City of Edinburgh Council

City of Edinburgh Council Works Towards Delivering Smart City Vision with Infrastructure Optimisation Model

Based in Scotland’s capital city, the City of Edinburgh Council provides a range of services from more than 70 principal locations to 480,000 citizens, businesses, and organisations in Edinburgh and Lothian. In 2005, the City of Edinburgh Council embarked on a service-led IT transformation programme with its outsourcing partner BT. The excellent partnership work created a virtuous circle with reductions in service costs leading to efficiencies, which then generated further opportunities, leading to more service improvements.

1. Executive Summary

Customer Profile
Based in Scotland’s capital city, the City of Edinburgh Council provides a range of services from more than 70 principal locations to 480,000 citizens, businesses, and organisations in Edinburgh and Lothian. In 2005, the City of Edinburgh Council embarked on a service-led IT transformation programme with its outsourcing partner BT. The excellent partnership work created a virtuous circle with reductions in service costs leading to efficiencies, which then generated further opportunities, leading to more service improvements.

The transformation programme resulted in a net benefit of around £5 million (U.S.$9.9 million) in direct IT costs and a return on investment in just 14 months. The total savings over five years are estimated at £6.4 million. Evaluation through a Microsoft® Infrastructure Optimisation Model showed a better than expected reduction in cost of support of the desktop estate of 32 per cent and reduction in cost of the servers of 72 per cent. An actual reduction of 69 per cent in hardware incidents has been achieved.

In 2005, the Council did not know how many computers were in its desktop estate, let alone how to manage them. Support for information workers was poorly scoped, with service desk agents only dealing with 8 per cent of requests at first point of contact. Because of the transformation programme, it is now 65 per cent. When a desktop broke with the previous system, it could take up to five days to be fixed—this is now done in four hours. The Council’s information workers now have stability, speed, and new ways of collaborating by sharing calendars and are using previously unavailable mobile solutions, such as push e-mail.

Key Benefits
• Total savings over five years of approximately £6.4 million.
• Payback period of just 14 months.
• Transformation costs of £7.8 million—tactical hardware replacement would have been £6.3 million.
• £40 million of capital receipts to the Council from selling 18 sites and moving 2,500 information workers into one building.
• Net benefit for the transformation of approximately £5 million.
• Outsourced partnership with BT now extended until 2016.
• Overall first call resolution of 65 per cent of requests for service compared to 8 per cent in 2005.

Key Indicators
• Annual IT expenditure of £21.5 million for service delivery.
• £3.8 million of development resources.
• 150 major application services.
• 19,600 change requests processed annually.
• Stretch target of £20 million in efficiencies in IT by March 2008.
• 20,000 council employees.
• 6,500 desktops.

Industry Drivers
Demand for:
• Optimisation of IT infrastructure to deliver more with less.
• Improved application performance and business resilience.
• More effective partnership working with statutory and non-statutory partners.
• Environment where all citizens can engage easily with the Council.

Competitive Landscape
In 2001, the City of Edinburgh Council entered into a 10-year outsourcing partnership with BT, which has now been extended to 2016. At times in the first five years, the relationship was challenging, with a perception by the Council that the service from BT needed to be more responsive and focused on service outcomes. In 2005, BT created a transformation programme involving partners such as Microsoft, Capito, and HP to deliver a programme of work that would improve the quality of service delivery.

Under the overall £150-million contract, BT has taken full responsibility for the day-to-day operation and evolution of the Council’s networked IT infrastructure. BT is working jointly with the Council to introduce new capabilities aimed at delivering more than £25 million of cash, and time releasing efficiency savings over the next five years.

Business Solutions
Goals and Objectives
• Optimisation of IT infrastructure with Microsoft-based IT services replacing heterogeneous platforms.
• Modernisation of the Council’s information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and delivery of projects to improve
frontline services to citizens.
• Stretch targets to secure substantial efficiency savings.
• Commitment from both partners to meet the Council’s “Best Value” targets.
• Restore internal customer and employee confidence in IT systems.
• Increase business agility and assure business continuity.
• Single sign on for mailbox, document access, and other features.
• New ways of working—roaming access introduced for the first time.

Specifically, by 2015, the Council wants to:
• Make Edinburgh the most successful and sustainable city in northern Europe.
• Keep and attract the people needed to drive its talent and knowledge economy.
• Provide every citizen with the best personal opportunities for work, education, and development.
• Ensure the city is safe, creative, and connected.

Solution
Having inherited a complex, disparate environment in 2001 with dozens of desktop operating systems, many aged core mainframe systems, and significant obsolescence challenges, BT first stabilised the network and refreshed and upgraded the core business systems.

In 2005, the partnership started a service-led technology transformation programme to improve services and provide the Council with a stable, flexible platform to support its plans. This programme involved changing business processes and supporting new ways of working. The vision of what the programme would deliver was a key part of the programme initiation process and involved a number of delivery partners.

The key visions were to:
● Standardise, rationalise, virtualise, and scale.
● Create a “zero-touch” infrastructure.
● Improve service delivery.

The new infrastructure involves transforming 8,000 users, 6,500 computers, 200 sites, more than 200 servers, 11 domains, 26 directories, and 4,500 business applications by mid 2007. By April 2007, the migration was around 95 per cent complete.

Business Value

Activity	Situation before implementation	Situation after implementation	Performance improvement	Value to City of Edinburgh Council
Desktop infrastructure	Manual localised processes	Mature processes and policies	Costs down 32%	ROI for total transformation in just 14 months
Server infrastructure	Manual localised processes	Standard policies to manage servers	Costs down 72%	Net benefit for total transformation of £5 million
Hardware incidents per 1,000 users	292	90	Incidents down 200%	Less downtime and higher availability of critical systems
First call resolution of infrastructure problems (%)	10	80	Resolution up 700%	Good level of help desk technology in place
Password reset first call resolution (%)	10	90	Improvement of 800%	Increased employee satisfaction
Overall first call resolution (%)	8	65	Resolution up 570%	Customer service now rated at standardised

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Industry Drivers

Business Profile
Founded in 1996 from a regional and district council, the City of Edinburgh Council has 20,000 employees and a budget of £772 million (U.S.$1.5 billion). It provides a range of services and covers more than 70 primary locations across Edinburgh and Lothian for 480,000 citizens.

Published in June 2003, Smart City Vision is the Council’s long-term strategy for the city. Smart City is a service improvement vision that recognises the critical role of technology-based solutions in providing cost-effective services. It acknowledges that Edinburgh is of immense importance to the social, cultural, and economic life of Scotland.

By 2015, the Council’s aims for Edinburgh are to:
• Be the most successful and sustainable city region in northern Europe.
• Sustain the highest quality of life of any United Kingdom city.
• Keep and attract people needed to drive its talent and knowledge economy.
• Provide every citizen with the best personal opportunities for work, education, and development.
• Be a safe, tolerant, creative, and connected city.

The City of Edinburgh Council Today
• City economy driven by financial services, education, and tourism sectors.
• Unitary authority employing 20,000 people across 180 sites.
• The Scottish policy context set by the Scottish Executive emphasises modernising government, putting the customer first, and supporting efficient government.
• Committed to adhering to national data standards in Scotland and information sharing with other statutory and non-statutory partners.
• In 2001,180 employees transferred to BT with an outsourced partnership now extended to 2016.
• Annual budget of £21.5 million for IT service delivery and £3.8 million of development resource.

Edinburgh's Smart City Vision

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Operational Excellence
A future-ready, flexible, and standardised IT infrastructure, transparent management, and interoperability in business processes are distinguishing features of the City of Edinburgh Council of the future. The Council has tough “Best Value” and efficiency savings targets and a need to introduce best practice in new ways of working. To achieve its Smart City Vision by 2015, the Council has to install secure, high-performance, and standardised IT at all its major sites.

In 2001, BT was faced with a complex and disparate environment with thousands of applications, hundreds of hardware variants, and dozens of operating systems.

The ICT department was formed from two separate departments—one regional and one district—with two different architectures. There was an ageing estate, software and hardware obsolescence, and major security challenges, including back ups, logons, and physical security.

Andrew Unsworth, Head of E-Government, the City of Edinburgh Council, says: “We literally did not know how many computers we had in our estate, let alone how best to manage them.”

The inherited system—in which there had been little investment for four years—was characterised by:
• Numerous disparate operating systems and desktops with individually configured clients involving multiple versions of Microsoft Office, plus SUN One iPlanet for e-mail messaging.
• Between 50 and 60 desktop hardware variants.
• A need for a modern, scalable communications network and a new e-mail messaging system.
• Lack of transparency for system administrators.
• Insecure infrastructure.
• End of support and obsolescence for many components in the environment.
• No common security guidelines to protect citizen data and critical information. Over 90 per cent of the estate updated to a non-standard level.
• High system management and support costs involving 200 Windows® infrastructure servers and 48 NetWare servers, with 120 Novell trees spanning 120 volumes.
• Difficult and expensive to implement change.
• High numbers of desktop visits by technicians.
• Multiple password requirements.
• Service desk environment used for call logging.
• Low level of confidence in IT support.

Customer Intimacy
The current climate in local government is strongly supportive of new ways of working, remote and home working, and collaboration solutions for its information workers. The City of Edinburgh Council is no exception. It wanted to improve its user experience of IT and provide a stable, flexible platform for future service delivery to citizens.

The partnership needed to deliver a seamless transformation to the new environment and reduce the number of line-of-business applications in the Council from 4,500 to around 400. The Council wanted a clean and simple environment that would be easier to change and involved fewer problems and incidents for users. An actual reduction in hardware incidents of 69 per cent was achieved.

Competitive Landscape
To remain competitive and achieve an extension to the partnership to 2016, BT needed to improve service levels, future-proof software and hardware, and achieve a tough target for return on investment. Strategic partnership and modernisation were never going to be easy, and its success was ensured by joint openness and collaboration within the partnership from Microsoft to both BT and the City of Edinburgh Council.

As part of the discussion about the extension of the contract from 2011 to 2016, BT provided a proposal to release £22.5 million of efficiency savings. On the back of the success of this transformation programme and the aforementioned savings, the extension of the contract with BT is due to be formalised in March 2008 —extending the contract by a further £92 million.

The City of Edinburgh Council is determined to become one of Scotland’s top performing local authorities and already operates with 24 per cent fewer employees per 1,000 citizens than any other comparable local government organisation. By modernising its IT infrastructure, the Council has already raised £40 million in capital receipts because it was able to sell more than 18 separate sites and bring together 2,500 employees in one building in December 2006.

3. Business Transformation Solution

BT and Microsoft inherited an array of equipment and operating systems. Servers were not centrally hosted, but distributed throughout the council, sometimes in inappropriate environments Andrew Unsworth Head of E-Government The City of Edinburgh Council

The City of Edinburgh Council and BT produced a business transformation strategy that was approved by the Council in November 2004, and initiated five months later. Despite working effectively with BT from 2001 to 2004, the Council had found the partnership challenging at times, and sometimes employee expectations were not met.

Unsworth says: “There was a perception that the service from BT needed to be more responsive and focused on service outcomes. Strategic partnership and modernisation were never going
to be easy, but BT and the City of Edinburgh Council worked through the majority of the problems together responsibly as partners supported by Microsoft.”

In 2005, the technical stream of the transformation was initiated by BT Programme Manager Hayden Edwards and Lead Architect Stuart McMillan. A delivery programme of this scale, against an estate as disparate as Edinburgh’s, was a major professional challenge for the partnership.

BT created a number of strategic partnerships with key suppliers during initiation to ensure that “best of breed” was utilised during the transformation. As well as Microsoft, BT engaged Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Capito and HP and Network Appliance for hardware and storage solutions.

Edwards says: “Establishing the vision was a big piece of the jigsaw for us, with plenty of ‘blue sky thinking.’ Microsoft adopted a highly pragmatic approach and challenged us and the Council to work effectively. We were never pressured by Microsoft into implementing a wrong technology, nor was McMillan not provided with the support he needed to ensure the correct architectural decision was made.”

The delivery approach was to create a “greenfield” central service infrastructure and then migrate users, through the desktop refresh, from their existing environment to the new one. The ensuing pilot involved 50 users in the Council’s client team. Build and test took just four months, from planning to completion.

Unsworth says: “BT inherited an array of equipment and operating systems. The mainframes were ageing, and critical Council services, such as core revenues, benefits, payroll, and housing systems, were not well supported.

“Servers were not centrally hosted, but distributed throughout the Council, sometimes in inappropriate environments. The network had also been allowed to grow in an uncontrolled manner to support standalone applications.”

The transformation strategy involved:
• Defining the future architecture for the City of Edinburgh Council.
• Redesigning ICT services.
• Transforming the technology used by the Council.
• Initiating a migration strategy to move the Council to a transformed environment.

The goal of the strategy was to provide a transformed ICT platform for the Council that would improve services and support its strategic service delivery objectives. The vision of the transformation programme was to:

Standardise and Rationalise
• Standardise hardware on HP computers and servers.
• Consolidate on Microsoft solutions for the desktops and e-mail messaging, including Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003, Microsoft Operations Manager 2005, and Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000.
• Rationalise applications from 4,500 to 400 while at the same time saving significant costs in application licensing.
• BT decided that a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement was the best solution for low-cost volume licensing for the Council.
• The Enterprise Agreement ensured significant flexibility in what products BT could choose and helped to mitigate future software obsolescence.

Create Zero Touch Environment
• Strive to create a clean and simple environment, which is easy to change and has fewer problems and incidents.
• Use Group Policy and Microsoft management tools to provide a tightly managed desktop environment and ensure lower costs and risks for the Council.
• Reduce the number of builds to two desktop and two laptop builds.
• Introduce software delivery, application bundling, remote management, and patch management based on Systems Management Server 2003.

Provide Scalability
• Use virtualisation to provide application server scalability, Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 for e-mail, and a storage area network/network attached storage (SAN/NAS) to provide horizontal storage scaling and quota management.

Improve Service Delivery
• Initiate a service transformation programme to implement best practices in service delivery and change management.
• Create a full mirror test environment and introduce best practices in change management to stabilise the environment and promote rapid, controlled change.
Improve the service desk through the implementation of an Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) service management tool and up-skilling agents to improve first call resolution. The actual improvement achieved at first point of contact was from 8 per cent to more than 65 per cent.
• Meet and exceed service level agreements on hardware incidents on the refreshed estate. Actual improvement was from a five-day to a four-hour fix when a desktop broke.

To provide a smooth transition, the partnership wanted to avoid co-existence between the old and new environments.

Edwards says: “We built an entirely new environment from scratch, moving from a ‘brown field’ to a ‘green field’ platform, rather than trying to transform the earlier environment.”

McMillan, who owned the end-to-end architectural solution for the “greenfield” estate, ensured that any requirements to link back to the existing estate were in place and maintained for the duration of the migration.

Improve User Experience
The Council needed to equip its employees with new tools to encourage more collaborative working and improve productivity.

Edwards says: “By implementing Active Directory for identity management, and by migrating the messaging system to Exchange Server 2003, we gave the user community stability, speed,
and new ways of collaborating. They now share calendars, which was impossible before. Mobile solutions—including push e-mail—are available.”

Core Technologies Summary
To fulfil the Council’s Smart City Vision, interoperable Microsoft technologies are providing a proven IT infrastructure blueprint for the Council. More than 6,600 seats have now been deployed, Involving 8,200 users and hundreds of sites.

In addition, more than 400 applications have been packaged and migrated to the new platform. They have replaced hundreds of disparate systems and created a professional centralised IT operation that is delivering £6.4 million in savings over five years.

Software
Standard Microsoft central service architecture based on HP hardware:
• Windows Server® 2003.
• Active Directory®—replaces Novell and other directory services for joint working across the site and gives unique identity to each user.
• Microsoft Exchange Server 2003—replaces SUN One iPlanet.
• Microsoft SQL Server™ 2005—database solution.
• Microsoft Operations Manager 2005—complete support system.
• Microsoft System Management Server 2003 for software distribution, remote assistance, automated software updates, and patch management.
• Windows XP-based Notebook PCs and desktops.

4. Migration Costs and Infrastructure Optimisation Model

We now have a happier customer and have created a virtuous circle—service cost changes leading to efficiencies, which then generate further opportunities, leading to more service improvements Hayden Edwards Programme Manager BT Global Services

The total transformation cost was £7.8 million, whereas tactical hardware replacement—a status quo option—was £6.3 million. Total savings over five years are estimated at £6.5 million. This provides a net benefit for the transformation of approximately £5 million.

A breakdown of the total transformation costs shows that £2.6 million was spent on labour with the balance on software, hardware, and licensing. By April 2007, the migration was around
95 per cent complete.

Due to the excellent results achieved by the transformation programme, the Council, BT, and Microsoft decided to evaluate the pre-transformation picture and the post-transformation results.

The results show a better than expected reduction in desktop support costs of 32 per cent and a reduction of 72 per cent of the cost of maintaining the server.

Return on Investment
The return on investment for the transformation was 14 months. At a cost of capital of 10 per cent over five years, the programme should provide a strong positive return on investment, with
a net present value of £5.5 million and an internal rate of return of 200 per cent. The Council is also on target to reach £25 million in IT department savings by 2011 from its operational budget.

Edwards says: “We now have a happier customer and have created a virtuous circle—service cost changes leading to efficiencies, which then generate further opportunities, leading to more service improvements.”

The mandate from the Council was to deliver continuous improvement and efficient working by deploying technology to deliver more with less. The Council is now 25 per cent more efficient in meeting quality of service targets.

Impact of Smart City Vision

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IOI Results-Pre-Transformation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Impact of the Smart City Vision figure shows how organisational change has delivered service-led change by introducing new business-driven processes and investing in people.

Methodology
The Microsoft Infrastructure Optimisation Model is an extended Microsoft-specific IT maturity tool with four generic levels of maturity. The detailed analysis focuses
on three areas within an IT environment—the infrastructure, the IT processes, and unit costs for desktop and server labour.

The analysis is performed on two levels:
• Ratings of the infrastructure and IT processes are done based on questions designed to determine maturity.
• Overall ratings are then calculated by comparing actual server and desktop labour costs to benchmarked costs by maturity level.

The partners decided to use the Infrastructure Optimisation Model to determine the following:
• Change to the desktop and server infrastructure resulting from the transformation.
• Change to BT services and operating costs stemming from the transformation.
• Benefits that the investment in Microsoft solutions—taken with solutions from key technology partners—has delivered to both BT and the City of Edinburgh Council.

The following two diagrams show the pre-transformation and post-transformation results in respect of direct costs borne by BT. Because of the very low quality of support delivered pre-transformation, the Council was bearing indirect or hidden costs. Total support costs have been cut by even more than these figures demonstrate.

IOI Results-Post Transformation

First Time Resolution-Service Excellence

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Benefit Realisation—BT and Microsoft
Working in partnership, BT and Microsoft have created a proven blueprint for technology transformation that can be used at other customer sites. Its resilience is shown by:
• Improved service levels. First-time resolution and break-fix response is now at 100 per cent in less than four hours.
• Estate is fully modernised, with no out-of-date systems.
• Software and hardware is future proof and compliant with licensing.

Benefit Realisation—the Council
The solution supports the Council’s Smart City Vision and partnership working and moves towards new ways of working. By coupling the transformation programme with rationalisation of the Council’s accommodation strategy, capital receipts of £40 million have been received to date, with employees working in open-plan office space. The authority is well positioned to provide:
• Higher levels of common business services.
• Improved mobility and collaboration services.
• More flexible working practices.

Server Infrastructure/Architecture
The Council now has a standardised server operating system with Windows Server 2003, where previously there were multiple server operating systems. Active Directory is now the central directory service replacing 26 separate directories. Other features include:
• Server asset management.
• Automated server monitoring using Microsoft Operations Manager 2005.
• Regular server backups for most servers.

Improvements are still needed to move to a rationalised level, including a central tool for user provisioning across heterogeneous systems and automated update- management for servers.

Desktop Infrastructure
Post transformation, the Council has a single desktop operating system—Windows XP—and full desktop lockdown. Desktop software standards are monitored through regular audits, while desktop asset management is in place using SMS 2003. Other positive features include:
• Automated software distribution for operating system deployment and update distribution.
• Two laptop and two desktop images, instead of a high number of desktop images.
• Active Directory as the centrally administered configuration and security directory for desktops.
• Manual compatibility and application certification testing for desktop software distributions.
• Standard Windows XP desktop firewall in place.

Operations Management
The Infrastructure Optimisation Model evaluation shows that post-transformation operations management has moved from basic to standardised. There is a centralised back-up process for critical systems. Departments are responsible for file and print servers in 40 per cent of cases. Other positive features are:
• A central tool for desktop back-up performs desktop data recovery on request.
• Help desk resolution or automated system imaging is used in 60 per cent of incidents. Another significant percentage is resolved remotely, with less than 10 per cent of machines requiring a deskside visit.
• Hierarchical storage management tools in place, as well as tools and reporting to enforce storage policies.
• Tools in place to manage server and network events proactively across 60 per cent of the environment.
• Fifty per cent level of redundancy and fault tolerance on servers and networks compared to 10 per cent in 2005.
• Good security using third-party tools for encryption, desktop firewall in places across 100 per cent of desktops, host-based intrusion prevention tools, and centrally administered anti-spyware and malware tools.

Asset Administration
The Infrastructure Optimisation Model evaluation showed that asset administration had moved from basic in 2005 to rationalised in 2007. The features where improvement was most apparent are:
• Hardware/software and service providers chosen based on their ability to partner instead of on an ad hoc basis.
• Electronic reports replace paper reporting for purchase orders.
• Service level agreements cooperatively agreed with providers, with enforceable penalties to replace service level agreements previously driven by the provider.

Technology Planning and Process Management
There is a much improved capacity for IT to respond to any need for significant business change. The features where improvement was most apparent are:
• Significant business change would affect 80 per cent of Council functions, but with no noticeable impact on external customers or citizens. The opposite was the case in 2005.
• ICT infrastructure planning is now long-term, with a horizon of more than two years. No ICT infrastructure planning existed in 2005.
• Around 80 per cent of new hardware or software is assessed and evaluated in a dedicated lab or in a formal pilot. Previously, it was evaluated ad hoc.
• Standards are developed proactively, with input from the Council and vendors, rather than reactively as before.

User Experience and Change Management
The improvements in service delivery have resulted in faster deployment of new services. New requests for service and problems are handled faster and more efficiently. The Council has introduced enterprise-wide common standards of security.

The transformation programme has seen a positive experience for the user community and an improvement in perception of ICT in the Council. The better user experience includes:
• Hardware incidents per 1,000 users have fallen from 292 a year to 90.
• Less downtime and higher availability of critical systems.
• Roaming user access for the first time, supporting more flexible styles of working.
• BT deployment and floor walking teams earn special praise. Change planning with the Council through the platform refresh was a major programme that ran alongside the technology changes. Change planning and execution within the business was a major contribution to the success of the refresh.
• Significant amount (nearly one year) of change management effort was spent—in parallel to the key design phases—in developing joint change management and communications materials to support the transformation, without which the programme would have failed.
• Praise for the way that the technical elements of the programme struck the balance between innovation and risk.
• Excellent forward planning, commitment, and customer care during migration.
• Seamless transition from old to new.

The Infrastructure Optimisation Model evaluation showed that, in change management, the Council had moved from basic to rationalised.
• Records, tools, and user knowledge now used to decide whether a desktop is capable of running new or upgraded software.
• Users notified about software changes that could affect operations.
• Automated software distribution is now in place, which was previously done by the user (30 per cent) or BT (50 per cent) for base desktop applications.
• Migration utilities and image management tools in use.
• New hardware and software tested on dedicated equipment before installation.
• A formal procedure for disposing of unlicensed, outdated, and redundant software.
• Rollback in place for 90 per cent of changes—proactive tools exist for minimising user downtime during software distribution.

Customer Service
The Infrastructure Optimisation Model evaluation rates customer service as “standardised” post transformation. The principal areas of improvement since 2005 are:

• Helpdesk able to log incidents and resolve basic infrastructure problems and have knowledge of network resources.
• First call resolution of infrastructure problems of 80 per cent, compared to 10 per cent in 2005; password reset first call resolution of 90 per cent against 10 per cent; and an overall first call resolution of 65 per cent against 8 per cent.
• Good level of helpdesk technology in place, with single integrated problem management tool for all users.
• Remote control of desktops for rapid incident resolution.
• Helpdesk data used to identify and prevent recurring problems and to determine proper service levels.

Financial and Non-Financial Benefits for the Council
After transformation, the new platform is capable of supporting the Council’s strategic plans and initiatives. It is on target to achieve:
• £20 million of efficiency savings in IT by March 2008.
• A higher level of common business services.
• Improved mobility and collaboration services.
• Better corporate records management.
• New ways of working.

5. Conclusions

“From the outset, BT, Microsoft, and the Council insisted on an unswerving commitment to openness and trust. Potential partners were only brought into the programme if they were willing to show a strong commitment to working collaboratively with all other players.” Andrew Unsworth, Head of E-Government, The City of Edinburgh Council

Microsoft demonstrated a strong openness and willingness to partner with the City of Edinburgh Council and BT, and, in doing so, helped to restore the reputation of ICT within the Council.

Unsworth says: “Microsoft brought significant thought leadership to the table in helping design and provide the necessary support and assistance to make the programme a success. Choosing Microsoft solutions as a core part of the new environment made it significantly easier to deliver the improved user experience and the level of integration required for the programme. Both the Council and BT believe that they could not have achieved the success they did at the same cost with any other platform.”

Shared Objectives, Shared Vision
The programme has proved the principle of BT, Microsoft, and the Council working as a professional partnership. BT demonstrated its strengths at programme and technical management and delivery by aligning multiple partners to deliver an end-to-end solution on schedule and within budget. The change management process is now being replicated on other projects within the Council.

Openness and Trust
Unsworth says: “From the outset, BT, Microsoft, and the Council insisted on an unswerving commitment to openness and trust. Potential partners were only brought into the programme if they were willing to show a strong commitment to working collaboratively with all other players.”

Happier Customers
The City of Edinburgh Council is meeting the “Efficient Government” targets set by the Scottish Executive. With the standardised environment and rationalised infrastructure, the Council is much happier with the BT relationship and can expect to make £25 million in operational IT savings by 2011. Unsworth says: “This will involve e-procurement, electronic document management, self-serving HR, and some work on telecommunications and Voice over Internet Protocol, in particular.”

As for wider citizen satisfaction, the Council is on target with its Smart City Vision. Unsworth adds: “The transformation programme provides us with modernisation in terms of our brand and a modern approach to customer service because our employees can now respond to citizens in a much more flexible and responsive way.”

Looking even further ahead, the City of Edinburgh Council is now well placed to explore the potential for shared services with other local authorities and statutory partners, including the police and NHS Scotland.

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com

For more information about The City of Edinburgh Council, visit www.edinburgh.gov.uk

For more information about BT, visit www.bt.com/uk 

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published October 2007

Additional search terms: IO, IOI, infrastructure optimization, infrastructure optimisation , io model