To become a national leader in providing electronic services such as online payments and integrated information management systems.
Supply
Penwith District Council was faced with just such a challenge when a best value review revealed that the current IT platform would not be able to deliver electronic Government. By enlisting the services of Computacenter, which brokered a working partnership between Penwith Council and Sun Microsystems, the authority was able to attract the necessary sponsorship, technical support and resources to build and implement a platform that would allow the provision of electronic services.
Through the partnership with Computacenter and Sun, the Council aims to meet the requirements of electronic Government by September 2004 – one year ahead of deadline.
Penwith District Council is situated in Cornwall in the most westerly part of Britain. It is responsible for providing services such as housing benefits, tourist information, local taxation and environmental services and has an electorate of around 49,000.
Like other Councils, Penwith also has to fulfil the demands of e-Government by 2005, which has massive implications for its technology infrastructure, as Andrew Mann, the Council’s Head of IT, explains: “The Council published a best value review, which revealed that our current IT platform would not allow us to meet the Government's vision.”
“We needed to empower Council employees at the desktop – most of our staff didn’t have access to the appropriate technology and were using typing pools. Internet and email access was limited to 8 positions throughout the Council which impacted on access to information and led to ineffective communication.”
The ensuing IT project gave the council the opportunity to overhaul its entire desktop estate, which was based on approximately 140 dumb terminals and a Sun SparcServer 1000 server. “We began to specify our requirements for a desktop environment, and to investigate the different options available,” comments Andrew. “We decided that the most cost-effective solution would be a Sun Ray thin client solution.
“The Sun solution allows us to maintain our centralised corporate systems and administration environment, whilst delivering office productivity tools to the desktops throughout the council’s central offices, and to outlying premises such as tourist information centres. It is quick to deploy and the centralised system administration makes it easy and cost effective to manage. Sun Rays never need upgrading, so yield a very low total cost of ownership. In addition, Sun’s office software StarOffice was provided free of charge."
It was important to keep costs down on the project, which also involved the installation of a server farm based on Sun Enterprise, Sun Fire and Netra servers. The servers run more than 200 Sun Ray 100s, and 30 Sun Ray 150 desktop appliances. The Council’s outlying offices each have either an E250 or Netra T1 server running up to 15 Sun Ray 100 appliances, networked back to the Council’s central office.
An impressive turnaround
The council realised that to deliver a project of this size on time and within budget, they would need to bring in external help. “Owing to the size of the new infrastructure and the timescales involved, Computacenter and Sun worked closely together,” explains Andrew. “Computacenter managed the Council’s partnership with Sun, helped refine our technology choices and facilitated the installation of hardware. The staff also used their expertise to swiftly deal with legal purchasing contracts.”
A considerable amount of the IT purchasing was managed through the GCat system, which is a catalogue-based purchasing scheme designed to provide public sector organisations with a simplified means of procuring and contracting for a wide-range of IT products and related services.
“Computacenter has a high-level of expertise in the technology they deliver,” comments Andrew. “It has greatly speeded up our purchasing turnaround time and saved us about three months’ of negotiations and many tendering procedures.”
Services on time
Thanks to the successful roll-out, which was completed in February 2002, Penwith District Council now has the right foundations for e-Government. “As a result of phase one we now have a more effective forum for communication throughout the authority, wider access to information, and our employees are empowered at the desktop,” comments Andrew.
Andrew is quick to pay testament to Computacenter’s involvement in the project: “Computacenter delivered their services on time and within budget, exceeding our expectations - their expertise was invaluable. We replaced virtually all of our IT equipment within a total project timeframe of less than six months, so this was an impressive turnaround.”
Penwith is currently in the process of putting together a proposal for phase two of the project. This will focus on electronically enabling Council services, as well as establishing contact centres where 80% of enquiries can be handled by a dedicated team. The initial stage of phase two will involve setting up an integrated electronic payment system, and electronically enabling services such as Revenues, Benefits, Planning and Building Control.
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