Countdown to the collaborative council. Exploring the collaboration challenges in local authorities

Transcription

1 Countdown to the collaborative council Exploring the collaboration challenges in local authorities

2 Countdown to the collaborative council TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 Overview 3 Innovating new public services 4 Consumer file storage tools? Call security now 5 a flawed content collaboration tool 6 SharePoint be careful what you wish for 7 Huddle 80 per cent of central UK government departments can t be wrong 10 About Huddle

3 OVERVIEW If you are considering the use of consumer file storage tools in your local authority to share data, think again. Research gathered from 350 U.K. local councils on their technology usage, via the Freedom of Information Act, has found that more than 50 per cent blacklist such tools, including Dropbox. Heightened concerns about the security of data being shared in this way is such that only 17 per cent of local councils allow these tools for specific business cases. So how can local authorities securely collaborate on content, and innovate the next generation of public services? They need to find the answer fast: 83 per cent of local councils already have a mobile working policy, the research reveals, and 56 per cent allow staff to access government content on their own device. For a collaboration strategy to succeed, it needs to embrace secure mobile and anywhere working practices. Countdown to the collaborative council, a Huddle white paper, uses real world examples to explore the collaboration challenges facing local authorities today. It examines the options now available , consumer file storage tools, collaboration software and why some fail to meet the demands for security, mobility and content sharing. The white paper also reveals why Huddle s next generation content collaboration solution opens the door to secure, streamlined processes, improved efficiency, and the rollout of innovative public services. INNOVATING NEW PUBLIC SERVICES Central and local government departments have been madly digitising everything from social care and housing, to planning and community services in the last few years. The result is a goldmine of insight and wisdom, which can be used to innovate on new public services, transform service delivery and drive unprecedented efficiency. That innovation can only happen through partnerships and collaboration. It s no secret that central and local authorities are increasingly turning to partnerships, shared services and more collaborative working with others, whether it is through focusing on the local economy, children s services, health or creating more efficient and better focused management structures. Quite simply, collaboration breeds better services at lower cost.

4 Interactive Demo: Ready to take Huddle for a test-drive? START DEMO Norwich City Council is a good example of this 1. The local authority is developing an operating model to aid the redesign of services and structures, and it places collaboration at its centre. Through a range of different collaborative relationships, Norwich is seeking to maximise the benefit gained from reducing resources, while maintaining influence over strategy and the delivery of outcomes. Indeed, collaboration appears as one of the council s four core values alongside pride, accountability and excellence. So how can the public sector step up, collaborate on all this digitised data and advance the delivery of innovative and efficient services? It s a problem East Devon District Council faced up to. One of 11 local authorities delivering public services in the region, there has been minimal historic collaboration between the separate authorities and departments. A proposal aims to create a single IT department, spanning all 11 authorities. Therein lies the problem: there was no unified system to share data salaries, costs, and performance data, for example easily and securely. With so many parties needing to access and edit the information, was not an option, and there were question marks over the usability and versioning ability of a clunky portal which was being hosted by one of the councils. CONSUMER FILE STORAGE TOOLS? CALL SECURITY NOW One of the default mechanisms used by staff in many public authorities is to collaborate through consumer cloud services. That means using services such as Dropbox to share documents, images, and videos quickly and easily. Some would argue that consumer cloud services could even substitute altogether. However, consumer storage tools expose significant security flaws around who sees the confidential information and what they do with it. Recent research by Huddle found that more than half (54 per cent) of local councils are so alarmed about the proliferation of consumer file storage tools that they blacklist services such as Dropbox. The research gathered from 350 local councils on their technology use, via the Freedom of Information Act, also found that 17 per cent of local councils only allow use of these tools for specific business cases or projects. One fifth of councils have yet to blacklist consumer file storage tools but with concerns about security so prevalent, it seems likely this number will soon follow. 1 The Importance of Collaboration, by Graeme McDonald. The Local Government Chronicle, April 2013.

5 Content collaboration for the mobile workforce DOWNLOAD WHITE PAPER Indeed, Huddle s research finds that security is now a top priority for many local councils. Take the loss of laptops, for instance. Some 482 laptops were reported lost or stolen in 2011, with the number falling to 412 in Seventy per cent of respondents also state that their council laptops are encrypted with the appropriate policies and protective technologies in place. A further three per cent say sensitive data is not held on laptops at all. Only seven per cent cannot guarantee it at all. Security is clearly moving up the agenda of local authorities perhaps orchestrated by the number of reports of lost laptops appearing in the media. Dorset County Council is one of many local authorities where concerns about data security were stonewalling content collaboration. The authority is working with Broadband Delivery UK to manage the roll out of superfast broadband across the region. The council needed to share documents with both internal departments and external organisations, including security controls to dictate who could access and edit what content. As a public sector organisation, Dorset County Council also needed to comply with data protection laws and ensure that each document was stored in a secure location. wasn t the answer: the Superfast Broadband project demanded collaboration on files of up to 100MB the Council s attachment limit was just 10MB. A FLAWED CONTENT COLLABORATION TOOL As Dorset County Council found to its cost, may be an effective communication tool, but it is a flawed content collaboration tool. Previous research by Huddle 2 found that 70 per cent of staff in UK companies send attachments when they need to share documents with people outside of their company. The report also finds that 42 per cent of UK employees are unable to send large files via ), and 41 per cent waste time searching for electronic documents. bloats already burgeoning volumes of data and can easily lead to the wrong versions of documents being shared. Cheltenham Borough Council learnt this the hard way. The local authority has been working closely with five other district councils in Gloucestershire (Cotswold, Forest of Dean, Stroud and Tewkesbury district councils and Gloucester City Council) for a number of years. However, sharing information with colleagues at the other councils was a time-consuming challenge.

6 Learn about Huddle security DOWNLOAD WHITE PAPER Large files were being sent via , explains Christopher Cox, program manager for Cheltenham Borough Council. As well as burdening our inboxes with attachments, we spent time at our face-to-face team meetings establishing which version of a document was final. We had to ensure that everyone s version of the document incorporated all the comments and feedback that had been sent via . Likewise Devon County Council. As part of its Targeted Family Support initiative to care for troubled families, the Council needed to collaborate with multiple agencies, including the NHS, Police and probation service. The Council had found it very difficult to share information securely across agencies, since some partners had secure while others did not. SHAREPOINT BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR Collaboration software could be the answer, with the Huddle research identifying 53 per cent of local authorities now using such technology. They should be careful what they wish for though. In this age of government austerity, certain collaboration software like Microsoft SharePoint for example can be prohibitively expensive to deploy and maintain, with up to 60 per cent of its cost accounted for in staffing. It is not popular with users either: many cite the interface as being unintuitive and difficult to use. Cheltenham Borough Council identified the complexities involved in getting teams up and running. We looked at deploying other collaboration tools, including SharePoint, but they required a lot of infrastructure work and had a slow design and deployment process, says Christopher Cox from the Council. Collaboration also needs to be mobile. The influx of innovative technologies and gadgets in people s personal lives has permeated the public sector as well as the private one. The Huddle study finds that 83 per cent of local councils have either a mobile working policy or alternative policies that cover mobile working in place. Some 56 per cent of councils say staff can access government content on their own device (bring your own device, or BYOD). Although some remain cautious as of this percentage, just six councils allow access on approved devices, 18 allow access to restricted personnel only, 11 only allow access for non-restricted content and eight per cent only offer access to . 2 Source: 2013 Enterprise Information Landscape, Huddle

7 HUDDLE 80 PER CENT OF CENTRAL UK GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS CAN T BE WRONG Today s local government managers are working in a landscape where efforts to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery requires new approaches in the face of shrinking budgets. Central and local authority staff need a secure, flexible means of collaborating on content with one another, across councils, with private and third sector partners, and with citizens. Huddle is the answer: offering secure content collaboration for government organisations of all types. Huddle empowers government teams, departments, and agencies to share and work on content, internally and across the firewall securely and confidentially. Huddle creates a central knowledge base. Central and local authorities can provide staff with the latest document templates and guidelines. Teams can comment on documents, notify colleagues of changes, track feedback and keep a full record of content versions with Huddle s automatic audit trail. Moreover, they have the flexibility to control who can see specific items. Huddle is secure. The cloud-based content collaboration solution has been awarded certification to ISO 27001, the internationally recognised standard for information security management. Huddle also has Pan Government Accreditation for use at IL2 for confidentiality and integrity. Huddle is the leading alternative to SharePoint in the cloud, offering easy-to-use collaboration tools, a 99.9 per cent uptime service level agreement and a 100 per cent adoption guarantee. Huddle battle-proven across major councils The local authorities referred to earlier East Devon County Council, Dorset County Council, Cheltenham Borough Council, East Devon County Council and Devon County Council are all using Huddle to transform the way they work and deliver cost-effective public services.

8 East Devon County Council The council is using Huddle to create a single organization to replace 11 separate regional IT departments. Approved for use by UK government departments, up to IL2 security classification, Huddle is helping East Devon County Council to access, share and collaborate on data in a secure, cost-effective environment. According to Chris Powell, Head of ICT at East Devon District Council, Huddle puts a useful amount pressure on all of the participants, because it s very easy to see who is having problems meeting deadlines. Huddle offers real transparency and ease of use. Dorset County Council When Dorset County Council required a tool to collaborate internally and externally on documents associated with the roll out of superfast broadband across the region, it turned to Huddle. The service enables fast and effective collaboration across the region and helps support the roll out of superfast broadband. Huddle also ensures that each document is stored in a secure location crucial for compliance with data protection laws. [Huddle] is intuitive and easy to use, and everyone, including the external organisations, could get up and running straightaway, saving us valuable time, says Pete Bartlett, Delivery Officer, Superfast Dorset. Cheltenham Borough Council Huddle is being used by Cheltenham Borough Council to support the GO Shared Services Program, a collaboration between Cheltenham Borough Council and other district councils. GO aims to establish shared services covering finance, HR, payroll and procurement based on the deployment of an integrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system shared by the authorities. The program will result in cashable savings, service efficiencies and improved service resilience. Using Huddle, all content relating to the GO Program can be viewed, commented on and versions tracked. Huddle has also significantly reduced the number of face-to-face meetings. Using Huddle, all of the project team, stakeholders and suppliers can access the correct document versions, whether they re at home or on the move with their iphones, says Christopher Cox, Program Manager for Cheltenham Borough Council. Huddle has enabled us to create a true partnership project.

9 Devon County Council Devon County Council s Targeted Family Support initiative is underpinned by Huddle. There are 1,370 families classified as troubled in the county, and the Council needed to securely gather evidence to show why families meet the criteria. A lot of the information we were working with such as family contact details is very sensitive. Huddle s pan government accreditation at IL2 was a winner for us, says Mark Hammett, Project Manager, Devon County Council. Using Huddle each new document uploaded provided key information on the family, helping the agencies get a full picture of each family and improve the services available.

10 Huddle Community LinkedIn Group Connect. Collaborate. Learn. JOIN COMMUNITY ABOUT HUDDLE Huddle provides next generation content collaboration for the government and enterprise. Its intelligent recommendation technology delivers relevant content to Huddle users when they need it most, with no need to search. Teams and organizations work more efficiently, using Huddle s secure cloud collaboration service that can be accessed via web browsers, desktops, or mobile devices anytime, anywhere. Co-headquartered in London and San Francisco and with offices in New York City, Huddle s customers include 80 percent of Fortune 500 and 80 percent of UK government departments, as well as companies such as Kia Motors, SEGA, Unilever and P&G. The company is privately held and backed by venture capital firms DAG Ventures, Eden Ventures, Matrix Partners and Jafco Ventures. More information can be found at Collaboration in action - Huddle customer stories Belgium supports the Presidency of the Council of the European Union with Huddle. Read more Cheltenham Borough Council selects Huddle to support shared services projects. Read more The Liberal Democrats place Huddle at the heart of party communications. Read more