Socitm Blog

Socitm's response has been prepared by Socitm's Futures group with input from the membership in Socitm's Regions and other key stakeholders.

Our key recommendations are:

• Regional or sub-regional groupings of local authorities to lead in the provision of health and social care resource allocation information systems, particularly as GP clusters take over commissioning from Primary Care Trusts.
• Creation of marketplaces for service outcome and demand-led approaches to information systems designed to facilitate personalised choice of health and social care services.
• Greater transparency and openness of information on care needs, assessments, diagnosis, research, guidance, treatments and availability and cost of health, as well as social care, services in order to generate conditions for innovation by patients, service users and providers of care and therapies.
• Development of national standards for interoperability, information sharing and consent.
• Mandation or regulation to ensure compliance with standards for interoperability, information sharing and disclosure should be considered.
• Sharing of information with patients and service users in a number of ways, including online access. This information should cover all significant sources of health and social care diagnosis, assessment, prevention, treatment and care, including GP, social care, acute hospital, community care and mental health.
• Support (technical and interpretive) for patients and service users to access their own information online to overcome the restrictions of their capacity or capability.
• Joining-up information across systems and organisations for complex cases to be done with the involvement of users to avoid unnecessary complexity and to remain outcome-focused, tracking typical user journeys through the systems, so that only the information that is genuinely needed is joined-up.
• An initiative to recast the mindset of all staff in public services on the benefits and responsibilities that will come with improved handling and sharing of data and information.
• Access requirements generated by the proposed information revolution in health and social care to be incorporated directly into the Race Online 2012 campaign.
• Leadership, vision, governance and funding to ensure development and implementation of standards, and joined-up information systems and outcomes.

The Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) is undertaking an inquiry into the way in which Government develops information technology policy and the strategy for its implementation. The inquiry will examine the Government's overall approach to information technology including how it identifies business needs, the effectiveness of governance arrangements, and procurement policy and practice. Socitm is seeking the views of its members and other interested parties, so that it can formulate its submission to PASC by the required deadline of 21 January 2011.

Please see the foot of this blog entry for how details of how to provide input to Socitm's submission.

Issues that readers of this blog may wish to comment on may include:

• Scope - central and local government; sectoral coverage; etc.
• Alignment of political and policy thinking with development of IT capability.
• Technology vs. service outcome-led strategy formulation.
• Incentives (for public, civil society and private sectors) to invest in IT-enabled change.
• Propensity for knowledgeable and informed senior level engagement.
• Capability to act as an intelligent client.
• Scale and depth of IT programmes.
• Adoption of business change methodologies.
• Open standards and open source.
• Outsourcing.
• Benefits and savings realisation.
• Learning from past mistakes.
• Other .....

Specific questions from the PASC paper:

1. How well is technology policy co-ordinated across Government?

2. How effective are its governance arrangements?

3. Have past lessons from NAO and OGC reviews about unsuccessful IT programmes been learnt and applied?

4. How well is IT used in the design, delivery and improvement of public services?

5. What role should IT play in a 'post-bureaucratic age'?

6. What skills does Government have and what are those it must develop in order to acquire IT capability?

7. How well do current procurement policies and practices work?

8. What infrastructure, data or other assets does government need to own, or to control directly, in order to make effective use of IT?

9. How will public sector IT adapt to the new 'age of austerity'?

10. How well does Government take advantage of new technological developments and external expertise?

11. How appropriate is the Government's existing approach to information security, information assurance and privacy?

12. How well does the UK compare to other countries with regard to government procurement and application of IT systems?

Socitm members wishing to comment on any of the issues or questions raised in this blog should submit responses using the comments facility at the foot of this blog entry or direct by email to martin.ferguson@socitm.gov.uk by 9am on 13 January 2011.

Responses will be collated, distributed to Socitm regional chairs/secretaries, Local CIO Council members and Socitm Futures members, and presented for consideration by the next meeting of Socitm Futures on Monday 17January 2011, in order to make Socitm's response to PASC by 21 January 2011.

Following a successful workshop at the Socitm Annual Conference 2010 in Brighton, the Flemish Government and European local government-related organisations, including Socitm, have been working to produce a pan-European 'Call to Action' - known as The Citadel Statement. The Statement will help local government deliver on the key objectives of the Malmö Ministerial Declaration. The Malmö Declaration,signed by EU Ministers on the 18 November 2009 in Malmö, Sweden, outlined a forward-looking eGovernment vision to be achieved by 2015.

On launching the Citadel Statement, Jos Creese said:

"Western societies will not be able to cope with fierce economic pressures and growing and aging populations liberated by new technologies, without new models of delivery, a smaller state andgreater personal responsibility. The Citadel Statement identifies the top things that local, national and EU decision makers can do to better support the digital enablement of these new models of service delivery."

Julia Glidden of 21c Consultancy takes up the story:

The Malmö Declaration, signed by EU Ministers on the 18 November 2009 in Malmö, Sweden, outlines a forward-looking eGovernment vision to be achieved by 2015. The key 'Malmö' objectives that EU Member States have pledged to achieve in the next five years are:

• To empower businesses and citizens through 1) eGovernment services designed around users' needs, 2) better access to information and 3) active citizen involvement in the policy making process;
• To facilitate mobility in the single market by providing seamless eGovernment services for setting up business, studying, working, residing and retiring in Europe;
• To enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of government services by reducing the administrative burden, improving the organisational processes of administrations and using ICT to improve energy efficiency in public administrations.

Initial research shows that despite numerous policy documents and 'how to' manuals on local eGovernment, nearly one year on, the 'Malmö Vision' is still not being translated down to the on-the-ground, local level.   The Citadel Statement aims to address this short-coming by better understanding why local communities are finding it challenging to implement eGovernment in an innovative, cost-effective and efficient manner.

Towards that end, supporters of the Citadel Statement carried out an open, online consultation to encourage local eGovernment practitioners across Europe to help identify practical solutions to combat barriers at the local level such as bureaucratic red tape, cultural resistance and divergent privacy and data protection laws.

To create the basis for the online consultation, the Flemish eGovernment Authority joined forces with Socitm to host a one day workshop at the recent Socitm Annual Conference in Brighton.   The workshop, which included the InterReg IVb project Smart Cities, gathered experts from across Europe to identify top actions that local governments need from National and EU decision-makers in order to better implement eGovernment.

Participants at the workshop agreed that to make 'Malmö' real at the local level, EU and National decision makers should take the following actions:

1) Help make public data more open across Europe by identifying five key areas where data can be reasonably be expected to be shared by 2013.

2) Facilitate interoperability for e-government services by agreeing a common semantic library for key terms by 2013.

3) Support local government e-service delivery by encouraging national and regional governments to be responsible for infrastructure issues such as cloud computing standards.

4) Make seamless e-government more achievable through the identification of five practical eServices that all local governments need to deliver by 2013.

5) Facilitate mobility by developing shared standards for the identification of people across Europe by 2013.

6) Reduce the administrative burden by 'optimising' EU and National procurement rules to better facilitate the 'build once, share many times' principle.

The declaration has been named the 'Citadel Statement' for two strategic reasons:

1. The word citadel is originally derived from the phrase 'citta ideale' or 'ideal city' and stands for a fortress that is used to protect a city.
2. The launch event for the declaration is in the Ghent Citadel Park on the site of a former fortress built at the beginning of the 19th century.

Supporters of the Citadel Statement hope that the Call-to-Action becomes a 'living document' that continues to evolve in the run-up to 2015 in a manner that spurs local government to achieve better eServices for citizens.

Socitm will be incorporating the actions set out in the Citadel Statement into a draft local public services IT strategy, which will be released for consultation in the new year.

The draft practitioners guide on publishing new contracts and tenders information is available at http://lgnewcontracts.readandcomment.com.

The guide suggests a practical approach to opening up data on new contracts using current procurement infrastructure and linking this to published spending data. At its core we suggest that authorities:

• Work within current standing orders when making decisions on when to tender for goods and services
• Work with regional procurement portals to disseminate procurement opportunities
• Include information on suppliers when publishing spend information e.g. supplier name / contract reference for low level spend items where tendering is inappropriate
• Develop a "contracts register" to store information on contracts awarded, that can be accessed locally or via regional Procurement portals
• Add in a transparency clause to the contracting process.

Transparency is vital to local democracy, and, if data is presented to the common standards we suggest, it will offer benefits in better engaging the public, and in informing improvement and efficiency. However, we also suggest certain safeguards around individual privacy and fraud prevention.  

This is an open consultation. The guide will be available for comment until 21st January. Comments can be submitted directly on the transparency programme site or the LG Group's Data and Transparency Team can be reached via transparency@local.gov.uk.

We look forward to hearing your views.

Martin Ferguson, Head of Policy (Socitm), on behalf of the LG Group Data and Transparency Team

Why information matters - how taking a strategic approach will help us achieve greater efficiency, improved transparency and accountability, and closer working with partners. This is a Local Government Improvement & Development project supported by Socitm. Go online today and contribute to a briefing that will be aimed at chief executives and senior managers in local government.

Ordnance Survey and the Local Government Group have entered into a joint venture partnership, 'GeoPlace' from which spatial address products will be created. Subject to approval from the Office of Fair Trading, it will combine local government's address and streets gazetteers, the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) and the National Street Gazetteer (NSG) with Ordnance Survey's OS MasterMap® Address Layer 2.

The aim is, for the first time, to provide a single definitive source of accurate publicly-owned spatial address data, for the whole of the public sector.

The initiative supports the Location Strategy's concept of a 'Core Reference Geography' and the key principles of the INSPIRE directive, including that data should only be collected once and kept where it can be maintained most effectively.

The new products will bring together the currency and consistency of existing address products and allow organisations to readily exchange address information with each other, streamline government services, reduce duplication and facilitate partnership working. This will deliver significant efficiency savings and improvements for both the public and commercial sectors.

The joint venture includes the acquisition of Intelligent Addressing (Holdings) Limited (IA), the company currently running the NLPG and NSG hubs on behalf of local government.

The parties are working closely to define detailed requirements and specifications and to put in place the necessary technical infrastructure to create and maintain the national address gazetteer database. These requirements include features such as local government's Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN), Ordnance Survey's TOID® (unique identifier) and Royal Mail's® Postcode Address File (PAF®.).The national address gazetteer database will have product quality content by April 2011, allowing customer engagement prior to product release between July and September 2011.

A single national address gazetteer database will provide a platform for collaborative working throughout the public and private sectors. Ordnance Survey, on behalf of GeoPlace, will make the products from the national address gazetteer database widely available to the market through its extensive network of Licensed Partners and to its direct customers.

The products created from the national address gazetteer database will be made available free at the point of use for all public sector bodies under the centrally funded Public Sector Mapping Agreement. Commercial customers will be able to license it in the same way as they do for the Ordnance Survey and NLPG products that they currently use.

Local government in Scotland and the Scottish Government are supportive of the goal to create a national address gazetteer database for the whole of Great Britain, and are working with local government and Ordnance Survey to explore options for achieving this goal.

For further information, please see:

Department of Communities and Local Government announcement - New national 'address book' to be free to emergency services - http://www.communities.gov.uk/news/corporate/1786470

Local Government Group announcement - New agreement set to create single address database - http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/core/page.do?pageId=15374919

Intelligent Addressing announcement - New Ordnance Survey and Local Government joint venture acquires Intelligent Addressing and ends address confusion - http://www.intelligent-addressing.co.uk/iaweb/document.htm?targ=842

Ordnance Survey announcement - Government initiative for national addressing - http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/media/news/2010/dec/nationaladdressing.html

I have received the following comments from Simon Norbury in his capacity as a member of our Socitm Futures group. These are some challenging and untested views! We would welcome your reactions and comments.

"Interesting report and regardless of its accuracy/validity in some areas, its implications could be very significant. Although it does not refer to local government per se, if central government brings its online services together in one place, how long will we be allowed to run 376 separate council web sites in England? You can imagine Eric Pickles asking these questions of his mandarins as I write.

 

As significant is the proposal to develop APIs to key transactions. Why should you have to go to separate council web sites to pay your council tax etc?

I thought one of most significant comments in the report was the distinction between information citizens want and need versus that which departments are promoting. You can see a situation where the standard texts - what is council tax etc and transactions being brought together with councils left to maintain the promotional material. There is already a tension between these activities.

How should we move forward - await some diktat or develop our own response?

Rather than stonewall the report and try to fend off its proposals on the grounds that every council is different (when we know that large chunks are the same), we should look at areas where we could bring things together. I would suggest that we look at the top transactions - 30,40,50? Look at where there is potential to bring them together in one place as standard applications. For applications where there is a genuine difference (say in interpretation e.g. empty properties for council tax) could we have APIs to the local application? Overall we should have APIs to the common applications enabling associated web sites or Apps to link and enable payments/applications etc. 

Just some immediate thoughts ....."

Your comments, please, in this blog entry or direct to:

martin.ferguson@socitm.gov.uk and snorbury@redpepper52.co.uk

Local Public Services ICT Strategy:

The strategy is now in a rough draft state. The first draft, completed from the contributions of the various workstreams, was discussed at the Local CIO Council meeting on 3rd November.

We agreed some measures to govern the further development of the strategy, including an editorial board comprising Jos Creese, Glyn Evans, Dylan Roberts and Geoff Connell.

A summary draft version of the strategy (approx 20 pages) will be commissioned, supported by more detailed documents for the individual workstreams. These documents will form the basis of a consultation through December-January with Socitm's membership and with key stakeholders and others interested in participating. The consultation will be transparent and fully open, and will be conducted online and through various fora, including Socitm's regional meetings.

Our aim is to have an agreed version of the strategy ready for launch in March 2011 and to maintain it as a 'living strategy' beyond that date, with appropriate updating as new requirements and opportunities arise.

Digital inclusion and Race Online 2010:

We will write to Martha Lane Fox to secure the release and publication of Socitm Consulting's research on digital inclusion.

Futures will assemble a brief business case for digital inclusion, to be used by Local CIO Council as the basis of a letter to all local authorities urging them to commit as a partner to Race Online 2012.

Google Apps:

Dave Fitton of Google introduced Google Apps to the group as a cloud-based solution. We discussed the scope and availability of the solution, and security and privacy issues (including Google's proposals for EU containment of data), and pricing.

Government Connect Secure Extranet (GCSx) to Public Sector Network (PSN) transition options:

Ian Wilcox attended from the Cabinet Office to set out potential options being considered for local authorities to transition to PSN in coming months. Kent and Hampshire will be leading the way by the end of 2010. Further work is needed to cost the various options and to determine what may suit local authorities at different stages of developing their network infrastructure.

And, finally: we welcome comments on these or any other items that you think should be under consideration by Socitm Futures.