Devolved-centralised review and BV critical friend

The project issues
Portsmouth City Council is in the process of implementing a new council-wide organisational structure, 'Moving Towards Excellence'. PCC is moving from a large number of individual departments to Strategic Directorates – four covering front line services, one covering all resources and one to address overall strategy and 'hot' cross-service strategic and change management priorities.

The existing ICT arrangements comprised a central IT department and some departmental ICT groups. The MTE study sought to examine this structure to ensure it was capable of addressing the ICT needs of the whole authority.

There is an overall aspiration to have arrangements which are consistent across all Strategic Directorates and all Support Services. The MTE study was undertaken in parallel with a central IT Best Value review, so it was treated as the first phase of that review and was conducted using Best Value principles, i.e. the 4Cs.

The second stage of the review will be a full BV ICT review based around key topics which are still to be scoped.

The Socitm Consulting solution
We interviewed Heads of Departments, new Strategic Directors, central and departmental ICT Managers and staff and users to gain understanding of the situation, practicalities, attitudes, prevailing issues and the business requirements. We examined strategic and service requirements and used our industry and local government knowledge to develop and analyse a number of options that would provide an effective service that would be acceptable to the whole ICT community.

Our findings led us to recommend that the all ICT resources become part of the existing central IT department but that where appropriate, they should be co-located with the directorates. This approach combines all the benefits of an integrated ICT community whilst maintaining close linkages with the businesses served. We also identified a number of key governance elements which needed to be put in place in order that the priorities, objectives and concerns of the service departments could be addressed in the context of PCC's overall priorities.

Our report set out recommendations for bringing together the ICT organisation and aligning the management structure of the ICT service to support this. PCC had recently taken part in both the Socitm User Survey and Benchmarking programme, so we also commissioned a benchmarking highlight report to supplement the main report's recommendations. This preliminary work and the subsequent highlight report were invaluable in providing comprehensive supporting information to the review, and enabled a more positive approach to the conclusions.

The benefits to the client
Our recommendations were used by the ICT review team to present the approach to the ICT Community, the re-organisation working Group and the Steering Group, and ultimately to obtain the agreement of elected members. The use of an independent consultancy which brought experience and knowledge of other local government ICT approaches was acknowledged as being very facilitating and helpful in achieving a consensus.

Project identification
Client organisation: Portsmouth City Council
Client contact: Dr Bob France, Head of IT, 023 9283 4433, bob.france@portsmouthcc.gov.uk
Lead consultant: peter.o-neill@socitm.gov.uk
Project no: 4726