Kent County Council ICT Strategy 2016-2020 · Kent County Council Page 2 of 20 November 2016...

Kent County Council

ICT Strategy

2016-2020

Infrastructure Division

November 2016

Version 1.0

ICT Strategy 2016-2020

Kent County Council of 20 November 2016

Forward

The new Information and Communication Technology (ICT) strategy sets out how

Kent will use technology to support the delivery of its overriding outcomes articulated

in ‘Increasing Opportunities, Improving Outcomes’, the strategic statement for the

Council.

Local government is facing a challenging time on many fronts including reduced

government funding and increasing customer expectations. The way that we use our

technology is vital to the cost-effective delivery of services to the residents of Kent.

The strategy identifies key themes and principles which provide the foundation for

the Councils technology framework for the use of ICT to support business change, to

control and develop the continued delivery of high quality cost-effective outcomes to

the people of Kent and ensure that we harnessing the full potential from the

technology that we have to support our front line service delivery.

I fully endorse and support this ICT Strategy and look forward to the benefits that it

will enable as Kent continues to be one of the best performing member-led councils

within the UK.

Gary Cooke Cabinet Member for Corporate and Democratic Services



Table of Contents

Forward ...................................................................................................................... 2

Executive Summary ................................................................................................... 4

ICT Strategy – Government Digital Services .............................................................. 5

Introduction ................................................................................................................ 5

ICT Vision ................................................................................................................... 6

The Council Overview ................................................................................................ 7

ICT Strategy in a Page ............................................................................................... 8

The ICT Strategy ........................................................................................................ 9

Key Business Themes ............................................................................................ 9

Business Capabilities ............................................................................................ 12

ICT Strategic Themes ........................................................................................... 14

ICT Principles ....................................................................................................... 16

Technology Selection ............................................................................................... 19

Governance .............................................................................................................. 20



Executive Summary

This ICT Strategy has been developed in support of the Council’s core strategic

ambitions and extensive consultation across Council Business Service units.

The significant challenges that face the Council have prompted a radical change

agenda for how services will be delivered and accessed by residents in the future.

Key challenges for the Council include profound budgetary constraints, making more

efficient use of resources, the need for closer collaboration from different agencies to

deliver better outcomes, whilst managing increasing demand pressures.

As technology advances and new consumer service models evolve people’s

expectations in relation to when and how they can access services is also changing,

with our services and service users increasing seeking solutions which provide

access the Councils services anytime, anywhere.

The resulting ICT Strategy provides the direction and priorities to move the current

technology environment forward, exploit technology innovation in the delivery of new

customer service models, whilst providing a stable and resilient technology services,

whilst making the most efficient use of limited resources.

Implementing this strategy will provide the necessary technology environment

demanded by business units as they strive to deliver the Council’s published

outcomes. The resulting ICT service should be agile and responsive but also

represent value for money.

This Strategy will be a ‘living’ document updated to respond to the changing and

evolving business needs.

ICT, part the Infrastructure Division will use the commissioning framework to meet

the technology needs to the Council. This approach facilitates a mixed economy in

the delivery of ICT, ensuring the Authority benefits from both internal and external

providers.

Michael Lloyd Head of Technology Commissioning and Strategy



ICT Strategy – Government Digital Services

This ICT strategy takes into consideration the Government Digital Services

‘Technology Code of Practice’ and the fourteen principles (listed below) which

influence strategically how technology will be used and considered within the

Council.

1. Define user needs, aims and capabilities

2. Make things interoperable

3. Make things open

4. Make things secure

5. Adopt Cloud First

6. Make things accessible

7. Share and reuse

8. Use common government solutions

9. Meet the Digital Service Standard

10. Comply with the Greening Government ICT Strategy

11. Define your sourcing strategy

12. Demonstrate an end to end service

13. Use common government sourcing routes

14. Enter into sensible contracts

Whilst not all the principles outlined above directly impact the Council they will all be

considered and adopted where appropriate.

Introduction

Since KCC published its ICT Strategy in 2011 the world has changed, this updated

strategy draws out the key developments and how the Council will take advantage of

these new technologies to meet the strategic outcomes.

We have moved from a period of unprecedented investment in local government to

an era of prolonged austerity. Our budgets have been and continue to be deeply

reduced and we have to make difficult decisions about the services we deliver. Cost

effectiveness is a key driver as well as new innovations which allow us to redesign

and reshape our services to the changing political landscape.

Technology has moved faster than anyone predicted rendering old service delivery

models obsolete. New opportunities in cloud computing and devices are radically

changing our options for delivering ICT services.

KCC’s updated ICT Strategy reflects the pressures and demands ICT faces and sets

out how our technology can respond to the challenge of providing high quality

services in a rapidly changing environment.



ICT Vision

Our vision is that our technology solutions will be a key enabler for the development,

delivery, improvement and transformation of Kent County Council and the services it

delivers to our residents. It will provide flexible and scalable solutions that adapt to

meet the challenges of today and future years. Our technology will be a proactive

agent for change in service delivery and will ensure that our staff have the

appropriate skills and knowledge to make best use of ICT facilities and systems.

We will deliver the following technology enabled strategic outcomes:

Provide staff, partners and citizens with access to reliable and predictable ICT services that fully exploit the benefits of technology

Support new ways of working and new service delivery models

Use our information assets to support intelligence based commissioning to target resources where they can be most effective

Provide agile and flexible solutions to support business units to meet evolving customer needs

Challenge and facilitate the business to take advantage of existing and new technologies that can support new and more effective delivery models



The Council Overview

The Council has set out its key objectives in the “Vision for Kent 2012-2022” and

“Increasing Opportunities, Improving Outcomes”. The Councils overarching strategic

outcomes are to ensure that;

For a detailed view of how these affect the Council’s immediate service priorities

please refer to “Increasing Opportunities, Improving Outcomes” the document that

sets out the strategic context for the Council to deliver its long term vision set out in

the “Vision for Kent”

Children and young people in Kent get the best start in life.

Kent Communities feel the benefits of economic growth by being in-work, healthy and enjoying a good quality of life.

Older and vulnerable residents are safe and supported with choices to live independently.



ICT Strategy in a Page



The ICT Strategy

The ICT strategy has to be aligned to the overall business context and the Council’s

key priorities in order to be effective. The strategy needs to allow for the fact that the

business environment is not constant and needs to be flexible to accommodate

changing business demands.

Key Business Themes

The key themes that have been identified which the strategy needs to support are:

Increased Demand Demand for Council services, particularly in the Social Care arena, is constantly rising. The changing population demographics is leading to a wider range of services and greater demand for Council assistance. This situation is not reversible and the Council will need to devote its resources to efficient care delivery. The role of the Council in supporting Health and Social Care integration will be a key priority in changing the way care is commissioned and delivered across the sector. In addition to increasing volumes, there is a widening scope of service responsibilities and new statutory obligations; for example, the Council taking on public health and coroner responsibilities

Significant Budget Constraints The Council, along with other public sector bodies in the UK, is facing a prolonged and significant reduction in its budgets. This situation will continue for many years and the Council must adapt to this changed situation by ensuring that maximum value is achieved for its expenditure. The impact of this financial pressure is driving changes to the way the Council functions and the way it provides services.

Increase Demand

Significant

Budget

Constraints

Strategic

Commissioning

Authority

focussed on

outcomes

Customer

Focused

Proactive &

Preventative

Services

Supporting

growth of

the Kent

Economy



Strategic Commissioning Authority focused on outcomes The challenges presented by the changing role of the Council, combined with the budget pressures mentioned above, has led the Council into a fundamental reappraisal of its role in providing services. In future the Council, while retaining accountability for service provision, will commission service providers, (internal units, charities, other public sector bodies and the private sector) to deliver the services. This change will have a fundamental impact on the way the Council functions and the types of services that ICT in particular is required to provide to support this approach. In future, investment decisions and new service designs will be shaped and measured by the manner in which they contribute to the Council’s priority outcomes. This is a move away from a strict kpi based measure of Council performance to a programme view of how Council services affect our residents’ wellbeing.

Customer Focused The Council aims to redesign its services to put the customer at the centre of everything we do. This represents a shift from a service oriented organisation viewpoint to a customer perspective and embodies a fundamental re-alignment of how the Council provides services. Service provision will focus on how best to meet the needs of the customer in the manner they choose rather than at the convenience of the organisation. This means that ICT services need to be capable of presenting joined up information across systems giving a complete unified view of the customer relationship with the Council and that this information is available at a time and in a format desired by the user.

Proactive and Preventative Services The Council will focus on creating preventative and proactive services particularly in the area of social care and child welfare. The objective is to ensure that problems are identified early with appropriate support and intervention channelled into services that can make a significant difference to service users at the point issues are easiest to resolve. This implies that ICT need to support mechanisms that aid the early detection of signals that can be used diagnose these issues.

Supporting Growth of the Kent Economy The Council will use its influence to foster the Kent economy. This will include a variety of measures: high quality training, ensuring the right transport links, focus Council spending where possible to boost the Kent economy etc. ICT need to support this effort by ensuring that it has the right tools and pattern of spending to equip business units to meet the economic challenges facing Kent.



Through our continued Strategic Partnership with Microsoft we have placed a number of technology apprenticeship’s in Kent in order to improve the technology workforce within Kent.

ICT are currently exploring opportunities with a Kent company to implement a system which will enable technology integration between health and social care.

ICT have also supported the Broadband UK Project which has delivered to date 91% coverage of superfast broadband which will increase to 95.7% by 2018. The next step will be to build upon this infrastructure to drive forward a digital economy in Kent.



Business Capabilities

The following business capabilities are critical to the Council for it to deliver its

organisational outcomes:

Mobile and Flexible Working To support workforce mobility and the use of flexible working patterns our technology solution will provide staff with the full range of tools to work flexibly in any location. This includes secure access to all the information held by the Council that is relevant to staff in doing their jobs. Flexible working allows the Council to utilise its buildings more efficiently, reduce travel costs and increase staff productivity amongst other benefits.

Business Intelligence and Information Management The Council holds significant amounts of data. Modern techniques allow raw data to be analysed to derive significant business information and intelligence supporting the Council’s aim of directing resources where they are most needed and provide greater value for money. Now that the Council is a Strategic Commissioning Authority an important pinciple in the commissioning framework is to use High-quality, robust evidence informing our decisions. This will be achived by:

- Using data available across KCC and our partner organisations to identify patterns and drivers of demand and impacts of interventions on outcomes.

- Ensuring that we retain ownership of data produced and used by our providers.

Digitally Enabled Workforce The Council needs to provide a modern digital employee experience. This covers the physical devices, information services and applications comprising a modern technology environment where information and services are fully integrated and received on modern, employee friendly ‘always on’ devices. The Council aims to fully embrace the consumerisation of ICT in its employee experience.



Scalability and Agility The Council operates in a dynamic environment of changing service demands. Demand for new services and rapidly changing demand profiles for existing services require that ICT is organised to support this business environment. The capability to deploy new services and expand or contract existing services rapidly at minimum cost is required to support business users. This necessitates that systems have integration and security designed into them from day one.

Cross Agency and Commissioned Services: Collaboration and Integration Increasingly services are delivered by a blend of agencies particularly in the Health and Social Care arena, hence the need to support joint working as a single unit. Effective sharing of services and facilities without boundaries whilst still preserving necessary organisational identities and standards will be a prerequisite in future service provision. The adoption of open standards and adherence to the Government’s interoperability framework will help facilitate this. Application Program Interfaces (APIs) should be opened up to allow structured data to flow between business applications and web-based services, providing automated options for accessing and sharing information between systems, and driving workflow. The opening and sharing of data and APIs enables trusted collaboration and co-production with other stakeholders and service providers. Integration Tools are required where necessary to integrate disparate applications, internally and externally to the Council.

Supporting Transformation of KCC Service Delivery In addition to Commissioning led changes, KCC business units delivery teams are working to transform how they deliver services to meet the new customer focused paradigm for KCC. This demands that systems and services are re-oriented and reformed to support this new perspective. This also demands that front line staff have the right digital capability (devices, training, systems) to deliver this to customers.



ICT Strategic Themes

Following a review of the business themes and overarching Council priority

outcomes there are four strategic themes which will drive and shape the way ICT is

developed and delivered in the Council. The ICT roadmap and its enabling projects

will be aligned to these themes. They are:

Strategic ICT Theme 1: Modern ICT Infrastructure Aim Technology has developed significantly with the maturity of cloud technology. The Council will need to move to this technology to take advantage of the most modern infrastructure delivery models. In particular, these need to be agile and rapidly scalable, combined cost effectiveness. Outcomes, measures of Success

Commodity cloud services as well as shared service offerings will be meshed into an overall ICT platform for business use. A single platform will be presented built from a small number of providers (internal and external).

Spending profiles will need to be re-shaped to reflect the transition from a capex to opex basis, as cloud compute models operate on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Majority of infrastructure to be cloud based within 3 years

Total cost of ownership to be the basis for infrastructure decisions.

Strategic ICT Theme 2: Agile and Responsive IT Aim Deliver a flexible and scalable ICT service, covering infrastructure and services. Develop the ability to respond rapidly to changes in scope and scale from business units at an affordable cost. Outcomes, measures of Success

Adoption of cloud technology. Wherever possible the choice will be software as a service i.e. commodity based technology, with infrastructure as a service the second choice.

Range of specialist services providers available to provide in demand skills as required to meet new business needs

Infrastructure provision will be shaped to provide flexibility, taking advantage of industry standards where possible, so the Council can exploit new opportunities in the future.

Business recognition that the availability of flexibility may not produce a lowest cost option in ICT budgetary terms. The value of flexibility should be judged by total cost of ownership / value for money to the Authority’s overall performance and productivity.



Strategic ICT Theme 3: Exploiting Information for Business & Customer Insight Aim Allow the data in the Council systems to be joined together so that business users can navigate and analyse the data without substantial ICT involvement. Data across multiple systems can be presented as a unified customer view. Outcomes, measures of Success

Data from systems to be collated in large containers allowing data matching to drive insights to support business decision making.

Business users have tools to be able to navigate and draw inferences from the accumulated data to support intelligence led commissioning

Data management processes are established as normal practice within business units supported by ICT services and tools to provide processes, governance and management of or critical data.

Strategic ICT theme 4: Managing Risk, Security and Compliance Aim The secure storage and processing of information is vital for the Council. To do business in an information age the Council has to maintain levels appropriate security standards which the Authority is audited against. This is achieved by maintaining our compliance accreditation with PSN, Health and the Card Payment industry as well as other recognised standards. Outcomes, measures of Success

Ensure accreditation to PCI-DSS, PSN and NHS information security and governance standards

Maintain and update relevant policies, processes and procedures in line with new technology capabilities, working practices and security threats.

Embed these policies into the working practices of the organisation such that good security practice is inherent in all staff behaviour

Embrace new technologies and services where possible to bring additional efficiencies to security compliance work ensuring they are targeted and proportionate.

Continue to take a robust risk approach to the application of security controls.



ICT Principles

Our ICT principles set out our direction of travel for ICT and our aspiration for service

delivery.

The ICT principles are designed to help deliver better more cost effective, flexible

and timely ICT solutions. They will support and underpin our investment decisions

and frame how we will engage and interact with staff, partners and the public.

ICT Principle 1: Cloud First Description The requirement will be to adopt a “Cloud First” approach in meeting new technology requirements where this offers the best value for money for a service (covering whole life costs) measured with the qualitative benefits arising from the respective service. Rationale Cloud services available on a variety of “pay as you go” service models are increasingly succeeding traditional in-house provider models. They offer superior functionality at reduced cost, without long term commitment. Using these services can result in significant cost reductions in service provision. Implications All opportunities need to be carefully evaluated to ensure that the Council obtains best value. New procurement opportunities through the Government G Cloud store as well as the CCS frameworks may reduce costs of service provision. The Council needs to fully understand the relevant cloud service cost models and how these match to our longer term usage patterns. Short term contracts offer significant ongoing flexibility and will allow increased responsiveness as business requirements change over time. Any in-house services, constructed on Cloud technology, will likely take the form of hybrid solutions (a mix of on premise and cloud technology).



ICT Principle 2: ICT Security & Compliance Description This principal influences the security standards by which the Council can deliver technologies to support the key business themes. Rationale We must focus on the data and its value to the organisation and the customer ensuring we take a risk based approach to its protection; ensuring we utilise the new technologies to secure data appropriately to supporting trusted collaboration, data sharing, digital delivery channels and anywhere computing. Using government assurance standards we can measure our security assurance levels which will direct where our security investment and resource should be placed. Implications This will drive us to segregate our valued data, thus allowing for a granular approach to security, monitor usage to ensure appropriate access, and have robust response mechanisms in place when inappropriate activity is found.

ICT Principle 3: Configure not Customise Description Applications and services will be used as designed by vendors. Customisation by re-writing applications and services will be discouraged. Rationale Customisation is significantly increases the total cost ownership with increased setup costs and the need for an ongoing commitment to re-apply the customisations as the software changes. Customisation tends to decrease flexibility and responsiveness, vendors make general changes first, customisations come last when product updates are being delivered. Packages are generally marketed that meet the commonly accepted market practices they seek to address. Facilities are usually provided to configure applications to specific requirements within the overall parameters of the general system and these should be used to address Kent requirements. Implications Systems and service will be implemented as supplied by vendors without customisation. This may involve some degree of business process amendment to meet common practice away from specific Kent usage. Very specific requirements will be handled outside general systems rather than spend large amounts of resource to support very specific Kent requirements where they differ from normal industry practice.



ICT Principle 4: First Reuse, then Buy, then Build Description The objective is to re-use assets (hardware, software, services) where appropriate before a new purchase is made. There will be a target of one system per business function. Commodity Off the Shelf (COTS) solutions are to be preferred to bespoke developments (whether in-house or externally sourced). Rationale Asset re-use helps to reduce costs, standardise on system use and potentially simplify the IT environment with a decrease in ongoing support costs. In general package solutions are lower long term cost solutions compared with bespoke solutions, and are faster to implement and easier to maintain. Implications An inventory of systems and the business functions they support needs to be actively maintained, together with an ongoing assessment of asset usefulness. Best practice use of systems needs to be propagated across units to encouraged service efficiency Duplicate and redundant assets need to be disposed of to reduce operating costs

ICT Principle 5: Exploit Enterprise Platforms Description The objective is to use the core enterprise platforms (hardware, software, applications) in place of any discreet or standalone systems. Rationale The Council has made significant investment in common hardware platforms, enterprise business software, and large scale business productivity services. These offer considerable capacity and using them for new services and systems will help reduce system complexity and data duplication. Reduced complexity will lower costs over time whilst a simpler more consistent data environment will remove barriers to using our data to derive and build business intelligence. Implications An application review to identify opportunities to rationalise our existing application portfolio will need to be carried out. Systems and services not using common enterprise platforms will be charged the full economic cost attributable to them both on a setup, ongoing and decommissioning basis.



ICT Principle 6: Minimise Environment Impact Description The objective is to minimise our impact on the environment through reduced energy and other resource consumption Rationale ICT is a major resource consumer in terms of the energy we use directly to run our devices and services. Energy costs are continually increasing and hence using less energy is beneficial in terms of environmental impact but also reduces our costs. Impact When choosing new services and physical infrastructure the cost of energy (and hence environmental impact) must be fully evaluated. ICT must provide new services to facilitate truly secure mobile working such that staff can use any location to access their full office needs: access to colleagues, information, documents, support services, applications systems. This will reduce travel requirements as well as other resource consumption while providing a better service for sta

Technology Selection

The Council has made significant investment in technology, in particular with

Microsoftâ and Oracleâ. Microsoft technologies underpin to 65 – 70% of all the

Councils ICT and Oracle support at least 25% of the major line of business systems.

In order to help deliver a more cost effective, fully integrated technology capability

and to maximise the benefits of the investment made by the council to date we will

always look to fully exploit Microsoft technologies that we have already invested

in first. This is a key principle to drive down the total cost of ownership of technology

from application rationalisation, software licensing and third party support though to

staff development and workforce planning.



Governance

Organisational ICT decisions will be governed by the Strategic ICT Board which will

advise the Strategic Commissioning Board on ICT investment, direction and issues.

The Strategic ICT Board is chaired by the Director of Infrastructure and have

representation from the Head of Technology, Directorates and Strategic and

Corporate Services.

To ensure robust governance of ICT commissions for both corporate and major

business initiatives, the ICT Programme Board, chaired by the Head of Technology

Commissioning & Strategy provides management oversight of ICT Programmes and

Projects holding the delivery to account. The board is represented by both senior

managers from the ICT Client and Delivery Teams.

The Governance set out above will focus on:

Priority setting and effective use of resources

Quality assurance

Clearly defining roles and responsibilities

Priority setting will be both a top-down and bottom-up process. The major initiatives

that ICT will contribute to will be set in accordance with the Council Business Plan,

Business Unit Plans and major transformation programmes. These priorities will be

set out in an Infrastructure Business Plan and signed off by the Corporate

Management Team.

Business services will fund their specific requirements and any additional contract

ICT resources not provided within the corporate funded basic ICT provision.

However, all ICT projects, regardless of the funding stream, will need to go through

the Quality Assurance process to ensure strategic compliance.

Requests for development will be supported by an initial business case that will be

used to inform priority-making decisions.

Quality assurance is necessary to ensure that ICT initiatives are following the ICT

Principles, and adhering to the Technical ICT Strategies and Standards.

Roles and responsibilities. The business commissioners will define business

outcomes and requirements and the ICT commissioners will be responsible for

determining the appropriate commissioning route, outline solutions, and strategic

compliance. This will be managed through the following governance structure.

Kent County Council ICT Strategy 2016-2020 · Kent County Council Page 2 of 20 November 2016...

Documents

Transcript of Kent County Council ICT Strategy 2016-2020 · Kent County Council Page 2 of 20 November 2016...