London Connects Conference 2008
The eighth annual London Connects conference was a great success, with over two hundred delegates from across the IT sector in London and beyond attending. There were a variety of discussions and smaller workshops on many areas of technology and collaboration, along with the networking opportunities that are such an important part of the event. To celebrate our eighth birthday we even had a delicious cake for everyone who attended.
For copies of all the presentations from the day, please head to http://www.kablenet.com/connects08. You will need the username and password from the delegate handbook. If
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Opening discussions 
The conference began gloomily. Tony Travers described just how
difficult the economic outlook for funding London services is. Were ICT
and shared services the way out? How should Capital Ambition become the
hub of Improvement and Efficiency in London? The panel of experts; Rob
Leak from Enfield, Nathan Elvery from Croydon, Mike More from
Westminster and Calum Macleod from Capgemini mulled the issues over. As
many barriers were identified as opportunities but a strong commitment
to partnership working and learning remained key themes.
We were delighted to welcome Michael O’Higgins, Chairman of the
Audit Commission to provide the keynote speech. Michael outlined 3
major challenges for London; energy use, green living and transport.
Technology can help with all 3. Michael highlighted examples from
Huddersfield and Leicester where digital maps were identifying energy
waste from households and businesses. Should we be shaming individuals
and businesses into reducing their energy losses? Much discussion
followed.
Morning sessions
Stream 1– Mobile working and the application of new technologyTwo
wireless experts from Westminster and Transport for London led the
debate. Andrew Snellgrove identified CCTV, mobile workers and
management of on street assets as the 3 pillars of the Westminster
programme. Both technical and management of change issues have been and
remain significant in this ground breaking work. But savings are now on
stream and Westminster is well placed to provide lessons learned to
others. Martin Davey from TfL described how the iBus project was
assisting 8000 buses to deliver a better service of 6.3 million
passenger journeys per day. Customers are receiving more accurate
information on bus arrivals from read outs at bus stops and will in the
future by mobile phone. Drivers are in better contact with the centre
and less distracted by the need to inform passengers about next stops.
Emergency and non-emergency incidents are able to be managed better.
David Wilde from Westminster as Chair summed up the need for boroughs
to work together and with TfL to exploit wireless potentials.
Stream 2 - Information management and governance
How do you leverage the value out of information? We had the right
people to answer the question in Tony Ellis (Brent) and Steve Palmer
(Hillingdon), respectively chair of Data Connects and Vice President of
SOCITM, besides being CIOs in their own authorities.
Tony was offering "hard and fast figures to justify investment" in
Customer Data Integration (CDI), as can be found in the recent business
case report commissioned from RSe. This pointed to a potential £1.4m in
annual cashable benefits from improved CDI in parking, council tax and
benefits. Attendees were invited to get involved by downloading the ROI
tool and sending their completed spreadsheet.
By contrast, Steve focused on the governance of the data and how
modern heads of ICT need to give direction and do more for less while
at the same time acting as a critical friend to the services. As one of
his slides said, "how brave do you feel?". The discussion afterwards
brought up some interesting topics with Steve challenging the idea that
'information sharing is bad' - creating a situation where some boroughs
have to buy in data they could have got from the electoral role.
Their slides are available online and the challenges might well be
summed up in one sentence from Tony - "we store too much info"!
Stream 3 – Sharing and Partnerships
Chair: Ian Taylor, Business Development at Synetrix
Speakers: Debbie Wisdom, Strategic Director Kent Connects; Dominic Cain Head of Client Services London Borough of Southwark
A well attended seminar heard Debbie Wisdom talk about Kent Connects and Dominic Cain about the ‘Tell Us Once’ pilot.
Debbie Wisdom said that Kent Connects has 16 partners – all the
local authorities in Kent plus others like Kent police. The
organisation provides core services around connectivity to all partners
(100 Mbs fibre link connecting all partners) including an information
sharing portal and runs business service projects for groups of
partners. The challenges are around transformation of the ICT service
in the region allied with business engagement. She mentioned several
projects including, GC aggregator, centralised NLPG access, shared data
centres, ICT staff exchange, joint training, a multi agency information
sharing framework, a virtual call centre pilot and customer profiling.
She conclude by saying that their overall aim is to remove any
potential for technology being used as an excuse for not transforming
services.
 Dominic Cain said that ‘Tell Us Once’ is about Central Government
working closely with Local Government to improve the customer
experience; in the first instance around bereavement. The key is
process change with technology as an enabler. When a person dies, there
are many Government, private sector and 3rd sector agencies involved
each doing their own thing and each having to be dealt with separately.
For example, Southwark partners include DWP, HMRC, DVLA, Lambeth
registrars, hospitals, funeral directors and the voluntary sector.
Southwark now employ bereavement counsellors who collect the
information once initially and distribute it to the other delivery
partners, then offer a return visit in 4 weeks to check that the
appropriate actions have happened. Dominic ran through some before and
after case studies to show the impact that this approach can have. They
currently use CJIT secure email to distribute the information and are
looking to move to GC secure email. He finished by emphasising that is
about the customer experience and not IT.
Afternoon Sessions
Stream 1 – Customer Services
Chris Naylor may now work for Tower Hamlets but he still likes to talk
about Hammersmith & Fulham. That’s because H&F have
demonstrated that you can make savings and increase service quality
from knowing your customer better. By use of Mosaic data from Experian
H&F were able to target their residents and go some way to
providing services in the way they preferred. That is face to face,
call centre or internet. Critical to the project was having a partner
like Agilsys who understood the context and could respond to changing
requirements. More benefits from online improvements at Croydon were
demonstrated by Graham Cadle. Month by month Croydon have been
increasing the users registered for online transactions requiring
authentication. Croydon have used Gandlake’s citizen account to provide
increased online service security. Croydon’s registered users include
intern=mediaries such as Age Concern and the Citizens Advice Bureau.
The Chair, Janet Worth, from the GLA was able to express delight that
these two projects were showing the way forward for friendly cost
effective online services.
Stream 2 – Information and network security
Philip Littleavon – Programme Director, GC
Philip gave an overview of the secure collaborative goal of Government
Connect and went on to highlight the structure differences between
central and local government. He explained that there is a need to
reduce these differences and that the main drivers for change were
Efficiency, Service Transformation, Shared Services and Data Security.
Security is proving to be the key enabler of change and that it
addresses the primary barriers to change, delivering trust and
connectivity.
Philip believes that the GCSx which is accredited to carry restricted
data will create a community of trust and he mentioned the Data
Handling Review written by Sir Gus O’Donnell and Kieran Poynter’s
review of the security incident at HMRC In terms of GCSx roll-out, of
the 410 authorities in England and Wales, 321 are currently undergoing
implementation of some stage or another
Dave Sifleet – Audit Manager, TfL
Dave started of by discussing the recent incidences of data loss and
how this has created a ‘trust gap’ between the public and its
‘partners’. In addition, we are seeing more and more cases of fraud and
misuses of technology as well as breaches of compliance. The
Information Commissioner now has the power to fine organisations who
breach data protection principles.
• There are solutions to all of these problems BUT what are the side effects and can we do this with a bit more balance?
• In trying to address these problems it is easy to forget the business needs.
• Dave discussed ways in which to achieve a balanced security policy
and how you should consider your information, the risks to that
information and what are the business requirements.
• You then need to ensure that your staff ‘buy-in’ to your policies.
• Remember – Control, Consolidate & Transform
Stream 3 – Green IT
Chair: Chris Blenkhorn, Consulting Systems Architect UK Public Sector, Cisco
Speakers: Dave Williams, Head of Technology and Innovation, Environment
Agency; Sean Powley, Assistant Director of Resources, LB Barnet
A well attended seminar heard Dave Williams and Sean Powley talk about their experience of green IT.
Dave Williams started by examining the scale of the problem – ICT
could be responsible for 2% of global emissions – as much as air travel
and as much as 10% of UK total energy consumption. He emphasised the
need for metrics, their target is for a 30% reduction in the embedded
carbon dioxide in manufacture and transport, 30% reduction whist in use
and 20% in disposal. Manufacture is the largest element. He is looking
to do this through procurement, influence and having an accurate
picture of current use against which to compare. Projects that can have
an effect include storage centralisation, thin client (especially if
the client devices have a longer active life) and virtualisation as
well other policies, eg home working which have an indirect effect on
the overall carbon usage of an organisation.
Sean Powley talked about the people side of Green IT, particularly
flexible and mobile working and modernising the way we work. This can
lead to better outcomes for the customers and a better work/life
balance for staff and underlying it all is a commitment to securing a
greener and more sustainable approach. He said that it is not really
about technology itself but thinking about new working practices,
offices and working locations and hearts and minds. Barnet has over the
last few years started to change working practices, introduce
encouragements for greener travel and look at work and service
locations – it is gradually coming together. He said that ICT can have
a direct effect and cited IBM’s Project Big Green but ended with a
question about money and energy – If ICT continues not to pay for its
energy consumption, will ICT carbon costs ever be taken seriously?
Closing plenary
If the morning began gloomily things were looking up by the
afternoon. Wingham Rowan was able to describe how Slivers of Time
provides work for people with irregular time commitments. Phil Pavitt,
Tfl’s CIO, outlined the greater cohesion that is taking place within
TfL and the GLA group generally in working together. The prospect for
real benefits from boroughs working with the London CIO group which
Phil is now leading have never been brighter. Cllr Michael White,
Leader of Havering and Chair of the Improvement Board which governs
Capital Ambition, spoke passionately about the possibilities of
wireless, smart cards and improvement through collaboration. Finally
Sir Steve Bullock gave an enthusiastic endorsement of the contribution
which ICT and Customer Service departments had made through London
Connects since it all began back in the year 2000.
The cake!
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