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Contents:
Transformational Government
Enabled by Technology
Annual Report 2006
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may be reproduced free of charge in any format or medium providing that it
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Foreword
Transformational
Government strategy sets out a six-year improvement journey for
public services. In the first 18 months, we said we would deliver
improvements already in the pipeline and build capacity for future
transformation.
This is the first annual report showing progress towards delivering that
strategy. We recognise within this report three things. Firstly, the
progress we have made against each of our published work strands;
secondly, the work we are doing to improve business change programmes
that have an information and communication technology (ICT) element; and
finally, the substantial benefit ICT provides to millions of people every
day.
What has struck me in my short time as the Government Chief Information
Officer is the sheer scale and complexity of the public sector and the
ubiquitous uses to which ICT is put. It is amazing to think that we
operate in over 140 countries, run some of Europe's
and indeed the world's largest computer systems, and
process tens of millions of transactions every single day of the year.
We are at the beginning of the Transformational Government strategy and
we recognise that we have more to do — more to do on
using ICT to improve public services; more to do on improving the value
we create from the investment we make; and more to do on improving the
success rate of our business change programmes.
We will provide a further update in our next annual report in 12
months' time.
The IT profession within the public sector has an estimated 50,000
dedicated people. Every day their dedication and hard work support those
who keep the traffic flowing, who ensure that benefits are being paid,
who save lives, who educate our children and who prevent crime. As Head
of Profession, I would like to take this opportunity to thank them and
also thank the tens of thousands of IT professionals in the private
sector who support us in these endeavours.
John Suffolk, Government Chief Information Officer
January 2007
Executive summary
This is the first Transformational Government annual report, covering
progress across the three main themes of the strategy:
- customer-centric services;
Comment: do strongly dislike the term customer.
While you are a "customer" of the DVLA, they're a monopoly with whom you have to deal.
Rather than take the term from business, why not take ... Reply?.
While you are a "customer" of the DVLA, they're a monopoly with whom you have to deal.
Rather than take the term from business, why not take ... Reply?.
Comment: I have pointed this out before, but I think it is ironic that in order to make government services 'customer-centric' we are obliged to hand over all our personal data including fingerprints. If any other ... Reply?.
- shared services; and
- professionalism.
The report itself is divided into two parts. The first part,
'Driving the strategy forward',
shows the overall progress made against the three themes outlined above
The second part of the report, 'Contributions from
public service providers', highlights the evidence of
transformational change already apparent across the public sector.
Accompanying this report, there are a number of online publications and
deliverables, including many case studies of successful
technology-enabled projects. Information on the individual programmes for
the devolved administrations in
Northern Ireland
Wales and
Scotland
is not contained within this report, but can be found on their own
websites.
Customer-centric services
Working to the Delivery Council, the Service Design Authority has
completed a number of tasks that will help to provide government with the
knowledge, tools and techniques for establishing the wants, needs and
preferences of both citizens and businesses. It has also provided input
to the service transformation review undertaken by Sir David Varney as
part of the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review. The Service Design
Authority is now working on a service transformation delivery plan under
the leadership of Sir Gus O'Donnell.
The website rationalisation policy, endorsed by ministers in April 2006,
requested pan-government guidance for plans to both rationalise content
and migrate it to either the
Directgov website (for
citizens) or the
Business Link website
(for businesses). Thus far, 951 websites have been considered and, of
these, 90 have already closed and a further 461 are planned to be closed.
374 of the remaining sites will be reviewed by June 2007, with a view to
encouraging further rationalisation.
Comment: So rather than people going to www.jobseekers.gov.uk they're going to have to go to www.jobseekers.direct.gov.uk
Reply?.
Reply?.
Shared services
Sharing services represents a major change for government; already there
are examples of significant progress. Transport for London has saved 30
per cent on human resources, the NHS has saved 34 per cent on processing
financial transactions, the Ministry of Defence has achieved a cost
reduction through the People, Pay and Pensions Agency, and the Department
for Work and Pensions has released resources for front-line work. The
shared service sector plans are available
online.
The Chief Information Officer (CIO) Council has been working to identify
barriers that prevent the sharing of services, and a report has been
produced on breaking down these barriers. This has included a toolkit for
practitioners. Both the report and the toolkit are available
online.
The development of the Government Gateway acts as an exemplar of the
common infrastructure model, providing a means for accessing over 100
government services online for 9 million plus citizens.
The Government has a dedicated committee for developing an information
sharing strategy across the public sector. A vision for
data
sharing has already been published (September 2006) making it clear
that Government is committed to greater information sharing in instances
where it is in the public interest, including fighting crime, providing
opportunities for the most disadvantaged and delivering better public
services. A full information sharing strategy is planned for summer 2007.
Information sharing is being used to explore new and better methods of
supporting the most disadvantaged, who need help across a number of
public bodies.
The Identity and Passport Service leads on identity management, with the
aim of improving government services by the more effective shared use of
data. In 2006, the Government created both a Ministerial Committee and
the Public Private Forum on Identity Management. Sir David Varney
reported and presented a case for making the most of existing identity
management assets and wider data sharing to improve front-line services.
The Chief Technical Officer Council has agreed and published the first
release of a cross-government Enterprise Architecture that addresses the
issues of reusing services and removing the technical barriers affecting
data sharing.
Achieving a step change in professionalism
Government needs the skills to deliver the technology-enabled programmes
that will transform public services. The Government IT Profession has
been launched with the aim of putting such advisers on a par with other
policy, legal, statistical or economic advisers.
Since July 2005, over 7,000 people have registered with the Government IT
Profession and, during 2005, a competency and skills framework was
introduced that will raise the quality and consistency of assessment
across the Civil Service. The broader capabilities required to deliver
these technology enabled programmes are being addressed via close working
with the programme and project management and procurement professions
(both headed by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC)).
Two workshops were held in 2006, jointly with the National School of
Government and the Said Business School, with more planned in January and
February 2007. Following on from these workshops, a strategy for the
creation of a Government IT Academy is due to be finalised early in 2007.
Support has also been given to departments to ensure that the right
people with the right skills are in the key roles. This has seen the role
of the CIO established as a board-level position. In August 2006, the
Technology in Business Fast Stream recruitment route to the Civil Service
was created for those who have the potential to be the CIOs of the
future.
Reliable project delivery
Building on a report from the National Audit Office (NAO), CIOs are
working with the OGC to create the conditions for more reliable project
delivery and to learn the lessons from those projects that have been
delivered successfully. Working
with OGC, the CIO Council has also approved new measures that ensure the
public sector both launches the right programmes (portfolio management)
and then manages and implements them in the right way (programme roles
and control mechanisms).
It is intended that the introduction of portfolio management will provide
oversight of each department's individual portfolio,
as well as a view across the whole central government portfolio. This
will ensure that, among other things, opportunities for sharing are
recognised, and the right resources are allocated based on priorities.
The programme roles and control mechanisms will bring robustness to the
appointments made to key roles (eg senior responsible owners and
programme directors) as well as hard-edged decision making relating to
stopping or restarting a programme.
CIO expenditure
The data presented on page 23 shows the IT expenditure in 2005/06 of
those parts of the public sector represented on the CIO Council (with the
exception of the Government Communications Headquarters).
Working better with IT suppliers
The aim of the CIO Council's supplier management
initiative is to make the Government a world-class IT purchaser,
obtaining best value for taxpayers. Deliverables already include the
first forward look at demand and supply of IT
services (ICT Capacity Project Report); a framework that presents
performance data on suppliers (Common Assessment Framework); a series of
cross-government
reviews of the most strategically important suppliers; and the
establishment of a joint CIO Council/suppliers board that ensures
consistent standards from suppliers, and aims to reduce supplier costs to
the
Government by up to 20 per cent while driving up IT delivery (the
Strategic Supply Board).
Contributions from public sector providers
Information is presented by the following departments and local
government CIOs:
Department for Education and Skills;
Department of Health;
Department for Work and Pensions;
HM Revenue & Customs;
Department for Transport;
Home Office and the wider criminal justice system;
Ministry of Defence;
Foreign & Commonwealth Office; and
Communities and Local Government.
There are many examples of delivery against a backdrop of great scale and
complexity:
For pupils, investment in technology is making a real difference to
educational attainment, with ICT Test Bed schools demonstrating twice the
national rate of improvement in key stage 2 English.
Picture and Communications Systems are now benefiting over 250,000
hospital patients per week. Using digital x-rays eliminates problems of
lost x-rays and the need to reschedule 5,000 patient procedures a year or
x-ray some patients twice. Emerging findings indicate that hospitals
implementing these systems can free up about 100,000 staff hours a year
to focus better on patients.
The Pension Service is in the process of implementing a major
transformation programme. It has replaced and simplified processes and,
as a result, each transformed pension centre is now dealing with its
customers' state pension claims in one 20-minute
telephone call — rather than talking to customers for
at least two hours and on several different occasions. This has resulted
in high levels of satisfaction for both customers and staff. By 2011/12,
The Pension Service will be saving £170 million annually in
operating costs.
There are also further case studies available
online, each of which has been endorsed by the department concerned.
Part 1
Driving the strategy forward
Part 1 of this report provides an overview of progress made in the last
year across the three main themes of the Transformational Government
strategy: customer-centric services, shared services and professionalism
(including reliable project delivery, strategic supplier management and
CIO Council IT expenditure). A detailed analysis of progress against the
Transformational Government implementation plan is available
online.
Transformation on a huge scale
Government departments help vast numbers of people, process massive
amounts of information and manage millions of financial transactions
every day of every week.
The National Insurance Recording System manages over £300
billion and is one of Europe's largest IT systems.
The Police National Computer handles around 10 million information
requests each month.
The Foreign & Commonwealth Office's network links
16,000 users in 240 posts across 144 countries, making it one of
world's largest and most geographically dispersed IT
networks.
The Department for Work and Pensions manages a larger annual turnover
than the national income of the Republic of Ireland.
The Department for Work and Pensions delivers 13 million benefit payments
each week — more than £100 billion each
year — and helps 4,000 people into jobs each day.
The Defence Information Infrastructure will reach 300,000 users on
150,000 terminals at almost 2,000 Ministry of Defence sites around the
world
In 2005/06, HM Revenue & Customs handled £395 billion in
receipts and administered £17 billion in payments.
Transforming public service delivery
Government is delivering high-quality, accessible services to millions of
citizens, businesses and front-line workers every day.
Customers can now apply for both State Pension and Pension Credit in one
20-minute telephone call, and the information collected is also used to
assess eligibility for Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit.
Almost 2 million people filed their self-assessment tax returns online
during the filing period ending 31 January 2006.
Around 100,000 families will get IT equipment and a safe internet
connection for learning as part of the Computers for Pupils initiative.
Each day, almost 1million primary school children use e-learning in their
classrooms.
More than 1.9 million hospital appointments have been booked
electronically, and over 9 million electronic prescriptions have now been
issued.
3.7 million motorists had renewed their car tax online by September 2006
New electronic border-control systems have generated 4,456 alerts to
border agencies and have resulted in 315 arrests.
Strategic context
The origins of Transformational Government
Technology has altered the expectations and aspirations of citizens,
businesses and front-line workers.
Private sector transformation now provides people with a range of
convenient, high-quality and often personalised services.
In part, the drive for improvement has come from forces outside
government. However, pressure to change has also come from within
government itself. In the 2002 Spending Review, more than £6
billion of new money was committed to public sector technology.
This enabled a wave of modernisation in health, education and criminal
justice — some of the world's most
challenging operational environments which create the most demanding
transformation projects.
Access to technology was an important early goal of this investment. The
most disadvantaged people can and do benefit from technology in public
services. For example, homeless people have the opportunity to learn new
skills, to keep in touch with family and to learn about accommodation or
work through mobile telephones or an internet terminal in a hostel.
To invest these new resources, public services had to tackle structural
problems that had lain dormant for many years while funds had been
scarce: a lack of customer focus, large-scale duplication and a shortage
of technology skills both in the public sector and among its suppliers.
"We cannot leave public services as they were, we
must build them around the personal aspirations of the individual
- renewal must and will be built upon these essential
truths: a flexible economy, reformed and personalised public services
Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP, speech to Labour Party Conference 2006
"Two-thirds of the country has access to the
internet. Millions of people are ordering flights or books or other goods
online, they are talking to their friends online, downloading music, all
of it when they want to, not when the shop or office is open.
The Google generation has moved beyond the idea of 9 to 5, closed on
weekends and Bank Holidays. Today's technology is
profoundly empowering.
Of course public services are different. Their values are different.
But today people won't accept a service handed down
from on high. They want to shape it to their needs, and the reality of
their lives"
Rt Hon Tony Blair MP, speech to Labour Party Conference 2006
Rt Hon Tony Blair MP, speech to Labour Party Conference 2006
A strategy for change
The 2005 Transformational Government strategy set out how government will
tackle these problems and enable transformation.
Comment: I wonder what will happen next. After this reorganisation has finished. Will we be invited to renew our car tax at www.direct.gov.uk/departments/driverandvehiclelicensingauthority/cartaxrenewal
?
... Reply?.
... Reply?.
In 2005/06 the Transformational Government agenda has moved to the heart
of public service reform.
The principles of Transformational Government are at the core of Sir
David Varney's review of service transformation, which
the Chancellor has published as part of the analysis informing
the
2007 Comprehensive Spending Review: Service transformation: A better
service for citizens and businesses, a better deal for the taxpayer.
The Government has commissioned a delivery plan to implement the
report's findings, to be published in 2007.
The departmental
Capability
Reviews also embody the principles of Transformational Government.
A hard path to transformation
As with any ambitious transformation agenda, we have had to learn lessons
and acknowledge shortcomings. Sometimes things have gone wrong and we
regret that. However, independent studies such as those carried out
byThe Standish Group in March 2003
confirm that the public sector success rate for technology-enabled change
projects is very similar to that of the private sector, but we must do
much more to improve our performance.
"In schools we were way behind other countries in
computers and IT €¦ in the CJS [criminal justice
system] there was no common IT system at all €¦ there
was a sense that the service was there, delivered to the consumer without
much regard to their needs and preferences €¦ the lack
of investment masked what was in reality a much more profound problem
than funding alone. It was a failure to modernise.€
Rt Hon Tony Blair MP, speech to the Labour Party National Policy Forum, 9
July 2005
"Public spending will be very tightly constrained
in the next few years to conform with the macro-economic policy
framework. This underlines the importance of IT-enabled transformation in
enabling us to continue the improvements we have seen in public services
while maintaining €¦stability.€
Rt Hon Stephen Timms MP, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Interview,
Computing, 20 July 2006
Customer-centric services
Putting people's needs at the heart of the system
"We must be relentlessly customer-focused. Many
people want a single point of contact for a range of services. The public
are not interested in whether their needs are met by department X or
agency Y, they just want a good, joined-up service where X and Y talk to
each other and share the information the public have provided. We should
strive to meet this demand.€
Sir Gus O'Donnell, Cabinet Secretary
Understanding the customer
Under the direction of the
Delivery
Council, the Service Design Authority has:
designed tools and techniques to allow government to use what it knows
and discovers about what really matters to citizens and businesses to
shape the services that affect them. The tools, techniques and exemplars
are available
online
established the Customer Insight Forum as a network to help government
gather, analyse and use information about the needs and preferences of
citizens and businesses more effectively. Its work directly supports both
the Transformational Government strategy and the Government
Communications Group's
Engage programme;
supported the Customer Group Directors for
Older People and for
Farmers;
in partnership with departments, agencies and local government developed
an approach to using different
service delivery channels, for example face to face, telephone and
online, to their best advantage. This approach will be piloted with
Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council;
developed a model for the greater use of online channels to enable
citizens to access services more effectively. This model will be piloted
with the collaboration of Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council;
provided input on customer insight and service delivery channels strategy
to the work of the
Service
Transformation Review undertaken by Sir David Varney on behalf of the
Chancellor of the Exchequer as part of the 2007 Comprehensive Spending
Review. A delivery plan is now in development for this review;
and
designed and is seeking agreement for a pilot to test the effect of
putting decision making about how best to meet
customers' needs into the hands of front-line staff.
Website rationalisation
The Government's objective is to have strong,
strategically effective communications and service delivery via the
internet, designed around the needs and lifestyles of citizens.
Ministers
commissioned the main central government departments to review their
websites and develop plans for their rationalisation and the migration of
content to the
Directgov
website for citizens and the
Business Link website for
businesses.
In the first phase of departmental reviews, 951 websites were considered
across 16 central government departments. Decisions have already been
taken to close 551 (58 per cent) of these websites; 90 sites have already
closed. Decisions have also been taken to continue with 26 websites
— although some of their current content will move to
Directgov and Business Link — and decisions on the
remaining 374 sites will be taken in the next six months.
Further discussions will take place over the next few months in order to
produce detailed implementation plans, confirm the role of departmental
corporate sites, extend the review to executive agencies and
non-departmental public bodies, and encourage further collaboration
between departments. This will be completed by June 2007.
Directgov
is an award-winning cross-government transformation programme with citizens as its focus. Since 2004, it has grown from 800,000 customer visits a month to over 5 million. It now involves 18 government departments and has links to services in nearly all 388 local authorities in England. It can be accessed via the internet, via digital television through Sky, ntl: and Telewest, and via mobile telephones. Independent research has shown high levels of customer satisfaction: 83 per cent of people who visit Directgov agree that it is a 'good place to start' and 80 per cent that it offers 'useful information'. Importantly, 70 per cent of people feel that it is 'a site I trust'. It is consistently rated in the top three government websites by usage as monitored by the independent service Hitwise and is now within the top 100 websites by usage in the UK.Shared services
The future of shared corporate services
Government corporate services (human resources, finance, IT, procurement,
etc) could be delivered through a handful of professional organisations
— serving a minimum of 20,000 but preferably 50,000 or
more customers.
Staff will be experts in their field and will operate standard business
processes on a minimum number of different systems platforms.
Users will take control of the information, enjoying the highest levels
of control, assurance, transparency and self-service.
Shared service organisations will be characterised by continuous
improvement, contestability of supply and transparency of performance.
Sharing services, knowledge, infrastructure and technology represents a
major change for government. By working more closely together, both
across and within departments, government can save money, reduce waste
and move closer to delivering services in the way that citizens want and
expect.
Significant progress has already been made
Transport for London has saved 30 per cent on its human resources spend
in the first year of operating its shared service centre.
The NHS Shared Business Service has saved 108 health trusts an average of
34 per cent of the cost of processing finance transactions through shared
finance services. It is on track to deliver savings of more than
£220 million over 10 years.
The Ministry of Defence's People, Pay and Pensions
Agency is reducing costs at the same time as improving quality. Through
sharing and related reforms, the Department is expecting a net benefit of
over £300 million during the next 10 years.
The Department for Work and Pensions Shared Services organisation was
launched on 1 September 2006, bringing together a wide range of
functions, from customer payments and debts to employee services for the
Department's 110,000 staff, releasing resources for
front-line work.
Case studies detailing progress on shared services are available
online.
Shared service plans
Shared service sector plans covering the UK public sector are
available
online. Highlights from the plans include the following:
The education and skills sector is promoting sharing across schools,
further education colleges and universities. Work is focusing on finance,
human resources and, potentially, learner administration, as well as
exploring other ways of collaborating across organisations.
The health sector will soon begin sharing services in human resources as
well as finance. With 1.2 million employees throughout the sector, this
is potentially the largest shared services implementation in the
world.
Shared services are integral to the Home Office's
current action plans and several departments'
Capability Review implementation plans.
The Department for Transport and the Department for the Environment, Food
and Rural Affairs are each implementing plans to share corporate services
with their respective agencies with the aim of delivering benefits to the
front line.
Most departments have expressed an interest in buying corporate services
from another organisation. A number have a preference for buying from
another central government organisation. This creates the possibility of
convergence within the central government sector.
Local government has already explored shared services in the front
office. One-stop shops and the subsequent joining up of back-office
functions are a key example of this. Local authorities are also
exploiting shared business functions (eg refuse collection).
Support from the centre
The CIO Council's Shared Services Team has been
working closely with the market to ensure suppliers can support the
shared service agenda, and with departments to plan and implement shared
services.
The team has identified barriers to sharing and is working to break them
down wherever possible. A progress report on removing barriers is
available
online.
A toolkit that provides shared service examples, guidelines and templates
is available
online and has been
accessed by practitioners around 1,500 times each week.
Common infrastructure
The Government Gateway is an exemplar of the
'build-once-use-often' common
infrastructure model. It provides departments and local authorities with
a consistent interface through which their customers —
and their agents — can securely access over 100
government online services. There are currently over 9 million active
enrolments by individuals, agents and organisations, and Gateway
availability stands at 99.96 per cent for the last 12-month period.
Data sharing
The Cabinet Committee,
MISC31, is developing the Government's strategy
for data sharing across the public sector. In September 2006 the
Department for Constitutional Affairs published a new vision
forg
;data
sharing, and a strategy is planned for publication by summer 2007.
Government is using information sharing to expand opportunities for the
most disadvantaged, particularly those adults who require support from a
number of different public bodies. One aim of the
social exclusion action plan, published in September 2006, is to
share information so as to identify people with multiple needs and then
better manage the provision of services to them.
A programme of pilots will explore alternative approaches to supporting
these people. This will give government a better understanding of what
information needs to be shared, (for example police, housing and
employment information), how to achieve this and what barriers exist to
the effective sharing of information to benefit this group.
Defra's Whole Farm Approach
Defra's Whole Farm Approach will drastically reduce
the number of forms a farmer has to complete and deliver savings to the
industry of up to £16.5m per year.
Identity management
Managing customer identity information more effectively and improving the
way data is shared will help government improve the quality of the
services it provides, target resources more efficiently and reduce the
need for repeated customer contact.
The Identity and Passport Service leads on identity management policy,
and one of its corporate objectives is to transform practice across the
public and private sectors.
To support better identity management, in the past year government has:
put in place a new
Ministerial
Committee on Identity Management;
established the
Public Private Forum on Identity Management chaired by Sir James
Crosby; and
commissioned the Service Transformation Review, led by Sir David Varney,
which has now reported and presents a case for making the most of
existing identity management assets and wider data sharing to improve
front-line services.
delivered a
for the National Identity Scheme.
An Enterprise Architecture
The key achievement of the Chief Technical Officer Council over the last
year has been the agreement and publication of Release 1 of the
cross-government
Enterprise
Architecture. The first release of this Enterprise Architecture
focuses on building the initial portfolio of opportunities to share and
reuse proven services, patterns and designs. It also addresses the
technical barriers to data sharing by providing a route to
interoperability across government through a common infrastructure. This
will help decision makers reduce the total cost of ownership and deliver
improvements to services in a quicker and more efficient way.
Achieving a step change in professionalism
To use technology to transform public services, we need to have the
skills within government to plan, develop and deliver large-scale,
technology-enabled business transformation programmes.
Government IT Profession
We have launched a new profession within government that will ultimately
put technology advisers on a par with policy, legal, statistical or
economic advisers. More than 7,000 people have joined the Government IT
Profession since it was launched in July 2005.
Comment: I guess that's out of a population of 50-60,000. The 7000 signups are far fewer than read Government Computing magazine. Reply?.
The Government IT Profession offers training, career development and a
framework of standards for IT staff across the public services to help
increase technology and delivery expertise.
Building skills
During 2005, the
Government IT Profession skills framework was launched, based
on the industry standard
Skills Framework for the Information Age.
As part of the Professional Skills for Government programme, this
framework now underpins the recruitment, performance management and
skills assessment of all civil servants working in IT. This will raise
the quality and consistency of staff assessment across the Civil Service.
The Government has strengthened its relationship with the industry-wide
IT profession in the UK. The Government is working with the
ProfIT Alliance to raise the
standards of professionalism in the demand and supply side of the IT
industry and to establish the infrastructure of a formal IT profession.
Improving policy delivery is not just about the Government IT Profession:
technology needs to be reflected in policy-makers'
skills frameworks too — just as an understanding of
law and economics is now. We are working closely with the Department of
Trade and Industry and the Sector Skills Councils for
IT and
Telecommunications, and
government, to develop a
blueprint for the IT skills required by non-IT professionals across
government.
We are also working closely with other public sector professions to build
the broader capabilities required to successfully deliver large-scale
change. In particular, we are working closely with the OGC
— in its capacity as Head of Profession for the
Programme and Project Management and Procurement professions
— to ensure that the necessary skills are embedded in
departments.
"The Government IT Profession is taking a lead role
in the development of a broader, industry-wide IT profession. Innovations
like the new Technology in Business Fast Stream for talented graduates
send the significant message that technology and delivery skills are no
longer second class; they are a priority for government.€
Karen Price, Chief Executive of e-skills uk
Government IT Academy
To ensure that we have the skills within government to plan, develop and
deliver large-scale, technology-enabled business transformation
programmes, we need a focus on training.
We successfully piloted two workshops in 2006, developed and delivered
with the National School of
Government and the
University of
Oxford's Said Business School. We plan to run
these again in January and February 2007. Following the success of the
pilot, we have worked with the National School of Government to develop a
strategy to create a Government IT Academy. The strategy is currently
undergoing
consultation and
will be finalised early in 2007. The Academy will have a strong virtual
element and will build upon existing development opportunities. It will
develop IT skills that:
support every career level, from new IT practitioner to CIO;
support the Government IT Profession competency and skills framework; and
complement the 'core' skills in the
Professional Skills for Government programme.
We are currently developing seminar and secondment programmes as part of
the Academy, and plan to launch both during 2007.
Managing our talent
We have continued to provide support to departments and large-scale
business change programmes to ensure that the right individuals with the
right skills are deployed to key roles. This brokering role had not
previously existed — major technology appointments
used to be made in isolation. In particular, a number of departments have
formally established the Chief Information Officer role as a board-level
position.
In August 2006, we launched the
Technology in Business
Fast Stream — a new scheme to recruit technology
graduates as part of the Civil Service Fast Stream. The scheme will
provide an entry route for talented graduates interested in delivering
technology-enabled change in the public sector, and who have the
potential to become future Chief Information Officers or leaders of
large-scale, IT-enabled business change.
"Having started my Civil Service career as a tax inspector at the
Inland Revenue in the 1970s, I know from experience that a career
structure that rewards professional competence leads to successful
delivery of public services. As the new CIO at the Department for the
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Transformational
Government strategy provides my business colleagues and me with clear
direction and a framework for developing the professional skills of my
staff."
Chris Chant, Chief Information Officer at Defra
Reliable project delivery
Continuous improvement
CIOs are working with OGC to create the conditions for greater certainty
of success in public sector business change programmes.
OGC
Gateway Review was an early foundation stone: the National Audit Office
(NAO) has recognised that it (and other measures) have strengthened our
capability year on year.
CIOs and OGC have worked with NAO to learn lessons from successful public
and private sector programmes and projects in the UK and overseas. The
recent NAO report
'Delivering
successful IT-enabled business change'
provides recommendations on how departments can take these forward.
New measures
The CIO Council has approved new measures to help ensure that the public
sector launches the right IT projects and then manages and implements
them well. These new measures build on good practice in DWP, HM Revenue
and Customs and Criminal Justice IT. They have been developed
— and will be implemented — with
input from OGC, to ensure that they complement the Gateway review and
other processes.
Portfolio management
There has been no strategic management of the
government's overall investment in IT since the
mid-1970s, when all government computers were owned by a single
organisation.
Portfolio management is being introduced to provide oversight of, and
insight into, significant change programmes that are underway in each
department and therefore central government as a whole. Through portfolio
management we are seeking to:
match supply with demand;
anticipate generic challenges;
identify duplication and other opportunities for standardisation and
sharing;
challenge relatively low value projects; and
set priorities when competing for scarce capacity.
The portfolio management process will also provide a viewing platform
from which to ensure that the
of failure are not occurring and
that the findings from the recent NAO report are being adhered to.
Relevant case studies and a detailed description of the
portfolio
management process can be found on the CIO website.
"This report should act as an encouragement to
those in government responsible for IT-enabled business change to believe
that success is entirely possible.€
National Audit Office, Delivering successful IT-enabled business change
Programme roles and control mechanisms
CIOs will bring further improvements in management capability by ensuring
the robustness of appointments and the recognition of role
responsibilities. Improvements will include the following:
Ensuring that those appointed to key roles such as senior responsible
owner and programme director have skills and experience that are
commensurate with programme complexity and risk.
Encouraging departments to recognise that senior responsible owner roles
are critical to programme success, and that these individuals must
therefore be afforded the time to fulfil their programme
responsibilities.
CIOs will also bring increased rigour to the established programme
control mechanisms, based on best practice already being applied
successfully in some departments. The approach complements project
management and other processes already in use, and further reduces the
risk of failure by providing a hard-edged control mechanism that can stop
or restart a programme at key points in its life cycle
— from policy formation through to benefits
realisation. The approach is set out in more detail on the CIO
website.
The challenge
Delivering success in the public sector is tough and the risk of failure
is often high. The diversity and complexity of the public sector, the
scale and security requirements of its operations, and the need to
respond to policy change and legislative deadlines all mean that legacy
issues can be expected to continue to surface. As issues arise we will
review our policies, our approach, our training and risk management, and
will implement changes to avoid repetition of the issue.
This annual report details other activities that are underway and that
also have a positive impact on the success rate of programmes and
projects. They include the professionalism agenda that aims to increase
the breadth and depth of our information and communication technology
teams, our work with suppliers to improve the transparency, team working
and understanding between buyers and sellers, and the common
infrastructure activities that seek to reuse existing assets rather than
building new systems and facilities from scratch every time.
CIO Council IT expenditure
The data shown here relates to the IT
expenditure in 2005/06 of those parts
of the public sector represented on
the CIO Council, with the exception of
the Government Communications
Headquarters, for which special rules
apply. Other parts of the public sector,
not represented on the CIO Council,
are not included here. Explanatory
notes are provided, as accounting
practices in relation to IT expenditure
can vary across the public sector.
expenditure in 2005/06 of those parts
of the public sector represented on
the CIO Council, with the exception of
the Government Communications
Headquarters, for which special rules
apply. Other parts of the public sector,
not represented on the CIO Council,
are not included here. Explanatory
notes are provided, as accounting
practices in relation to IT expenditure
can vary across the public sector.
Dept/sector |
IT expenditure 05/06, £million |
Explanatory notes |
|
Audit Commission
|
||
|
CfH
|
1,056
|
|
|
CLG
|
Based on 2006/07 expected expenditure, and includes capital and
resource ICT spend for the department's own
business purposes, together with sums that are transferred to
local authorities and others for ICT-related purposes.
FireControl and FireLink project expenditure is excluded.
|
|
|
CPS
|
Approximate annual spend on Compass contract with Logica CMG.
|
|
|
DCA
|
243
|
|
|
DCMS
|
||
|
Defra
|
153
|
Planned expenditure for 2006/07 for core Defra activities split
across four main headings: base, services, projects, Chief
Information Officers Directorate overheads and IT consumables.
|
|
DfES
|
||
|
DFID
|
30 Catalyst Business Change Programme £18 million,
IT function £12 million. These figures are
calculated on an accrual basis. Managed telecoms service voice
telecommunication service costs for the UK
(£674,451) are not included in the IT function
total. Overseas voice communication costs cannot be easily
separated out from data communication costs and are therefore
included in the overall IT function costs. Accommodation and
utilities costs are not included as these are currently treated
as a central overhead.
|
|
|
DfT
|
223
|
Transport Direct £16 million, Driving Standards
Agency £10.5 million, Highways Agency
£29 million, Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency
£130.5 million, Maritime and Coastguard Agency
(excludes Certification Agency (excludes salaries)
£0.4 million, Vehicle and Operator Services Agency
£26 million.
The amounts shown include the costs of operational services in
addition to new systems development.
|
|
116
|
Manpower £3.77 million, non-manpower
£0.63 million, revenue £20.92 million,
capital £8.16 million,
arm's-length bodies £82 million.
|
|
|
DTI
|
ICT expenditure for core DTI activities as reported in the
department's annual accounts. Of this,
£30 million related to expenditure with the
department's preferred ICT supplier (Fujitsu)
and £4 million with a range of other suppliers.
|
|
|
DWP
|
1,143
|
The reported numbers are on a resource accounting basis. They are
the total of ongoing/recurring, one-off and change expenditure,
including both resource and capital expenditure. Internal
functions identified as entirely information system/information
technology are included.
|
|
Education
|
850
|
Schools £600 million, further education
£250 million. Does not include IT spend by higher
education.
|
|
FCO
|
101
|
|
|
HMRC
|
989
|
Private finance initiative contract payments £151
million, IT services and consumables £507 million,
IT capital expenditure £331 million.
|
|
HMT
|
This figure includes capital as well as revenue for the whole of
HMT, but not the depreciation or cost of capital charges on
capitalised equipment. It includes purchase of hardware, software
licenses, maintenance and repair and telecoms, but does not
include information system staff costs (£2.446
million).
|
|
|
328
|
This includes all costs incurred by the core Home Office,
including IT staff costs and resource and capital expenditure on
IT. For agencies (the Identity and Passport Service and the
Prison Service) it includes all expenditure except IT staff costs
for the Identity and Passport Service.
|
|
|
Local government
|
3,300
|
This figure is based on an extrapolation of a voluntary 27 per
cent sample of local authority returns. It includes the servicing
costs of capital expenditure. It breaks down as follows: staff
costs 46 per cent, software 12 per cent, contracts for services
11 per cent, hardware 11 per cent, data and voice 9 per cent,
consultancy 3 per cent, other 8 per cent (source: Society of
information technology management).
|
|
MOD
|
936
|
MOD annual report and accounts 2005/06.
|
|
NHS
|
1,441
|
|
|
NI public sector
|
||
|
ONS
|
Includes all expenditure by IT department and IT-related
expenditure controlled by projects and programmes, but excludes
capital charges.
|
|
|
Police
|
387
|
Includes £202 million for Airwave and
£185 million for national police IT (including the
Police Information Technology Organisation). Does not include
local police forces' IT spend, which in
2003/04 was £41 million.
|
|
Scottish public sector
|
600
|
Includes bodies whose responsibilities are devolved to the
Scottish Parliament and excludes UK departments whose functions
extend to Scotland. Comprises actual expenditure from 75 per cent
of the Scottish public sector, to which expenditure assumptions
have been applied to cover the remaining 25 per cent.
|
|
Welsh public sector
|
165
|
Hardware £82 million, telecommunications
£17 million, maintenance services £15
million, mobile phones £5 million, software and
licences £45.6 million.
|
|
Total
|
12,414
|
Working better with IT suppliers
The CIO Council's goal is that government should
become a world-class IT purchaser — delivering to the
public and government staff modern, reliable services that offer the best
value for the taxpayer and being a flagship customer for the best and
most innovative IT suppliers.
The CIO Council's supplier management initiative will
deliver the programme of action set out in the Transformational
Government strategy. Acting on behalf of the Council and under the
leadership of the CIO of DWP, OGC has already done the following:
Published the first forward look at supply and demand for IT services (
IT Capacity Project Report). While a number of
capability issues were identified, the project concluded that there is
unlikely to be a widespread shortfall in ICT delivery capacity over the
next three years. The Government needs to ensure that it has a detailed
understanding of the IT market's capability and
capacity, together with the Government's impact upon
it. This analysis will be repeated every six months. Information about
significant planned government procurements can be found
online.
Established a Common Assessment Framework for IT suppliers, which
presents consistent and objective performance data on the work that key
suppliers are carrying out across government. The IT industry was closely
consulted in the preparation of the framework through the trade
association Intellect. It embodies relevant elements from
Intellect's own supplier code of best practice.
Completed the first ever round of formal cross-government reviews of the
performance of each of the most strategically important IT suppliers,
engaging all CIOs who are customers of those suppliers and agreeing
actions to drive improvement where necessary. Supplier development plans
will be developed on an incremental basis.
In addition to this, the CIO Council and the chief executives of the key
IT suppliers have established a Strategic Supply Board to give further
strategic impetus to improvement throughout the supply chain. The Board
has set itself goals of substantial and sustainable improvement in three
key areas over the next four years:
To ensure that all departments and all suppliers consistently meet the
best standards for project and programme delivery by 2010.
To reduce the costs of government IT by up to 20 per cent overall
(including up to 40 per cent in the total cost of government desktop),
sharing the benefits between reinvestment in the technology needed for
further reforms in public services and contributing to the overall
financial and efficiency targets that departments will have to meet.
To steadily improve procurement management year on year, so that by 2010
best practice is applied to all procurement and all procurement happens
according to agreed timescales.
"These bold aspirations will require a radical
reappraisal of the way we do things in government —
and will require a willingness on the part of both government and
industry to transform the way we operate, considering new approaches to
delivery.€
Joe Harley, DWP IT Director General and Chief Information Officer
Part 2
Contributions from public service providers
This part of the report highlights evidence of transformational change
already apparent across the public sector. This information has been
contributed by the departments listed below and by local government CIOs.
Department for Education and Skills
Department of Health
Department for Work and Pensions
HM Revenue & Customs
Department for Transport
Home Office and wider Criminal Justice System
Ministry of Defence
Foreign & Commonwealth Office
Communities and Local Government
Education, skills and children's services
Children, learners and teachers are benefiting from a £3.5
billion information and communication technology investment in education,
skills and children's services.
Almost 1 million primary school children using e-learning in class each
day
A three-fold improvement in computer-to-pupil ratios in schools
Electronic whiteboards being used in nearly every school
Almost all UCAS applications are completed online
Almost 16 million users have access to broadband throughout the education
system
350,000 teachers are saving time by using ICT for lesson planning and
administration
Better attainment
The Department for Education and Skills is leading the drive to use new
technology to transform teaching and learning across 23,000 schools, and
throughout further and higher education, skills training, adult learning
and children's services.
For pupils, investment in technology is making a real difference to
educational attainment, with ICT Test Bed schools demonstrating twice the
national rate of improvement in Key Stage 2 English.
Meeting individual needs
The use of digital content and services supports personalised learning
— widely recognised as key to raising educational
attainment. Learning technologies are particularly helpful in engaging
marginalised and under-achieving pupils and in improving motivation.
Getting the right technology in place
In 2005/06, over £500 million was invested in ICT in
schools: all schools now have broadband access and are linked to
the
National Education Network.
To ensure that locally-procured ICT offers the best value and meets the
right standards,
which offer national purchasing power while
still respecting local independence are being put in place.
|
Education practitioners can more easily tailor learning materials
and activities to individuals through the use of technology.
They can use learner assessment and information systems to inform
and adapt that personalisation.
Learners have more control; they can choose digital content and
media that best suit their learning needs and style.
|
Leaving no one behind
Computers
for Pupils, a £60 million initiative to install ICT in
the homes of some of the most disadvantaged pupils in England, was
launched in 2006. Over an 18-month period, computing equipment and a safe
internet connection for learning will be installed for around 100,000
families.
MyGuide was also
piloted in 2006: it is a facility that seeks to make the internet more
accessible and usable for large groups of people who do not currently use
it — whether because of disability or a lack of skills
or confidence.
Leading-edge schools
Shirelands, a secondary school for 11 —19-year-olds in
the West Midlands, is using a virtual learning environment.
It offers an online pool of learning resources and facilities, enabling
teachers to share lesson plans and best practice.
It provides access to a personal online space for pupils, parents and
teachers — not only for this school but for nine other
local participating schools.
Teachers can allocate individual tasks for pupils, pupils can access
resources and ask for online support from teachers from home, and parents
can get more involved by checking progress and homework.
Rylands High School in South Africa is also connected, making it possible
for pupils to collaborate on school projects and join assemblies via
video conference.
Protecting children
The Government is committed to introducing an
information-sharing index to
support the work of children's services in all areas
of England by the end of 2008. The index will help to transform
children's services by supporting more effective
prevention and early intervention, and contributing to improved outcomes
and experiences of public services for all children, young people and
families.
The index will do this by supporting better communication among
practitioners across education, health, social care and youth offending,
allowing them to contact one another more easily and quickly. Where
appropriate, the index will allow these individuals to share information
about children and young people who need services or about whose welfare
they are concerned.
Health
Each year in England's National Health Service:
325 million consultations take place with GPs or nurses in primary care
13.3 million people attend their first outpatient appointment
13.9 million people attend the accident and emergency department
5.4 million people are admitted to hospital for planned
treatment
4.2 million emergency admissions to hospital are made
649 million prescription items are dispensed in the community
6.4 million calls are made to NHS Direct
The National Programme for IT
National
Programme for IT is the world's largest civil IT
project. It includes the following:
An electronic NHS Care Records Service to improve the sharing of
patients' records across the NHS with their consent.
An electronic booking service — Choose and Book
— to make it easier and faster to book hospital
appointments for patients.
An electronic prescription service.
A national network which will ensure that the IT infrastructure can meet
NHS needs — both now and in the future.
Picture Archiving and Communications Systems.
By enabling better management of patient information and access for
health professionals to that information when and where it is needed,
including in an emergency, the National Programme for IT can improve care
and increase patient safety. For example, it can help to reduce mistakes
in prescribing and dispensing medication, as well as delivering greater
protection for the confidentiality of patient information.
Picture Archiving and Communications Systems are now benefiting over
250,000 patients every week. Using digital x-rays eliminates problems of
lost x-rays (up to 12 per cent can be lost with traditional x-ray films)
and the need to reschedule 5,000 patient procedures a year, or to x-ray
some patients twice. Emerging findings indicate that hospitals
implementing these systems can free up about 100,000 staff hours a year
(equivalent to 50 members of staff) to focus on patients
better.
Every week, hundreds of members of NHS staff now successfully receive new
systems. As a result, tens of thousands more patients receive better
care. The National Programme for IT now delivers more IT support than any
other public service organisation in the country. It also continues to
run large heritage systems and install major software upgrades on time,
to budget and without problems.
The Quality Management and Analysis System — which
gives GP practices and primary care trusts objective evidence and
feedback on the quality of care
delivered to patients
— and the national Choose and Book service
— which for the first time combines electronic booking
with a choice of place, date and time for first outpatient appointments
— are other examples of the successful introduction of
IT by the National Programme for IT.
The delivery of over 16,000 connections to the NHS national network on
time and to budget is a major milestone.
What has the National Programme for IT already delivered?
More than 1.9 million hospital appointments have now been booked
electronically — at a rate of 12,000 a day. These
account for about 31 per cent of NHS referrals for treatment.
Sixty-five new Picture Archiving and Communications Systems are now live
and more than 119 million digital images have been stored, benefiting
over 12 million patients per year.
Over 9 million electronic prescriptions have been issued.
When complete, the NHS network will be one of the largest virtual private
networks in the world. More than 16,000 NHS locations are connected
already, and over 1million patient records are successfully retrieved
from the Personal Demographics Service every day, helping to correctly
identify patients.
As well as the national systems, over 16,000 local systems are serving
well over 300,000 NHS staff.
The challenges of implementation
The National Programme for IT is a large, complex programme, and the NHS
is one of the world's largest organisations, itself
undergoing radical change to deliver better healthcare for people. A key
challenge is to introduce modern IT and the business changes necessary to
exploit it fully without impacting the safe delivery of care.
In a 10-year programme of this size, scale and complexity, it is to be
expected that there will be issues and difficulties; NHS Connecting for
Health has been open about this.
The National Programme for IT has set itself ambitious and challenging
targets to deliver systems to provide defined benefits. It believes it is
better to delay implementation of a system to get it right for patients
and clinicians, rather than to deploy it rapidly and get it wrong.
The software to support key national elements of the programme has been
delivered on time and to budget, and parts of the national systems have
gone live as planned. There have been delays to the clinical record
system due to the complexity of developing software that interacts with a
large number of existing systems, and also due to the need to get doctors
to agree on the contents of electronic health records. The cost of these
delays is being met by ICT suppliers, not the taxpayer.
Operating in this environment, and on this scale, inevitably presents
challenges that the programme has overcome through innovation. These
challenges include the following:
Positively engaging clinicians in the business change necessary to
deliver the benefits of the new technology to patients and staff,
ensuring that systems deliver their full potential.
The capacity and capability of suppliers within an innovative but tight
contracting and performance environment.
The capacity and capability of project and programme management within
the NHS.
Delivering such a major system at a time of great structural business
change for the NHS, including the creation of independent trusts.
Positively engaging all stakeholders to ensure that all concerns and
criticisms are addressed.
The National Programme for IT has been subjected to a great deal of
critical scrutiny, including from the National Audit Office;
its report
on the value for money of the programme noted the substantial progress
made, but also commented that successful implementation continues to
present significant challenges.
NHS Direct
People want healthcare advice available out of hours from home or from
their workplace when they can't get to a doctor: this
required a real transformation in healthcare delivery.
NHS Direct is the first truly
multimedia 24-hour health service organisation, giving people health
information and advice on the phone, online, through digital TV and
through printed self-help guides.
The service grew by 47 per cent in 2005/06, with more than 23 million
patient contacts throughout the year. By April 2006, NHS Direct was
receiving more than 2 million patient contacts per month, more than
double the level of the previous year.
In 2005/06, NHS Direct:
answered 6.8 million phone calls; and
attracted 13.5 million visitors to NHS Direct Online.
Work, benefits and pensions
In promoting opportunity for all, the Department for Work and Pensions
(DWP) is delivering better services to people, businesses and its
front-line staff through a huge investment in technology-enabled business
change.
A £6 billion-plus investment over five years from 2003
supports DWP to:
Help over 20 million customers to find work, claim benefits and plan for
older age
Serve more customers than Barclays UK
Deliver 13 million benefit payments each week —
totalling more than £100 billion each year
Help 4,000 people into jobs every day — including
putting 400,000 job vacancies online
Transform delivery to customers so that most pensions claims can be dealt
with in one 20-minute telephone call
Manage a larger annual turnover than the national income of the Republic
of Ireland
Helping people to find work
People looking for work now have access to over 400,000 job vacancies
through 8,600 wheelchair-friendly 'job
points' around the country, via the Jobseeker Direct
phone service (which takes over 180,000 calls a week), and
online.
The website attracts over 1.5 million visits each week and is the biggest
of its kind in the UK.
Since May 2005, employers have been able to put their vacancies online 24
hours a day using
Employer Direct.
This service now accounts for 27 per cent of all notified job
vacancies.
When people need to claim benefits, DWP's Customer
Management System now provides staff with on-screen information and
guidance: less paper is used, and contact centres can stay open longer
for customers. An improvement plan has addressed the teething troubles
and the Customer Management System is now delivering reliably. A new
system release in November 2006 means that cases no longer have to be
rebuilt when inaccurate personal information has been recorded. Looking
to the future, Jobcentre Plus is refocusing its resources to ensure
delivery of the new Employment and Support Allowance by 2008.
Supporting families and children
Work to improve the service of the
Child Support Agency continues alongside the
announcement of the Government's plans for an improved
system of child support.
The stability and operational performance of the new computer system have
improved, and contracted service levels are now consistently met. An
additional £120 million is being invested over three years
to improve customer service even further.
Helping disabled people
The quality of service for 5 million callers to the Disability and Carers
Service's helpline has been transformed. Only one per
cent of callers now get an engaged tone, compared with 77 per cent just
two years ago.
Directgov now joins up government information, and is particularly
relevant to people with disabilities: from financial support to the
location of designated parking bays and accessible petrol
stations,
Directgov is the
answer.
Since March 2006, the main benefits (including those for disabled people,
such as the Carer's Allowance) have been able to be
claimed online. This will be extended to other areas by the end of 2007.
Providing people with security in older age
The Pensions Transformation Programme, a major initiative to improve
customer service by modernising and simplifying the benefit claim
process, is transforming benefit delivery for today's
elderly.
In one 20-minute telephone call, customers can now apply for both the
state pension and Pension Credit, and the information provided can also
be used to assess their eligibility for Housing Benefit and Council Tax
Benefit.
Managing customer information
DWP's Customer Information System is one of
Europe's largest databases, providing a single source
of secure, accurate information about 90 million customer records across
government. It is now securely accessible to 80,000 members of DWP staff,
60,000 users from seven other government departments, and over 400 local
authorities.
The Customer Information System has improved services across government
by sharing customer information. For example, the Driver and Vehicle
Licensing Agency can now automatically exempt disabled people from
vehicle excise duty, and The Pension Service and local authorities can
identify state pension customers who may be able to claim additional
benefits. Joining up saves customers time and defeats fraud.
Transforming DWP's IT capability
DWP's realigned ICT contracts now provide for higher
levels of service and better technology at market-competitive prices. The
Department only pays for the services it needs for its business, rather
than for surplus capacity. The services are delivered at a lower overall
cost to the Department and include a desktop refresh and an upgrade to a
high-quality single voice and data network — at no
extra cost.
Revenue and customs
In 2005/06,
HM Revenue and Customs:
Handled £405 billion in receipts
Administered £17 billion in payments
Successfully upgraded the National Insurance Recording System
— one of Europe's biggest IT
systems
Received 2 million self-assessment tax returns online
Handled 560 million tonnes of freight through 120 ports and 50 airports
Processed 25 million import/export declarations and collected or secured
£22 billion in import duties
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is responsible for collecting taxes, paying
tax credits and child benefit, and enforcing the UK's
frontiers.
Tax returns made easier
In the filing period ending 31 January 2006, nearly 2 million people
filed their self-assessment tax returns online — an
increase of 38 per cent on the previous year. During the two days before
the deadline, 8,700 returns were received each hour. The total number of
returns filed by December 2006 was well in excess of the total filed to
December 2005, predicting a likely further significant increase for the
period ending January 2007.
The system has been improved in response to customer feedback and now
remembers personal details securely, pre-fills forms, performs all
calculations automatically and makes instant refunds electronically.
The online service also saw 1.1 million employer annual returns and over
40 million end-of-year summaries being filed by businesses
— a 13 per cent increase on the previous year. Another
increase is certain for 2006/07.
The CD-ROM for employers, developed in response to customer feedback, has
an improved training package that makes life easier for employers using
online filing for the first time. It includes comprehensive and
easy-to-follow instructions and a means of checking calculations. In 2006
the CD-ROM won the Institute of Payroll Professionals Innovation Award
— after being put forward not by HMRC but by the
people who use it.
Benefiting families
Six million families, including 10 million children, depend
on tax credits. During 2005/06,
£17.3 billion was distributed in child tax credit and
working tax credit.
An unprecedented attack by fraudsters caused HMRC to close the online tax
credit service in December 2005. Work is continuing to improve the
site's security so that online applications can start
again as soon as possible.
Making importing and exporting easier
Importers, exporters and freight forwarders can complete customs
formalities online; last year HMRC processed over 25 million customs
transactions and collected £22 billion in customs duties.
Work also began to develop the International Trade Single Window,
providing online information to anyone importing to, or exporting from,
the UK. This is a joint initiative between HMRC, the Department of Trade
and Industry's Small Business Service, and the
Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
An information business
Data is at the heart of HMRC's business, and by
addressing the root causes of poor quality data, HMRC is improving both
operational efficiency and customer service.
Through initiatives such as the joint work between HMRC and DWP to share
basic information such as name and address details, customers
don't have to provide the same information so many
times, and fewer mistakes are made. The initiative also makes it easier
to identify any abuse of tax allowances and benefits.
The National Insurance Recording System provides information relating to
70 million records to over 66,000 users in private industry and
government. It processes 1 billion off-line and 300 million online
transactions each year, manages over £300 billion, and is
one of Europe's largest IT systems.
Maintaining this system is vital to ensuring correct forecasts and
payments for the millions of people planning their retirement, in receipt
of benefits or in receipt of a pension, and it was successfully upgraded
in 2006.
Streamlined systems
When HMRC was formed in April 2005, it looked to improve efficiency while
bringing together over 100,000 staff running corporate services and using
a variety of incompatible systems.
The first phase of an enterprise resource planning system delivered new
financial and procurement processes and systems in 11 months, on time, to
budget and using standard industry software. The second phase, a new
human resources system, went live in November 2006.
Transport
Last year, 2.6 million people booked their driving test online, with
£70 million of fees collected automatically
Around 19,000 MOT garages are now linked by computer
3.7 million motorists have renewed their car tax online
Each year, the Highways Agency receives 78,000 calls and 13,000 emails to
its enquiry service and 45,000 calls to its automated traffic information
service
40,000 Highways Agency customers have signed up for automated email
traffic alerts
Faster, more convenient 24-hour services for customers online
With 39 million drivers, 32 million vehicle keepers and 100,000
commercial vehicle operators the Department for
Transport's agencies work on a scale far larger than
any private sector transport organisation. Yet investment in technology
is allowing them to provide cutting-edge online services that live up to
their customers' demands.
Self-service facilities now enable private motorists to go online to
apply for a first provisional driving licence, book a driving test, renew
their car tax or declare their vehicle off the road. To renew car tax
once meant a trip to the Post Office with a pile of documents. Turning it
into a five-minute transaction on the internet meant computerising 19,000
MOT garages, a major reworking of government business processes that
serve 32 million people, and persuading the insurance industry to provide
a central database of insurance details. Computerising MOT garages proved
more challenging and took longer to deliver than expected, but the
Department for Transport and the supplier worked together to overcome the
challenges, and the system was delivered successfully.
For commercial vehicle operators there are a host of internet services,
and 60 per cent of all transactions with operators are now carried out
online.
Convenient and accessible online services may improve the
customer's experience but another important benefit is
that convenience increases compliance with the law. This in turn reduces
the demands on those who investigate and enforce it and, more
importantly, improves road safety.
Front-line staff
Technology allows the Driver, Vehicle and Operator group of agencies to
share information and opens up access to that information for their
front-line staff. Thanks to a hand-held computer, staff from the Vehicle
and Operator Services Agency can improve enforcement and road safety by
accessing commercial vehicle data at the roadside. They can use the
device to check whether the vehicle has passed the required tests or
whether there is a warning out against a particular vehicle or operator.
Safety is also the ultimate benefit of the computerisation of around
19,000 MOT garages. The link-up makes MOT testing more consistent and
secure, which in turn helps to prevent fraud.
Informed travellers
The Highways Agency has increased the use of existing services and the
number of ways it provides travel information to its customers. New
services include advanced warnings of planned events and more strategic
information on roadside variable message signs, and a 24-hour automated
'Traffic England' telephone service
and website. Trials of high-tech interactive information points at 24
motorway service areas displaying live traffic information attract over
60,000 people each month. Live traffic information from the Highway
Agency's National Traffic Control Centre is also
broadcast on several radio stations.
Transport Direct
The Department for Transport-funded online journey planning
service, Transport Direct, is helping people
to plan door-to-door journeys across the whole of Great Britain by any
mode of transport. Since its launch in late 2004, the site has been
accessed 11 million times a year.
Crime and borders
- During 2005/06, the Crown Prosecution Service prosecuted over 1.17 million cases, with over 895,000 defendants convicted in Magistrates' Courts and almost 73,000 convicted in the Crown Court
- New electronic border-control systems have generated 4,456 alerts to border agencies and have resulted in 315 arrests
- The Police National Computer handles around 10 million requests for information every month
- The Crown Prosecution Service IT programme provides a national computer network, desktop equipment and case management software to around 8,000 of its own personnel and over 1,000 police staff engaged in victim and witness cases
- The Crown Prosecution Service Case Management System is now supporting staff in almost 700 sites. 4 million cases have been registered on the system
Improving the criminal justice system
In January 2006 alone, the
Police National Computer
processed 10 million transactions, helping the police and criminal
justice agencies research vehicles, crimes and property.
The Police National Computer is accessible to every force in the UK and
is now accessible to police in the field through Airwave hand-held
digital radio devices.
Airwave is a digital radio service that enables much clearer, more secure
communication than the old analogue system. The Airwave service is being
delivered under a 19-year private finance initiative valued at over
£3 billion. The migration of police forces from their old
systems to Airwave is now in the final stages, with 160,000 active users
out of a planned police total of 180,000. The recent adoption of Airwave
by the fire and ambulance services will improve radio interoperability
between the emergency services.
A national fingerprint identification service provides support to the
police service by processing 100,000 records of arrests every month. The
system also interfaces with the Immigration and Asylum Fingerprint System
in the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, providing both
organisations with additional identification capabilities.
National
Offender Management Information System will support end-to-end
offender management by providing prisons and probation services with a
single record of an offender that can be accessed and updated in real
time. Introduction of the system into 139 prisons (including privately
run establishments) and 42 separate probation areas will take place over
two years from its start in December 2006 and will involve the training
of over 78,000 staff, the building of a single IT infrastructure and the
merging and migration of 200,000 offender records.
Secure email now enables police to respond to a request for details of
previous convictions from a probation officer on the same day.
The criminal justice system Exchange XHIBIT Portal provides Crown Court
hearing information to Magistrates' Courts, the
Witness Service, Victim Support, the police, the National Offender
Management Service and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in minutes
rather than days. The Exchange facility also enables the electronic
transfer of case information between police and CPS systems.
The Witness Management System, part of the joint Crown Prosecution
Service/police service initiative, No Witness No Justice, enables witness
care officers to support the needs of individual victims and witnesses.
By the end of August 2006 in excess of half a million cases had been
registered on the system.
In response to the establishment of the
Serious and Organised Crime Agency in April
2006, infrastructure was set up to enable CPS's
organised crime division to exchange confidential information with it.
IMPACT
Programme is improving the ability of the police service to manage
and share operational information to prevent and detect crime and make
our communities safer. The programme has already delivered the IMPACT
Nominal Index, which enables forces to see which other forces may hold
information on particular individuals of interest to them.
Information technology has transformed crime-fighting by helping to deny
criminals the use of the road. The Association of Chief Police Officers
(ACPO) National Automatic Number Plate Recognition system processes 5
million readings daily, and will build to 50 million daily in 2007 to
make it one of the biggest web services in Europe. For every
£1,000 spent on the system there are 2.02 arrests, 8.18
fixed penalty notices and 2.46 vehicle seizures.
Better border control
The Joint Border Operations Centre, which opened in 2005, runs an
e-borders system to match information in travel documents with data from
the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, HM Revenue and Customs, the
police, the Identity and Passport Service and UKvisas.
The Joint Borders Operation Centre analyses 12 million airline passenger
movements on 36 routes and 17 carriers. The number of checks is expected
to grow to 30 million by March 2008.
UKvisas is rolling out a system to support fingerprint checking for UK
visa applicants worldwide.
In March 2006, the Identity and Passport Service launched the biometric
passport to counter fraud, and in July 2006 issued the millionth
biometric passport.
Defence and foreign affairs
- The Defence Information Infrastructure will reach 300,000 users on 150,000 terminals at about 2,000 Ministry of Defence sites around the world
- Using ICT to improve asset management means that the Army's vehicle fleet has been reduced, leading to benefits worth around £30 million
- The Foreign & Commonwealth Office's global network links 16,000 users across 144 countries
- The Foreign & Commonwealth Office website receives 12 million visits each month
Supporting the Armed Forces
New information systems are making UK armed forces more effective, better
run and more efficient. Underpinning these systems is the
Defence Information Infrastructure, which was rolled out in September
2006. The infrastructure will deliver a secure, joined-up computer system
for 300,000 users on 150,000 terminals at nearly 2,000 Ministry of
Defence sites around the world — including the front
line. The system will be fully rolled out before the end of 2009.
Logistics are essential to modern warfare; the job of maintaining and
supporting equipment all over the world is managed by the
Defence Logistics
Organisation (DLO).
Over the last five years, DLO has improved the way its business is
carried out through the
Defence Logistics Transformation Programme, much of which has been
enabled by new technology systems. The Joint Asset Management and
Engineering Solution has changed the way the Army manages its vehicle
fleet. It has already enabled more efficient vehicle use and a reduction
in fleet numbers to deliver benefits in the region of £30
million. It is used by more than 3,000 people to manage 23,000 equipment
types.
Benefits for staff
Using the Defence Information Infrastructure, the People Programme
enables civilian staff to book training and leave, and apply for jobs
online. Further work will improve the way civilian staff are paid
— a service that the Ministry of Defence also delivers
to several other government organisations.
joint personnel administration programme harmonises a range of Royal
Navy, Army and Royal Air Force policies and regulations, and provides a
single, modern administration system that personnel can access wherever
they are in the world. The programme went live with the Royal Air Force
in March 2006 and will roll out to the other two services by the end of
2007, eventually serving almost 300,000 regular and reserve personnel.
Better buying
Every year, the Ministry of Defence handles nearly 400,000 contracts.
Expansion of the
Defence Electronic Commerce Service
(DECS) will enable more of the demand for commodity items to be managed
electronically. It also hosts the stock management system for the bulk
fuels inventory, which processes over 750 million litres of fuel each
year.
The benefits of DECS have also been extended to other government
organisations. A
collaboration
programme enables the Ministry of Defence, other government departments
and industry to interact in a secure and trusted environment.
Delivering diplomatic and consular services
Britain's diplomats all over the world need the right
information at the right time, in the right place, and often in a hostile
security environment. Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) has
one of the largest and most geographically dispersed IT networks in the
world, linking 16,000 users in 240 posts across 144 countries. This
global network offers fast, secure and reliable services to staff and
customers at home and overseas.
British citizens need up-to-the minute advice about precautions to take
when travelling. To get this information, 3 million citizens across the
world access FCO websites in the UK and embassy websites overseas up to
12 million times each month, mostly for travel advisory and visa
services. The Department also sends 1.5 million emails every year,
alerting subscribers of any changes to travel advice.
In the future, integrated systems will be an important part of the
FCO's service to British and foreign citizens
overseas. Work is underway to securely link the FCO's
information systems with those in other government departments,
particularly the Home Office, Cabinet Office, Department for
International Development and the Ministry of Defence.
Communities and local government
New technology is already transforming the way people use local
government services. And that same technology is expected to bring
efficiency gains of over £1.1 billion by 2007/08.
- The typical local authority has 98 per cent of its services e-enabled
- 4 million e-payment transactions will be accepted via local authority websites during 2006/07
- Over 113,000 electronic planning applications are expected to be received in 2007
- Local authority websites receive around 15 million unique visits per month
Strong and prosperous communities
New technology is already transforming the way people use and access
local government services. That same technology is expected to bring
efficiency gains of over £1.1 billion by 2007/08. Many local
authorities have already risen to the challenges laid out in the
Transformational Government strategy and are delivering significant
performance improvements and cost savings. New targets are being set for
what transformed local government, supported by technology, should look
like.
Commitments for transforming local services are set out in Chapter 7 of
the local government
White Paper Strong
and Prosperous Communities. Those commitments are designed to take
forward work in the following areas:
- Business process improvement.
- New ways of working.
- Shared services and joint working across organisations.
- Improved customer focus.
- Moving people to new channels.
- Understanding 'costs to serve' in order to increase efficiency.
A 'business improvement package'
for local public services is planned to be published in early 2007,
setting out a coherent package of improvement tools covering business
process improvement techniques, technology and collaboration.
Under the guidance of the National Process Improvement Project, a package
of support is also being developed to examine and redesign end-to-end
business processes, targeting service improvement and increased
efficiency. In addition, work has been initiated with the Local
Government Association to create a vision for joined-up access to
front-line services, across services within councils, between councils
and with other agencies. This will support best practice that is already
underway.
Local e-Government
The transformational local government agenda is also reflected in three
ongoing national projects building on the work of the local e-government
programme.
The first of these projects is
Government Connect: the aim is that by
sharing customer information between local and central government
securely, services can be tailored to suit an individual
citizen's needs. For example, a customer can
seamlessly access council and central government services at the same
time. A citizen wanting to claim benefits currently often needs to
contact their local authority housing benefits department, Jobcentre
Plus, Citizens' Advice Bureau and Registered Social
Landlord. By using Government Connect to help join up these agencies, the
citizen should receive improved accuracy in their claims processing and
quicker service delivery.
The second project is
Local Directgov, which provides
citizens with easy and direct links between the Directgov website and all
the services that their local authority provides online.
The third project is the 'Connect to your
council'
Take-Up Campaign, which is
designed to raise citizen awareness of the range of local authority
services now available online, and to encourage people to use them.
There are a wealth of innovative and successful IT initiatives across
local government that are often overlooked. There are too many to list in
full here, but there follow a few contrasting examples:
Hampshire County Council has developed
OT Direct, an improved system for handling requests from citizens,
social services and healthcare professionals for help from occupational
therapy services in Hampshire. By transforming access mechanisms and
business processes, waiting lists for services have been reduced from
months to weeks — with direct benefits for Hampshire
citizens. Significant increases in service demands have also been met
without increasing the demand for full occupational therapy assessments.
Hammersmith & Fulham Council developed a customer-focused
segmentation model to understand how people like to interact with the
Council. It is now planning a major restructuring programme to bring
service delivery and means of communication more in line with customer
preference and need.
Birmingham City Council is achieving huge efficiency gains by
transforming its corporate business processes. By investing
£100 million in transforming its infrastructure, processes
and culture, the Council will save £600 million over the
next 10 years.
The Liverpool Direct council contact centre is open 24 hours a day, seven
days a week. The centre currently handles around 50,000 calls per week,
and in 90 per cent of cases the call is resolved the first time, without
the caller having to be put through to another team. There are plans to
extend the centre to deal with 80 per cent of council
services.
At Tameside Council, the internet has become the primary means for
accessing council services. The council has succeeded in managing its
business more efficiently by moving people to cheaper delivery channels,
while providing the same or better service, during a period when the
total number of customer contacts has risen.
Digital inclusion
It is crucial to ensure that the most vulnerable people have the
capability to use transformational local government services. Communities
and Local Government is supporting initiatives that focus on identifying
and delivering local services to excluded people using new technologies.
digital
challenge competition will fund a world-leading example of a digital
community, focusing on benefiting those at risk of social exclusion.
The digital challenge inclusion network will create dialogue across
sectors (public, private, voluntary and academic) in order to see how ICT
can better address digital and social exclusion issues.
A digital inclusion team has been established, with the key objectives of
focusing support and development on the use of technology to ensure
better delivery to the most excluded.
People who live in remote rural areas and who don't
have a computer at home are not being left out either. For example, in
the East Riding of Yorkshire, the CitizenLink initiative allows people in
rural areas to access information remotely through video-conferencing. In
North Cornwall, local volunteer trainers are helping people to make free
use of computers and internet connections in places like village halls.
Local residents have an opportunity to see how easy it is to access local
council, county council and central government services online in a safe
environment, with skilled support.
Up to now, people with restricted mobility have had to make trips to the
council to sort out benefits queries or home care support, or get others
to make these visits on their behalf. This is difficult and can lead to
delays in receiving payments and other entitlements. In Leeds, people can
be visited in their own homes by a social care worker who can record
their details with digitally-enabled pen and paper technology, and
transfer it straight into a council computer, speeding up the processing
of their entitlements. In Halton, the 'Benefits
Express' bus is a high-tech, mobile doorstep service
dealing with benefits claims; it helps to greatly reduce the time it
takes for thousands of people in the borough to get through their
entitlement reviews.
More remains to be done to exploit the potential of technology to help
vulnerable or excluded groups, either through the services that support
them directly or by accessing services electronically which are designed
to meet their needs.g
The challenges
There are several challenges ahead if we are to see the kind of
innovation described above being taken up more generally by local
authorities as part of a coherent business improvement strategy.
Replication and roll-out
There needs to be further work to determine what needs to be done to
ensure that the models mentioned here and many other working examples can
be disseminated in such a way that they can readily be taken up and
implemented by other local authorities as appropriate.
Take-up
In the early stages of any innovation, the innovation itself and the
publicity it generates are often enough to engage with the natural
'early adopters'. As the innovation
is further developed and mainstreamed, a robust and transparent business
case and benefits analysis needs to be developed if the particular
initiative is to be taken up by organisations in any great numbers.
Achieving widespread citizen acceptance and take-up of services via new
channels presents an urgent and important challenge if we are to realise
the benefits from these new and innovative ways of working. In order to
do this, we need to improve our understanding of customer preferences, as
well as their needs.
Comment: That's why it's essential to give people what they want, and not to fob them off with what you assert they want (with little evidence), and then spin your way out of the mess that results.
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Co-design ... Reply?.
Comment: A note on usability: there are too many hyperlinks ("Link to item", "Comments") on this page. There should be a way to organise them so that commenting and searchability are enhanced. Reply?.
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