Boston Borough Council ICT Strategy

Boston Borough Council ICT Strategy

10.01.2007, reference: 5884ICTS_v10.doc Christine Westlake, [email protected], 01692 405597, 07771 622065). Socitm Consulting, PO Box 66, Holyhead, LL65 2YB, www.socitm.gov.uk Registered office F4 Moulton Business Centre, Redhouse Rd, Moulton Park, Northampton, NN3 6AQ

Boston Borough Council ICT STRATEGY

Boston Borough Council Document status: Draft ICT Strategy – 10.01.2007 – $12yml03r 2

Revision history

Document ID/version Status Date Reason for issue Author

5884ICTS_v2.doc Draft 29/11/2006 Initial release of draft Part A only for information

Christine Westlake

5884ICTS_v3.doc Draft 30/11/2006 Draft Part A as above plus draft of part B

Christine Westlake

5884ICTS_v4.doc Draft 1/12/2006 Draft Part A and B for CMB Christine Westlake

5884ICTS_v5.doc Draft 5/12/2006 Draft Part A and B following comments from AM & AC

Christine Westlake

5884ICTS_v6A Draft 8/12/2006 Draft Part A following cmb 5/12/06

Christine Westlake

5884ICTS_v7A Draft 14/12/2006 Final version of ICT Strategy following CMB on 12/12/08 and further input from various.

Christine Westlake

5884ICTS_v8A Draft 22/12/2006 Final draft version of ICT Strategy for P&D committee briefing 03/01/07

Christine Westlake

5884ICTS_v9 Draft 09/01/2007 ICT Strategy sent to Terry Street for QA following PD Committee

Christine Westlake

5884ICTS_v10 FINAL Draft 10/01/2007 QA’d ICT Strategy for Cabinet 17.01.2007

Christine Westlake/Andree Mitchell

Document approvals and distribution.

Issuing email file reference and date1

Issued to which approvers

Approving email file references and dates

Approval status

5884CW013 issued 29/11/06

Andree Mitchell & Andrew Claydon

Information & comment only

5884CW014 issued 30/11/06

Andree Mitchell & Andrew Claydon

Information & comment only

5884CW015 issued 1/12/06 (v4)

Andree Mitchell For CMB Distribution (superceded by v5)

5884CW016 issued 5/12/06 (v5)

Andree Mitchell

5884CW018 issued 8/12/06 (v6A)

Andree Mitchell For comment and distribution to CMB 12/12/6

5884CW022 issued 15/12/06 (v7A)

Andree Mitchell

5884CW025 issued 22/12/2006

Andree Mitchell For P&D committee briefing 03/01/2007

5884CW029 issued 09/01/2007 (v9)

Terry Street Re: 5884CW029 ICT Strategy and Service Review 09/01/2007

For QA

5884CW030 issued 10/1/2007 (v10)

Andree Mitchell For Cabinet 17.01.2007

1 This is the explanatory email file name and date (from Socitm) to which the deliverable version was attached, which email explains what the issue /variation is about and asks for approval where needed



CONTENTS

1 INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................... 5

1.1 Methodology ............................................................................................... 5

2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ............................................................................... 7

2.1 Background ................................................................................................. 7

2.2 Key Points .................................................................................................. 7

3 SUMMARY RECOMMENDATIONS ............................................................. 10

3.1 Resilient Ring – 2007/08 Q1 ........................................................................ 10

3.2 ICT Working Group – 2006/07 Q4 .............................................................. 10

3.3 ICT Work Programme – 2007/08 Q1 ........................................................... 10

3.4 ICT Structure – 2007/08 Q1 & Q2 ............................................................... 10

3.5 Help Desk – 2007/08 Q1 onwards ............................................................... 11

3.6 E-Financials – 2007/08 Q1- Q4 ................................................................... 11

3.7 Revenues & Benefits – 2007/08 Q4 .............................................................. 11

3.8 Website –2007/08 Q1- 4 ............................................................................. 12

3.9 CRM and EDRMS – 2009/10 Q1- 4 ............................................................. 12

3.10 Zenworks – 2007/08 Q1- 2 .................................................................. 12

3.11 Desktop provision – 2008/09 Q1 .......................................................... 12

3.12 Service Delivery Statements – 2007/08 Q4 .............................................. 13

3.13 Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity – High Priority (ongoing) ............ 13

3.14 Information Management – 2008/09 Q1 ................................................ 13

3.15 Health Warning!.................................................................................. 13

4 EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT ..................................................................... 14

4.1 Vision ...................................................................................................... 14

4.2 Current position......................................................................................... 15

4.3 Getting there ............................................................................................. 17

5 STRATEGIES AND POLICIES ..................................................................... 19

5.1 Vision ...................................................................................................... 19


5.3 Getting there ............................................................................................. 21

6 GOVERNANCE FOR ICT ............................................................................ 22

6.1 Vision ...................................................................................................... 22


6.3 Getting there ............................................................................................. 23

7 ICT SERVICE PLANNING .......................................................................... 26

7.1 Vision ...................................................................................................... 26


7.3 Getting there ............................................................................................. 27

8 INFORMATION MANAGEMENT ............................................................... 29

8.1 Vision ...................................................................................................... 29




8.3 Getting there ............................................................................................. 30

9 ICT SERVICE DELIVERY ........................................................................... 32

9.1 Vision ...................................................................................................... 32


9.3 Getting there ............................................................................................. 33

10 TECHNOLOGY ARCHITECTURE ........................................................... 35

10.1 Vision ............................................................................................... 35

10.2 Current position ................................................................................. 36

10.3 Getting there ...................................................................................... 37

11 ICT SERVICE ROLE AND STRUCTURE .................................................. 40

11.2 The IT Utility role ............................................................................... 40

11.3 The IT Services Broker role .................................................................. 40

11.4 The Business Change Agent .................................................................. 40

11.5 The Change Process ............................................................................ 40

12 IMPLEMENTATION ............................................................................... 41

12.1 Options ............................................................................................. 41

12.2 Action Plan ........................................................................................ 42

13 APPENDIX A – SOCITM SOFTWARE SURVEY 2006 EXTRACTS .............. 49

14 APPENDIX B – CONSULTEES ................................................................ 53

15 APPENDIX C – SWOTS ........................................................................... 57

15.1 ICT Workshop ................................................................................... 57

15.2 Client Workshops ............................................................................... 58

16 APPENDIX D – KEY PROCESSES FOR CMM LEVELS ............................. 59

17 APPENDIX E – OTHER WORKSHOP OUTPUTS ..................................... 60

18 APPENDIX F – CONNECTIVITY REFERENCES ..................................... 60



1 Introduction

Any ICT Strategy should support the business needs and requirements of the organisation. With this in mind Socitm Consulting has looked at the business need and requirements first and then considered the capacity and ability of ICT to meet this. This document sets out the Council’s corporate ICT Strategy. Each Department should have its own ICT Strategy linking to this, but as a minimum have regard to the level of ICT required to support the delivery of the annual Service Development Plan. This recognises the supremacy of the corporate ICT Strategy in setting out commonality. Wider ICT Strategies should be established for any local strategic partnerships. The ICT Strategy is supported by two further separate documents. An ICT Service Review that reviews the service considering various aspects and presents three service role options to be considered. A Highlight Benchmark report presents the results from a high level benchmarking exercise using key performance indicators of the current ICT service at Boston Borough Council comparing with other similar authorities.

1.1 Methodology

1.1.1 The ICT Strategy has been developed through consultation with most internal stakeholders, those involved in the Lincolnshire Shared Services Partnership (LSSP) and the ‘resilient ring’ project and members of Public Sector Working Group (PSWG). A list of consultees can be found in Appendix B.

1.1.2 A series of interviews were held face to face and a few using the telephone to determine the expectations of the ICT service, level of service received, level of satisfaction, and requirements of the ICT Strategy. This included the stakeholders already mentioned plus ICT staff.

1.1.3 Three workshops were run to give participants the opportunity to discuss their requirements of the ICT service, issues and priorities using various methodologies including a SWOT analysis – see Appendix C.

The Capabilities Maturity Model (CMM), developed by the Software Engineers Institute, was also used to determine where the ICT service positioned their service on the model compare with where their customers placed them – see figure 1. A description of the key process requirements for each level of the model can be found in Appendix D. An explanation for the difference may be that the customer is unaware of what ICT does, evidenced during the workshops, and what procedures the service should have in place to demonstrate its maturity. Whilst the ICT service provided is constantly improving there is a recognition within the section that further procedures and best practice (for example relating to the IT Infrastructure Library) are being put in place, but not all areas of the higher levels have been achieved at this stage.

The first workshop was for ICT staff only, the remaining workshops excluded the ICT staff to try and ensure an open environment where true opinions could be expressed about the service.



ICT

Client

Figure 1 - Capabilities Maturity Model

1.1.4 Socitm Consulting undertook a high level benchmarking exercise. The outputs from Boston were compared with similar authorities who had already participated in the Socitm Benchmarking process to give an indication of level of ICT service delivery.

1.1.5 The outputs from the interviews, workshops, benchmarking exercise and research have been used to inform both the ICT Strategy and the ICT Service Review.

1.1.6 Socitm Consulting wish to thank all those who participated in the workshops and interviews without whose help it would not have been possible to produce the ICT Strategy.

Level 1: Initial

Level 5: Optimising

Level 4: Managed

Level 3: Defined

Level 2: Repeatable



2 Executive Summary

2.1 Background

2.1.1 Socitm Consulting were commissioned to produce an ICT Strategy for Boston Borough Council. Any ICT Strategy should support the business needs and requirements of the council. With this in mind the business needs and requirements were considered first and then the ICT service was examined to determine how these requirements might be best met.

2.1.2 Interviews and workshops were run to provide the opportunity for as many staff, Members, stakeholders and partners as possible to contribute. The extensive information base held by Socitm Consulting was used to compare ICT service delivery at Boston with similar councils to produce a highlight benchmark report.

2.1.3 This report, the ICT Strategy, is supported by two further documents, The ICT Service Review and a Highlight Benchmark Report. A fourth document entitled, ICT Service Improvement, Information Security Awareness has been supplied to assist with promoting the ICT Security Policy and the ISO17799, Information Security Management standard.

2.2 Key Points

2.2.1 The benchmark exercise has highlighted that ICT is under-resourced by 2 full time equivalent (FTE) staff. This is based on the number of technical ICT staff supporting all users as of the start of financial year 2006/07, i.e. 8 ICT staff for 350 users. The current technical staff complement is 6 which includes a temporary secondment from a neighbouring local authority.

2.2.2 Outputs from the interviews and workshops indicate that the ICT service is generally well thought of throughout the council, is good at providing quick fixes to ‘easy’ problems, but finds it harder to resolve the more complex problems and is constantly fire fighting. This is due to the number of staff, lack of current work programme and limited skill sets and experience.

2.2.3 It is anticipated that the Lincolnshire Shared Services Partnership (LSSP) will provide service delivery and technology opportunities for ICT at Boston. The ICT element of this partnership is still to be scoped at the time of writing this strategy, but indications are that the partnership would enable opportunities for joint procurement that would deliver economies of scale and could provide shared risk and reward type contracts with suppliers.

This would be of particular benefit to the council in the areas of Customer Relationship Management, Electronic Document and Records Management and sharing of technical support skills. These are areas of work that Boston will find particularly challenging to deliver because the solutions and associated skills are expensive to implement However they would provide service delivery benefits. Lincolnshire County Council are implementing a “Resilient Ring” project which will provide a very high capacity wide area network across the county providing the ability to reduce long distance communications costs for the council. The Resilient Ring will also be fundamental in supporting the projects and work of the Lincolnshire Shared Services Partnership (LSSP) and the Public Sector Working Group (PSWG) which include the provision of shared services, data centres, contact centres and disaster recovery.



2.2.4 In order for Boston Borough Council to be able to take full advantage of the LSSP and PSWG work it must align itself with the technologies being used by the majority of the partners. Primarily this means that Boston will have to move away from using GroupWise/Novell to Microsoft Exchange/Outlook and consider the use of thin client where appropriate.

2.2.5 It was discovered through the client workshops, that there is limited understanding of what ICT does within the council, or indeed, how it could contribute to enhancing service delivery corporately. Governance of ICT within the council has also been highlighted as an area for improvement.

To help address these issues Socitm Consulting recommend that an ICT Working Group is created. The suggested brief for this group would be:

• To undertake the ICT Governance role

• To provide a forum for presentations to keep the Council updated on the benefits and level of appropriateness of emerging technologies for Boston

• To provide input and coordination of ICT requirements to be included within the Council’s Service Development Plans to enable the delivery of those plans

• To agree and monitor the annual ICT work programme

• To agree deviation from the programme should unexpected urgent requirements occur during the year so that the associated implications and risks are understood by the group.

This is discussed further in Section 6.

2.2.6 Information Management, ICT Security, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery are all vital functions of the council. The council currently has no Information Management Strategy, the ICT Security Policy has not been reviewed for a number of years, however there are plans to put in place an interim policy with a view to aligning security policies for all Lincolnshire Councils as a deliverable of the shared services work currently taking place. Plans for Business Continuity are in their infancy and thus Disaster Recovery is not yet comprehensive. All these issues put the council at risk. Although this situation is not unusual in smaller local authorities it is no less important. This has been recognised by the Public Sector Working Group (PSWG) who has commissioned some work by Cornwell Management Consultants plc to consider options for shared disaster recovery for the members of the group and is considering the use of the resilient ring to achieve this.

The council should treat as a priority the production of an Information Management Strategy and the revision of the ICT Security Policy in line with ISO17799 that deals with not just ICT security, but also physical security, incident management and security of staff to name a few areas. The Council’s Business Continuity plans should be completed, adopted, tested, documented and amended on a regular basis. The council should be prepared and practiced for the worst possible case. It is understood that some of this work is being done in partnership with Lincolnshire County Council and the other Lincolnshire district councils.

2.2.7 The ICT help desk is the shop window for ICT. It should be the first point of contact for all queries and problems for all council staff and Members. All calls should be recorded on the help desk and monitored so as to be able to identify recurring problems, training issues, and software and infrastructure performance. With appropriate training the help desk should work towards achieving 80% call resolution at first point of contact, this would then free up the more experienced technical staff to deal with more complex work.



2.2.8 In order to be able to plan ICT service delivery and further to the Council’s work on e-Government, it is now essential that ICT develop an updated annual work programme that has been agreed at a corporate level. One element of this work programme has to be the procurement and implementation of new or replacement systems. In order to know what will be due for replacement the service should have access to a contract management system, manual or computerised, that will alert ICT at least 12 months in advance to allow adequate resource and financial planning.

2.2.9 The workshops highlighted that services receiving an annual ICT recharge have little idea of what they are paying for. For Best Value and CPA purposes as well as general good practice service heads should understand what makes up their ICT recharge, what they should be expecting in levels of service and what ICT expect of them as customers. Rather than introduce Service Level Agreements (SLAs) which often involve charging of penalties on failure to deliver which is not relevant within an internal service environment, Socitm Consulting suggests that the council considers adopting Service Delivery Statements (SDSs). SDSs are a ‘softer’ version of SLAs and break down the charge into tangible elements such as the charge per PC supported, number of hours support a year and so on. SDSs also lay out general ICT procedures in a clear and concise manner. Charges from the SDS model can then be fed into the annual budget process in accountancy as a percentage of total ICT budget.

2.2.10 The website is in need of rejuvenation. This will involve a restructure of the site to provide more logical and intuitive access to information and services. Ownership of information and responsibilities for publishing need to be clearly defined to ensure that information and services are current and relevant. Socitm Consulting recommend that service users are the owners of the content that is published on the website relating to their service, with the Communications Manager having ultimate responsibility. ICT should be responsible for the integrity and performance of the systems supporting the website.

2.2.11 The ICT Service Review presents three structures for the ICT service based on three roles for ICT service delivery as described by Gartner research.

• The IT Services Broker role is a very small unit with specialist contract and negotiation skills which has chosen to outsource all of its ICT products and services to external service providers. This role would have no technical expertise or local business knowledge to assist services.

• The IT Utility role is the most straightforward option, responsible for providing ICT-based services and operating them with competitive efficiency. Socitm Consulting consider that the current ICT service is operating within this role.

• The Business Change Agent role represents an ICT service prepared to align itself with the wider business and support strategic objectives, offering skills and credibility that can really add value. To achieve this ICT will need to play a more proactive and strategic role within the council in order to ensure maximum benefit from past and future investments in technology. Socitm Consulting recommend that the ICT service adopt this role for future service delivery using a combination of in house, partnership and outsourcing service delivery methods as appropriate and beneficial to the council.



3 Summary Recommendations

A full project implementation plan can be found in Section 12.

3.1 Resilient Ring – 2007/08 Q1

3.1.1 Take advantage of the Resilient Ring project. Connection to the resilient ring will:

• Enable the council to make savings on the costs of running long distance leased lines.

• Allow replacement of DSL lines to remote sites including the crematorium and the Haven and the high-speed link (LES10) to Fen Road.

• Enable shared Internet provision.

• Support shared service provision.

• Provide a robust vehicle for business continuity and disaster recovery

3.2 ICT Working Group – 2006/07 Q4

3.2.1 Set up a corporate ICT working group as detailed in Section 5 to enable:

• ICT Governance

• Increase corporate ICT awareness

• ICT inclusion in the Service Development Plans

• Creation and monitoring of an ICT work programme

• Corporate decisions on deviation from work programme with understanding of associated risk and consequence of decision.

• Member and user involvement

3.3 ICT Work Programme – 2007/08 Q1

3.3.1 An ICT Work Programme should be agreed through the ICT Working Group and be monitored on a regular basis.

3.3.2 Quarterly reporting of the ICT Work Programme and update from ICT Working Group into Audit and Governance Committee

3.3.3 Regular reporting on the status of the work programme to the Council’s Corporate Management Board.

3.4 ICT Structure – 2007/08 Q1 & Q2

3.4.1 The Council should adopt the Business Change Agent role for ICT service delivery in principle, subject to the budget being found from existing Council budgets, by:

• Using the suggested structure.

• Writing job descriptions and person specifications.

• Evaluating the new job descriptions.

• Recruiting to the new structure.

3.4.2 The service delivery methods should employ a mix of:

• In house provision so as to retain the local understanding and knowledge of the business of Boston Borough Council.

• Partnership working through the LSSP & the PSWG to be able to take advantage of economies of scale for joint procurement.

• Selective outsourcing where it can release internal resources for new projects, or supply specific skills that are required but are not available through the Partnership.



3.5 Help Desk – 2007/08 Q1 onwards

3.5.1 Promote and enhance the level of service offered by the ICT help desk by:

• Adopting the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) standards.

• Reviewing the software being used to ensure fitness for purpose and budget. If it is not then procuring an alternative that is.

• Working towards an 80% resolution target at first point of call.

• Continuing to develop the skills and experience of the ICT help desk staff.

• Promoting the ICT service.

• Ensuring that all calls are recorded and escalated in accordance with agreed service level

3.6 E-Financials – 2007/08 Q1- Q4

3.6.1 This system is not being used to its full potential. Socitm Consulting recommend that the council seriously considered keeping e-financials and extending the contract for a further 5 years because:

• It is the most popular financial management package (Socitm Software Survey 2006).

• The LSSP may consider a joint procurement for financial management in the future. Significant investment has already been made in this application and it would be prudent to maximise this investment during the next 5 years.

• The finance department may consider that although they are not happy with the system, they already have a tight programme of work including the base budget work so would not have the capacity to enter into a procurement situation at this time.

Should the council decide to follow this recommendation, Socitm Consulting suggest that:

• There should be a health check carried out on the system by the supplier, Cedar.

• A full retraining programme for all staff that use the system.

• The council should consider using the supplier of e-financials, thus reducing the number of suppliers involved in this solution, to support Oracle 8i while moving forward with the recommendations from the health check. This will probably include a reconfiguration of the system, a training programme and an upgrade to Oracle 10f and e-financials 3.4.

3.7 Revenues & Benefits – 2007/08 Q4

3.7.1 This contract is a perpetual software licence contract so the actual software contract itself is not an issue. Support and maintenance is due to finish next year and will have to be reviewed. There may be the opportunity to achieve reduced costs through negotiation of the various contracts.

3.7.2 The council should be aware that Revenues and Benefits is an area identified by the LSSP as one being considered for shared service delivery. Socitm Consulting therefore recommend renegotiating the support and maintenance for a period of time that would align Boston with the shared service project timetable allowing time for data conversion and migration over to a new system should the partnership decide on an alternative solution to Academy.



3.8 Website –2007/08 Q1- 4

3.8.1 The website should be the shop window of the council. The website should contain up to date relevant information that is easy to find and provide access to transactional services. The current website was ranked as a ‘C’ontent only (Better Connected 2006). It is strongly recommended that:

• Joomla, the content management software currently being used is adequate for Boston and should be retained since it is a cost effective product that is functionally fit for purpose.

• The website style and templates are redesigned, content reviewed, staff retrained in publishing information and more transactional services are made available.

• External consultation is carried out to determine what the public want and how the website can help them.

• The communications officer is responsible for published content.

• That the council, over the next few years endeavour to improve its Better Connected rating from ‘C’ontent to a ‘C’ontent+ rating or even a ‘T’ransactional rating.

3.9 CRM and EDRMS – 2009/10 Q1- 4

3.9.1 Boston should participate in any partnership projects for implementation of both corporate Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Electronic Document and Records Management (EDRM) Systems. Both these systems should include corporate workflow and business process re-engineering in order to be fully effective. These systems can be costly and resource hungry to implement, but the benefits can improve service delivery and the customer experience. By participating in a joint procurement and implementation project the negative impacts can be reduced through economies of scale and joint responsibility for support and implementation.

3.10 Zenworks – 2007/08 Q1- 2

3.10.1 The Zenworks system should be rolled out across the entire council to enable remote support. This will reduce the amount of time ICT staff are out of the office and therefore should improve performance of the help desk.

3.11 Desktop provision – 2008/09 Q1

3.11.1 ICT should consider entering into a draw down type supply contract for the provision of PCs and laptops. By having a standard specification, build standard and disposal procedure. Quality control and contract monitoring would have to be effective. A third party could provide this service by:

• Receiving the request

• Building the PC to pre-agreed specification and standards.

• Deliver to the council and install on the user’s desk

• Remove old equipment and either re-commission or dispose according to ICT’s procedures.

• Remove packaging.

3.11.2 This would benefit the council by:

• Freeing up help desk staff, who can then concentrate on improving the help desk service

• Reducing the cost of PCs and laptops through economies of scale.

• Providing a standard specification and build standard to the council.



3.12 Service Delivery Statements – 2007/08 Q4

3.12.1 ICT should consider implementing Service Delivery Statements to inform users of what they are getting for their ICT recharge. Socitm Consulting would be pleased to help with this work if required. The introduction of SDS has to compliment the budget preparation cycle.

3.13 Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity – High Priority (ongoing)

3.13.1 Continue to develop comprehensive business continuity plans and ICT disaster recovery plans to support these for the council by continuing to work with the PSWG, LSSP and the Lincolnshire Resilience Partnership. These plans should be appropriate to cover the business requirements including communications infrastructure, equipment and hardware, data and systems and will involve all current third party ICT suppliers. These must be regularly practiced and tested, documented and amended. Staff must be aware of their roles in these plans

3.14 Information Management – 2008/09 Q1

3.14.1 The council should develop an Information Management Strategy aligned to ISO15489 and review the ICT Security policy. Both should use the principles of ISO17799. These should be promoted and regularly updated.

3.15 Health Warning!

3.15.1 This presents a vast work program for the next few years. This must be prioritised, resourced properly and managed using the Council’s project and programme management methodologies, identifying the necessary skills and experience to ensure successful project delivery.



4 External environment

4.1 Vision

4.1.1 Citizen expectations

Citizens expect the Council to be accessible both during and outside of normal office hours via the website and extended hours by telephone; to provide a reasonable (and consistent) level of response to queries, ordering and purchasing of services. They will also expect any response to be informed by all transactions relevant to the citizen and will not expect to have to contact services within the Council individually.

Citizens in their communities will expect the Council to provide help for communities in using technology for administration, and in order to publicise themselves and their activities.

Citizens are receivers of the Council’s services and as such are stakeholders. Representatives should be consulted for their input and feedback, especially on ICT developments such as access to services via the Website and the potential for links from the Council’s website to other sources of information and services such as the County Council and the Citizens Advice Bureau.

4.1.2 Government policy

Government policy is to use electronic methods to modernise government: to provide joined-up transparent government that uses ICT to streamline service delivery, to empower the front-line and reduce costs in the back office. The Government has been running a number of National Projects as part of the modernisation agenda which may present possible benefits for Boston.

The Government published a set of e-Government Priority Outcomes (www.localegov.gov.uk/en/1/priorityoutcomes.html) for local authorities to be achieved by 31st December 2005 (29 ‘required outcomes’, to be delivered online) and 1st April 2006 (25 ‘good outcomes’, where individual Local Authorities could choose the delivery method). This work should now be nearing completion. In addition, the government have produced further policy documents including Transformational Government and the Local Government Response to Transformational Government in which it states…….

‘We believe that local government has a particularly important part to play in shaping local public services on behalf of communities. Although no single organisation can deliver everything on its own, local authorities are in many ways ideally placed to articulate local needs and to offer local leadership (as documents such as the Local Government Association’s The Future is Local have argued) because they are:

• Democratically elected, accountable and visible

• Connected to place and local people’s needs and aspirations

• Endowed with powers to promote community well-being

• Used to balancing competing priorities for their areas and brokering local partnerships

• Already responsible for a high proportion of all government interactions with citizens

• Demonstrating a good (and improving) track record of delivering services on the ground’



4.1.3 The following emerging technologies are currently recognised as having potential to change the Council’s ICT strategy:

• Universal broadband and wireless communications – enabling mobile working and working from home;

• Digital TV – providing an alternative electronic channel to those homes without PCs

• Video conferencing – further enabling mobile and home working and providing another method of communicating with citizens, suppliers and other stakeholders;

• Smart Cards – providing citizens with proof of identity and ability to use both Council and other local services (e.g. transport);

• Biometrics –three out of four members of the UK public say they are in favour of wider biometrics usage to enhance their security. This is according to the recent Biometrics in Britain Study 2006, from document and identity security specialists TSSI Systems – becoming widely used in the finance sector for security and access purposes. Also being trialled in a Scottish school, using palm vein recognition for charging for school meals.

• Mobile telephony – including 3G and GPRS

• Using SMS and other mobile technology to communicate and consult with citizens

4.2 Current position

4.2.1 Boston Borough Council concluded in presenting their Implementing Electronic Government Return 2006 (IEG6) that not all the priority outcomes were appropriate to the council at the time of writing and that they would be reconsidered as part of the Customer Service and Access Strategy and the ICT Strategy.

4.2.2 The council has made good progress in procuring solutions to meet the e-government and priority outcome requirements and has partially implemented them. However, for the Council and the public to gain maximum benefit from this investment the solutions should be fully implemented and utilised across all relevant services and customer take up of e-services should be encouraged. For example Council Tax e-billing, viewing of Council Tax, Housing Benefits and Business Rates accounts online. Increased use of these facilities will also improve the council’s e-Government compliance.

4.2.3 The Lincolnshire Shared Services Partnership (LSSP) has the potential to achieve economies of scale through joint specification, procurement, implementation and support of technologies that would enhance service delivery to the public such as Geographical Information Systems (GIS), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Electronic Document and Records Management (EDRM). It also provides the opportunity for joint support on some of the technologies that do not require full time support at any single authority and for exploring joint delivery of selected services.



4.2.4 Lincolnshire County Council has started the implementation of their Resilient Ring (RR) project. This is a very high capacity Wide Area Network (WAN) supplied by BT with a capacity of a 2GB channel and the ability to add an extra 31 x 2GB channels. This will provide the ability to reduce long distance communications costs via leased lines and enable the replacement of the point to point DSL links to remote sites including the crematorium, the Haven, and the high speed link (LES10) to the Fen Road Depot. The Resilient Ring project will also provide the potential for shared services including: data centres and contact centres; disaster recovery; and centralised support. Following agreement on common architecture and connection to the ring, this could enable shared Internet provision. The RR is scheduled to be available in spring 2007 and will have 10 points of presence throughout Lincolnshire. The East Midlands Broadband Consortium (EMBC) provides broadband connections to schools through 13 points of presence. Both the RR and the EMBC solutions are based in the BT exchanges. It is highly likely that both will be merged in the future. The charging structure for access and use of the RR is uncertain at the moment, however initial indications are that individual authorities will be expected to fund the access circuits to the RR and use of the shared ring could be free.

Cornwell Management Consultants plc has been commissioned by the PSWG to produce a report on the options for members of the group for ICT Disaster Recovery (DR). Their report is due to be delivered early 2007. Options being considered include the use of the Resilient Ring for Disaster Recovery.

4.2.5 The Lincolnshire Research Observatory (LRO) www.research-lincs.org.uk is a partnership of organisations across the County who aim to share and improve access to quality information across Lincolnshire. There is a possibility of being able to implement a shared GIS and GIS data exchange for the County who use the same GIS product as Boston, MapInfo. The prime objectives of the LRO are to:-

• act as a single point of reference for information on the County;

• improve the availability and use of this information;

• raise levels of expertise and capacity amongst partners;

• reduce the duplication of effort and research fatigue;

• provide a seamless approach to data provision.

4.2.6 The Shared IT Support work stream of the PSWG has, in addition to Shared Disaster Recovery and the sharing of IT skills, implemented out of hours support for Councillors IT. This service is provided to districts at a low cost by HBS, the strategic partner of Lincolnshire County Council (LCC) with the current year’s costs being funded by grant funding.

4.2.7 The PSWG are also running with a number of other projects related to e-government including:

• The implementation of a Lincolnshire wide procurement card (with partners including the Police, NHS and Lincoln University). This scheme may be extended to other partners including, for example, the Welland partnership and North East Lincolnshire. This project is funded by the East Midlands Regional Centre of Excellence (EMRCoE)

• Smart Card pilot implementation for leisure and libraries between East Lindsey District Council (ELDC) and LCC.

• Succession planning for LincUp (the Lincolnshire Portal).



4.2.8 The council recognises the Government Connects project as being important in the future for the council. Indications are that the council will be required to use this channel to submit government returns, paper returns will no longer be permissible, as well as using it as a secure link for the transmission of sensitive data. Boston has previously sent a letter of intent to central government together with other members of PSWG. The partnership is currently in discussion with the Government Connects project with regard to pricing structure and implementation offers.

4.2.9 Government have run a programme of National Projects that has now finished. These projects pulled together the knowledge and experience of councils, central government, the private sector and others to define and deliver key priority services and local e-government building blocks to help councils transform the business of government and meet the Gershon efficiency agenda. These projects were completed to varying levels of success. Cap Gemini was commissioned to quantify the benefits of six of the National Projects. Links to the finding are below:

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

• Mobile Working (Project NOMAD)

• Planning and Regulatory Services (PARSOL)

• Enterprise Workflow

• Council Tax and Business Rates Evaluation (Valuebill)

• Local Authority Websites (LAWs)

See www.localegovnp.org for further information on the National Projects.

4.3 Getting there

4.3.1 Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Electronic Document and Record Management Systems (EDRMS) should be projects for consideration in partnership with the Lincolnshire Shared Services Partnership, since these can be expensive projects to procure and implement successfully. To gain maximum benefits from these technologies both of these projects should include workflow and business process re-engineering. Joint procurement and implementation projects have the potential to deliver solutions at less cost than through an individual procurement process and have the added benefit of taking advantage of shared risk and reward scenarios that may be attractive to a supplier.

4.3.2 The Customer Service and Access Strategy has recommended a few short term measures including the installation of ICT systems in the interview rooms, which, since customer services is one of the main work streams being considered by LSSP, could be included in this work stream.

4.3.3 The council should take the opportunity to revisit all technologies purchased to meet the e-government and priority outcomes agenda with a view to identifying where further roll out or implementation of the existing products would gain greater benefit for the council’s services. For example, the annual maintenance cost for the “Direct Public” element of the Revenues and Benefits system/website ability to view account information has an annual maintenance charge of approximately £12,000. Internet payments have an annual charge of around £4,000. Not promoting the use of these, fully implementing all their functionality and achieving savings would be a waste of money.



4.3.4 The Lincolnshire Shared Services Partnership has, as already mentioned, a lot of potential for its partners. However, being a member of this partnership should not mean that the council is tied and committed to implement everything that is proposed by the partnership. There must be a benefit to Boston. There should be an understanding in the partnership that there are key elements that all partners would be expected to subscribe to, for example the resilient ring, but that other elements should be considered to be optional, possibly because the partner has a funding or resource issue that would mean they would be unable to implement at that time but may like to later on, or that their technology would not support the proposed element e.g. a shared revenues and benefits service. Joint procurement could still take place, but with a phased approach for implementation. This would have the advantage of the ability to negotiate significant discounts, the successful supplier could schedule resource more effectively, but the disadvantage that a service provider for an individual authority could, perhaps, provide a reduced level of service if the procurement decision had not gone their way, which would require more stringent contract monitoring.

4.3.5 Any re-development of the website should include input from external stakeholders, for example The Citizen’s Advice Bureau, other voluntary sectors and local businesses perhaps through the local Chamber of Commerce, within the Borough, since they will have valuable experience that can be used to improve services being delivered through this channel.

The highlight benchmark report prepared by Socitm Consulting recommends that the council should endeavour to attain a Content + ranking, next year for the website on the Better Connected survey. The Better Connected rankings are:

• P (promotional) – to be removed for the 2007 edition of Better Connected.

• C (content)

• C+ (content plus) - equates to a website that provide very useful content and advanced online self-service features

• T (transactional)

• E (excellent) – to be introduced for the 2007 edition of Better Connected. The website will have to be ranked as transactional but will also be effective, efficient and engaging

External Environment - Key Issues

• Consider joint procurement and shared service provision for CRM and EDRMS with the LSSP

• Install ICT systems in interview rooms.

• Understand what LSSP proposals mean for Boston and identify the benefits for the council before signing up to each development.

• Maximise the benefits to be gained from the e-government investments

• Monitor progress of National Projects and identify any appropriate benefits for Boston

• Include external stakeholders in re-development of website

• Improve Better Connected rating.



5 Strategies and Policies

5.1 Vision

All the strategies and policies of the Council should complement and support one another. They should be live documents that are understood by all levels of the organisation and are regularly reviewed and revised. All strategies and policies should include consideration to funding, personnel and ICT issues, which should be developed by seeking expert advice from the council’s service providers.

5.1.1 Community Strategy

The Community Strategy should detail the priorities and objectives for the next five years to continually improve the environment based on local needs and economy in the Borough for all its residents, visitors and businesses community aspirations. The Local Government Act 2000 places a duty on all local authorities and their partners to produce a Community Strategy to improve the economic, social and environmental well-being of their area.

5.1.2 Corporate Plan

The Council’s Corporate Plan, 2004 to 2009, contains seven priorities and 24 objectives that align very closely to the Community Strategy. One of the objectives, under “A Listening and Improving Place”, is to provide quality services that can be accessed easily. The Plan was reviewed in February 2006, leading to a focus on a smaller number of priorities for improvement in the short-term.

5.1.3 Customer Services and Access Strategy

The Customer Services and Access Strategy should outline the various access channels promoted by the Council to disseminate information and deliver services. A key factor to this is to ensure that regardless of the channel used the citizen will receive the same excellent level of service and a consistency of current, relevant information.

5.1.4 Communications Strategy

The Communications Strategy should detail the communication channels to be used by the council to promote its services and how it will communicate with members of the public, the press and general publicity.

5.1.5 Information Management Strategy

The Council should adopt principles for managing information systematically and robustly, and making it readily available to those who need it (subject to compliance with legislation relating to information security and information-handling generally).

5.1.6 ICT Security Policy

Information and supporting technologies are a key resource to any organisation. The Council should ensure that the ICT Security Policy is robust and is as a minimum working towards the principles of ISO17799, The Code of Practice for Information Security Management. There is a responsibility on the Council to be able to demonstrate that the information about its customers and the systems that it is held on is secure and robust and is only used for the reasons agreed. There will come a stage where partners and third party suppliers may not work with Boston if the council is not seen to be working in this direction e.g. Government Connects’ Code of Connection (CoCo).




5.2.1 In the development of the majority of strategies there is limited evidence of having sought at the outset the expert advice of the council’s ICT service providers or the opinions of those who would be using the services being delivered by the strategies and those of the citizens. ICT appears to be an afterthought rather than being a key enabler that could affect the degree of success of the strategies.

5.2.2 The current Community Strategy was adopted in 2004 and is overseen by the Boston Area Partnership, which is Boston’s Local Strategic Partnership. Work on reviewing the Strategy will commence in 2007. This umbrella document links to the Local Plan (now the Local Development Framework) for the delivery of planning and land use priorities and the Boston Masterplan for the delivery of the economic and regeneration priorities. The Boston Masterplan is overseen by the Boston Area Regeneration Company. The Community Strategy also complements the Housing Strategy, which addresses the housing needs of the Borough.

5.2.3 The Council’s recently adopted Communications Strategy 2006 - 2009 has an objective to improve the website. This has been strongly highlighted during the workshops.

5.2.4 The Council currently has no Information Management Strategy. However Data Protection principles are applied as a result of the work undertaken prior to the departure of the Borough Solicitor. There is a Freedom of Information (FoI) Officer in Legal and Democratic Services and Head of ICT is, at the time of writing this strategy, the Data Protection (DPA) Officer, a role that previously resided within the legal department. Updated training for FoI and DPA has been rolled out via the Intranet and all staff should have now completed it.

5.2.5 The Records Management Strategy, which includes retention guidelines, was adopted in November 2004 and should therefore be considered for revision.

5.2.6 A Freedom of Information Code was also adopted in November 2004.

5.2.7 The Council current ICT Security Policy is now outdated and is being reviewed in consultation with the Council’s Lincolnshire partners. Socitm Consulting has provided a case study for information on information security awareness as a separate document.

5.2.8 In the Performance Improvement Plan 2006-2007, 7, seven priority areas for improvement have been identified. The seventh is to provide quality, customer focused services for which ICT which is a key enabler.

5.2.9 The Borough Council, via the Local Strategic Partnership, will be assisting Lincolnshire County Council with accessibility planning. Accessibility planning in Lincolnshire focuses on promoting social inclusion by tackling the accessibility problems experienced by those living in a rural county. There will be a specific focus on improving access to those services, which have the greatest impact on life opportunities – jobs, health care, learning and food shops – along with other key service centres such as post offices, leisure services and libraries.

5.2.10 The Boston area is home to many different communities. Following a recent Best Value Review of Community Cohesion the Council has adopted the following vision:- "To create an environment where people from all ages, backgrounds and cultures value and respect each other, are provided with similar life opportunities and can play a full part in building a prosperous economy and flourishing community"

5.2.11 Boston Area Partnership produced a Community Cohesion Strategy in June 2005, which is currently under review. Community cohesion and access to services also feature as headline challenges within the draft Local Area Agreement for Lincolnshire.



5.2.12 The Council's Generic Equalities Scheme is currently being updated and is expected to be adopted in January 2007.

5.3 Getting there

5.3.1 There should be an active liaison between ICT, Corporate and Service Strategies to ensure alignment between the ICT Strategy and other plans of the Council (in order to achieve and maintain a common vision).

5.3.2 All strategies, including the ICT Strategy, should be considered to be ‘live’ documents that are regularly reviewed and promoted. They should be written in such a way as to be easily updated and the process for their adoption to be thorough but rapid, all updates being published to staff and members immediately after adoption.

5.3.3 The Council should formulate, adopt, implement and maintain an Information Management Strategy, including an Information Security Management System supported by the appropriate technology. This strategy should comply with and support all current relevant legislation and should be managed by either the legal or the ICT service. The Information Management Strategy should comply with ISO17799, The Code of Practice for Information Security Management, which covers security for not only ICT issues but also security of data, physical security, business continuity, disaster recovery, incident management including escalation and consequence, risk mitigation, security of staff, contractors and visitors. Consideration should be given to where the responsibility for this should lie. It is the opinion of Socitm Consulting that the role of Information Management should be within the Information, Communication and Technology service where it would support the council’s services through systems procurement, implementation, support and maintenance and ensuring the resilience of the councils ICT systems.

5.3.4 The ICT Security Policy should be reviewed as a matter of urgency and should adhere to current best practice including the principles of ISO17799 that draws attention to the need for all employees and members to receive awareness training. ICT and HR should have a joint responsibility for ensuring that it is enforced through spot checks, education and terms and conditions of employment.

Strategies and Policies - Key Issues

• All corporate and service strategies should be linked and compliment each other.

• All strategies should be ‘live’ documents, being regularly reviewed and updated.

• The council should formulate, adopt, implement and maintain an Information Management Strategy, review the Data Protection policy and associated procedures and decide where the responsibility of Information Management should be.

• The ICT Security Policy should be reviewed in the full context of ISO17799 as a matter of urgency and enforced. All staff and members should receive awareness training.



6 Governance for ICT

6.1 Vision

6.1.1 ICT investment

Investment in ICT should be linked to Council objectives and provide sustainable funding for the ICT infrastructure (network, telecommunications, desktop, databases and applications software).

6.1.2 ICT policies

There should be a cogent and coherent set of ICT policies covering:

• Security and confidentiality;

• Access to and use of ICT services;

• Information sharing;

• ICT skills that the Council’s workforce need;

• Project management.

6.1.3 Organisation of ICT function

ICT should be organised and delivered through a rational combination of corporate and departmental service delivery responsibilities within a common overall direction in order to meet the business needs of the council.

6.1.4 Risk management

ICT projects and services should be subjected to systematic risk assessment to support a consistently high standard of service delivery. Risk mitigation should be applied as appropriate to all projects.

6.1.5 Prioritisation process

New developments (and other major projects) in ICT should be supported by well-structured documentation/business case. Competing priorities of proposed projects should be assessed by the application of weighting criteria that reflect Council priorities, core values and service imperatives (e.g. compliance with legislation).

6.1.6 Business continuity

The business continuity of Council services (which is the prime responsibility of the relevant Heads of Service) should be supported by service level guarantees. Given the similar nature of business continuity provisions, there should be a co-ordinated approach to alternative ICT service delivery routes and methods, and to ICT disaster planning.


6.2.1 Sustainable investment for ICT is crucial to balancing the annual budget. Whilst capital funding can be used to kick start projects, for example IEG funding, there is always a funding requirement for ongoing support, maintenance and upgrading. Boston have a particularly difficult financial position to deal with over the next few years, so spend on ICT must be able to demonstrate benefits either of cost or improvement in service delivery.



6.2.2 Although considerable work has taken place over the past year on Business Continuity Planning at the council (the council is one of the most advanced in the county), Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery are not yet comprehensively implemented throughout the council putting the council at risk. In addition to the Business Continuity planning work currently being coordinated by the Lincolnshire Resilience Forum, work is being carried out through the PSWG to consider options for shared ICT disaster recovery.

6.2.3 Since the council requires an updated annual ICT work programme it is currently unable to prioritise work, or assess the associated risks. A standard project management methodology has been introduced to the Council and its use is being actively promoted within the council. Previously projects have not being managed consistently, since a variety of project management methodologies have been used in the past.

6.3 Getting there

6.3.1 ICT Governance needs to cover:

• ICT Strategy review

• Forward planning and research into use of ICT within Boston Borough Council

• Accountabilities, standards, policies and guidelines on the use of ICT

• Priorities and resources

• Work programme formulation and monitoring

• Risk management

• Business Continuity of ICT services

• Co-ordination (including of training), dissemination of good practice

• Monitoring of ICT service delivery performance, security, quality and best value

• Oversight of (relevant) applications acting as corporate client including Financials & HR; asset management; Performance and Risk Management, GIS; LLPG; CRM; EDRMS; e-mail; Intranet.

• ICT Infrastructure client role: ICT architecture; ICT security; integration of corporate and departmental systems; disaster recovery and back-ups; corporate networks; desktop services

• Management and support of departmental applications

• ICT procurement

6.3.2 The Council will review how this is to be achieved, perhaps as a function of an ICT working Group.

6.3.3 The suggested brief for such a group would be:

• To undertake the ICT Governance role

• To provide a forum for presentations to keep the Council updated on the benefits and level of appropriateness for Boston of emerging technologies

• To provide input and coordination of ICT requirements to be included within the Council’s Service Development Plans to enable the delivery of those plans

• To formulate and monitor the annual ICT work programme

• To agree deviation from the programme should unexpected urgent requirements occur during the year so that the group understands the associated implications and risks.



6.3.4 Membership of the group should be:

• A ‘super user’ or other suitable representative from each service of the Council with the ability to appreciate the corporate implications

• A Councillor to represent the Members – perhaps the portfolio holder

• The Head of ICT will represent ICT

• Any relevant members of the ICT or other service areas for specific issues as required

It may take some time for the group to have the right dynamic and composition. The key requirements should be enthusiasm, authority to contribute to decisions, an understanding of the corporate implications and risks of ICT and a thorough understanding of the represented service.

The ICT Working Group should report into the Corporate Management Board after every meeting. It should also report into the Audit and Governance Committee giving progress on the delivery of the agreed annual ICT work programme and ICT Strategy.

6.3.5 The group should meet on a regular basis, 4 or 6 times a year so that the meetings tie in with the service development plan schedule and the budget process. Agendas should be produced and minutes taken which would be presented to the following Corporate Management Board by the Head of ICT. ICT staff should also be included in the circulation of both the agenda and the minutes.

6.3.6 It is recommended that the Chairmanship of the group should remain with a senior member of the group such as the Portfolio holder until the group has become established. It is expected that this would take approximately 6 months. After this time a rotational chairmanship might be considered as this would provide a training and experience opportunity and would reinforce that the group is not an ICT group but a business driven group with ICT providing the enablement and technical ‘expert’ role.

6.3.7 Robust business continuity and disaster recovery in ICT is fundamental to the delivery of the council’s services given the dependence of the services on ICT to be able to deliver services to the public. ICT should have a comprehensive disaster recovery plan to cover all communications, network infrastructure, systems and data for the council. This plan should be rehearsed on a regular basis and the plan modified as systems change and lessons are learnt. These plans should be developed and maintained in conjunction with the business continuity plans of the council’s services.

6.3.8 The highlight benchmark report suggests that the investment in ICT is low at the council. Sustainable funding is important for ICT and there is an opportunity to supplement internal funding of ICT through the projects being delivered through the Lincolnshire Shared Services Partnership and possibly other external funding streams such as the Rural Development Agency, European funding and others.

6.3.9 ICT has taken advantage of the funding provided through the e-government programme. Most of this funding would have been treated as capital. However, there is always an ongoing maintenance and support element of any ICT project that is usually treated as revenue. Ensuring that once the project has been implemented that it is financially sustainable is an important part of any solutions evaluation.



Governance for ICT- Key Issues

• Set up an ICT working group responsible for ICT Governance

• Write a comprehensive ICT disaster recovery plan to meet the business needs that is tested and updated on a regular basis.

• Ensure that all service business continuity plans include plans for ICT provision in the event of a disaster.

• Ensure that all funding for ICT is sustainable.

• Identify external funding opportunities.



7 ICT Service Planning

7.1 Vision

7.1.1 Development plan

A comprehensive managed, prioritised programme that is co-ordinated between corporate and departmental projects in line with departmental ICT strategies.

7.1.2 Investment plans

External funding and other procurement routes should be proactively sought.

Procurement should be co-ordinated to optimise resources to ensure economies of scale. This includes collaboration with other councils and public bodies in partnership for procurement effectiveness. Buying and selling of ICT services should be benchmarked against external provision and against best practice.

Resource requirements for project implementation and, once implemented, for service delivery and ongoing maintenance and support should be identified and sourced appropriately.

The sustainability, stability and performance of the Council’s ICT infrastructure should be ensured through capacity planning and lifecycle planning.

7.1.3 Skills plans

Training and recruitment of ICT specialist staff should be planned to meet the business requirements and delivery of the annual work programme. Users of ICT should receive adequate, timely training to ensure that they have the skills necessary to get the best out of the ICT systems and information available.

7.1.4 Programme and project management

The council should use a corporate project methodology based on Prince2. This would include the use of standard project documentation with a corporate programme role to support, co-ordinate and monitor across projects. All project management should include post implementation reviews and contract monitoring.


7.2.1 There has previously been no formal co-ordination across the various ICT projects and ICT requirements of services, however, the introduction of the e-Government priority outcomes and other initiatives, e.g. Pendleton requirements for e-Planning, have raised the profile of ICT and how it can improve service provision within service areas.

7.2.2 Whilst revenue and capital ICT budgets are reviewed each year there are no formal long-term investment, skills or infrastructure plans, because there is currently no corporate ICT annual work programme, since all resources were focused on delivery of the programme of work associated with e-government and priority outcomes. This strategy begins to address this issue.



7.2.3 The Council has recently adopted a corporate project management methodology based on Prince 2 called WPM – Simply Projects, which is in the process of being fully implemented across the council. ICT are not automatically called to provide ‘expert’ advice at the start of a new project.

7.2.4 There is no ICT programme management function currently within the Council. There is also limited project management resource, although the council is addressing this through training, actual experience gives the added value.

7.2.5 Work on compiling registers of software, hardware and skills has been started but needs to be completed.

7.3 Getting there

7.3.1 Assemble and maintain a comprehensive programme of ICT projects and service ICT requirements. Section 11 provides the basis of this work programme. Management of this would be the responsibility of the ICT working Group.

7.3.2 Establish and maintain sustainable budgets for infrastructure support and renewal. This includes a renewal programme for all PCs, laptops and desktop printers that is agreed and monitored by the ICT working group. If the council knew how many PCs it required over the following year, it may be able to consider a draw down type contract that would attract a better price through economies of scale. This could be extended to the LSSP. A print review has recently been carried out by Insatsu Chosa that will inform a printing and copying strategy.

7.3.3 Ensure consistent application of the adopted project management methodology to all projects for effective delivery of projects. This includes identification and allocation of appropriate resources, including project management, from both ICT and client side and the skills required to ensure successful delivery of the project before project start approval is given. Projects can often fail because the need for full commitment from both user and ICT side is not recognised. Each project should be reviewed on a regular basis to ensure that it is still meeting the business case and “stopping” the project should be allowed if it is no longer appropriate. All projects should be sustainable. Ongoing support and maintenance arrangements are a key part of a project and must be considered. Time and resource must be allocated to enable a post implementation review (PIR) to be undertaken after one complete cycle of the solution to ensure that the project has delivered to requirement and benefits are realised. ICT and users must be allowed to learn from lessons highlighted through the PIR.

7.3.4 Complete audits, update, create and maintain databases, asset registers or inventories for the following areas:-

• Technological Skills (within ICT but could be extended throughout the council)

• Third party contracts

• Hardware

• Desktop software

• Systems software

• Database register (standalone departmental databases)



ICT Service Planning - Key Issues

• Create and manage a corporate annual ICT work programme

• Establish an agreed, funded replacement program that is sustainable for all PCS, laptops and desktop printers.

• All projects should be managed using the corporate project management methodology allowing adequate resource for Post implementation reviews

• Full commitment from both user and ICT side prior to project start approval

• Undertake audits of skills, contracts, hardware, software, databases and software tools, create inventories and maintain.



8 Information Management

8.1 Vision

8.1.1 Freedom of Information (FoI) and Data Protection Act (DPA)

The council should conform to statutory requirements

8.1.2 Content Management

Common processes and tools should be applied throughout the Council. This allows the website (and shared data) content to be created, managed and presented efficiently. It also serves to provide a consistent set of processes for content providers, publishers and managers, which greatly ease training and support. Technological support of the Website should be provided by the ICT service. The responsibility for the content should lie with the data owner.

8.1.3 Records Management

Processes should be adopted whereby paper-based records can be accessed and referred to as part of a corporate and comprehensive service to customers. Archiving standards should be set.

8.1.4 Security framework

Full compliance with the relevant standard, ISO 17799, may not be considered necessary at this time for BBC, but adopting the principles of the standard are considered best practice and good preparation for when compliance may become compulsory. (www.iso-17799.com). Socitm Consulting has provided a case study titled Information Security Awareness for information on promoting this subject within the council.

8.1.5 Information sharing

The adoption of information sharing agreements, which comply with recognised standards with regards to security, with partners to ensure that respective responsibilities needs to be agreed and understood. Agreement is also needed as to the codification and interpretation of data. This is particularly relevant to the proposed Lincolnshire Shared Services Partnership.

8.1.6 Custodianship

The assignment of ownership responsibilities for information management, including formal regimes for the retention, archiving and disposal of information should be agreed and monitored.


8.2.1 The council ensures compliance with DPA and FoI. Currently the legal section responds to requests for information under FoI. The Head of ICT is the DP officer. Whilst these interim arrangements currently function well, Socitm Consulting recommends that both the areas of FoI and DP be covered comprehensively in a single area to ensure that the council is not put at risk.



8.2.2 Joomla is an open source product that is used as the council’s content management software for the website. It was felt that the navigation, usability and look and feel of the website could be improved and was raised as an area of concern by all the workshops. Some information is out of date, and a number of staff are unsure who can publish information to the site and how they can publish it. Other councils, including Shepway www.shepway.gov.uk are currently rated higher than Boston (Better Connected 2006), and both Shepway’s website and the website of Southwell Town Council www.southwellcouncil.com show what is possible using Joomla. This proves that the software is not the issue, ownership, training, facilities and style are. This project is being addressed by the Council’s recently adopted Communications Strategy.

8.2.3 Electronic Document and Records Management has not yet been corporately implemented at Boston. Some service area specific applications use local solutions to meet the needs of the service and its business application. Document Management has been identified as a key requirement in the Customer Service & Access Strategy.

8.2.4 The council currently has no formal security framework. It has an ICT Security Policy that requires updating and is working towards the principles of ISO 17799. This work is scheduled for this financial year (2006/07). The writing of a flexible policy that enables amendment to deal with technology changes has been proposed. Adoption of the Lincolnshire County Council policy is being considered as a short term solution for the Council to enable the Lincolnshire Shared Services Partnership to consider a common policy.

8.2.5 No formal standards are being used to share data, although it is understood that there are some limited protocols in place for example in community safety. There are guidelines available for information retention and a Data Protection policy and these are to be available on the Intranet. Some metadata tagging is being used with limited success. A Local Land and Property Gazetteer has been implemented at Boston but the Council’s third party software suppliers do not automatically conform to the address standard at present.

8.2.6 Custodianship/ownership requires attention. There is confusion over who is responsible for the data and information being published on the website and who is responsible for currency and relevance. Some service applications and databases are held on user’s PCs. This is being addressed, but gives cause for concern since corporate databases should be backed up on a regular basis. Through the user workshops it was identified that some of these local database users were not familiar with the Council’s backup procedures, but just assumed that ICT did it.

8.3 Getting there

8.3.1 Through the Corporate Management Board agree where the responsibility for FoI and DPA is managed in the Council. Other associated areas such as disposal of confidential waste, redundant PCs and laptops also need to be addressed.

8.3.2 The corporate project to rejuvenate the council’s website should be progressed. This will involve redesigning the site to make information more intuitive to access and to make more transactional services available, utilising e-forms and e-payments. Retrain authorised staff in publishing information to the site that it relevant and timely, understanding that it is the service’s information so the service is responsible for that information. Ultimate responsibility for the website content should lie with the Communications Officer. ICT should be responsible for ensuring that the site and supporting applications are technically supported, maintained and has acceptable, minimal downtime.



8.3.3 Old data archives, where access is required frequently, should be converted to the agreed standard, which could be part of a corporate Electronic Document and Records Management System project or even sourced from the Lincolnshire Shared Services Partnership. This is of particular reference to the planning service that has archived data in several formats. This will greatly assist with the sharing of data and improve service delivery to the citizen.

8.3.4 The consistent application of standards for data quality and classification, metadata tagging should be adopted corporately for all information.

8.3.5 ISO 17799 should be promoted corporately so that as a minimum there is an increased awareness on information security. Ultimately the council may wish to consider becoming accredited, although at this stage being seen to be seriously adopting the principles of the standards should be sufficient.

Information Management- Key Issues

• Identify who will be taking responsibility for FoI and DPA in the future.

• Rejuvenate the council website

• Consider the implementation of a corporate EDRMS (ISO15489), perhaps as part of LSSP.

• Standardise archiving technologies.

• Corporately adopt standards for data quality and classification

• Adopt principles of ISO17799 working towards accreditation or compliance.



9 ICT Service Delivery

9.1 Vision

9.1.1 ICT service management

The council should have Business plans for ICT service delivery in place that incorporate Aims and Key Tasks that meet the business needs and requirements of the council and offer value for money.

ICT should endeavour to demonstrate excellence in performance and quality in the higher quartiles of comparators.

ICT should be consistently managed and delivered in accordance with Service Delivery Statements (SDSs), with accompanying performance management and costing/charging regimes.

9.1.2 Improvement plans

Objectives should be stretched for improving services, informed by benchmarking against others.

Targets, methods and processes should be continually revieweds.

Standards for technology and how the technology is applied should be reviewed on a regular basis.

ICT should seek out best practice proactively for recommended use at Boston Borough Council.

9.1.3 Disaster planning

The ICT service should have rugged procedures in place for the restoration of services in the event of disaster with minimum disruption to business services according to business need.

ICT should have effective data back-up, verification and restore procedures that are tested on a regular basis.

Full documentation of all systems should be maintained to enable restoration of ICT services with minimum disruption to service delivery.

Disaster recovery procedures should be regularly tested, those tests should be documented and post mortems carried out.

The ICT service should provide expert assistance in the preparation of the individual business recovery plans for the services of the council.


9.2.1 The council has a partnership arrangement with Lincolnshire County Council for the development of business continuity plans. However, ICT disaster recovery is not yet comprehensive, has not been fully tested and is not yet fully documented.



9.2.2 The capacity of the ICT service is stretched and therefore much of its time is spent on “fire fighting.” This has been highlighted during the workshops. The highlight benchmark report also suggests that the service is understaffed by 2 FTE based on 8 ICT staff supporting 350 users at Boston. Currently only 5 technical ICT staff are in place. This makes it difficult for ICT to be proactive and to be able to undertake reviews

9.2.3 There are no formal SLAs between ICT and its customers. There are however agreed, but not necessarily appropriate, response and resolution times that are monitored as local PIs (See SDP and Performance Monitoring). These have been publicised through the use of an internal ICT questionnaire and follow up frequently asked questions, etc.

9.2.4 ICT does have a service development plan in line with the other services of the council.

9.2.5 A highlight benchmark report has been produced by Socitm Consulting as part of the process of delivering the ICT Strategy and Service review and has been delivered as a separate document.

9.2.6 The need to implement e-Government over a short timescale and the capacity of the team has resulted in a reactive as opposed to proactive approach. This means that, while considerable work has already been done as resource allows, there is further work to do to put in place the basic procedures. However, lessons learned as a result of failures and problems have considerably improved the situation and the team are being trained in ITIL and are putting in place ITIL best practice where feasible.

9.3 Getting there

9.3.1 To consider the introduction of Service Delivery Statements (SDSs) which are a softer version of Service Level Agreements. This is an annually produced statement, generated at the time of budget preparation which explains the composition of the annual recharge for ICT services broken down into tangible components such as number of PCs supported, number of hours of ICT support per annum and the amount of server capacity taken up by departmental applications. It also details agreed service levels, what is expected of the user and what the user should expect of ICT. Socitm Consulting would be happy to provide examples and provide assistance with the introduction of Service Delivery Statements if required.

9.3.2 ICT should provide expert assistance in the annual production of the service development plans for all service areas to ensure that appropriate ICT requirements are included, which in turn would help to inform the creation of the annual work programme.

9.3.3 The ICT service development plan should take into consideration the technological requirements of the other plans of the council’s services to enable them to deliver.

9.3.4 Boston should consider participating in a national ICT benchmark exercise, such as the Socitm Benchmarking service, to enable the service to demonstrate excellence and identify areas for improvement. Participating in a national exercise also provides a network of similar councils to gain experience on how to improve. Some members of the Lincolnshire Shared Services Partnership already participate in the Socitm Benchmarking service.

9.3.5 A comprehensive disaster recovery plan should be written for ICT. This should include plans for telecommunications, the network infrastructure, hardware, software and systems. This should be tested on a regular basis and reported on. The plan should be modified to take into account any changes. Staff should be fully trained in their role in the event of a disaster. This is part of ISO17799.



9.3.6 The ICT service should consider further adoption of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), as a framework for service delivery. One of the core principles of the ITIL framework is the provision of quality customer service which is achieved by ensuring that the customer requirements and expectations are met at all times. ITIL provides best practice guidelines and architectures to ensure that IT processes are closely aligned to business processes and that IT delivers the correct and appropriate business solution. One of the main objectives of ITIL is to assist the IT service to improve IT efficiency and effectiveness whilst improving the overall quality of service to the business within imposed cost constraints. Further information on ITIL can be found at www.itil.co.uk. The adoption of the National e-Service Delivery Standards should also be considered.

Note that ITIL has now started to be considered by ICT and that two members of the service have received initial training and are putting in place some of the best practice.

9.3.7 Also worth considering adoption are the National e-Service Delivery Standards for ICT (NeSDS). Local Authorities who adopt the Standards will be able to identify where to start in moving towards the delivery of more efficient services, thereby determining how much progress they have made to date. They can see what ‘excellent’ services look like and how far they have to go in order to achieve the delivery of an ‘excellent’ service. This therefore provides an opportunity to prioritise services, allowing them to focus their effort and resources on achieving the improvements needed for the priority outcomes Gershon Agenda, IEG and CPA. Note that Boston was a consultee on behalf of East Midlands Councils for the development of these standards.

ICT Service Delivery- Key Issues

• Consider introduction of SLAs or SDSs

• Provide expert assistance in the production of service development plans

• ICT service development plan should consider requirements of the services.

• Consider participating in a national benchmarking exercise on a regular basis.

• Write, implement and test a comprehensive ICT Disaster Recovery plan

• Consider adoption of ITIL framework and NeSDS



10 Technology architecture

10.1 Vision

10.1.1 Contact channels (web, e-mail, post, telephone, personal visit, etc)

Provision of these facilities should relate to the demand from customers (in terms of what, when, where and how) but customer demand should be managed where reasonable to do so, to promote the use of contacts that optimise effective service delivery against cost.

10.1.2 Service applications

The council should adopt business-led; best-of-breed packages where available and affordable in order to:

• Achieve cost-effective procurement and delivery of ICT;

• Deliver user friendly applications that meet the professional requirements of the council

• Minimise the risk of non-compliance with relevant service standards and legislation;

• Ease the integration of information between Council systems (through commonly available interfaces);

• Ease information transfer and sharing with other agencies

10.1.3 Integration

ICT should use system architecture and integration tools that conform to e-GIF (e-Government Interoperability Framework) standards which are mandatory for all public sector organisations, wherever possible.

10.1.4 Application support tools

Support and integration problems involved in accessing data across multiple systems should be minimised through common search and reporting facilities – e.g. by adoption of browser based Intranet.

10.1.5 Common infrastructure services

ICT should adopt the use of standard software for workflow, desktop software, back-up and resilience. Where possible, the use of standard database solutions.

10.1.6 Infrastructure

ICT should use a standard desktop with the provision for regular technology refresh on an as needed basis (allowing remote management, and sign-on to the Council’s network from anywhere)

Advantage should be taken of the latest proven technologies for unified voice and data networks that allows the common transport of voice (which requires consistent two-way traffic for the duration of a call) alongside data (which is very variable as to the quantity, source and direction and is transmitted in bursts)

ICT should have a review programme of standard ICT platforms, databases and software: balancing ease of management with the need to keep up-to-date.




10.2.1 e-GIF standard is specified and used where possible.

10.2.2 System backups are done in a variety of ways, using different technologies.

10.2.3 PCs and laptops are sourced from the current Dell range to meet the current minimum specification. File servers are sourced from the HP product range through the three quotes process to meet Council’s financial regulations. ICT use the HP Insight Management suite to manage these servers. Printers are usually based on the HP product range and are purchased as required. Office software is standardised on Microsoft Office products. Email is currently GroupWise based on Novell.

10.2.4 Databases include Microsoft SQL, MSDE, Microsoft Access, Universe, Ingres 2, Sculptor and Oracle 8i which is soon to become unsupported. Microsoft SQL is the preferred database.

10.2.5 IT for Members at Boston Borough Council has been a slow starter. Dial up connections and 2nd user PCs were initially used by Members who soon lost patience with the speed of service delivery. Broadband has now replaced the dial up connections and those Members who are using the service have found a significant improvement in speed and functionality. At this stage not all members are using IT to access information and as a means of communication. The programme is due to be restarted in 2007/08 Q1.

10.2.6 The Council’s voice and data networks are based on the IP family of protocols over in-house Local Area Networks (LANs) and leased Wide Area Network (WAN) circuits and, therefore meet the vision. Also working with LCC regarding the Resilient Ring project.

10.2.7 The number of passwords used to gain access to various levels of security of systems has been criticised during the workshops. This has been reduced over the past couple of years with the introduction of a single sign on where possible. Not all applications currently support this functionality.

10.2.8 The main office runs a relatively new Siemens Realitis switch. Fen Road run an old Rocom switch and outputs from the workshops suggest that the handsets and telecommunication service received at Fen Road is poor and is need of attention. The ICT service should endeavour to deliver the same quality and performance in its service delivery regardless of location. This work has been delayed due to resource, capital programme freeze, the need to develop the ICT strategy and work plan post IEG and the future of the Fen Road depot location.

10.2.9 The Council’s current application portfolio is outdated in some areas, there is limited integration and little in the way of cross service interfaces.

10.2.10 Customer services have the potential to be a key factor in the delivery of services to the public if developed and managed appropriately. Socitm Consulting understand that according to the recently adopted Customer Service and Access Strategy (CSAS), Boston will be creating a ‘virtual’ team of Customer Service trained staff reporting to The Head of Community Development with common set of training and skills. ICT will be a key enabler in the delivery of consistent information and services through this channel and this has been identified within the CSAS.



10.2.11 Boston uses Cedar’s e-Financials finance package. According to the Socitm Software Survey – see Appendix A, this is the most popular financial management package. Whilst it may be adequate for accountancy purposes there are some issues and the users appear to be very frustrated with its usability. This could be due to lack of familiarity with the system and poor implementation. Oracle 8i, the database that the package uses will soon no longer be a supported version.

10.2.12 The Council currently uses MapInfo which is capable of being rolled out further as a corporate system. The council also has a Local Land and Property Gazetteer. Both of these applications are integrated into the Licensing, Land Charges, Planning and Building Control applications. Further integration is possible subject to resourcing.

10.2.13 The website has been criticised during the workshops for not being an effective shop window for the Council’s services, with some information outdated, poorly presented, and there is still a training issue for the staff charged with publishing information onto the website. There is also some confusion as to who is responsible for publishing and managing information, maintaining, supporting and developing the site. This has been recognised in the Customer Service and Access Strategy and the Communications Strategy.

10.2.14 The Better Connected publication has ranked Boston’s website below average compared with other Councils and other Councils using the same software have been ranked higher. The content management software is considered to be adequate for the Council’s purposes and was a low cost option at the time especially since Microsoft was not interested in working with the council due to the mixed environment.

10.2.15 The council lacks certain key corporate systems that could bring about greater efficiencies and improved service delivery. These include Electronic Document and Records Management and Customer Relationship Management. There is also a lack of alignment in some areas with other members of the LSSP that could cause problems later on delivery of shared services and projects and this includes the current use of GroupWise.

10.3 Getting there

10.3.1 ICT should adopt wherever possible, recognised standards for integration and connectivity including e-gif and XML based protocols. Ideally information should only be held once e.g. property addresses or in the future person information. See Appendix F for connectivity references.

10.3.2 All of the council’s spatially related systems should take advantage of the Council’s GIS system and also the Local Land and Property Gazetteer. The GIS system should be considered to be a corporate application that can benefit the whole council by improving service delivery across all access channels.

10.3.3 ICT should consider the use of SANS technology to improve performance and efficiency in backing up systems. The benefits of using SANS technology include:

• Centralised backup of desktops, laptops & servers including geographically remote sites.

• All backups can be scheduled to run automatically day or night to suit your working hours.

• Backup of multiple operating systems, system files, e-mail, databases and all other files whilst they are open.

• Fast and efficient data recovery.

• Ability to restore critical data quickly to any machine or location to minimise disruption in a disaster.



10.3.4 IT needs to become the normal method of accessing information and communication for all Members at Boston Borough Council. Elections will be held in May 2007. After the elections there will be extra training for existing members who require it and a structured training programme for newly elected Members together with a high level of support. Some of the training may need to be on a one to one basis to encourage some of the less technically confident Members.

10.3.5 Password controls should be reviewed to determine if there is an easier process for users without compromising security and taking into account the requirements of the differing applications that do not always support single sign on. Security will be an issue because more sophisticated technologies and authentication may be required for access to sensitive information e.g. relating to children.

10.3.6 Several departmental applications have been identified as having reached, or soon reaching, the end of their initial term of contract, or requiring an upgrade. These have been included in the list of projects in Section 12. Of particular concern is the status and use of the Financial Management System, e-financials supplied by Cedar Open Accounts. The council is dependnt on this system for the management of its financial affairs including budget management, payments and receipts.

Ideally the replacement of any application should be allowed 12 months for specification, tendering, negotiation, implementation, training and data migration. When specifying new systems requirements attention should be given to compliance to national standards, ease of use, ability to share data with other applications via interfaces and system integration tools. Ideally the council should endeavour to hold data once and share it between applications as appropriate, for example Land and Property Gazetteer, GIS, EDRMS, single property database, single person database. Standardisation on data extraction, reporting tools and browser based Intranet

10.3.7 Users should participate in supplier supported user groups for the software applications being used by the council. This is often an effective way of getting system enhancements escalated with the supplier since problems being experienced by Boston are often mirrored at other sites. It also provides a networking opportunity to be able to identify system functionality best practice.

10.3.8 All the applications run by the council should have three systems:-

• Test

• Train

• Live

If server space is limited the test system could also be used for training. All new patches and releases should be loaded onto the test system, tested by the user (and ICT where appropriate), signed off by the user and only then loaded into the training and live systems.

Adoption of this practice, which is already in place for the Council’s newer and key systems, will help to ensure the integrity of the live system.

10.3.9 Attention should be given to the performance level of the telecommunications at the various locations. This may include updating the telephone switch at Fen Road. When supplying telephone units to staff ensure that each unit is fit for purpose and that adequate training is given if needed. Standardisation of handsets would minimise the support and training required. Introduction of the use of voicemail should be considered, but needs to be used effectively and managed.



10.3.10 Use of access channels should be prioritised against demand and benefit. Some technologies may not be appropriate for Boston at present such as digital TV. Nationally access channel popularity ranking is still face to face, telephone, letter, Internet. Whatever channel is used to access services and information the service should be consistent in content and quality.

10.3.11 By using the inventories/registers as previously recommended the council will find it easier to review and plan upgrade and replacement programmes for hardware and applications. However, if a solution is performing reliably and is not compromising other systems it should not be automatically replaced just because it is old.

10.3.12 Standardisation on PCs, laptops, desktop software, databases, and operating systems will ease the issues in capacity for support and development, but this cannot be done unless inventories and registers are fully in place as previously recommended.

10.3.13 The use of thick client, thin client and citrix should be applied as appropriate and as dictated by the application. Standardisation on any one particular method of connectivity is not practical, it is better to adopt the best solution for each individual case within the council’s agreed standard. Consideration should be given to the council’s remote and mobile working policies and strategy when selecting the most appropriate solution.

10.3.14 Align the technologies used at Boston Borough Council with those used by the other partners of the LSSP where of benefit to Boston. This will prepare the council in becoming able to take advantage of proposals of the LSSP shared services where appropriate. In particular, it would benefit the council to standardise on Microsoft products starting by migrating from GroupWise to Microsoft Outlook and Exchange.

10.3.15 The opportunities provide by the use of the resilient ring should be taken up as soon as possible to address some of the issues mention earlier with communications, Local Area Networks (LANs) and Wide Area Networks (WANs). Opportunities presented in the longer term by the LSSP for the provision of CRM and EDRMS should be seriously considered.

Technology Architecture - Key Issues

• Promote IT for Members as the normal channel for accessing information and communication after the May 2007 elections

• Review password control for systems access

• Gain maximum business benefits from corporate use of GIS

• Source cost effective support for Oracle 8i for duration of existing e-financials contract.

• If feasible build into 2007-2008 work programme replacement projects for all applications identified for renewal in the next financial year adopting the 12 month lead time rule.

• Standardisation project for support tools particularly towards browser based technologies, PCs, laptops, desktop software, databases etc.

• Review telecommunications facilities particularly at Fen Road particularly to deliver consistency in performance and functionality.

• Invest in those access channels that demonstrate maximum use and benefit.

• Deliver consistency in delivery of information and services

• Build into the work programme a replacement programme for hardware based on information from the inventories and registers.

• Adopt a best of breed solution policy wherever possible.

• Consider alignment of technologies with partners

• Use of recognised standards for interfacing and connectivity.



11 ICT Service Role and Structure

11.1.1 The ICT Service Review presents three structures for the ICT service based upon three roles for ICT service delivery as described by Gartner research.

11.1.2 The costs associated with the current structure and role is in the region of £364,000.

11.1.3 Data from the recent Socitm Salary Survey has been used to estimate remuneration levels for each of the three structures.

11.2 The IT Utility role

11.2.1 This is the most straightforward option, responsible for providing ICT-based services and operating them with competitive efficiency. Socitm Consulting consider that the current ICT service is operating within this role but is struggling to be effective with the current level of resource, skills and experience. The likely costs of providing a fully resourced and experienced structure to support this role would be in the region of £482,000.

11.3 The IT Services Broker role

11.3.1 This role is a very small unit with specialist contract and negotiation skills which has chosen to outsource all of its ICT products and services to external service providers. This role would have no technical expertise or local business knowledge to assist services. Likely costs for a structure supporting this role are likely to be in the region of £370,000. However, there would be additional costs associated with any contracts to support ICT technical requirements. These contracts will have less flexibility than the current ICT service and it is the experience of Socitm Consulting that any ICT outsourced contract will cost at least 20% more than the current service provision within 2 years of the start of the contract.

11.4 The Business Change Agent

11.4.1 This role represents an ICT service prepared to align itself with the wider business and support strategic objectives, offering skills and credibility that can really add value. To achieve this ICT needs to play a more proactive and strategic role within the council in order to ensure maximum benefit from past and future investments in technology.

11.4.2 Socitm Consulting recommend that the ICT service adopt this role for future service delivery using a combination of in house, partnership and outsourcing service delivery methods as appropriate and beneficial to the council.

11.4.3 The costs associated with this structure would be in the region of £440,000.

11.5 The Change Process

11.5.1 Whichever option is adopted, the posts within the structure would have to have new job descriptions and person specifications written. The new job descriptions would have to be evaluated in line with current council practice. It is likely that the evaluation process will probably result in an adjustment to these estimates.



12 Implementation

12.1 Options

12.1.1 This strategy means that a significant number of general housekeeping functions will need to be done. There are also a number of departmental software reviews and procurements that will need to be undertaken. The Council should treat each of these separately but would need to ensure that compatibility of the various systems is treated as a critical factor when evaluating potential solutions.

12.1.2 This strategy identifies a number of corporate solutions that may be procured through the Lincolnshire Shared Services Partnership. Given the possible overall value of theses procurements the partnership should publish an EU Notice (using Negotiated Procedure) encompassing all its requirements and inviting bids for any one or more partners with the options for partners to join the solution at a later date. Such an advertisement could also include an invitation for suppliers to submit bids on alternative approaches such as Application Service Provision (ASP). There is also the option of using framework agreements through ESPO, OGC or Catalyst that could also be used for the management of the bid process if the OJEC route was required.

12.1.3 Indicative costs for systems are shown in the action plan (12.2), where available. These should be treated with care as much depends on the scope and breadth of the Council’s requirements.

12.1.4 All projects should be supported by a full business case before finally being accepted onto the projects list. Comprehensive options appraisals should be undertaken and each project managed using the corporate project management methodology.

12.1.5 It should be noted that at the time of writing this ICT Strategy the projects list was still being developed and was not complete. It was not therefore possible to prioritise the projects, however an indication has been given, where possible, of the status of each project.

12.1.6 Once established, the projects list should inform the annual work programme which in turn should develop into a rolling work programme that is agreed, monitored and managed corporately through the ICT Working Group.



12.2 Action Plan

Status Key:- C=Critical N=Necessary I=Important

Contract Current yr. Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5

Project Status End 2006/7 2007/8 2008/9 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 Notes

1. Cedar e-financials

Upgrade Oracle to v10

Upgrade e-fin to v3.4

Health check

Oracle support

Cancel current oracle support contract

C 1829

13714

-8300 -8300 -8300 -8300 -8300

FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Approach either original supplier or Oracle

15days@£795+expenses(15%)

2days@£795+expenses(15%)

Costs for 3 levels of support have been supplied

2. Capita Axis Income Management 0 68000 0 0 0 0

3. Capita Chris 2000 cash receipting To be replaced by Axis

0 -?????? 0 0 0 0Potential savings

4. Capita REMIT To be replaced by Axis 0 -?????? 0 0 0 0Potential savings

5. Capita Academy 0 0 0 0 0 0

6. Capita Direct Public 0 0 0 0 0 0

7. Capita e-billing 0 0 0 0 0 0

8. Boston AD project Time only

9. CACI QPR 0 0 0 0 0 0





10. GVA Grimley N 0 5,000 0 0 0 0Hardware only also require s/ware

11. Frontier Chris

New server

Database conversion

Software upgrade

Migration Assessment

Installation

Training

I

5,000

7,000

7,500

950

750

1,500

PAYROLL & PERSONNEL SYSTEM

2days@£750 per day

12. Northgate Pickwick

Needs to be reviewed, legacy system but still most popular one used. Elections in May 2007. Northgate have recently acquired MVM where the product originated. All development was put on hold. New development plan has just been completed and should be available on request from supplier.

13. Swift LG Swiftsearch

14. Online payments for car park season tickets

Regeneration

15. Payment over phone for ECN fines. Regeneration





16. IBS Open Housing

17. Delta Scuba N 5,000 Hardware- no estimates on s/ware yet

18. Swift LG APAS/PLACIS

19. Civica Flare

20,000 New box for flare - need to consider moving on to SQL version in future in line with council’s preferred database

20. Gower Epilog N 50,000 Replacement system

21. Open Source Joomla

3,000 Assistance in revamping website

Coordination and branding of various other linked sites for example Guildhall, Haven, TIC.

22. Capita CRM No action – await LSSP

23. CES

24. IMR Alchemy

25. EDRMS No action – await LSSP

26. MapInfo

27. SPSS 4,000 new box to be shared with Formic

28. Formic

29. Weblabs Forms Master

30. Weblabs Community Master





31. Touchpaper 18,000 review s/ware reqs & perf y1, replace y2?

32. Sophos, Anti-virus software critical Jul-08 10,000

33. Fortinet Firewall & Internet Security

150 900 37,018 0y1 new licenses, y2 new licences +50 extra, y4 replacement

34. Civica Galaxy

35. Microsoft Office 2003 15,000 training for users on upgrade to 2007

36. MS Access 97 & VBA post logging database

37. Access Databases - various

Create inventory, promote guidelines for development

38. ID Pro

Staff cards?

39. Novell Netware, File & Print Sharing, Novell to Microsoft exchange

Mar-07 56,552 Extend novell for further year while migrating to exchange/outlook, plus user training on M/S Outlook

40. Delivery to desktop including thin client

41. Open Source tools

20,000 cisco infrastructure performance monitoring tools

42. Oak Telecom Call logger

43. Smart Start

44. Hexagon (HSBC) Mar-07 Contract renewal being considered





45. Win Albacs

46. HP Insight Manager

47. GGP NLPG (LLPG)

48. NDIS £? Progression to level 3

49. GIS

Corporate roll out and adoption

Links to Boston Mayflower – contractual obligation

50. Planning

£? Project to gather all planning history information into one place – linked to corporate archive/information management strategies and policies

IT assistance in enabling online consultation of LDF documents – ICT time only?

51. Customer Services Access Strategy Projects

Needs to be broken down into individual projects from the Strategy

52. Install ICT in interview rooms

(CSAS project?)

5,000

53. Novell Zenworks

20,000 Installation, consultancy and contractor support

54. Veritas and corporate backup solution





55. Virtualised server hardware

46,000 25,000 0Improved resilience, more efficient server management

56. Lincolnshire procurement card

-12,200 -5,400 -20,100 -25,100 -24,100 -23,600 Taken from Lincs procurement card business case annex B financial analysis

57. PC/Laptop replacement programme

52,500 52,500 52,500 52,500 52,500 25% of total number of PCs/Laptops * £600

58. Server replacement programme 44,980 22,640 72,500 15,800 38,000 212,500 Taken from spreadsheet A provided by AM

59. Lincolnshire resilient ring

Costs for connection and savings to be made not known at point of writing.

60. ICT working group

61. ICT work programme

62. ICT Structure revision estimate 30,000 33,000 36,300 39,930 43,923 48,315

63. CRM - wait for LSSP

64. EDRMS - wait for LSSP

65. Service Delivery Statements

66. Disaster recovery & Business continuity -PSWG

Costs unknown at present





67. Members IT

7,000 25,000 7,000 7,000 7,000 7,000Elections in 2007/8, concerted effort to get all members on board

68. Software/hardware inventory

Maintenance as well as setting up – time only

69. Contract renewal alert system

70.

71. Inventories and registers. Completion and maintenance

72. ISO17799

£? Compliance is not recommended at this stage but clear demonstrable evidence of working towards adopting principles of ISO17799 should be sufficient at this stage

Awareness training for all staff and members

TOTAL 115,930 334,892 196,200 90,130 179,341 296,715

Boston Borough Council APPENDICES


13 APPENDIX A – Socitm Software Survey 2006 Extracts

This extract shows the most used product for each application area and where the Boston Borough Council product used lies. This is not a comprehensive list but covers the majority of the business applications. A key is provided at the end of the table.

Pos. Supplier Authorities in Sample

Satisfaction Indices *

General Ledger Number % SP Fn Rel

1 Cedar (e-Financials) 77 17.4 3.2 3.6 4.0

2 Agresso 57 12.9 3.5 3.7 3.8

3 Oracle Financials 54 12.2 3.1 3.8 4.2

E-Payments

1 Civica (ICON) ex Radius 80 13.0 3.7 3.9 3.7

2 Capita Academy (AXIS) 49 19.0 3.5 3.6 3.9

Debtors

1 Civica (Powersolve) ex Radius 60 16.0 3.7 3.4 4.0

2 Cedar OpenAccounts (e-Financials) 58 15.4 3.3 3.5 3.9

Debt Recovery

1 Civica (ARMS) ex Radius 47 16.9 3.6 3.5 3.9


Cash Receipting

1 Capita Academy 112 30.9 3.3 3.7 3.8

2 Civica ICON 106 29.2 3.8 4.0 4.0

Income Management

1 Capita Academy 25 31.3 3.6 3.7 3.9

2 Civica ICON 16 20 4.0 3.8 4.0

Fraud Management

1 Intec (InCase) 42 24.0 3.6 3.5 3.8

2 Capita Academy 15 8.6 3.0 3.4 3.1

Performance/ Programme Management

1 Panorama Business Systems (pbviews) 32 15.6 3.8 3.8 3.9

7 QPR 2 1.0 3.5 3.5 3.5

Asset Management

1 IPF 27 15.6 2.6 3.3 3.5

5 GVA Grimley 2 1.2 2.5 3.5 3.5

Purchasing




e-Procurement Number % SP Fn Rel

1 Oracle 20 11.6 3.7 4.0 4.0


Payroll

1 Northgate Information Solutions 101 26.0 3.5 3.7 4.0

3 Frontier (CHRIS) 44 11.3 3.8 3.6 4.2

Personnel

1 Northgate Information Solutions 91 22.0 3.3 3.4 3.8

3 Frontier (Chris) 39 9.4 3.7 3.5 3.1

Electoral Registration

1 Northgate MVM (ex Pickwick) 122 40.7 3.9 4.1 4.2

2 Strand 72 24 3.6 3.7 3.8

Land Charges

1 ESRI (CAPS Solutions) 90 33.1 3.0 3.5 3.6

4 Swift LG (Swiftsearch) 13 4.8 3.6 3.9 3.5

Council Tax

1 Northgate 117 37.3 3.1 3.6 3.6

2 Capita Academy 79 25.4 3.4 3.8 3.7

NNDR

1 Northgate 105 33.1 3.1 3.6 3.6

2 Capita Academy 80 25.2 3.4 3.8 3.7

Housing & Council Tax Benefit

1 Northgate 122 37.9 3.0 3.5 3.6

2 Capita Academy 82 25.5 3.4 3.8 3.6

Homelessness/ Waiting List

1 Northgate 28 27.7 3.6 3.7 4.1

4 IBS (Open Housing) 9 8.9 3.3 3.4 3.6

Leisure Centres

1 Gladstone MRM (Microcache & Membertrack)

70 35.9 3.1 3.4 3.3

4 Delta (Scuba) 14 7.2 3.5 3.0 3.4

Planning Development Control

1 ESRI CAPS (Uniform) 138 41.9 3.1 3.8 3.8

7 Swift LG 12 3.6 3.3 3.4 3.7



Planning Building Control Number % SP Fn Rel


6 Swift LG 11 3.4 3.2 3.4 3.7

Environmental Health & Trading Standards

1 Civica (including Flare) 149 43.1 3.8 3.8 4.1


Burials and Crematoria

1 Clear Skies Software (Shelton) 48 28.6 3.5 3.7 3.8

2 Gower Consultants (Epilog) 48 28.6 3.6 3.7 3.9

Content Management System (CMS)

1 Microsoft (CMS) 45 15.3 3.9 3.7 4.1

Joomla open source - not listed

Customer Relationship Management

1 Lagan (Frontline) 44 17.3 3.9 4.2 4.0

7 Capita (Direct) related to Acadamy product

7 2.7 2.8 3.0 3.5

Grounds Maintenance

1 Mapinfo (Composer & Confirm) 58 27.6 3.3 3.6 3.8

8 Civica (ex Flare) 4 1.9 2.5 4.0 3.5

Waste Management

1 Northgate MVM 14 9.0 3.2 3.4 3.4

4 Civica (ex Flare) 9 5.8 3.3 3.6 3.9

Document Management

1 Anite 98 27.5 3.3 3.6 3.6

7 Alchemy (Micrographics) 6 1.7

Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

1 ESRI 159 33.2 3.6 4.0 3.9

2 MapInfo 111 23.2 3.7 4.1 4.1

Survey Analysis Software

1 Mercator (SNAP) 78 49.1 3.7 3.7 3.8

2 SPSS 40 25.2 3.5 3.9 3.9

E-forms

1 Business Web (Achieve Forms) 54 22.7 3.7 3.8 3.7

Weblabs content master - not listed



IT Help Desk Number % SP Fn Rel

1 Touchpaper Software 51 12.6 3.5 3.6 3.8

2 Sunrise 45 11.1 3.4 3.4 3.9

4 Intuit (Track IT)2 35 8.7 3.5 3.6 4.0

Virus Scanning Software

1 Network Associates (McAfee) 124 29.2 3.8 4.1 4.1

2 Sophos 102 24.0 4.0 4.2 4.2

Legal Case Management

1 Solicitec (SolCase) 25 13.7 3.6 3.6 3.6

Galaxy - not listed (Civica)

SP = Supplier performance

Fn = Functionality

Rel = Reliability

The Boston application for each application area is shown in italics.

1 = application used most from survey

2/3/4/5/6/etc = position of application being used by Boston which is shown in italics which may also be rated as 1

2 May be worth considering as a replacement as the supplier performance and functionality it rated the same as

the current product, reliability rates higher and it used to offer good value for money (2004)



14 APPENDIX B – Consultees

Name Stake/

holder Title/area interview

date f2f/tel ICT

Workshop 06/11/06

Client Workshop 10/11/06


Andree Mitchell Y Head of ICT –consultation, direction and assistance throughout the process for developing this ICT Strategy

Chris Good Y ICT 26/10/2006 f2f Y

Jamie Moses ICT 26/10/2006 f2f Y

Andrew Claydon Y Dir. Resources 26/10/2006 f2f

Andree Mitchell Y Head of ICT

Victoria Newton-Davies Y Cultural Services 26/10/2006 f2f

Katherine Nundy Y HR 26/10/2006 f2f

Lorraine Bush Y Democratic services 26/10/2006 f2f

Kim Newboult-Robertson Y Legal Services Y

Suzanne Rolfe Y Performance & Improvement, Project Management, Risk Management

Y

Barrie Higham Y Cultural Services 26/10/2006 f2f Y

Paula Sargeant Y Property Services 26/10/2006 f2f

Nigel Hall Y Property Services

Vacant Post Y H.of Community Dev.

Bev Smith Y Community Safety, community regen; Community Cohesion, Emergency planning, business continuity

Mary Parkin Y Surestart, Childrens services

Fiona White Y Env. Health, Licencing 26/10/2006 f2f Y

Sam Knott Management Information Officer 26/10/2006 f2f Y

Dave Horry Y Cultural Services 26/10/2006 f2f Y

Peter Jullien Y Economic Regen.

Trevor Darnes Y Env. Health, Licencing 26/10/2006 f2f

Philip Jackson Y Env. Health, Licencing 26/10/2006 f2f Y



name Stake/ holder

Title/area interview

date f2f/tel

ICT Workshop 06/11/06



John Chapman Y Env. Health, Licencing

Andy Fisher Y Housing 23/10/2006 f2f Y

Sarah McCombie Y Ass.C.Exec. 23/10/2006 f2f

George Barnard Y Waste management & recycling, fleet management, street cleansing

23/10/2006 f2f

Ken Andrew Y Waste management & recycling, fleet management, street cleansing

Matt Fisher Y Parks & Grounds 23/10/2006 f2f Y

Martin Potts Y Bereavement Services 23/10/2006 f2f

Simon Sandland-Taylor Y Building Control 23/10/2006 f2f Y

Ian Farmer Y H.of Strategy & Partnerships 23/10/2006 f2f Y

Phil Drury Y Dir. Dev. 23/10/2006 f2f Y

Steve Lumb Y Ass.Dir.Regen. 23/10/2006 f2f

Nick Harding Y Dev.Control Y

Tracey Pettet Y Forward Planning Y

Richard Steele Y ICT 23/10/2006 f2f Y

Bob Wagstaff Y Revenues & Benefits 23/10/2006 f2f Y

Cherilyn Black Revenues & Benefits 23/10/2006 f2f Y

Fran Trowsdale Y Customer services 23/10/2006 f2f

Vacant Post Y H.of Environmental Services

Vacant Post Y Ass.Dir.Fin.Services

Glynis McEwing Y Procurement 23/10/2006 f2f Y

Gemma McMillan ICT 23/10/2006 f2f

Helen Dawson Y Accountancy, Capital Programme Management, Revenue Budget Management

f2f Y

Nick Mansey Accountancy, Capital Programme Management, Revenue Budget Management

23/10/2006 f2f

Matt Breathwick ICT 23/10/2006 f2f Y



name Stake/


date f2f/tel ICT

Workshop 06/11/06



Jane Piccaver Y Accountancy, Capital Programme Management, Revenue Budget Management

23/10/2006 f2f

Sue Lawson Y Communications 30/10/2006 tel Y

Mick Gallagher Y C.Exec

Cllr. Michael Brookes Y Portfolio holder for e-gov & Information Management 06/11/2006 f2f

Cllr. Richard Leggott Y

Cllr. Horace Battram Y

Cllr. Ernie Napier Y

Cllr. Andrew Finch 23/11/2006 tel

Cllr. Sally Gall Y

Lydia Gaunt ICT Y

Sheena Barsley ICT Y

Rebecca Apperley Y

Jenny Moore Y

Eleanor Hoggart Borough Solicitor 06/12/2006 tel



name Stake/


date Comments

Mark Starkey – spoke to someone else in IT

PSWG, E.Lindsey 29/11/2006 Seem to be doing more than the other members of PSWG on the DR front, but PSWG are looking at this anyway. Early days for LSSP

Jackie Mills PSWG, South Kesteven, (customer services & e-gov)

14/11/2006 Customer Service Centre just gone live so very busy. Funded by east midland centre of excellence, idea? funding stream funding comes to an end mar08

Ray White Technical Infrastructure Manager LCC LCC contact for major projects including resilient ring

29/11/2006 Lengthy conversation re resilient ring and disaster recovery project in PSWG.

David Haycox PSWG Co-ordinator, NKDC 1/12/06 Revised terms of reference for PSWG - now concentrating on shared services. Members shared support joint contract for out of hours being piloted.

Paul Kendrick PSWG, Lincolnshire health trust 30/11/06

Alan Thomas LSSP & NKDC Shared services lead for ICT 8/12/06 Early days yet for scoping ICT part, but will be considering EDRMS, CRM, training, support etc.



15 APPENDIX C – SWOTS

15.1 ICT Workshop

Strengths

1. Large skill set within small team 2. Ability for team to adapt to situations – team

working 3. Flexibility & adaptability of team under

specific constraints 4. Friendly and approachable 5. Can work all as a team, all have different

skills and knowledge 6. Fast workers, work well under pressure 7. Conscientious.

Weaknesses

1. Under resourced – staff and finance 2. Poor feedback to customer/staff 3. Lack of experience because of diversity 4. Shortage of time leads to poor documentation

and communication 5. Budget restricts us to develop skills and

systems 6. Lack of communication from the team to the

users 7. Lack of standards

Opportunities

1. Resource staff appropriately 2. Good skill set of staff – training and

development 3. Rationalisation of hardware, software, etc

would lead to greater in depth understanding 4. Wide range of knowledge 5. Can learn new things, skills from other IT

staff

Threats

1. Low morale = loss of staff 2. Outsourcing 3. Lack of resilience/resource – Disaster

recovery/business continuity/Best practice/Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)

4. Lack of funding 5. Support being taken over by external parties 6. Stress related illness due to pressure of work



15.2 Client Workshops

Strengths

1. In house service 2. Accessibility of support 3. Can-do attitude 4. Good team 5. Integrated well with the Council 6. Good interpersonal skills 7. Good desktop support 8. Excellent hand holding skills

Weaknesses

1. Limited knowledge of technology and software applications

2. Lack of technically proficient staff 3. Diversity of systems 4. Lack of consistency of service delivery across

offices 5. Skills on specialist systems weak 6. Hierarchy issue – where does ICT sit within

the Council & ICT structure 7. No service area database support, too many

access databases and no control or advice 8. Support to satellite offices poor 9. Many different servers, confusing,

inconsistent updates (version control)

Opportunities

1. Explore grant opportunities 2. Shared Services Agenda 3. To improve 4. Technological development 5. Business process streaming 6. Website development/re-design 7. e-Government development, full corporate

implementation of products bought/installed to meet e-Government requirements.

8. Customer focussed website

Threats

1. Financial constraints 2. Recruitment and retention of ICT staff 3. Technology could crash – disaster recovery

plans. 4. Reliance on service areas to have skill sets, but

knowledge vested in only a few people or even an individual person (e.g. efinancials)

5. Lack of specialist skills 6. Retention of skilled ICT staff (approximately

50 vacancies in BBC) 7. Lack of ownership of systems, projects 8. Lack of member involvement and

understanding of ICT issues 9. Lack of full project management cycle, once

system implemented move on to next, what about post implementation reviews etc.



16 APPENDIX D – Key Processes for CMM levels

Each of the levels requires the service to have all the listed key processes in place, together with the processes from the previous levels. Level Current State at Boston Borough Council

Level 1: Initial

• No key process areas prescribed for level 1

Level 2: Repeatable

• Service Commitment Management.

• Service Delivery Planning. ......................................................................... Service Development Plan

• Service Tracking & Oversight.

• Subcontract Management.

• Configuration Management.

• Service Request & Incident Management.

• Service Quality Assurance. Level 3: Defined

• Organisation Service Definition.

• Organisation Process Definition.

• Organisation Process Focus.

• Integrated Service Management.

• Service Delivery.

• Intergroup Coordination.

• Training Program. ..................................................................................... Personal development plans

• Resource Management.

• Problem Management. Level 4: Managed

• Quantitative Process Management.

• Service Quality Management.

• Financial Service Management .............................................................. Corporate Financial planning Level 5: Optimising

• Process Change Management. ............................................................................... Being implemented

• Technology Change Management.

• Problem Prevention.



17 APPENDIX E – Other Workshop Outputs

17.1.1 The Council expectations of ICT from the workshop sessions were:

• to contribute to service delivery efficiency and effectiveness;

• to be available on demand, wherever and whenever it is wanted within agreed limits;

• to be well-co-ordinated, well planned and appropriately resourced;

• to meet statutory obligations and government guidelines, notably e-Government and its accent on Customer Focus, the requirements of the Data Protection Act (DPA) and Freedom of Information Act (FOI);

• to be proactive in identifying technologies of benefit to the Council – both internally and in improving customer service;

• to provide demonstrable value for money;

• to achieve excellent performance and quality – in the upper quartiles of comparators;

• to be responsive to and supportive of service needs;

• to employ good information management practice (including good practice relating to the ownership, security and sharing of information);

• to support business continuity of the Council and its services;

• to demonstrate both a resilient and robust approach to the delivery of an ICT service that meets the requirements of the Council.

18 APPENDIX F – Connectivity references

The Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is a simple XML-based protocol that can run over different transports. At the moment, the random number server only supports the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). If you are new to SOAP, you might want to check out the W3School's SOAP tutorial.

Services that can be accessed via SOAP are often described in the Web Service Definition Language (WSDL). WSDL is comparable to the Interface Definition Language (IDL) often used with CORBA but contains information not only about the interface to the server, but also about its location. (In CORBA, information about server locations is stored in server references, not in the interface descriptions.)

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Boston Borough Council ICT Strategy

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