The Modernising Government Agenda is transforming local government IT strategy. In the past, local government IT was often seen as the bumbling poor relation of the public sector. Not any more. The agenda has focused local authorities on providing an online one-stop shop for people when they contact a local authority – with an immovable deadline of 2005. Local councils, according to local government minister Christopher Leslie, deliver around 80 per cent of people’s day-to-day contact with the government. “The modernising strategy provides a framework to transform council services, joining them up with other public services and offering greater choice for customers and greater cost-effectiveness for councils,” he said.
In October 2002, all councils in England had to submit ‘Implementing eGovernment’ statements in which they set out how they intend to deliver services across the internet, over the telephone and face to face. “We want to see councils harness the power of eGovernment to engage people, to increase participation in how councils run their services and lead their communities,” said Leslie.
At Leeds City Council, this approach has been welcomed enthusiastically. Eileen Wainwright, the council’s assistant director of strategy and development is working on a £5 million, three-year project that will deliver geographically based information to both employees and citizens.
Wainwright said the developments are customer-driven, not technology-driven: “eGovernment is not technology-driven. It is about different parts of the council business reinventing themselves to improve their services, which can then be enabled by IT. However, it is really about those services changing to make a real difference to the end customer.
“All of our strategy is about improving services and enabling access, empowering citizens and employees to get better services,” she added.
Wainwright believes the e-government agenda encourages local authorities to design services around customer needs. Leeds City Council has a population of 750,000 to look after and Wainwright is planning to develop partnerships with supplier organisations to help her meet their needs.
“We want to work with suppliers and want them to understand what our business is, where it is going and what they need to do to keep their product relevant,” she said.
On a personal level, Wainwright says her challenges are all about the successful management of developing new systems to keep customers happy. “The key challenges for me personally are the scale of the developments and managing the process successfully,” she claimed.
This provides its own management headaches: “Managing the very complex relationship between applications and infrastructure so they move forward in a coherent way – that isn’t easy,” she added.
Exciting time
Wainwright believes local government IT is a very exciting place to be at present, as it is at the forefront technologically.
“There is a lot more variety, especially in application development, where we are working on 50 major projects over the next five years,” she said.
It is the business effect of these developments that Wainwright finds most rewarding: “What I really enjoy is going into the different business areas and seeing the difference when a system has gone in and is working well. You can see it is making a real difference on the ground.”
The agenda has only two years to run before it hits the deadline to put 100 per cent of all government services online. It will be a challenging time for everyone working in the public sector but there is a feeling of confidence emerging from local authority IT directors.
Even the Audit Commission reckons 78 per cent of councils will have all services delivered electronically on time – no more the bumbling poor relation of local authority IT here.
Quelle: MIS Web
