Putting cloud to work in local government. How councils are adopting cloud to enable business change

Transcription

1 Putting cloud to work in local government How councils are adopting cloud to enable business change

2 Foreword Recently there has been a lot of negativity about the slow progress of cloud adoption in local government. In our view much of it is unfounded. Indeed, when we last looked into the issue in 2013, we found that over 70% of local councils are using cloud computing. The general move towards broader adoption is reflected in our own experience over the last year. Recently we ve worked with and talked to a number of councils that have a really clear vision of where they want to go with cloud and a plan to implement the business change. They re using cloud to not only reduce costs, but to be more flexible in the way they deliver new services for both staff and service users. Of course, there is still plenty of work to be done. The flipside of our 2013 research was that nearly a third of councils haven t used a cloud service at all. That s too many if the government s vision of a cloud-driven public sector is to become reality. This report takes a positive look at the challenges that are holding up more widespread adoption. We share the experiences of those that are currently migrating their IT to the cloud, and give you a take on what can be done to overcome the most common barriers. We hope you find the result both informative and useful. Andrew Hawkins Business Development Director Eduserv Contents Making sure your organisation is ready for change 4 The need for rigorous planning 6 Ongoing delivery and successful supplier management 8 Security, PSN and enabling the drive towards shared services 10 Conclusion

3 Executive summary With budgets now lower than they have been for many years, councils ability to maintain service levels by making new efficiencies is one of the hottest topics in local government. This report aims to help councils explore how the challenge can be tackled by cloud computing. We examine what is motivating local authorities to move to the cloud, how IT leaders are managing the transition and how they ensure their plans stay on track to achieve the business s objectives. The report is based on interviews with IT leads in five local authorities, all of which took place in September The output provides insight and practical steps that councils can use to start their own journey towards cloud. The key findings are: Cloud is not just a cost saver you need to talk the language of business change While many councils are aiming to save money with cloud, focusing purely on reducing costs is likely to limit the long term effectiveness and potential of cloud. IT leaders can solve this problem by educating their organisations on the potential to drive real business change. Successful implementation takes planning and strategic thinking Many councils are deploying cloud services as a tactical reaction to budgetary circumstances. This means there is a danger that councils will only ever achieve a patchwork of point-fixes with little long term strategic benefit. Councils can overcome this by placing more emphasis on their pre-procurement planning. They also need to provide potential suppliers with a clearer idea of how their business is changing and what their business objectives are. Managing a multi-vendor environment is the future: you re likely to need help Council IT leads see cloud as an effective way to move away from inflexible old outsourcing contracts. They also warn that managing a multi-vendor set up brings new challenges. Key recommendations include using an aggregator or implementing the Service Integration and Management (SIAM) approach to service management. Security is still a major issue to address: but it is not a barrier to adoption. Security is still an issue, and requires hard work, but councils are encouraged that making use of accredited platforms like the Public Services Network (PSN) can also be a platform for delivering business change for example, by enabling them to share services and resources with other public sector bodies. Each of the sections that follow expand on these points in more detail. We also provide quick at-a-glance tips that will help inform local authorities currently thinking about migrating IT to the cloud. 3

4 1 Making sure your organisation is ready for change At a glance: To get their organisations ready for cloud, IT teams should consider how to communicate three key points: How cloud can enable business change. What the impact and benefits of the change will be for the business. What cloud means for individuals. I don t want cloud to be seen as a budget driven necessity; I want it be seen as a new business opportunity. Ian Gale Bristol City Council Council IT departments who want to make cloud a success must talk about more than cost-savings. They need to talk the language of business change. One of the most common themes to emerge from our interviews with council IT leaders is that the move to cloud has often been a necessary response to reduced budgets, or a previous lack of investment in IT that has reached crisis point. At Bristol City Council, for example, cuts meant that the IT department suddenly found itself struggling to find space to host its infrastructure. There was a big move to rationalise property and close buildings, says Ian Gale, ICT Service Delivery and Integration Manager for Bristol City Council. We simply had no more room for much of our on-site equipment. Cloud was the natural solution, but the pitfall was that cloud might potentially be seen by the business as just a way of managing the impact of cuts. Worse, it might have been perceived by staff simply as a way of reducing headcount, leading to resistance to the change. A need for strategic thinking The challenge for council IT leaders is to make sure their cloud programmes aren t just seen as quick fixes but something which has been thought through strategically. For this to happen IT must take a leadership position. It must educate the business that the cloud is not just a reaction to austerity. Jos Creese, CIO for Hampshire County Council, told us that the cost savings at his council are only marginal. The focus, rather, needs to be on flexibility and business agility. 4

5 Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead case study: Whenever I talk to our services about sourcing options, I talk about the agility that cloud might bring, the rigour it will probably require and the integration needs, especially around identity management, says Creese. I down play the economics because time and again savings are not there. We re using cloud to invest differently as much as to save money. The more important thing to get across is that we re investing time and resources in cloud services because we know it s right for the future. It s about making it relevant to the business, says Mark Watson, Chief Technology Officer at Brighton & Hove City Council. It was well known across the organisation that we needed to do something, because IT had been damagingly underinvested in for some years. It s important for everyone to understand cloud can also help us work more effectively to support the business. Cloud means we can turn new services round faster, deliver for the unpredictable and with a level of ease that s not been there before. That s the real message. The tone is similar at Bristol City Council, where Ian Gale quickly moved the cloud conversation on from the cost issue. I don t want cloud to be seen as a budget driven necessity; I want it be seen as a new business opportunity, says Gale. That means when I talk about cloud it s in terms of time-to-market ; how extra speed will help us deliver services that meet citizens expectations. It s also important you let your own team know what s in it for them. For example, can you tell your IT teams that they can be released from keeping the lights on to engage in more strategic work? The key is to communicate cloud as an enabler of business change. To overcome any internal resistance, it s equally important to tell all staff what the impact of that business change is likely to be. How reacting to circumstances can be an opportunity to transform business Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead s move to cloud was initially forced by budget cuts, but that was only the start of its journey. We had a situation where there hadn t been enough investment in IT for a number of years, says Rocco Labellarte, Head of Technology and Change Delivery for Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. Systems were failing because they hadn t been maintained properly. When the budget cuts hit us we didn t have the capital to replace them. Cloud was the solution that made the most financial sense, but since that time the council has fully exploited cloud s potential to achieve a range of other impressive results. In fact cloud has emerged as the driving force behind a programme of rationalisation and transformation that has turned efficiency around the council has introduced hot desking, remote working and has been able to close five buildings without impacting local services. The Royal Borough has since been cited as a shining light on the Government Digital Service blog and nominated in the 2014 BCS awards. Out of adversity comes opportunity, says Labellarte. We ve dug ourselves out of a financial and technical hole but we ve also changed the way the business works, and we re making sure everyone in the business is proud of that. 5

6 2 The need for rigorous planning At a glance: For a successful procurement process, you need to provide suppliers with: A clear idea of the objectives you need to achieve. What you ve got in terms of infrastructure and applications. Your vision for business change. We realised that if we didn t do this in two years we d be dead. A leading CIO Before engaging with suppliers, successful implementations start with planning, strategic thinking and a clear idea of business objectives. The consensus from IT leads deploying cloud services is they ve had to work quickly. We realised that if we didn t do this in two years we d be dead, said one leading CIO. Again, this is largely because many programmes started as a reaction to economic circumstances and unusual business pressure. The concern is that this kind of climate tends to result in limited, tactically driven fixes. The mistake that local authorities often make is that they start by looking at suppliers and systems and then engage with them too quickly before being clear on the business problem to be addressed, says Jos Creese, CIO for Hampshire County Council. This means you are less likely to work strategically and secure a good fit supplier and service for your partners based on a proper understanding of what you are ultimately trying to achieve. Taking a moment to step back helps with procurement Our interviewees told us that taking a step back at this key stage either doing it yourself or working with an experienced consultant will pay you dividends in the long run. Before you even look at potential suppliers you need to get a really strong idea of what your infrastructure is, what the network looks like, and where the application interdependencies are. You also need to consider how the business is changing. This may feel like a frustrating delay, but it is necessary to give suppliers a clear sense of what they have to work with and how they may be able to help you. 6

7 Without working out these elements at the outset, your conversations with both your procurement team and suppliers will have limited value. It also means you are likely to discover problems with factors such as legacy integration at a later stage, which inevitably slows implementation down. According to Jos Creese, a rigorous approach will also help you to weed out inadequate suppliers. If you have a coherent approach to cloud sourcing assessment you can check out which suppliers have a maturity of approach, skills, methods and architectures, says Creese. You need an experienced partner that knows how to manage complex integration issues and the problems that arise when you potentially have several suppliers. It would be a mistake to go with a software provider, for example that says it does cloud. They may well do cloud but can they help you manage it for the long term? G-Cloud and working with procurement The G-Cloud initiative aims to save millions by enabling public sector bodies to buy IT services more cost effectively so how are councils finding the experience? There s not much doubt that some councils are frustrated by it. I was really excited about the potential for G-Cloud, however so far we ve found it s good for getting an indicative price, but what happens when you need to know more? Often you don t go further because you need to be shown what the offer is in a meaningful way more specifics on what is and isn t included would be helpful, says Angela Parratt, Head of IT, Bath and North East Somerset Council. Sifting through suppliers and the different services they offer can indeed be challenging, but is vital in order to ensure that you are procuring a service which can do everything you expect it to. Getting procurement involved in this process is recommended because their skills in evaluating and differentiating services will help you make a better decision. You can end up with a 500 company long-list for specific service, so you really need someone in procurement that knows what they re talking about, says Rocco Labellarte, Head of Technology and Change Delivery for Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. For IT teams whose procurement functions are wary of working through G-Cloud or do not understand how it meets with the procurement regulations, the G-Cloud team at the Cabinet Office encourages buyers to get in touch with them directly so they can work through any problems. 7

8 3 Ongoing delivery and successful supplier management At a glance: It s important to take a number of steps to manage cloud successfully these include: Making ongoing supplier relationship management a priority. Considering a partner with experience of managing both large and SME providers. Thinking about the SIAM management model as your cloud strategy progresses and matures. We need to remind ourselves that our citizens and service user needs should drive everything we do... Ian Gale Bristol City Council Managing a multi-vendor environment is the future: you re likely to need help. If there s one thing council IT leads fully agree on it s moving away from the traditional outsourcing contracts of the past. They see this as a good thing because it gives them more agility and flexibility. But this also means that you re going to manage a different kind of supplier, or indeed multiple suppliers. Our future for IT is a multi-vendor environment, no doubt. The challenge is to make that work without adding new and unnecessary layers of complexity, says Ian Gale, ICT Service Delivery and Integration Manager for Bristol City Council. Managing multiple partners The CIOs we spoke to are all working with a mixture of large and smaller suppliers. These points to a future where more cloud services aggregators are likely to be used to manage multiple cloud applications. Alternatively, Both Ian Gale at Bristol and Mark Watson at Brighton say their departments are taking on the challenge by adopting a Service Integration and Management (SIAM) model. This can either be done through an outsourced partner or it can be done in-house, which may require the development or recruitment of additional skills. Whatever your situation, managing a number of SMEs in your supplier base means you ve got to do something, says Ian Gale. We re all happy with more flexibility. It s great that we re no longer tied to long contracts and get services to market more quickly, but you need to put some pretty strong 8

9 management processes in place to make sure your multi-vendor environment doesn t get out of control. We also have to remember that cloud is not just technology for new technologies sake at every stage we need to remind ourselves that our citizens and service user needs should drive everything we do, Gale continues. SIAM allows us as an organisation to manage the service providers in a consistent and efficient way, making sure that performance across our portfolio of multi-sourced goods and services always meets user needs. There are also a number of other useful steps you can take to ensure management and delivery of your cloud programme is successful, including setting up a delivery board that is distinct from your planning board, establishing technical and service forums, communicating your progress, and formal process for reviewing delivery against strategy. Is 1-2 years a realistic timescale for cloud? While there was no set answer to this question, the IT leaders we spoke to agreed that a lot can be achieved in less than two years. It s hard work no one should pretend otherwise but it can be done, says Rocco Labellarte, Head of Technology and Change Delivery for Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. But the most important thing, say our interviewees, is selecting a management partner with the right experience and credentials to assist you throughout the process. 9

10 4 Security, PSN and enabling the drive towards shared services At a glance: Councils looking to move their estate to the cloud securely should consider: Types of data that can safely be moved to the cloud and which should remain in-house. Exit strategies that cover where data is held and how it can be recovered. How PSN can help with assurance and also enable a new vision of secure collaboration with other public sector organisations. It s almost certain that it s the less sensitive information that will be in the cloud anyway. Jos Creese Hampshire County Council Security remains a challenge, but there are ways to enable new and more collaborative ways of working across the public sector safely. Our IT leaders largely agree that while security remains a key priority, it should not be a barrier to cloud adoption. The question is whether this will continue to be the case as councils continue to put more services into the cloud. The most important thing to remember during this period will be to plan ahead carefully, review regularly and consider whether your needs will be best served by a hybrid model built on both private and public clouds. At the moment we re conducting a full audit of all our information including assessing it against government security classifications, says Mark Watson, Chief Technology Officer for Brighton and Hove City Council. What we re initially finding is that only a small percentage of our information should be classed as official sensitive. It s very important we protect our information, especially now we re increasingly looking to work with and share data with partner organisations in the public, private and third sectors. But a lot of the other information we hold for example in planning, or for our museum service is very much public domain anyway and doesn t need the same expensive firewalling protecting it. Another important consideration is to make sure you have an exit strategy. It s not rocket science, you just have to think about what data and processes you re going to put where, and what you re going to need to keep local for security or purely operational reasons, says Jos Creese, CIO for Hampshire County Council. 10

11 It s almost certain that it s the less sensitive information that will be in the cloud anyway. Whether it s in the UK or not is not as important as some people imply. It s more important that you know exactly where data is, how it s being managed, the standards and controls, and how you can get it back if you need to do so. It s surprising how many organisations don t have that plan in place when they move to the cloud. Making the most of PSN If security is handled correctly, it can also be a platform for creating new efficiencies for example, by sharing services and resources with other public sector bodies. To this end, putting in the hours required to achieve compliance with the Public Services Network (PSN) is crucial. It s true, there is a lot of work involved to reach compliance, but there are other wider benefits to consider, says Ian Gale, ICT Service Delivery and Integration Manager for Bristol City Council. For example, there are lots of secure services like and storage that can be run over PSN and have in-built connectivity with other PSN compliant organisations. Those organisations could include other local authorities, blue light emergency services or even third sector organisations that we re increasingly working with. We re having all these conversations now and PSN is very much an enabler for that more efficient shared service vision which, potentially, could also end up delivering a more joined up experience for citizens Overall, the feeling among IT leads in councils is that while security will always be a very important consideration for cloud, the potential benefits of cloud far outweigh any perceived security risks

12 Conclusion The views in this report indicate that cloud computing is gaining traction in councils across the UK. At the same time, there s little doubt that making the transformation involves a lot of work and careful thinking. The leaders we spoke to all stressed that planning is absolutely vital. Above all, the message is that the effort is worth it. Cloud, with the right management structures and processes in place, is now firmly becoming established as an enabler to transformation helping councils move away from old-style outsourcing arrangements, and towards a more agile and flexible future. To find out more about cloud computing and how we can help you achieve your goals visit We are a not-for-profit Managed Cloud Services provider specialising in helping the public sector and charities use IT more effectively. We have our own UK data centre and provide a range of managed cloud, consultancy and colocation services. Our customers include Bristol City Council, Brighton and Hove City Council, the Department for Education, Guide Dogs and the British Red Cross. WEB-142.0