The Internal Enterprise Service Provider The future transformation strategy for Public Sector ICT Departments and Digital Government

Transcription

1 Whitepaper The Internal Enterprise Service Provider The future transformation strategy for Public Sector ICT Departments and Digital Government

2 Table of Contents Technology consumerism and the digital citizen...4 Meeting the expectations of the digital citizen...5 The transformation has already begun...6 The Public Service IESP agenda explained...8 Transformation is an evolving journey, not a race towards a destination...10 About Logicalis

3 The role and importance of ICT within public sector organisations has undergone dramatic changes in recent years. The most significant of these is the relationship between those who deliver ICT and those who consume the services it delivers. The majority of citizens have now become experts in identifying, selecting and sourcing a wide range of technologybased services ICT has never been more critical to the successful transformation of public service delivery. And never before has the budget and resources needed to drive ICT-led service transformation been harder to find. Throughout the public sector, ICT is influencing every facet of service delivery. This includes the way in which citizens engage with local government, central government, healthcare, education and revenue, the way those who deliver frontline public services interact with each other, and the strategies that procurement and finance adopt to achieve greater productivity, efficiencies and cost savings. Public sector ICT professionals and users also face more complex challenges than those operating in the private sector; millions of citizens interacting with hundreds of thousands of public sector professionals, consuming a variety of disparate services every hour of the day. And whereas private sector organisations are able to target their services to the demographics and preferences of their particular target audience, the public sector has to interact with citizens of every age and every socioeconomic group. They have to bridge the digital divide in order to accommodate the needs of the highly digitally literate and the non-digitally enabled. And as well as satisfying the service needs of the public, they must also satisfy their service expectations. For CIOs in the public sector, this presents one of the biggest challenges of all. Because citizens today have access to consumer technologies and public cloud-based services that most CIOs in public sector organisations are struggling to match and will struggle even harder to keep pace with. Technology consumerism and the digital citizen The rapid rise in technology consumerism has led to an expanding number of disparate providers offering an infinite choice of on-demand IT services. Organisations and consumers can now contrast and compare the many and varied services on offer, and then mix and match them to arrive at the experience, value, and cost model that best suits their immediate needs. Take, for example, the citizen who enters a retail store to acquire a new smartphone. Their aim is to walk away with the most current and coveted model, delivered within a price and service plan that best meets their lifestyle and financial needs. They expect that when they leave the store, everything needed to enable their new handset to deliver the experience they have been promised is in place. That s because, in their mind, they have not bought a piece of technology, they have bought a service. They have no wish to specify the underlying technology and software platform that will enable them to make a call, receive a text or Skype a friend, they simply want to consume a service. The majority of citizens have now become experts in identifying, selecting and sourcing a wide range of technology-based services. Citizens regard buying technology as a service to be the most flexible and efficient way to consume the technology they need and, most importantly, the best way to achieve a near immediate realisation of investment benefit. In many ways, the average digital citizen defines themselves by the services they consume. 4

4 By adopting the same service defined approach to technology, public sector organisations can now achieve the same freedom and flexibility of choice as the citizens they serve. The average public sector IT department spends more than 80% of its budget servicing technology buying decisions that were made five or ten years ago It s hardly surprising, therefore, that leaders within both the commercial and public sectors are becoming increasingly attracted to the Software as a Service (SaaS) approach. It offers something the traditional specify, develop, build, implement and manage model cannot. It offers something they can select, purchase, switch-on and benefit from almost immediately. For example, the sales director who wants to improve customer relationship management (CRM) can go directly to SalesForce.com and buy a complete suite of mature CRM processes as a cloud-based service. If that sales director approached the IT department for the equivalent solution, the time frame for delivery and realising the business benefit would be considerably longer. The overall cost would also be higher and the complexity greater. It s no wonder the business executive or departmental head, like the consumer, has become concerned more about the service standards they desire than the underlying technology required to deliver them. And when they think service, they think speed, ease, agility and value. Just like the digital citizens they serve, public sector organisations are increasingly defining themselves by the services they consume. They are transforming into a Service Defined Enterprise (SDE). Meeting the expectations of the digital citizen The majority of citizens who consume public services also shop, bank, work and socialise online. They book holidays, travel and accommodation online and they interact with their partners and children while sitting in the same home online. All of this they do using technology and applications they can buy and use immediately in the high street or through the cloud. This technology consumerism sets a high expectation for the experience they receive when they interact online with any public services organisation. Technology industry analysts contend that the average public sector IT department spends more than 80% of its budget servicing technology buying decisions that were made five or ten years ago. This suggests that the gap between the demand for public sector innovation and the CIO having the time, money and resources required to deliver it is more likely to be widening than closing. So, how can the public sector CIO expect to keep pace with the demand for service innovation when they are burdened with the colossal ball and chain of having to run all their legacy investments? How can they manage to transform citizen services, streamline internal collaboration and improve back office efficiency when their budgets are under constant pressure? And how will they find the time to deliver the quality service needed to properly enable critical frontline services, at a sustainable cost, when they have to spend so much of their time on day to day technology management? The answer lies in transformation. 5

5 The transformation has already begun It s a transformation that every public sector ICT department will have to undergo in order to remain valuable and survive The most progressive public sector organisations are now transforming their ICT department s role from IT expert, advisor and provider to what Logicalis terms the Internal Enterprise Service Provider (IESP). It s a transformation that every public sector ICT department will have to undergo in order to remain relevant, valuable and, in some cases, survive. The IESP will take the form of either individual ICT departments, or a collective of public sector ICT departments that aggregate their human, operational and financial resources, they work in collaboration to deliver the best possible experiences to their internal users and the citizens they serve. It will require a transformation in how they consume selected ICT services in the way they design, build, operate technology and infrastructure platforms. The public sector IESP will have three key priorities: 1. Transform internal architectural and operational models to drive down cost and improve agility in service delivery 2. Focus resources on government digital transformational priorities and support service transformation initiatives 3. Aggregate demand around cooperative services to transform the consumption models for critical infrastructure and digital services The public sector organisation will increasingly view technology as a powerful tool in delivering the capability needed to achieve its operational and service delivery objectives. However, it will expect that capability to be delivered in a way that is faster and more efficient than ever before. And this capability will not be delivered through a complex underlying infrastructure within, say, the organisation s data centre. It will be delivered within a new operational paradigm; where technologies and services are consumed from the most efficient and appropriate source. This source will be the provider, internal or external, that can meet the strategic needs of the organisation or department, and deliver the service it requires at an acceptable cost, speed and risk. As well as heralding a fundamental shift in the ICT acquisition process, it also creates two significant opportunities for the public sector CIO. Firstly, to transform how the ICT department builds and operates the IT infrastructure and systems under its control so it becomes as agile and cost-efficient as an external services provider. Secondly, to establish the ICT department as the trusted advisor to help define strategic direction, and then source, engage with and manage external service providers in order to maintain and develop the organisation s portfolio of ICT services and capabilities. To realise these opportunities the ICT department will need to adapt in order to assume the identity of a pseudo service provider. The aim is not simply to become comparable to external service rivals, but to become the arbitrator of what service standards and capabilities are most needed and which provider is best positioned to deliver them. The ICT department will also be a thought leader and investigator of new service opportunities and possibilities. Only when 6

6 this transformation is complete, will the CIO and the ICT department become a true IESP to the organisation. Public sector IESP will transform itself into an operation that recognises that the organisation has wider options for sourcing ICT services and that user and citizen experience is everything While the IESP will continue to own and operate enterprise architectures, business process and productivity applications, its primary focus will shift from technology management to the delivery of the most appropriate and bestvalue IT related services. It will not, however, abandon its expertise in running technology. Instead it will confine its remit to building and managing those technologies and activities that the business believes it is critical to have delivered internally. And while it will still build and operate many key IT assets; networks, servers, storage, ERP systems, it will do this in the style of a managed service provider. The public sector ICT department will need to work to the IESP agenda: 1. Focus on delivering a 360 user experience 2. Move from managing technology to offering a well-defined service portfolio 3. Sell itself to the organisation based on quality of service and best-value differentiation 4. Adopt pre-validated architectures as the first choice for internal ICT architectures 5. Embrace operational automation as the de-facto standard for running ICT and ICT Services 6. Transition staff from being experts in technology management to best practice exponents of service delivery and user experience 7. Adopt Service Management (ITSM) best practice as a critical organisational Key Performance Indicator (KPI) 8. Always look first for external partners who can deliver the services the organisation needs The public sector IESP will transform itself into an operation that recognises that the organisation has wider options for sourcing ICT services and that user and citizen experience is everything. It will understand that adopting best practice architectures and operating processes is the only way to introduce and manage technologies that deliver great user experiences at a price that the government purse is willing to fund. Just like the major outsourcer, the IESP will recognise that doing everything in-house is no longer an option. It will recognise that being able to identify, integrate and manage a select group of service providers into a single, unified service is the only way to make the organisation believe that one contract with the ICT department is a practical and sustainable long-term solution. This service-centric approach will help the CIO focus every action on delivering what the organisation wants most; a transformative user and citizen-centric experience built using services from the most appropriate source. 7

7 The public service IESP agenda explained The portfolio will comprise internally built and operated services, and a variety of external service partners Focus on delivering a 360 user experience: recognising that the organisation is being bombarded with external sourcing options for all of their ICT needs. Each one promises to bring the organisation something unique, compelling or transformative. The IESP will recognise that all of its services will need to be compared with those available externally. It must proactively evaluate all relevant options that are able to deliver the user experience that the organisation is able to fund. Move from managing technology to offering a well-defined service portfolio: the growth in consumer IT gives users a distorted sense of how easy it is to access IT-based services. Consumers buying a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) are never exposed to the underlying technology platforms, complexity or operational challenges that the service provider has to deal with every day. All they see is a product offered at a monthly pay-per-user rate and available virtually immediately. The IESP will embrace IT services portfolio management as the most effective way to engage with and serve the organisation. The portfolio will comprise internally built and operated services, and a variety of external service partners. The IESP will ensure that the organisation and its users will not be able to differentiate between services delivered internally and those delivered via partnerships. Sell itself to the business based on service value and best-value differentiation: the ability to respond to and fixing a failed piece of equipment or being able to implement a new server platform is no longer of differentiated value to the organisation. While, every external communication to the CEO, CFO or an agency head is going to sell the value of the external provider s service offering, public sector ICT tends to be viewed as a budget line item which consumes ever more money to simply keep what is already in existence running. This puts the ICT department at a serious disadvantage in delivering what is perceived as public service innovation. Therefore the IESP will take on the characteristics of the service provider, communicating the value of its portfolio and ability to deliver quality of service and best-value differentiation. ICT may feel the need to talk about risks associated with Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). The IESP, however, may be more inclined to balance the risks with the operational benefits to be gained, such as how mobile enabled public services would transform the experience of citizens, patients, carers, or students. Adopt pre-validated architectures as the first choice for internal ICT architectures: all major vendors are now producing pre-packaged or prearchitected infrastructures for use within organisations of different sizes and vertical market focus. These pre-packaged systems come with many thousands of hours of pre-flight testing, and the warranty and support of either a single or multiple industry leading vendor. The IT department would have seen its role to continually choose the best in class individual technologies, and build, integrate and validate the platforms needed to run key services. The IESP will see these validated architectures, primarily Data Centre Converged Infrastructures, Communications and Collaboration services as a fast-track, efficient way of building out the higher layer services to meet the collective needs of their institutions. 8

8 The IESP will systematically move people into process; automate process, and build-out the user interfaces and back-end systems to enable it to deliver service as close to 100% efficiency as is achievable Embrace operational automation as the de-facto standard for running ICT and ICT services: most IT departments comprise people, technology and process. In operational terms, it is people who provide the effort and expertise and, therefore, represent the highest overhead. Unnecessary human intervention in the process of provisioning, managing and responding to systems failures in a service provider adds only one thing; cost. The IESP will systematically move people into process, automate process, and build-out the user interface and back-end systems to enable it to deliver service as close to 100% efficiency as is achievable. The IESP will strive to put people into roles to discuss new public sector ICT innovation, putting process and technology into the heart of the organisation where people add little value and significant cost. Transition staff from being experts in technology management to best practice exponents of service delivery and user experience: the converged infrastructure has been pre-validated by the vendor. Its implementation has been undertaken by a certified partner. The management platform has been automated to respond to all known incidents or faults and the user requests its provision through a full automated portal. So who needs to manage technology anymore? As well as enabling the transition operational staff to higher value roles within the organisation, adopting the IESP agenda can also enable staff to be cooperatively transitioned to the private sector partner. This can deliver financial benefits to all parties. ICT personnel are regarded as the experts in running technology-related matter. The IESP will train its personnel to be experts in engaging with the organisation, its departments and its users. Their role will be to help ensure near perfect service definition and to engage with service partners and providers on best practice service management. Most importantly, when the organisation no longer cares about technology management, but cares deeply about user experience, the IESP will concern itself with how well it has met the expectations of its users. It will understand that these users now have a choice and can buy any IT service from any source they chose. Adopt Service Management best practice as a critical organisational key performance indicator: according to a recent Gartner report, 90% of all IT Service Management (ITSM) programmes have not delivered the results expected. IT Service Management will be at the heart of the IESP s operating model. Best Practice IT Service Management processes, systems and platforms will turn the ICT department from being expert managers of products and technology into best practice practitioners of service management. Most importantly for the public sector IESP, they will become skilled at managing the service providers who are delivering core infrastructure or application services. Managing the service provider will be more important than managing individual technology components. Always look first for external partners who can deliver the services the organisation needs: many governmental organisations and departments are now adopting the motto of digital first. The IESP will adopt the motto externally-first. The leader of the IESP will task their colleagues to always investigate and evaluate the offerings of external service providers that are able to meet the needs of their users and citizens before deciding to build the service themselves. By looking externally first the IESP will ensure that anything it decides to build and operate itself will deliver a comparable user experience, be equal or superior to the standards of an external service provider, and will be delivered at a competitive market cost. 9

9 The leader on an IESP will plan this transformation on six key fundamental processes: In the coming years the technologies that have enabled public sector organisations to deliver a richer and more satisfying experience to its users and citizens will expand at an accelerating pace Service Specification Service Sourcing Service Brokering Service Integration Service Governance Service Management The IESP will build and operate only a fraction of the services the organisation uses. It will have positioned itself in the minds of the organisation and its users as the trusted conduit for all technology-based service delivery. It will gain greater influence and control over the services and sources the organisation chooses to develop its technology-based services portfolio. The IESP will be responsible for more service layers and levels than ever before, and managing these will become more challenging as the focus shifts to the quality of the user and citizen experience that is delivered rather than the underlying platforms that deliver the experience. This will make the IESP more relevant and valuable to the organisation than the ICT department was able to be before the transformation. Transformation is an evolving journey not a race towards a destination In the coming years the technologies that have enabled public sector organisations to deliver a richer and more satisfying experience to its users and citizens will expand at an accelerating pace. A wider range of collaborative services spanning infrastructure, application and communications will become available and compelling. The internet and cloud principles of multi-tenancy and scale are already driving the major vendors to offer service provider type solutions that can be operated by the public sector IESP or trusted services partner. The transition to IESP, from the old world to the new, has to be seen as an evolutionary rather than revolutionary process; one that adopts a phased and systematic approach. This will deliver progressive service improvements and cost savings, while minimising disruption and risk. The core building blocks of communications networks can then act as a gateway to a range of other large-scale collective services, such as: Service Defined Networks Identity Management and Security Data Centre Capacity Services Voice Services Collaboration Services Video Services Data Backup Services These new architectures are not just being designed for large-scale IESPs or cloud providers, they are perfectly suited to the needs and scale of aggregated public sector organisations. 10

10 About Logicalis Logicalis continues to invest in technologies that are perfectly suited to the needs of public sector organisations; Service Defined Networks, Cloud Computing, Unified Communications and Collaboration solutions Logicalis continues to invest in technologies that are perfectly suited to the needs of public sector organisations; Service Defined Networks, Cloud Computing, Unified Communications and Collaboration solutions. We also invest in the key operational capabilities that enable our public sector customers to transition to the new experience-centric and innovation-centric delivery models discussed in this paper. Logicalis has been helping public sector clients transform how they define, build and operate the IT infrastructure and systems that are under their direct control. Logicalis has also been at the forefront of public sector shared communications services and shared data centre services and cloud as the first cloud provider to connect our services to the Janet Network (Joint Academic Network) to service the needs of the UK education sector. Logicalis made significant investment in developing services that are both valuable and compelling to major UK public service sector organisations. Logicalis has also taken a major involvement in the growth in shared service communications networks. We are proud to have been the communications partner of the Welsh Government and its ground breaking, and still unmatched, PSBA communications services. The PSBA has encompassed more than innovative communications services. It has demonstrated that sharing resources, procuring services collectively, creating dynamic, personalised services for individual organisations, and creating procurement models for collective consumption is a viable and powerful option for the transformation of public sector services. Logicalis employs nearly 3,500 people worldwide, including highly trained service specialists who design, specify, deploy and manage complex ICT infrastructures to meet the needs of almost 6,000 corporate and public sector customers. To achieve this, Logicalis maintains strong partnerships with technology leaders such as Cisco, HP, IBM, CA Technologies, NetApp, VMware and ServiceNow. The Logicalis Group has annualised revenues of over $1.4 billion, from operations in Europe, North America, South America and Asia Pacific, and is fast establishing itself as one of the leading IT and Communications solution integrators, specialising in the areas of advanced technologies and services. The Logicalis Group is a division of Datatec Limited, listed on the Johannesburg and London AIM Stock Exchanges, with revenues of over $5 billion. 11

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