There is also considerable interest in call
centre technology and customer relationship management systems.
although few authorities have a call centre at present, nearly
two-thirds expect to have introduced one by the end of this
year.
Providing access through digital TV to the services currently
being offered by councils through their Web sites is expected to
become practical from 2002. A few authorities have developed
smartcard applications for accessing or paying for council
services, but these are felt to be expensive and difficult to
implement.