How the UK Parliamentary ICT
function is delivering savings now
and in the future
Peter Lamb
Head of UK Parliamentary ICT
Finance
• Where we have come from
• The Journey to the ICT Strategy
• The ICT Strategy to 2015
Where we have come from
BACKGROUND
Parliamentary ICT (PICT)
• Formally started April 2006
• Brought together various small ICT teams
supporting different parts of both Houses of the
UK Parliament.
• To provide a coherent consistent delivery of ICT
Services by
– Building leadership and programme delivery capability
– Focus on reliable execution and financial discipline
– Spreading ideas across people and teams that share
common values across Parliament
Scale
Users:
• Members and their staff ≈ 5,000
• Administrative Staff
≈ 3,500
• User equipment
9,000+
• Application supported
120
• Current budget:
£24.7m or €28.8m
• ICT Programmes budget £5m-£8M, or €5.8-€9.3m
How we have to got to where we are now
THE JOURNEY TO THE ICT STRATEGY
First steps
• Building teams from many different areas
• Developing strong cross Parliament
stakeholder relationships
• Consolidation of different services as
appropriate
• Better management of contracts
• Improvement and replacement of the existing
infrastructure
Single ICT service
• Unified structure
• Better support functions with single points of
contact e.g. Service desk
• Projects centralised
• Standardisation of processes and procedures
• Consistent control and compliance
Human Resources & contract
management
• Move to using permanent staff rather than
agency staff
• Consolidation and review of support contracts
• Matching contracts to new requirements
• Renegotiating contracts to get better value
The Infrastructure programme
• The Infrastructure programme was the first
major change made by PICT to the hardware
and software platforms in Parliament.
• It was also the time for a major refresh of the
desktop operating software.
The Infrastructure Programme
• What we did
– Rationalised the number of servers
– Moved to a virtualised environment as standard
– Implemented monitoring tools across all services
– Created an offsite data centre for business
continuity and disaster recovery through a
specialist supplier
– Rolled out Microsoft Vista as the standard
operating system for administrative staff
The Infrastructure Programme
Benefits:
• This gave a more stable environment that is
easier to manage and has better monitoring
• It allowed faster provisioning of servers
• It saved space and power
• A more locked down and stable desktop
• It saved money
The Infrastructure Programme
Measure of change
• Starting point ≈350 servers
• Now have 171 servers of which ≈40 are for
new services where a physical server is
required
• If we hadn’t virtualised we would have ≈ 840
servers
Where we are now going
THE ICT STRATEGY TO 2015
Baseline
• We now have in place a more robust
infrastructure
• We have a well structured organisation
• And we have a good relationship with our
stakeholders
• Why change?
ICT Vision for 2015
• To connect Members, the public and the
administration to the information and services
they need from anywhere, at any time, from
any device
• To further reduce the costs of ICT
• To provide new opportunities and pathways
for greater efficiency and effectiveness in
Parliament
How will we do this
We will change
• What we support
• How we support it
• Where it is provided
• Who provides it
Customer service & advice
Support, training, proactive engagement
(main focus on Members)
Bespoke services
Procedural applications
development & support
Communication services in the cloud
Members & their staff
•Email
•File storage
•Office productivity software
Non bespoke services
HR
Finance
Facilities
Administration staff
•Email
•File storage
•Office productivity software
Network
Hosting &
infrastructure
Equipment
PICT Core capability
Strategy, planning, core IT skills, procurement, service management, system & data integration, security, communication
The ICT Strategy
The five components:
• Customer service and advice
• Bespoke services
• Cloud Services
• Non bespoke services
• Core capability.
Customer service and advice
• Will deliver a proactive service to users that
moves from doing a lot of “break/fix” to one
based on brokerage of those services from
third parties and where we concentrate on
giving advice on how to use the available and
upcoming technologies better
Bespoke services,
• In house development of systems, primarily
for procedural applications
Cloud Services
• To provide flexible, lower cost ICT services such
as email.
• Starting on the more straightforward elements
such as email
• Considering use of office packages through cloud
• Moving infrastructure we currently have to IaaS
Non bespoke services
• Use commercially available solutions without
modification for standard administrative tasks
• Examples are systems to support:
– Building management
– Human Resources
– Finance
Non bespoke services
• We are going to renew our network.
• This may merge a number of data and voice
networks to a single network with VOIP
• It will allow use of different types of devices
Capability to deliver
• Finally, core capability, which ensures PICT has
what is essential to deliver the strategy and
value to Parliament
• To maintain and enhance the relationships we
have with stakeholders
What will that mean for PICT
• We will have reduced out current budget by
around 20%
• As part of the cost reduction we will have fewer
directly employed staff and will occupy less space
in Parliamentary buildings
• We will be able to respond to requests more
quickly and flexibly
• We will have a lower environmental impact
End
Questions?