The London Borough of Newham is an organization with big plans, as I discovered when I spoke with Geoff Connell; and with the help of some of their equally proactive Local Authority counterparts in the UK they are making big strides to realize them.

The concept of sharing and collaboration between local authorities is nothing new, organizations like SOCITM have been promoting this for some time now, however the missing link has always been filling the gaps between the many get togethers with effective action that ultimately raises the service delivery bar for everyone.  Newham, in conjunction with 10 other Local Authorities is currently addressing this.

The foundations of a plan started when Microsoft UK partnered with Newham on the SSN Program over 2 years ago now.  Newham had written an in-house CRM application back in 1998 that they used as a front of house system to deal with citizen inquiries, complaints and the like.  They reckoned that this application was costing in the region of hundreds of thousands to build and maintain, and so they decided to see if they could offload the on-going development and support costs.  It was agreed that Belfast City Council would be the ones to productize the offering and that they would act as systems integrators for new deployments if required.  Part of the deal was that a portion of the funds received form the work Belfast did would go to Newham, and a portion would go to supporting on-going product development.  Newham were prepared to give the code away as well to anyone that wanted it...this was achieved through their SSN Site.  The model, with some tweaking along the way, worked to the satisfaction of everyone.

• Newham now have the benefit of updates to the CRM solution at a reduced or no cost.
• Belfast are making services revenue that is to the benefit of their local rates payers.
• New 'customers' do not have to pay a lot of money to build their own solution - and spend more rate payers money than they have to.  There are currently 18 Authorities using the application today.

The foundation had been built - where to next?

If you look at the context of what is happening more widely in the UK, you will see a lot of forces combining that are driving an agenda of change: The Gershon Review on Public Sector Efficiency; the drive for Shared Services through a Transformational Government Enabled by Technology; and of course the new possibilities open by new technologies that emerge at an alarming rate which citizens demand.  The ability to maintain a delivery rate that keeps up with all of this is becoming impossible to do in isolation.

Enter the Shared Learning Group.

The SLG is much like any other group in that they regularly come together to discuss their thoughts and ideas; but there is a key difference.  Recognising the fact that ideas and other best intentions at get togethers often disappear once attendees get into their cars to drive home for dinner, the SLG clubbed together to fund a full time Program Manager; someone that would facilitate, nominate action owners, and drive accountability for their completion.  Couple this with the fact that the SLG members are a compact bunch that are hand picked based on their ability to deliver excellent service in key areas, and that they are prepared to contribute a dedicated project manager who will work towards the success of the SLG you would think that something positive would happen.  Results have demonstrated that it has started to bear fruit.

Their current workstreams are as follows:

• Performance Management Capability
• Collaborative Working
• Information Sharing Index (ISI)
• Identity Management Framework
• Integration
• Flexible Working                                      
• Technology in the Home/Assistive Technology

These workstreams were voted for by the SLG participants, and represent the most important issues facing IT in local government in the UK.  The ultimate delivered solutions will either be built in-house or more usually in conjunction with a Systems Integrator; the deal with all of the solutions is that they should be suitable and available for any other local authority to use.  The likelihood that solutions will be reused is high, Geoff reckons, given that their original specification was decided by consensus rather than in isolation.

Sustainability is an unaddressed issue, however.  This is something that they are currently trying to agree an approach on.  Do they simply give everything away for free and rely on an unmanaged and unmanageable community to evolve their solutions?  Do they charge a nominal fee for use, and pump this back into development? Do they barter the solutions for others they don't currently have? Do they want to get into the software business in the long term?  A lot of questions...They hope that this will be worked out over time.

Perhaps when some more thinking is done around what the implications of Shared Services might mean, the ultimate solution may be the centralization and management of such functions such as Collaborative Working or CRM into centres of excellence that host services on behalf of whole sectors.  Technology is starting to enable this in a disparate environment through things like Identity Federation through Web Services.  Geoff suggested that this may be a follow on workstream for the SLG to tackle.  It will also be the topic of a future post from me.

I'll keep in with Newham to see how things progress.  For reference, other SLG members are:

• Bromley
• Derby
• Isle of Man
• Kent CC
• Lewisham
• London Borough of Newham
• Rotherham MBC
• Sunderland CC
• Wakefield MDC
• Warwick DC
• Derby CC
• Hampshire

Geoff presented at our SSN Summit in May...his ppt is here.