Executive
December 14th 2001Report of the Head of IT&T
Information Technology & Telecoms Development Plan 2002/3
Summary1 The annual Information Technology & Telecoms (ITT) development plan sets out areas for investment in ITT that have been identified and proposed by Directors. All of the proposals have been through an investment appraisal process, which provides a comparative assessment of the schemes. The revised IT Scheme Appraisal Model is outlined in Annex A. The bids have subsequently been assessed by the IT Development Plan Evaluation Panel and are listed in priority order as agreed by the Panel in Annex B.
2 A summary of each bid and the comments of the panel are incorporated in Annex C. The panel have made funding recommendations which have been reviewed by Management Team and are set out for Members in Annex B.
Background
3 This is both an operational plan which supports and delivers the business objectives of services across all Council activities, and a strategic plan which identifies areas of work which will prepare the authority for the major strategic challenges of e-government and help implement Access to Services. It contains proposals that Directors have identified where the introduction or extension of business systems will:-
• Meet a statutory Requirement ( Yes or No in Annex B)
• Address an area of Risk to the Council, either in terms of safety, financial risks or a risk to service delivery (High, Medium or Low in Annex B)
• Address corporate, business or technical policy objectives (High, Medium or Low in Annex B)
Proposals
4 The projects, as in previous years, are split into types:
• Business appraisal (BA) - where a detailed cost benefit analysis is undertaken on schemes that have been identified as having potential for investment before the scheme is proposed for development. Though these bids do not require funding they have been left in with the other items so that they can be prioritised against bids where the BA and implementation occur in the same year.
• Technical Appraisal (TA) – Where the business case is proven but further research is required to evaluate the technical feasibility of a scheme. • Extension - where a scheme builds on proven IT systems and investment
to deliver further benefits.
• Implement - where a scheme has been the subject of a business appraisal, or where exceptionally appraisal and implementation are undertaken in one year; for example as a result of either legislation or re-organisation.
• Replacement – where a system needs replacing due to obsolescence or changing business requirements.
• Time Only – where development work needs only the input of the IT Department (usually because external or directorate funding has been identified)
Budgetary Implications
6 It is Council practice to lease as much of this expenditure as possible over a five-year period. Budget sums allocated to the plan are revenue and not capital as is often assumed. The columns in Annex B show:-
• Guide Capital – This is the gross expenditure for each bid, what the project would cost if it were funded from capital. This is not the budget allocated to the project.
• Total Cost over 5 years – What the project will finally cost over the five year lease period, including lease repayments and maintenance costs.
• Annual Ongoing Cost – the revenue sum paid each year in lease payments
and maintenance. This is the actual budget that will be allocated to the project in future years.
• First Year Costs – a proportion of the Annual revenue costs which will be
incurred in the first year, based on an estimate of when the project will be implemented within the year. This is often difficult to predict. The column P/Y indicates the proportion of the year expected to be covered by the part year effect.
General Fund Budget for 2001/02
7 Within the 2001/02 revenue budget there was First Year revenue provision within the General Fund for IT developments of £120,000 in year one , with ongoing funding of £260,000 in subsequent years. Of this, only £74,745 was committed in year one, with an ongoing impact of £144,745 in subsequent years. The remaining in year balance of £60,000 was committed in 2001/2 for the Access to Services Best Value Review.
General Fund Budget for 2002/03
8 Within the 2002/03 revenue budget, First Year revenue provision of £130k has been made within the General Fund, giving rise to an ongoing budget of £ £260k in subsequent years. A further £30,000 has been provided within projected passported Education budgets.
9 Annex B shows the recommendations of the panel . There are 25 bids for discussion, 18 of which are recommended, 2 of which are deferred and 5 of which are recommended for rejection.
10 Assumptions have been made about the potential implementation dates of each bid and therefore the percentage of annual ongoing cost that will be incurred in the first year. These are set out in Annex B in the P/Y column.
11 If the recommended bids are approved this will commit expenditure of:- General Fund Education HRA DLO Total First Year 2002/2003 96,612 6,026 2,191 2,191 107,020 Ongoing- 2003/2004 onwards 103,656 6,491 2,360 2,360 114,868
12 This will leave a further first year General Fund budget of £33,388 which would give rise to an ongoing budget of £156,344, to be allocated in the second round of bidding for 2002/03. This will be presented to Management Team in June 2002 and to Members in July 2002. The second round of bidding allows for urgent new requirements to be considered in year together with a review of the deferred bids and further new bids for funding which are likely to arise from the Business Appraisals currently in progress or proposed for the first half of next year.
Budgets for Other Funds
13 Not all IT development costs fall on the General Fund. Where applicable expenditure has been allocated to either the General Fund, Education, DLO or HRA. Where a corporate project affects all funds costs have been split on the basis of the number of PC’s in each area.
14 Recharges for DLO are also affected by the element of General Fund costs for corporate schemes that is charged to central support services. The only
schemes affecting central support services in 2002/03 are Citrix Server Upgrade and the establishment of a Corporate Property Gazetteer. The support services share of the cost of these schemes is small and as only 4% of this is recharged to DLO the effect will be negligible. These increases will be offset by lease fall outs from previous years’ IT Development Plans, which will be offered as savings in the annual budget round for 2002/03.
Themes
15 The bids submitted for this years IT Development Plan support four key strategic IT development strands . These are all consistent with the developments set out in Access to Services and in the work being set out in the forthcoming IT strategy. Many of these projects will contribute the achievement of BVPI 157, 100% of services to be delivered electronically by 2005.
• Web Development – Once again this year we received a number of bids for
web development. To prevent fragmentation to the CYC web presence and to ensure consistency in the way that CYC presents itself and its services on the web these bids will be incorporated into the Web Strategy which will be
reported to Management Team in January. Three bids have been approved by the panel, 02EDLE03, a virtual tour of York which uses external funding to give web access to images of York’s historic buildings, 02DEDS02 which will put the planning system on-line and 02CEX02 which will further develop the innovative Decision Making Online system.
Work has already commenced in the second half of 2001 to scope the requirement for the further development of Decision Making Online. If the scope of the development required cannot be achieved by the target date of 2002 this will be reported to Members at an early opportunity.
• Information Consolidation – The need to join/up information held in
disparate databases has been a key theme of the Access to Services BV review. Five bids have been made that concentrate on this issue. The establishment of a corporate Property dataset is a primary theme and bid 02COR02, the establishment of a corporate Gazetteer has been adopted as a corporate project rather than a bid from DEDS, to ensure that this key activity is integrated across all service areas. This is a fundamental preparation for the Access to Services project. The gazetteer will be the central reference source for all address data across the council and will facilitate links between information held in disparate databases
Other notable projects that appear in this category are 02COR04 for the appraisal of a Corporate Geographical Information System which will enable data from across CYC to be mapped against other significant data sets, and 01LE3 – for the development of a York Leisure Smartcard. This will appraise the work involved in replacing the York Card which will require the establishment of a core person database for CYC. The appraisal will bring out issues about whether the York Card should be specifically a Leisure card. A York Council card or even a York City card, enabling citizens to access a wide range of services. Smart Card technologies are conventionally proposed as part of e-government solutions and may be proposed as part of the Access to Services project. It is therefore sensible to undertake this appraisal with this in mind.
• Infrastructure improvement – 2 bids have been made to strengthen the
resilience of the existing IT infrastructure – The upgrading of the Citrix server farm operating system (02COR03) has been recommended whilst the upgrading of some of the major systems operating systems (02COR05) has been deferred, pending a further analysis of the risks involved in maintaining the existing software. There is a further bid for a pilot of flexible working (02COR01) which will extend the reach of the IT infrastructure.
• Social Care statutory agenda – There is a fast growing strategic agenda for
Social Care, giving rise to a spate of Government guidelines on electronic record keeping and charging models. 02COM1 and 02COM2 are both recommended as high priority for time only bids in this year.
Rejected Bids
16 Five bids were rejected by the panel as they were :-
• Not sufficiently high priority or didn’t significantly add to the achievement of corporate objectives - e.g. web broadcast of council meetings
undertaken by ODU as it is a business mechanism that is required rather than a technology system.
• In conflict with IT strategy/ Access to Services project/Corporate Objectives – e.g. using an external company to put York pollution statistics on their web site which was judged to be both too technical for the general public and would fragment the CYC web presence.
Recommendations
17 That Members agree the recommendations of the IT Development Panel and that this report proceeds to the Public Executive alongside the Budget report on December 14th.
Contact Details
Author: Chief Officer Responsible for the report:
Tracey Carter Head of ITT 551949 Jane Collingwood Business Development Manager
551977 Simon Wiles
Director of Resources
Background Papers –
Annex A - Bid Assessment Model Annex B - List of Bids 2002/03 Annex C - Summary of Bids
