The reports below  have been written for Socitm by Dan Jellinek, Editor of E-Government Bulletin.

Index
Sara Coburn
Roger Lamb
Simon Norbury
Alex Black
Chrispin O'Connell
Thomas Power

Sara Coburn

Socitm's spring conference began with a few sobering reminders about a some myths from the past, from conference chair Sara Coburn, a BBC news and business presenter, picking up on the conference theme 'The technology promise: myth or reality?'

If they are going to be able to drive forward the transformation agenda, it will be imperative for IT directors to keep their credibility in the face of some high profile confidence-shakers from the past, she said. People will remember the millennium bug episode, where everyone was promised disaster and spent millions to prevent it and it never happened, she said.

So people are expecting significant returns from the new systems, but will they be disappointed? The key will be to be open and honest about the reality of new technologies, and separate out the myths, she said. Transformation is possible, but changes will have to be visible, and they will have to deliver what the public wants.

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Roger Lamb

One of the new technologies just coming into use at innovative authorities, and which could help in the transformation agenda if properly implemented, is RFID – radio frequency identification, the topic of the next session delivered by Roger Lamb, business applications manager at the independent RFID technology centre in Bracknell.

Without going into the physics of the technology – it all works by something called inductive coupling, apparently - Lamb explained the basics of how it works and how it could be and is being deployed in local government services.

The basic RFID system is similar to barcoding in that that RFID tag or chip helps to automate the identification of objects, but unlike with barcodes the tags can be read at a distance and out of visible sight, and the tags are unique for every individual object, not just by object type as with barcodes. Some are passive, and activated by the RFID reader device, and some are active, with their own batteries, and can store more data and interact more with the reader. The third part of the system is an IT infrastructure that matches up reader and tag information and records activity such as tracking the physical location of an object at the point of reading.

The opportunities for public sector bodies with RFID include to track and register library books. If books have tiny chips stuck onto them within labels, the library user can simply swipe their library card and place a stack of books to borrow on a reader table, which detects the titles and status of all the books automatically and all together, however they are stacked and whichever way up they are.

Trials funded by the ODPM's e-innovations fund are currently taking place in Sutton, which is developing a specification for use by all of local government, and in Somerset, where experiments are being run on unmanned or unattended libraries in rural areas.

Other uses include to help track lone mobile workers to help with their safety; to help people in their homes receiving care identify who a caller is and check they are from the council; and to help parking attendants identify which car has a residents permit and which does not without having to approach close to a car or stop walking down a street.

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Simon Norbury

Councils are still "only scratching the surface of transformational government," Westminster City Council head of information services Simon Norbury told Spring conference in Bolton.

He predicted a shift "from 'e' to 'u' – the ubiquitous network, connected anytime, anywhere, anyhow." This would prove revolutionary for services with a mobile element such as medical care, welfare and crime prevention, he said.

In Westminster, the corporate transformation programme is comprised of 21 separate projects, most of which were originally ICT projects but have been moved into the management mainstream, Norbury said. "The difference is that now, although they are mostly dependent on technology, they are led by a business transformation manager, not by me."

Projects include online payment of parking tickets, which now receives 500 payments a day and combined with automated telephone payment saves the council £300,000 a year; Welcome to Westminster (W2W), a common registration procedure for four services including libraries and council tax; and a smartcard system.

There is also online application for residents' parking permits, replacing an old system whereby residents had to turn up in person at one-stop shops with nine different pieces of identification to combat fraud, Norbury said. "Everyone had to do it – once Noel Gallagher was seen queueing up for his permit. Everyone except possibly the Queen. But now it is online, with security from a DVLA and an Experian database, and in the first weekend we had 30% take-up. That's the secret to take-up: you have to enable things that people actually want to do."

Westminster is also aiming to become a 'Wireless City, one of the world's first, Norbury said. Using WiFi, WiMax and mesh network technologies, a system of wireless broadband 'clouds' and 40 wireless CCTV cameras in three areas have already saved a great deal of money by enabling mobile working, he said. Citywide rollout will follow, allowing for example all social services staff to work away from the office and all schools to become wireless hotspots.

Flexible working practices, partially enabled by the wireless network, will save the council money on office accommodation by enabled it to eventually sell off seven out of 18 floors of City Hall, Norbury said. "Efficiency will improve and staff satisfaction will improve." Offices will also be "relayered" to move from being outdated deskbound spaces to meeting areas where mobile workers can come in for small informal meetings or larger formal meetings. "Currently it takes three weeks to have a meeting at Westminster because it takes three weeks to book a meeting room," he said. "And at the moment two or three floors of City Hall are taken up just with filing systems. That is absurd."

There were some new extra costs associated with flexible working, Norbury said, such as the extension of technical support late into the evening to fit with people's homeworking practices. "It needs to be built into the business case." Organisations might also consider internet load balancing and a second back-up internet connection in case the first one went down, he said. "It never has gone down for me in two years, but you can guarantee the first day he chief executive works from home, the line will go down."

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Alex Black

IT directors must work closely with managers from service departments if technology projects are to be successful, Alex Black told spring conference delegates in a session entitled "What's that got to do with IT?"

Black, who until his recent retirement had been assistant programme manager at the North West E-Government Group (NWEGG) Partnership, said this was especially true for partnership projects between councils.

"Most of the activity we get involved in, especially working in partnerships, is not about IT per se, but about improving services," he said.  "So we must combine our expertise with that of colleagues in service departments. And service departments should share the responsibility - and the blame - for IT projects."

It departments have traditionally been lumbered with all sorts of odd projects simply because there is no other logical home for them, Black said, listing vending machines, telephony and the Gershon efficiency review as examples.

He said IT managers were often the best people to lead major new projects "because we implement new systems continually, whereas departments like housing for example may only implement a new system once every 10 years." IT staff are also good at specifying systems and helping service staff articulate their requirements, and are good at procurement, project management and implementation, he said. "We're also a soft touch."

Service departments also have strengths: they know about running their own businesses better than anyone, Black said. But they must put proper resources into specifying what they need from new technology systems.

As for sharing services, " there has been resistance in some quarters, but there is now a realisation that we have got to work together, following the transformational government strategy," Black said.

He gave two examples of successful partnership working. The first was a partnership between two districts with no common boundary that procure, implement and support all systems jointly. They save on procurement effort and achieve lower prices and lower implementation costs, he said. "Everything is speeded up for the second organisation, in learning from what has gone on in the first organisation."

Black's second example was of a sub-regional partnership for out of hours call handling that outsourced the work to a small, flexible firm used to dealing with web-based enquiries. Benefits included lower cost and knowledge sharing.

The main success factors for partnership are clear governance and above all trust, Black said. "You have got to know people will make decisions in the best interest of the partnership as a whole, even when decisions are not necessarily in the best interest of the lead organisation."

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Crispin O'Connell

When entering into partnership agreements with other authorities, councils must not be afraid to ask and answer the difficult questions about the basic purpose of the partnership and how it will work right at the outset, Crispin O'Connell told delegates.

"Ask why are you doing these things, what are the challenges?" said O'Connell, who is Chief ICT Officer at Cardiff City Council. To innovate with partnership managers must also ensure they have support from councillors, he said. "You must have the politicians on board."

Cardiff is currently involved in a whole series of ground-breaking partnership projects including the Wales Disaster Recovery Consortium (WADRC) and a family of projects leading from its call centre programme Connect to Cardiff (C2C).

The WADRC partnership is a co-operative project between Cardiff, Carmarthenshire and Wrexham councils who agreed in 2004 to jointly procure and run a disaster recovery system. They chose to use Fujitsu and Sun to develop a secure computer room in Cardiff, with management and administration by the city council but the facility shared by all three authorities.

The three partners drew up an invocation agreement, which includes an agreement for the partners to provide each other with services to help with the recovery of systems of the affected partner. Each partner can choose which of their service systems to support for possible disaster recovery, with for example Cardiff choosing to prioritise revenues and benefits; social services; housing rents and corporate email. There are other benefits, said O'Connell: the facility is much easier to test than if it had been outsourced off-site, with the partners enjoying an estimated 2,000% more testing time. It has also brought the three closer together in general: "We really have a bond now with Wrexham and Carmarthenshire on technical issues, through the forum," he said.

Separately, Cardiff's successful Connect to Cardiff (C2C) contact centre was also extended to other public bodies through partnership, first to Blaenau Gwent council which wanted a similar facility but could not afford to create one. Cardiff came up with a three-year partnership agreement under which a new smaller centre was created in Blaenau Gwent to ensure local jobs, but where the calls were handled across C2C's own system. The benefits for Blaenau Gwent included gaining a sophisticated model at an affordable cost, and reduced risk. And for Cardiff, it boosted its image within Wales as the largest Welsh council was helping one of the smallest, and it also generates some income to reinvest in C2C.

After that project was launched, the Cardiff Local Health Board asked to join a similar set-up to create a Connect to Out of Hours Cardiff GP service, which has similar benefits and has also aided joined-up working between health and social care, O'Connell said.

"A lot of health calls have a social care element, for example if someone is taken ill, someone else in the household may then need social care. So we have moved to co-location of Cardiff's social services emergency care duty scheme."

Interestingly for the lawyers in the audience, O'Connell revealed another secret of successful partnership working within the public sector: never sign a contract. "Document your agreements, but avoid contracts. Once you get into them, issues of risk and damages can make the lawyers get very cautious," he said. "So we've managed to go forward with partnership agreements that our lawyers have been happy with."

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Thomas Power

Councils are going to have to throw out concepts of linear business processes and channels of communication to citizens, and embrace a future of complex, interactive online communities and networks, keynote speaker Thomas Power told conference.

Power is co-founder and chairman of Ecademy, a global online community of more than 70,000 self-employed businesspeople divided into topic-based and location-based groups.

"We like processes that are linear, but you are going to have to say goodbye to that world. The internet has freed the citizens – they are no longer bound by governments. Blogs free the public to publish. Consumers are growing sceptical about organisations, so to find routes to individuals you will have to do things differently."

The secret will be for councils and other public bodies to build their own networks of and with citizens, Power said. "You have to learn how to build communities online. Think of your organisation as a club, but fully integrated locally, regionally and nationally."

The internet is a huge global matching device, Power said, matching people with each other or people with services. The most successful internet companies realise this fact: Yahoo matches people with information; Google matches questions with answers; eBay matches buyers with sellers; MySpace matches bands with fans; and so on.  "And people can talk back, and have a dialogue: that's what local authorities will have to learn."

The future world of work will follow the same pattern, he said, with employers offering jobs online and networks matching them with freelance employees, worldwide. "There are already almost five million people who work from home, and by 2020 most people will be self-employed. It will change public services, because people will be travelling less, and interacting more with their local communities," Power said.

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