One Small Step...

The PSF’s Ian Cuddy told me he’s had a letter from the Cabinet Office saying that the Central CIO and CTO Council meetings are going, henceforth, to publish the minutes of their meetings. Great stuff and cheering news following experience reported earlier this week! PSF started a bit of a campaign for transparency, last month, citing Socitm’s stewardship of the Local CIO Council as an exemplar.


Today’s scheduled Government Connect Benefits Realisation Awards Ratification Committee was again postponed.

Philip Littleavon wrote, today, to GC Board members acknowledging that “there has been a fair amount of discussion and concern about the recent batch of letters to local authorities”. As he and Paul Howarth (Head of the DWP Housing Strategy Division) now see it, key issues going forward are:

1. “Paul & I to agree and communicate a clear documented message with respect to the DWP data access policy defining what authorities should do if they feel they will not achieve compliance by 31 March. Also to describe the position if compliance is achieved by 31 March, but the live configuration process extends beyond this date.
2. “It is now unlikely further bulk communications will be necessary, but GC will look to work closely with the LGA / Socitm / IDeA to help with authorities we perceive to be at risk or not engaging sufficiently well. It is important that all discussions are closely coordinated with Anna Smith to ensure clarity and coordination.”

The main theme in response to Socitm’s broadcast asking for evidence of inappropriate support from GC was of contradictions between advice provided by the Account Managers and the content of the letters. Authorities have considered the Account Managers their main points of contact, and assumed any information provided to them was shared with the team and that, on the other hand, the Account Managers spoke for the Team, and their advice could be relied upon. This doesn’t seem unreasonable; otherwise why set-up accounts management arrangements? I hope, therefore, that Philip is communicating these messages to his Account Support people.

Have a good weekend.

Investing in our future...

Key discussion at today’s Socitm Board meeting, held at Camden Town Hall, concerned our need to invest in additional resources. This was prefaced by consideration of an interim report on the level of financial reserves that the Society should retain. The reserves provide a buffer to ensure the Society can remain solvent and affect an orderly winding-up in case of adversity. This is a bit of a simplification but a very cautious approach would be to retain sufficient cash to enable service delivery for a year with no income, and an orderly winding-up of business. We took the view that a sensible risk posture would be to provide for 6 months’ operation, recognising that a sudden and complete cessation of income would be quite unlikely.

The main investment proposals are in appointing a Commercial & Business Development Director (working title) and a London-based Head of Policy. The former role is to manage business partnerships and oversight of commercial operations, generating revenue for member services and, therefore, more than self-funding. Directors approved, in principle. The final decision will be made by the Commercial Board on 23rd February. The Policy role is required to maintain and develop dialogue with key stakeholders (especially in Government) and to facilitate appropriate policy development through Socitm Futures. This will cover some of the role that I’ve been undertaking, as I return to my “day job”. Directors approved the policy role initially on a contract basis, with a review after six months, and accepted that this could be funded by reserves, with an expectation that funding would be provided by commercial income in the longer term. Although the Board recognises that much of the Society’s work will be undertaken by paid resources, it re-emphasised its need for active support from serving ICT professionals, whose experience cannot be substituted.

Other financial considerations, today, were in reviewing and formalising current public relations, marketing and sales support – remaining areas where we don’t have up-to-date contracts.

Other noteworthy items of discussion were:

• The problems with our financial management system (Iris) have been overcome. It’s now integrated with the new CRM, and is just going fully “live”.
• The focus, now, is in getting the new CMS operational. In order to secure early benefits the initial process, now, will be “migration, rather than transformation”.
• We are implementing a recommendation from our recent Director Training course – a register of hospitality/ gifts received.
• For the first time, our annual accounts will include a detailed annual report, which is nearing completion.
• The National Spring Conference is shaping-up well. The AGM report will feature developments in Member Services.
• The Member Services Board would like the NAC to form a Reference Group of volunteers to consider membership applications, appeals etc.

I hope to publish the next President’s Report by the end of next week.

Planning IA09

I've removed the notes of my attendance at an IAEAB (Information Assurance Events Advisory Board) meeting, at the request of the Chair. He advised that the content is privileged information. I am very sorry for any embarrassment caused, but was not advised of its confidentiality, and none of the documentation discussed was marked as confidential.

I'm bemused at this development, which I hope to meet with the Chair to discuss. I believe I have a duty as a Socitm representative to report my activities on its behalf (and that as a CIO I have similar responsibilities as a public servant). Whilst there will always be occasions when we cannot divulge information that may compromise requirements such as commercial discussions or security, I did not think that any of these applied. On the other hand, it was clear that there is a real need to engender appreciation of and active support for effective Government Information Assurance.

A few updates from me. Last week I spoke on behalf of the Society at the Transformational Government event in Westminster. It was very well attended considering the weather and I used the opportunity to talk about avoidable contact as well as a number of "CIO role" issues. Plugs for Socitm's Channel Value Benchmarking and Professionalism work duly achieved!

On Tuesday of this week I met Philip Littleavon and Simon Norbury and, although I haven't yet discussed how/who/when with Richard, I want to make sure that we don't lose focus or momentum on this. I know that locally where I work we were a bit upset by the tone of some contact from GC but we see the worth of finally getting everyone linked as a start to building the linkages across the public sector that can help enable the transformation agenda. The Society will, amongst other roles, continue to be a "critical friend" to the programme but it is in all of our longer term interests to make this happen. There is no doubt that Philip and Simon want Socitm to succeed and our discussions were both positive and constructive.

The GC work also raises an important issue for us as a Society however. In every area where we want to have influence it is important to show to others the Society's worth in being involved at the earliest stages of policy and initiatives development. For too long we have been on the back foot and commenting on other people's (particularly central government) ideas and proposals rather than being in there help shaping them in ways that we can work with and that make sense locally. Your Board will be considering how we make sure this happens. I know that GC doesn't apply to many of our members but early engagement regardless of where we are geographically located and who our local, regional or national government is has to be worth pursuing vigorously.

Work is also progressing on the detail and logistics of the 1 day national event on 23rd April. It will be a good day and we have secured Tony Travers and former MP Richard Allan as two of our headline "acts". With a mix of case studies and major strategic issues it will be both informative and participative and I urge members to support it. On the day we will also be holding the Society's AGM including any necessary elections. Be there, have your say and use your vote.

Socitm Board is tomorrow as I write this but next Tuesday gives me my opportunity to "get my own back". I'm chairing a worksstream at an event that features its first 2 speakers as our own Richard Steel and Glyn Evans.


Steve P

Connections

On Monday I chaired a sickness absence Hearing at Newham Town Hall, following which I returned home to work.


Three news articles interested me because of the different perceptions of ICT they reflect. Whilst there’s a view that flexible working enabled by ICT proved its worth in last week’s winter storms and resultant transport disruption, and a majority of public sector employees believe that ICT can help drive down costs, CIOs believe that businesses are ignoring the potential benefits of high-performance networks, and (because?) they have only a middling influence on business strategy. Together, these represent a fair summary of the state of our art, in my view, and draw attention to the key areas in which we need to develop our skills.


Socitm has now received a number of responses to its broadcast about the Government Connect letters that were recently sent to many Authorities concerning CoCo compliance progress. Thanks to all respondents. Some have expressed anger and frustration - which we will be discussing with the team - and one plaudit, was received. Additionally, Philip Littleavon (Programme Director) has replied to a note of mine as follows. (Reproduced with Philip’s permission.)

“We have had a mixed response to the last (Jan 30) letter, but not all (or majority) bad. Roughly 130 responses received out of about 180 requested. Of those that responded about 15 could be categorised as "very disappointed.." and we've said sorry where appropriate, but all of these authorities are doing quite well. The majority were OK and we have had a few plaudits as well. Within the 130 there are a handful that are clearly at risk of not achieving compliance on time.

“Whilst accepting that a few feathers have been ruffled and that we clearly got some facts wrong (eg., some lost responses to the 21 November mailing) the process has moved us on enormously. The acceleration in progress we have experienced is incredible. Currently receiving c. 40 CoCo updates per day!

“We are still collating and analysing, but I have concerns in a couple of areas.

1. Those that did not respond (c.50)
2. Those that did not respond to the previous mailing (c.11). These (on paper) have made least progress.

“We will need to keep working on these Councils until a clear statement emerges. Of course we risk more annoyance.”

We will respond to all the Authorities that contacted us letting them know what action is taken.

On Tuesday, with James Lee and Ian Tomson-Smith of SNT Consulting, Richard Carde and I had back-to-back meetings with Orange and TfL.

We met Bob Pisolkar, Orange’s Public Sector Divisional Business Manager, and Sean Harney, Business Development Manager, to discuss engagement in related areas that include a technology roadmap workshop, commercialisation and market intelligence.

Vince Tooke, from TfL joined us to discuss PSMP project progress and how we address issues such as Programme Governance, Marketing and PR, development priorities and exemplification of a standard business case. We also reviewed related work on the network infrastructure and Data Centre.