Agile ICT in the Public Sector 7 th December 2011 An Agile Method Working In Local Government

1. Agile ICT in the Public Sector 7th December 2011 An Agile Method Working In Local Government fresh thinking – delivering better IT • Introduction – a passion to make a difference • Fresh Thinking – Doing Better ICT – Our Agile Approach • Our Story – The Problem, Challenge, Perspective, Principles and Method • The Results and The Learning • The Advice and Why Pentagull?

2. Phil Baron • Current role • Phil is an ICT and local government specialist working both as a consultant and a director of newly formed technology company. Phil has worked for the last 14 years with Blackpool Council at the senior management level covering a range of responsibilities from ICT, customer services and leading on a number of organisational-wide change programmes. • Experience • Phil has 25 years’ experience working within ICT in local government at the strategic, tactical and operational levels. Phil was an Assistant Director of ICT and Customer Services in a large Unitary Council and for the past 12 years has been working with organisational-wide transformational change programmes including e-Government, business process redesign, putting the “Customer First”, mobile and flexible working and IT modernisation. Phil was awarded “runner-up” in the Government Computing awards for Innovator of the Year 2007 for his work with improving the design of front line services supported by better IT. • Recent transactions • Led the rethink and redesign of Blackpool Council’s Customer Access strategy and its operational design including the supporting technologies. This has saved the Council in excess of £1.5 million including improved performance reducing the actual annual contacts from 900,000 to around 300,000 within a couple of years. • Responsibility for ICT and Customer Services with over 150 staff and an annual budget of £9 million. Recently managed a reduction of £1 million from the base budget with both services undergoing significant restructures including a number of compulsory and voluntary redundancies. • Phil has recently led and supported the ICT element of the Building Schools for the Future programme looking at a range of solutions for managing ICT within schools. The focus changed due to announcements from central government and Phil was able to shape the revised contract to provide the best options for the schools and the CSA. • Helped to save £3 million over 5 years for Blackpool Council with the introduction of an in-house delivered IP digital telephony service including contact centre call handling technologies. A range of options were looked at including a complete managed service from a number of known telecommunications companies. • Developed and generated an external set of business opportunities for Blackpool Council that led to an total annual income of £500k that helped to reduced the total cost of the ICT service for the Council. Phil also helped the growth of a trading account for Printing Services from £250k to £1 million gross within 4 years. • Introduced and promoted the first town-wide public sector wireless service known as Wireless Blackpool. This was part of the regeneration of the town and also part of Phil’s vision for a local electronic grid supporting an e-Community of private, public and third sector organisations. • Led Blackpool Council’s Changing Times initiative that brought together access to services, business improvement, electronic services, ICT modernisation and e-Community. Phil introduced the first Council open day events (all services under one roof), a video known as Mrs Pearce and annual service awards. • Assisted on a voluntary basis with the amalgamation of two separate infant and junior schools into one new primary school. Phil acted as the temporary Chair of Governors to bring the new school into a new era and has been active with the school to support them during their first few years. • PHIL BARON • Managing Director • Pentagull • M: +44 (0) 07572464120 • E: philip.baron@pentagull.co.uk • www.pentagull.co.uk

3. Phil Baron – a passion to make a difference • 25 yrs in ICT and local government • 7 yrs at Lancashire County Council • 14 yrs at Blackpool Council • 12 yrs as Assistant Director for ICT • 5 yrs as Assistant Director for Customer Services and ICT • 4 months as Managing Director for Pentagull Ltd

4. Fresh Thinking Doing Better ICT Our Agile Approach Our Story

5. The Problem Take time to Stop and Think and be Open Minded • If we always do what we did we will always get what we got • Buying off-the-shelf software solutions and large database development platforms • Dysfunctional and fragmented software and service designs • First hand reality of random parts under the bonnet • Same old traditional ways to do ICT • It is not our fault (ICT) but the business can’t specify their requirements • You must conform to the standards and best practice • Doing the wrong thing righter – excellent Council worse place

6. The Challenge What is it we are here to do? • “help me do my job and do it better” • Design, build and deliver better ICT • Understand the purpose of ICT • How do we cope under all this pressure? • Where do you start from?

7. The Perspective Which way should I look at the problem? • From an outside in view and not inside out • Software Design and Service Design view • Thinking -> Design -> Delivery • The science of good design • The art of change in human/service systems

8. The Principles Do we need something to guide us? • A set of principles that make sense • Be open minded and decisions based on data and knowledge • Design from the work by being in the work • Think flow first and not scale • Work with individuals and interactions from the work • Achieve working software over comprehensive documentation • Management role is removing barriers in the work • Measure only to improve and learn • Customer collaboration over contract negotiation • Respond to change over following a plan • The answer might be less or no ICT

9. The Method How do we learn the best way? • Experimented with two approaches aligned to principles • Agile for our technical approach – Street Scene (2006-7) • - Couple of developers working with front line staff with freedom • - Customer asked – why can’t you just build a system • - Developers thought – we can and model processes very quickly • - Developer and customer started to understand each other – BINGO • - Better ICT emerged – our Enterprise ServiceBuilder platform was born • - Refinements are made to achieve same/better with less code • Systems Thinking for our service approach – Customer Access • - A multi-skilled team including a developer and ICT management • - Studied all the customer demand coming into the Council • - The team learnt lots about the current performance • - The team experimented with new service designs and pulled ICT • - There was fusion between the agile and systems thinking work • - Our business deployment approach emerged from this work

10. The Results Don’t take our word for it!! • The results have been beyond what we could have predicted • Have a look at our case studies on our web site or take a brochure from our stand • ESB and our approach has gone viral across Blackpool Council • Yes – ESB can scale – it has been built to deal with predictable demand from local government services

11. Examples in the work – Using the approach • Customer Access Rethink and Redesign – replaced CRM • Transformed Street Scene • - Waste/Highways/Neighbourhoods • Enterprise System Replacement • - Environmental/Trading Standards/Enforcement Services/others • Employment Support – client management system • - delivered as a “cloud” hosted managed service • Multi-Agency working – case management system

12. Other examples in the work – gone viral

13. Benefits of the Approach

14. ESBKey Facts for Blackpool Council • 28 business areas and live since February 2008 • 1480 active users / 3500 users registered to use it • 549 object types • 920,291 current items • 72,934 archived items • 7,929,485 individual pieces of data • 55,387 documents in 33,106 folders • 37GB of file store • 3.8GB of database storage • Hosted across 12 individual servers for high availability and fault tolerance • A new item is created on average every couple of minutes • It is built to stay working even during an upgrade • (Figures correct as of November 2011)

15. The Learning What are we learning? • Principles become solid, experiment with method • This is not a tool but a fundamental change • Service systems are different to manufacturing systems • The role of ICT – its value and worth • Study first, improve then pull in ICT to improve further • Continuous improvement and sustainability are built-in • A new role is emerging – new skills and new opportunities • It is scary at first but we know now it is worth it • It is very hard to see at first as we are clouded by what we currently think and do – counter intuitive to industry standard

16. The Advice What can I do next? • Get more knowledge and make an informed decision • Don’t panic but....more expensive trains could be leaving.... • If you have a team of developers and not using agile then start to ask some questions • If you don’t have a team then you need to be working with IT suppliers who are taking an Agile approach • If you need any help please feel free to contact us

17. Do we believe in what we have done? Want to know a bit more? philip.baron@pentagull.co.uk 07572 464 120 www.pentagull.co.uk