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South Lanarkshire Council (SLC) is one of Scotland’s largest local authorities. Its annual budget of more than £560 million is used to deliver a range of services – from recreation and recycling to education and housing – to a population of 305,000. These services increasingly need to be available outside traditional office hours. Technology touches every area of the Council’s business from paying salaries to processing council tax bills, which means system downtime can quickly become visible to local residents. The Council operates more and more on a 24x7 basis, which necessitates a highly available IT infrastructure.

This infrastructure is funded by each individual council department, so it is essential that the local authority not only delivers cost-effective IT services but can also demonstrate this value to the business and its taxpayers.

To help meet these objectives, the council took the decision in the late 1990s to out-task a number of non-core IT functions, including the management of its 5,000 desktops/laptops and printers. This estate does not include the substantial education infrastructure, which is supported under a separate contract.

The desktop environment plays a key supporting role in the delivery of local services and providing access to core applications, such as email. Supporting and managing this environment, however, can be a time-consuming process, and SLC wanted to be able to focus its resources on more strategic activities.

SLC chose to partner with Computacenter Services because the latter demonstrated that it could enhance the Council’s existing processes and IT service management practices.

Under the seven-year contract, which started in July 2004, Computacenter Services manages the entire lifecycle of the council’s Lenovo desktops and laptops, HP printers as well as other peripherals. This includes supply chain and support services, routine maintenance and disposal.

To help ensure the ongoing efficiency and business value of the £12 million contract, Computacenter Services has introduced an ongoing service improvement programme, which is closely aligned to the ITIL framework. This approach has not only helped to improve key performance levels but also led to the introduction of new processes. For example there has been a significant reduction in call volumes following the introduction of route cause analysis techniques to help identify permanent fixes for recurring incidents.

Due to the diversity of its operations, SLC uses around 700 applications – from standard off-the-shelf software, such as Microsoft Office XP, to bespoke critical business solutions. This makes for a very complicated build management process, which can involve up to seven images for each of the Council’s seven departments. Computacenter Services has helped to simplify and standardise this process and has also improved the visibility and management of SLC’s desktop assets, which helps speed up the implementation of desktop technology.

Computacenter Services also assists the local authority with its hardware refresh programme which is financed through an equipment leasing arrangement to ensure South Lanarkshire Council maximises its investment in new desktop and printer technology.

Achieving best value from both its IT services and systems is of key importance to SLC. Council departmental budgets are coming under increasing pressure. The more SLC can make IT cost-effective the better – as this ensures precious funds can be invested in maintaining local services and council jobs.

To this end, SLC has worked closely with Computacenter Services to drive down the operational overheads of its desktop environment. As a result, over the course of the next two years the council expects to make cost avoidance savings up to 15 per cent based on previous expenditure.

It is important, however, that these savings are not made at the expense of IT performance and availability. SLC is constantly striving to improve the service offered to the business and, by partnering with Computacenter Services, desktop availability has increased, which increases the council’s overall efficiency.

FURTHER INFORMATION
For more information on Computacenter Services desktop solutions, go to
www.computacenter.com/support-services