A threefold challenge

The best job he's ever had, is how Martin Ferguson describes his position as the Society of IT Management's (Socitm) first head of policy. The essence of his role, which he has held for eight months, is to influence three keys areas of public service development: better information management; innovation in the design of public services and improving public service outcomes. He also sees his role as a three way split: firstly around influencing, secondly formulating and thirdly supporting policy. "So influencing policy might be where we are trying to establish the general principles, the evidence base for improving services and perhaps for using digital delivery," he explains. "Formulating policy gets us more into the specifics. For example, we have a good track record of working with central government, including the Department for Work and Pensions on the Government Connect programme. That is leading us to a role where we are involved in formulating policy for the proposed Public Sector Network and the G Cloud." The third area is policy support for Socitm members: "So it's advice, guidance and support in terms of implementing these improvements." Ferguson has been instrumental in setting up a G Cloud workshop with the Cabinet Office. The event, scheduled for this month, will involve chief information officers and heads of IT from across the public sector and others with a specific interest in the topic. He says that initially councils are likely to use the G Cloud for generic applications such as email, collaboration tools that are increasingly being deployed in public services, and communications technologies such as VoIP. "And probably added to that, hosting legacy applications," he says. "In other words if you wanted to close your data centre in a small local authority, and you might be looking for a reliable place to support and deliver those legacy systems. "Beyond that - and I think perhaps the more exciting areas - are around the portfolio of functional applications we require in public services, so record management, document management systems, CRM, HR, library and social services, the list goes on." He also believes the G Cloud may also become attractive because it will make pre-tendered services available, easing procurement and lowering the costs. "So you are simplifying the whole procurement process, and avoiding having to go into detailed input-based specifications, which has been the traditional route for procurement and focus more on outcomes," he says. But the "big vision" is in the potential to create a virtual local authority. "For example, where I live in Hertfordshire and we have a two tier government," he says. "By providing services in a shared manner in the G Cloud, we could create a virtual unitary authority without the costs of local government reorganisation." On getting the necessary assurances between data security and availability of services via the cloud, Ferguson maintains this is theoretically possible. "The G Cloud is being designed to be integrated with the Public Sector Network and security will be designed in through the architecture – controlling access, connectivity and use," he says. While shared services has made stuttering progress, Ferguson feels there is evidence of growing enthusiasm. "It may be that the anticipated financial austerity facing public services is actually going to trigger a change of thinking in that respect and force the hand of local politicians," he proposes. He says the reticence does not emanate from Socitm's members in the local ICT communities, but from ongoing local political and cultural issues. "There are examples in the not too distant past, on the south coast for example, of trying to develop a shared services offering for revenues and benefits and simply failing because of the political difficulties between the respective local authorities." Local government has had a strong history of shared services, he says, including consortia providing IT services to housing, finance and other functions. But he believes they fell apart because the applications did not have the flexibility to cope with changing requirements. "I would argue," he says, "now that those functional applications have become much more bread and butter, that actually it is the strategic applications – spatial integrating systems, spatial data, collaboration tools – that enable us to offer services in new ways. And they are increasingly provided across the internet and ultimately could be provided through the G Cloud." Shared services are most likely to be feasible at a sub-regional level, he maintains, because respect and trust are key, and the fact that IT managers of neighbouring authorities usually know each other makes a huge difference. He concedes there are tensions between joining up services and sharing information, however, and points to Socitm research which shows that most public service employees receive tantamount to no training in information management. As long as that remains the case, he argues, it is going to be very difficult to achieve the kinds of sharing and openness of personal data to achieve the aims of the Total Place project. A government initiative looking at how a 'whole area' approach can lead to better public services which cost less, Total Place could offer local government significant opportunities to set the direction for public service reform. Ferguson sees a gathering momentum around Total Place, which is long overdue. "It is something I did as a geography undergraduate in the 1970s for goodness sake, identifying local communities, what their characteristics, needs and preferences are in terms of how they would access services and then designing services to fit those needs," he says. "Total Place, in terms of the principles, seems to make an awful lot of sense. The question for us is – and again it's an area where we are going to have to do some more work – is how do we effectively support that kind of local level of working in terms of information provision, sharing and ICT provision in an efficient and an effective manner." These could be challenges for Socitm Consulting's The Council of the Future project. Launched last October, it is looking at traditional ICT issues such as mobile working, electronic document and record management, internet services and business applications, along with broader business issues such as key performance indicators, enterprise resource planning, lean systems and the commissioning and managing of services. Ferguson says there has been considerable interest in The Council of the Future from chief executives, and that Socitm is working with a range of authorities, including Merthyr Tydfil and Oldham, on this. Asked whether enthusiasm for green technology has waned, Ferguson responds that far as those who are driving it are concerned this is not the case, but that those "on the ground" could be forgiven for seeing looming austerity as a bigger issue. "Clearly everybody is focusing hard on efficiency and coming out of recession, but arguably green ICT is central to achieving some of those requirements, particularly efficiency," he maintains. "Local public services are looking at a whole range of initiatives, from virtualisation of servers to reduce energy consumption, to the energy costs of the desktop and printers." Green IT and budget savings are mutually compatible, he argues, citing Socitm research which suggests that as the UK emerges from recession energy prices are likely to spiral at multiples of RPI inflation for other commodities, simply because supply and demand are only just in balance. And as industry demands increase, there will be shortages that will drive up prices beyond the shock experienced in the 1970s. Ferguson brings a range of experience to his new responsibilities, including leading strategic support for councils' e-government plans as the assistant director at the Improvement and Development Agency, and as chief information officer at St Albans DC when the council helped make software history. St Albans was working with a vendor to implement a poll tax application which turned out to have one significant failure: it overestimated the population, prompting the then Department of the Environment to cut the council's grant. The council successfully sued the vendor for the lack of fitness of purpose of its software and recovered the £1.2m shortfall from the company - a significant sum for an authority whose revenue budget was then £8m. "It meant that for the first time software was recognised as a 'goods', whereas previously in law it did not have any recognised standing, so unfair contract terms could not apply," says Ferguson. "And for the first time software, in law, had to be fit for purpose as opposed to meeting some kind of specification of requirements that had been defined by the supplier, albeit sometimes with customer input." Going forward Ferguson claims this is a "really exciting time" to be involved in ICT and there is "huge opportunity" for improvement. And despite cultural and leadership barriers, he believes there are good examples of councils with strong political will and a chief executive who understands that information is key. When pressed, he cites Hampshire with its long history of working with partners to deliver effective outcomes, Essex which is innovating with strategic outsourcing and Kent which is "doing interesting things" in terms of a single point of delivery and getting better value out of its estate. But he acknowledges that the examples of good practice are often fragmented. "We do not have a methodology and the financial incentives that support the replication of good practice across the sector," he says. And this could be where his threefold policy role has most impact.