The head of the UK's largest local authority
transformational government project said he is "frustrated" by
the time it is taking for visible benefits to come out of the
programme.
Glyn Evans is head of Birmingham City Council's transformation
programme, which aims to save taxpayers £1bn in 10 years. He has
spoken of the lessons he has learnt so far.
Birmingham's transformation project is made up of nine separate
programmes, each aiming to bring efficiency to a different
department. Two key programmes include the Corporate Services
Transformation, which aims to rebuild the council's back office,
and Customer First, which aims to create a single point of contact
for customers using council services.
Evans has faced several challenges in the project's first two
years. He said, "Overall it has been a positive experience, but I
am frustrated by the length of time it is taking to make a change
in the council."
The impetus for change at Birmingham came from a survey showing
just 55% of customers were satisfied with council services. "If
that was in the private sector you would be replacing the
management," he said.
The answer, Evans said, is the transformation programme, but it
has not all been plain sailing.
The
council has experienced difficulties with its SAP systems, for
instance. A backlog of 10,000 unpaid invoices remained stuck in the
SAP finance system six months after it went live. The council's
"Approvals Day" was scheduled for 13 May, when all outstanding
invoices were to be cleared. Evans said 92% of invoices are now
being paid on time.
Evans blamed the problems on communication rather than
software.
"Most of the issues we had with SAP were not software-related at
all. They were about getting the message out, and possibly
underestimating the complexity of the organisation. We were not
replacing one way of doing something, but nine different ways. It
adds a level of complexity."
He said an organisation the size of Birmingham was always going
to have some teething problems, "I do not think any FTSE 100
company would do it any better than we did."
Another problem, he said, was maintaining the support of senior
managers and politicians when challenges come, and ensuring they
are aware of the time it takes to see positive differences.
"I confused communication with engagement," he said. "Sending
out material is not the same as having the capacity to sit down
with managers and talk to them. I am actually struggling now to
generate the capacity to rectify that.
"We put a lot of effort into collecting evidence to underpin our
business cases. I do not think we shared that enough with the
directorates who were going to be impacted by the change." As a
result, he said, employees' response to the project was
"sceptical".
Evans came up against further challenges when council IT staff
did not see the transformation IT projects as "career enhancing",
making recruitment difficult.
Despite the issues, Birmingham's project has been successful so
far, making a £9m net contribution to this year's budget.
But for Evans, this sort of change in local government is
overdue. He said the public sector has not been successful in using
IT as an enabler of change, and blamed a "limited understanding" of
IT among senior politicians and management.
"Most senior managers in the public sector are still of the
generation that grew up without IT," he said.
It is IT professionals who must provide leadership, but warned
IT staff not to look to central government for inspiration.
"We have got to move away from the central government view that
it is all about efficiency savings and shared services. It has got
to be more than that.
"IT is the enabler, but transformational change has to be
systemic. It has to address organisational structures, job roles,
processes and cultures."