RSS feedsAbout 18 months ago, The Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) started implementing an IT shared services model in a bid to introduce process consistency and align its activities more closely with business requirements.
The agency, which until 2003 was known as the Lord Chancellor’s Department, has responsibility for constitutional reform and administration of the courts.
Although it always had a large, semi-centralised IT department, says Roy Godfrey, assistant director of project and programme management, there were also ‘15 other pockets of IT dotted around’, running projects for different parts of the business.
‘We previously often had no visibility into projects running in different areas of the department, and things would be done one way in one part and in a different way in another,’ he says. ‘So the aim was to introduce consistency and generally make the experience better for users.’
As a result, the decision was taken to consolidate all activities into a single e-delivery group that comprised 400 employees, including information management staff, reporting into a single chief information officer. This move alone is expected to save the DCA £4.3m over three years, by preventing duplication of effort and consolidating previously distributed functions to increase efficiency.
On the projects side, a formal central governance team of two to three staff was created to standardise procedures and approve new activities. A project support team of between five and six was likewise set up to ensure that development work conformed to agreed standards and quality measures – and also that it came in within budget and matched the business requirements.
The project support group manages about 200 staff, working on initiatives such as the £2bn Criminal Justice IT programme to build a centralised technology infrastructure for the police, courts, prison and prosecution services.
To underpin its move towards standardisation, the e-delivery group decided to implement a programme management toolset to help formalise and regulate its activities. After six months of preparation, the group rolled out Mercury Interactive’s IT Governance Center in December 2004 to manage two initial projects, before spending the following year rolling out the system across all its initiatives.
The system, says Godfrey, provides the organisation with a framework to define goals, prioritise projects, monitor performance and evaluate results.
‘We were much more ad hoc and less structured in the past, but now all staff do everything in the same way, which means they adhere to governmental and departmental guidelines and best practice,’ he says.
‘They have access to common information and follow common processes so we can enforce more control, which in a project world is a good thing.’
But the key challenges when introducing such a system are less to do with technology and more to do with cultural change, says Godfrey. The secret to success here lies in constant communication with staff as to goals and objectives, introducing floor-walkers and a helpdesk, as well as periodic training sessions.
‘Getting people to move to new ways of working is the most difficult and challenging thing, and it can seem a bit like trying to herd sheep,’ says Godfrey.
‘It has taken us a year to get to the point where everyone is working at a consistent level, but output is now way beyond what we could have dreamed.’
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