In its recent Corporate Risk register Brent Council recognised that there was a possibility of an IT failure in its move to the Civic Centre in the summer of 2013. Brent Council has reached an agreement with other London councils to share services via a 'cloud' computing company, Capgemini which put out the following statement:
Six London borough councils have signed a four-year contract with Capgemini
that will see them move their finance, procurement, HR and payroll services to
the cloud.
The shared services project involves Lambeth, Lewisham, Barking and
Dagenham, Brent, Croydon and Havering councils.
It is the first programme to be announced under Project Athena, which will
lay the foundations for a single ICT platform for use by all London-based
public sector organisations.
Capgemini claims the deal is the most ambitious IT programme ever undertaken
by local government and will pave the way for similar initiatives across the
UK.
The councils' new systems are scheduled to go live in July 2013 and will be
managed by Capgemini for a further three years.
Mike Suarez, executive director for finance and resources for Lambeth
Council, who led the bid for the transformation contract, said:
All councils
share common support functions - like HR, finance and procurement - but we have
our own ways of doing them. If we can use the same system, we will streamline
our processes and save money without cutting services.
Managers will have access to budgets in real time and not need to
complete endless paperwork for the simplest of tasks – making real savings for
the tax payer.
Suzy Foster, head of local government of Capgemini UK, said:
We have helped
many public sector bodies improve services to the public and save money by
streamlining their IT and business processes. We are now delighted to have the
opportunity to deliver these same benefits in the greatest city in the world.
I hope that officers and councillors have addressed the issues of security, lock-in (to contract), lack of control and reliability that the diagram above identifies as possible drawbacks to such a system. Clearly these pose risks for both residents and council services. It is not clear what the move will mean eventually in terms of job losses.
The combination of both a physical move and a digital one presents a major challenge,
More on cloud computing services
HERE
