In the public eye

By Diana Milne, Editor

As the UK prepares for the next general election, behind the scenes, work is underway on a project to transform the public sector’s IT infrastructure. Diana Milne meets the government’s top CIO, John Suffolk, to find out how he will make digital Britain a reality.

“I think in the future there will be more and more done with open source”
-John Suffolk

As the man at the helm of one of the most ambitious government IT projects in history, John Suffolk faces huge pressure to make it work. Having unveiled a highly ambitious plan to migrate many government services to the cloud, the UK government's top CIO is now in the design phase of putting together the world's most innovative public  sector IT infrastructure. As part of its Digital Britain strategy, not only is the government establishing a G-Cloud to enable public sector bodies to host ICT services from secure shared networks, it is also creating a central applications store and reducing its hundreds of data centres to just 10 to 12 facilities. Given the prospect of looming budget cuts across the UK public sector this project seems extravagant. But the huge long-term cost savings that will be realised once the system is up and running more than justify the initial investments in its creation.

A numbers game

Letting the numbers speak for themselves, Suffolk describes the saving's that will result just from the consolidation of the government's  existing data centres: "I don't know anybody that would say that we need 130 data centres. A number between nine and 12 seems like a much more sensible amount. When you do that the economics are quite significant. You just save a bucketload of cash. Microsoft, HP and IBM who are working with us on the project say we would save UK£900 million in the first five years of the project and UK£300 million every year after that. That's serious money." The same will be true once the government rationalises its plethora of telecommunications infrastructures, and moves to a cloud based public sector network infrastructure. This, says Suffolk, would result in savings of UK£500 million a year. The application store, meanwhile, will create a central marketplace for the sharing and reusing of online computer programmes by all government departments - a system that will cut down dramatically on the duplication of applications, reducing costs another UK£500 million a year. "If the government is going to use public money to build something, it should be available for any other part of the public sector to use," says Suffolk. "The application store will catalogue what is already available so departments can discover what we already have and build that into their plans rather than constantly re-inventing the wheel."

But while cost savings are, naturally, a major driver behind the project, improving efficiency in this multi-departmental organisation where IT departments frequently duplicate their efforts, was also a major priority: "Government is very loosely federated into many departments that are pretty much autonomous in terms of how they operate," says Suffolk. "And with that comes overlap and duplication, naturally." As well as mproving operational efficiency within the organisation, Suffolk says he is keen to tackle the current problem of a procurement process that is fraught with red tape and debilitatingly time consuming. Existing European procurement guidelines often prohibit participation from smaller independent IT vendors, which, says Suffolk, could offer valuable technology solutions to the government. "I do think that I have talked for England about how complex and time consuming the European procurement process is. Many SMEs tell me they can't afford to bid because it takes too long and it's too expensive. That smacks to me of being anti-competitive and anti-innovative. These companies are often asked to prove their systems work in a big way and they can't afford the infrastructure for that. But with cloud based services they will not need to. They can provide the software and service and just load them onto our world, which has the infrastructure and is secure. I think that will bring in thousands of SMEs rather than just only the people with big pockets who can afford to bid for the government work." He goes on to say that the new system will enable government departments to find technology solutions far faster than under the current system, which can involve an 18-month procurement process.

The one challenge Suffolk foresees in introducing these faster procurement processes will be to encourage the market to bid with open source technology: "I think in the future there will be more and more done with open source which we fully support. But it's quite hard to get the market to bid open source. Under European procurement rules you cannot specify the technology or a brand so it is up to the market to determine what technology they will bid to fulfil your technology requirements. So we have a lot of work to do with the markets to help them to bid open source." Although Suffolk and his team have now finalised details of what the cloud concept will mean and how it will work, he says the next challenge is to work out how to deploy the new technology. The government is already signed up to several long-term contracts with IT vendors and it must decide whether to wait for these to reach completion before introducing change or to go full steam ahead with its plans alongside existing vendors. Suffolk describes the different approaches it could take: "The first approach is a transition by osmosis, as in when people's contracts come in for renewal you move to a cloud based contract as part of that renewal exercise. But of course then your timeframe is determined by when contracts expire and some of these have another five or eight years to go. Another approach is to invest upfront. Then the third approach is to work with suppliers of existing services to government and begin to get them to rationalise their data centres and reuse components. Our plan is to have some basic services running this year."

Election fever

Suffolk admits, however, that any targets he has for the start of the project could be changed by the fast approaching UK General Election. "The slight challenge is that there's an election coming up and I don't know how it will affect it [the project]." He goes on to say that given the cost savings it will bring, he does not foresee difficulty in justifying the project. "My feeling is that it's hard to disagree with rationalising data centres or telecoms networks as it saves cash. It's also very hard to disagree with our sustainability agenda and doing more in a less carbon damaging way. It's hard also to disagree with our open source reuse policy. But it will be for any new government to detail its new policies and we will execute them."

Though Suffolk cannot predict whether a new political power will affect progress on the strategy, there is widespread agreement that whoever takes charge will be introducing sweeping budget cuts across all government departments to help stem the UK's gaping budget deficit which is believed to total around UK£45 billion. To plug the gap the government needs to find savings of UK£25 billion over the next two years, increasing to UK£46 billion to 2014-15. For Suffolk and his team this will inevitably mean finding ways to do more with fewer resources: "The big shift in the next period will be the acceleration of value creation. We will have less money and people will have to do more with less. I think there will be restrictions on every budget." Where his department differs from other government departments, however, is the fact that it's very purpose is to deliver greater efficiency and cost savings meaning it will be a key weapon in the government's armoury when it comes to defeating the dreading deficits: "The operational efficiency plan which was published in May 2009 identified that if you do reuse systems, introduce cloud computing and shared services, there is evidence that you can take 20 percent out of the utility and infrastructure costs of technology. And I absolutely believe that's the case."

Multi-tasking

Although the G-Cloud is the most well publicised aspect of the Government ICT Strategy, it is just one of 14 different strands that make up this project. Alongside establishing the cloud and applications store and consolidating data centres, the government's plan also includes establishing a common desktop strategy, the Greening Government ICT strategy and the Information Security and Assurance Strategy, amongst a host of other initiatives and service delivery targets. Given the mammoth scope of the project, it is not possible for Suffolk to have hands-on involvement in every aspect of it. He says this means recruiting the right deputies is crucial – a process he makes sure he is involved in from the start: "You have to make sure that the team around you is made up of highly talented individuals and experienced individuals in their own right. I sit on all the recruitment boards for CIOs in departments and I have the final say on whether we employ them or not. When I've done that my job is to act as the hand in the small of their back. There is no point in employing  them if all you are doing is poking your nose in to day-to-day business. Generally speaking my role is to bring the best people in and give them the tools and support for them to do a great job then get out of their way. Don't get me wrong though. If I see something going wrong or pick up a whisper in the press or from a supplier then I will go and with that team to try to resolve the issue." He goes on to say that as a CIO he would describe himself as hands-on, despite having an essentially strategic role: "Much to the annoyance of some of my colleagues, my sleeves are rolled up and ready for action. You've got to muck in and get involved in what's going on. Otherwise you come up with daft ideas that bear no resemblance to the ability of someone to implement them." While he makes a point of keeping well abreast of affairs within the various government departments, Suffolk admits he is unable to keep track of the myriad new technologies being introduced constantly into the market. His main priority is just to filter out the many that cannot be applied in a government setting: "I don't try to keep up with it. The pace of technology is accelerating because innovation is now being built on previous innovation. Also a lot of it doesn't get traction in terms of the markets. So what you learn when you look at something as big as government is that first of all a lot of the technology is completely irrelevant. You have to pick up the ones that are a generational movement and that will be here for some time. Those are the ones you track and get involved with. But you can't track every evolving technology." Currently he says, not surprisingly, his focus is on developments in cloud computing, particularly the security of cloud computing: "For me it's anything to do with cloud security. One of the biggest questions I am asking is: 'Can I trust security software developed by a vendor who I'll never meet and where I have no knowledge on how they employ, develop or deploy their software."

Going public

Unlike many senior civil servants Suffolk came to government via the private sector route, having worked in several roles, including as Managing Director of the financial services firm Brittania. Describing the difference between the public and the private worlds, he says: "The first thing I would say is that the private sector is easy in comparison. In the private sector, there's always a single person who can tell someone what to do. In government that's not the case. Therefore you have to hone a very different skill in that you make progress on the basis that you have a compelling vision based on fact, rather than you just have a position of power. Secondly, in general business you can track most things that are going on whereas in government you can't. In a business most objectives are broadly aligned in the same direction. In government they may be competing so something you are doing in crime might go against something else." The procurement process too differs greatly, he goes on to explain: "In the private sector I could choose my supplier and the technology whereas in the public sector in Europe they [the supplier] determine the technology and the architecture."

But despite these apparent restrictions Suffolk claims that he enjoys greater freedom in the public sector than he ever did in private sector roles: "If you want to see open doors and the ability to make progress, you will see it in the public sector. If you want to see bureaucracy and many hoops to jump through you will also see that. I think it's about a state of mind. You have to go in and say 'now I understand there isn't one single person who can tell me what to do, there are competing objectives and it's too big'. Then you go in and say 'how do I make progress?' and after that it's pretty simple." There's nothing simple, however, about the project ahead of Suffolk and his team. With multi-departmental participation, targets to achieve billions of pounds worth of savings, and a myriad of external partners to work with, The UK Government's IT Strategy is the most complex technology project underway in Europe. But with simplifying processes and cutting costs its core aims, it's a long-term investment in a new way of working that will transform government IT and put it light years ahead of many private sector corporations.