Meeting documents

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP

ANNUAL SERVICE REVIEW

DECEMBER 2004

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP ANNUAL SERVICE REVIEW

Contents

Section 1 Executive Summary Page 3

Section 2 First Year of Partnership Page 6

Section 3 Infrastructure Report Page 23

Section 4 Investment Plan Report Page 25

Section 5 Managed Budgets Page 33

Appendix 1 Storage Management Plan 2005-06 Page 36

Appendix 2 IEG Requirements Analysis (nb not attached but available on request)

Section 1 : Executive Summary

First Year

The first year of the partnership between Bath & NE Somerset Council and HBS has seen important organisational building blocks put in place. These can be summarised as:

B7 Governance processes established

B7 HBS' management team appointed

B7 Core services are being delivered well without any KPI failures

B7 Creation of the Business Improvement Service (BIS)

B7 Bringing together of People Services in Riverside

In addition some critical projects that will deliver on-going benefits to the Council are worthy of note.

B7 XP roll-out is now complete

B7 Payroll upgrade completed successfully

B7 Managed Print Service underway

Lessons Learned

During the course of this first year, although much has been achieved, several aspects could have been better.

B7 Pace- the BIS service was relatively slow off the blocks. Going forward the BIS resources must push projects through to enable the partnership to realise benefits at the earliest opportunity.

B7 Project start up- the hand-over of projects from BIS to delivery should have been smoother. Managed Print Service is an excellent example of this. This service will deliver cost efficiencies to the Council year on year. However because the initiation and communication was poor at the outset the project is seen in a negative rather than a positive light

B7 Procurement rules- time and resource has been lost due to the lack of understanding of OJEU and Standing Orders, and how they apply to procurements made by HBS on behalf of the Council. Guidance notes and expertise are available however advice has not been sought at the outset of a project. This is being addressed by training the BIS team in the short term and including this facet of project delivery in the Sponsor Awareness Workshops.

B7 Communication- cutting across all aspects of the partnership during this first year is the lack of awareness of what is happening. Written communication has been issued every month, providing updates on project progress. This hasn't had the desired effect so more face to face communication is needed in the future and a wider ownership of 93getting the messages across94.

Continuous Improvement

In terms of continuous improvement the following productivity benefits give an indication of what has been achieved since the commencement of the Partnership

- 2% reduction in unit cost of PC support

- 4% reduction in unit cost of Network support

- 15% reduction in unit server support costs

The continuous improvement programme will seek to deliver both service improvements and unit cost reductions throughout the life of the Partnership. For 2005/6 the target is an overall increase in user satisfaction as measured by the service questionnaire against the benchmark for 2004/5, and a minimum 2% reduction in the unit costs of the core services, and an improvement in first fix help desk calls by 5%.

The way People Services interface with the rest of the Council will see improvements in end to end processes by capturing data as close to source as possible and avoiding duplication. The introduction of the Training and Recruitment Modules of ResourceLink early in the new year will mark the transition to the next phase of service improvement. For the first time the council will have one data base holding employee training records and this will be linked to the employee record. In addition, the module can be used as a training administration package and courses will be booked and joining instructions sent automatically from the system. The Recruitment Module will enable People Services to automatically generate standard letters to be sent to applicants.

In summary the following was achieved through the Partnership:-

B7 Increase in HBS senior management resources of 360 man days per year from April 2004

B7 Reduction in unit charges to the council for PC support, server support, network support and People Services

B7 Achievement of 99% of KPI targets

B7 Successful transition phase

B7 Implementation of Resourcelink payroll upgrade

B7 Formation and relocation of People Services without disruption to the council

In the summer of 2004 a customer satisfaction questionnaire was completed by users within the Council. As a target it is intended to improve on these results by 2% in the responses to the questionnaire issued in the summer of 2005.

IDS 3.42 3.52

People Services 3.46 3.56

BIS 2.96 3.06

Next Year

BIS resources next year have been focussed to support the Council's major initiatives, rather than being dissipated across many smaller projects. In this way BIS will be better able to add value to the Partnership. The areas that will be addressed are:

B7 Customer Access Programme

B7 IEG, including the deployment of e-forms and workflow

B7 Business Process Re-engineering (BPR)

B7 Corporate Electronic Document Management (EDM)

B7 Flexible working, or more accurately called Work from Anywhere

In addition the roll-out of Agresso and the Manager's Access and Employee self service modules of ResourceLink will contribute tremendously to changing the way of working within the Council. Managers will have direct access to up to-date and consistent information relating to the resources they are responsible for, both people and finance.

Risk Reward

Three projects are proposed to be considered within a risk/reward framework. These are:

B7 Procurement

B7 Corporate Electronic Document Management (CEDM)

B7 Overall Programme Management element of the Contact Centre (part of the Customer Access Programme)

All three projects will contribute significantly to the Council's corporate objectives and as such demonstrate the added value provided by the partnership between the Council and HBS. The projects will either deliver headroom efficiencies and/or service delivery improvements to the citizens of Bath and North East Somerset.

Discussions on Procurement are well advanced but need to be finalised, while the other discussions are at an early stage.

Summary of Investment Funding for 2005/6

Main Investment Proposal

To install and commission a Corporate Storage Area Network in Guildhall at a cost of A3143k plus A314k annual support charges. It is proposed that the server refresh budget be reduced from the forecast

A3350k to A3300k in order to help finance this main proposal

Section 2 : The first year of the Partnership

Introduction

This report represents the Strategic Partnership Annual Service Review for the period August 2003 to July 2004, the first year of the Partnership.

The ethos of the Partnership is working together to achieve the objectives as set out in the Partnership Agreement, and whilst the report is produced by HBS it has been prepared in consultation with Bath and North East Somerset.

Within HBS the clear line of accountability for the services being delivered and the staff delivering them is through the Partnership Director.

Overview and financial summary for HBS

Summary of First Year of Partnership

During the course of this calendar year progress has been made on a number of fronts.

Transition

The Transition phase of the project was officially closed in February, with all the governance procedures in place. The groups that have been established are the Partnership Board, the BIS Development Group who is helping establish the Business Improvement Service, and the BIP Service Delivery Group (formally ITCSG) who monitor the services of both IDS and People Services. In addition a Co-ordination Group, chaired by Jean Hinks, has been established to monitor the partnership overall and to escalate items to the Partnership Board as appropriate. Other members of this group are Phil Hall, Jayne Mulligan, William Harding, Jeff Wring, Richard Haver and Dave Davies. These groups work within the existing decision making processes in the Council, namely Directors' Group and Executive. The Transition period was a busy time for both partners but was completed to schedule. PWC, the external auditors, did a review of the project and although they made some recommendations, overall they gave the partnership a big tick in the box.

Management Team

HBS have recognised the importance of needing a strong management team to support the Partnership and consequently the structure has changed to reflect this. The team is led by a Partnership Director (Richard Haver) whose reports are the Partnership Manager (Dave Davies) responsible for the Business Improvement Service, and two new appointments of a Service Delivery manager for IDS (Sally Cummings) and a Service Delivery Manager for People Services (Claire Young).

People Services

A priority during the Transition period was the creation of a People Services department from the amalgamation of HR administration and Payroll. The team came together in April and they are based in 3rd floor Riverside House. The creation of the single department was a good example of partnership working, involving several moves both in Riverside and Northgate House, along with thousands of paper files being transferred. All through the moves service levels were maintained at a high standard.

Business Improvement Service (BIS)

The Business Improvement Service is a new service, and this has been established during the first year. This service will be the platform by which the partnership will grow and how HBS will provide added value to the Council. HBS resources have been working with the Council to progress A project register has been created and this will be built upon to create a three year rolling plan. The creation and agreement of this three year plan is an important activity which is planned for completion in the autumn. A workshop involving Members and Directors and senior officers from both the Council and HBS kicked off this process.

BIS is an integral part of the Service planning process to help ensure projects help deliver both service plans and the corporate plan.

A number of service specific and corporate projects are well advanced, and a key project over the coming year will be the establishment of the Corporate Contact Centre.

Northgate Payroll Upgrade

This was a major achievement in terms of the tight timescale to complete, the resources required from both HBS and the Council, and the impact on the Council and indeed the partnership if it had failed. The upgrade was successfully installed on time in March. It was a great achievement to all concerned. Expenses and car mileage claims were then implemented in April. The second phase of the project is ongoing with Recruitment and Training Administration well advanced. This key element of this phase will enable managers and their staff to be more self sufficient, and reduce the need to create and pass large volumes of paper around the Council. This is an exciting development and goes hand in hand with other initiatives that will help change the culture of the organisation.

Summary of KPI performance for the core services

IDS performance in this area has been good with all KPIs being met.

People Services' KPI performance over the past year has been very encouraging. All KPIs are being met with the exception of 93pre employment checks94 and 93contracts issued within 40 working days from receipt of instruction94. This is as expected as these targets were not being met prior to transfer.

Financial Performance

HBS financial target in the first 8 months of the Partnership was to make a loss of A332k. It was accepted within our Business Plan that due to the substantial investment being made by HBS during the first full year and with the cost of Transition, it would be during the 4^th quarter before the Plan would move into profit.

B7 Transfer of retained HR admin work without additional income

B7 Delay in projects take up

B7 Lower consultancy income for Quarters 3 and 4

B7 Continued growth in IT services and hence the additional resources required, that are not funded through contract variations

IDS

Core Service Delivery

IDS performance in this area has been good with all KPIs being met. This is a highly satisfactory result given the substantial growth in the infrastructure since the commencement of the Partnership. Additional work is now going on with the KPI Sub-Group to review and refine the KPIs to ensure their continued relevance.

Customer ratings from Questionnaire

The results of a customer survey issued in August 2004 and conducted by the Council showed that IT scored approximately 3.5 out of a possible 5 for customer satisfaction. These may be considered good results given the amount of change and growth within the business during the first year of the Partnership. It should be pointed out that all negative comments have been investigated and action taken to address the issues arising.

B7 All callers to the IT helpdesk are issued with a job number & the estimated timescale for the job to be carried out.

B7 A member of the IDS Service Delivery Management Team has been allocated to each of the service liaison groups to work with the BIPSDG member in planning meetings etc.

B7 Substantive work on skills transfer has taken place within IDS for support to Agresso.

Baseline statistics for 2004/5

The following are the baseline statistics as of 1^st August 2004:-

Service Improvement Projects/Initiatives

IDS have reviewed their processes over the past year with a view to improving our internal efficiency and the quality of service offered to our customers. Helpdesk, purchasing and management information reporting procedures have been generally improved. Significant resource has been devoted to improving the accuracy of the Council's IT asset register as well as its software and licencing records. Similarly, the recent major system upgrades and implementations have meant that we are now trying to construct revised SLA agreements for all major systems.

IDS have also been actively participating in the HBS Group's Vanguard project that aims to improve the quality of service offered by the various helpdesks over all the HBS contracts. The lessons learned and proposals arising from this study will be available for deployment on this site. The aim from this process, once it is applied to Bath & NE Somerset is to increase the 1^st line fix rate & improve the overall customer experience. We are committed to commencing a trial on extended helpdesk opening hours. A full report will be provided to the council for, due consideration to the continuation of this service, at the end of the trial. Similarly, the establishment of service streams across the HBS Group means that IT best practice and skills may be shared and therefore be spread down to local service provision.

Further important work has been undertaken to ensure a smooth flow of both project and smaller works right through from initial user requirement to the delivery of a solution.

A Project Officer, with specific responsibility for small works has been appointed, and a member of the Programme Management Team has been given the responsibility for the work planning of all office moves.

Monthly meetings now take place between the IDS Service Delivery Manager (Sally Cummings) and the Head of Strategic Resource Planning (Phil Hall) to jointly plan the BIPSDG agendas and review the actual and proposed resource allocation for the consultancy pool.

IDS Projects completed for Clients

IDS as been exceptionally busy over the last year and has delivered completed projects or undertaken substantial works in the following areas:-

Infrastructure and Desktop Services

XP Roll-out substantially complete

Major replacement of key servers

VOIP(Voice over IP) provided on 14 sites

Improved network resilience

Improved VPN (Virtual Private Network) providing more secure connectivity to users

Home working pilot in Revenues and Benefits

ADSL adopted remote sites to improve communications bandwidth

Improved patching against computer viruses

Large number of office moves

The delivery of the XP Roll-out has brought many advantages to the Council, the key ones being:-

Centralised File Management.

All files which were, prior to XP, stored insecurely on the C drive have been transferred to servers where the data is more secure, accessible and is backed up daily. All new documents are saved to a server, rather than locally.

Roaming Profiles & Hot Desking

Users are now able to hot desk easier as all desktop shortcuts, Outlook accounts, Internet settings, default printer paths etc. follow them to each PC.

Active Directory

This has allowed IDS to centrally control and reconfigure the security and user settings of every PC connected to the network. It allows IDS to remotely install some software, instead of having to send It Support Officers out to visit the individual machines. The ability to restrict access to A & C drives has considerably reduced the exposure to data loss, corruption and theft, virus infection and file management issues.

Security Patch Management

With the installation of a Windows 2000 Microsoft SUS (Software Update Service) server IDS are now able to automatically apply regular updates to each PC connected to Active Directory.

Distributed File System

Prior to XP, Bath and North East Somerset has 3 shared S drive servers at different locations, meaning that the S drive in Bath was not the same as the S drive in Keynshan. With DFS a corporate J drive has been created which links all 3 S drives together to simplify file navigation.

Major Projects

Northgate HR upgrade to PeopleLink migration

Agresso Financial Management Package implemented

CareFirst Social Services Client Software Phase1 implemented

Uniform Planning and Control Software Upgrade substantially complete

Revenues and Benefits Upgrade to I-World implemented

Axis Pension Migration

NNDR Migration substantial work undertaken

Implementation of Content Management System substantially complete

Continued development on the Council's internet and intranet sites

Continued development to the LEAs systems

This list does not claim to be exhaustive but does, however, give a flavour of the depth and breadth of the work undertaken.

Issues

As pointed out previously, the Partnership has experienced significant growth both in terms of size and complexity over the last year. There are of course several issues to arise out of this situation and these are as follows:-

B7 The majority of the Council's major systems have been replaced or upgraded during the past year and require additional resources to maintain them. (CAPS Uniform has gone from 1 server to 6, Care First from 1 to 3, with an additional server to be introduced within the next 12 months. Agresso currently requires 6 servers whereas FMS made use of only 1.)

B7 The growing number of servers has created severe real estate problems over their location as well as their management

B7 Changes in desktop set-up and general usage has generated major data storage issues

B7 General security across the Council's laptops and desktops and the need to ensure that this is maintained at an acceptable level.

B7 The Council's E-Government and Customer Access Programme will result in a considerable amount of extra resource both in terms of implementation and infrastructure.

These issues are addressed either in the IDS Investment Plan or via areas such as the re-negotiation of SLAs.

In addition to the points raised above an analysis of IT Helpdesk calls has been undertaken and common themes have been identified. There has been some initial discussion between HBS and the Council on the benefit of initiating a joint IT training programme to address these issues, in particular improved desktop skills, better housekeeping, information security. This programme should be discussed further and agreed.

People Services

Core Service Delivery

Summary of KPI performance

KPI performance over the past year has been very encouraging. All KPIs are being met with the exception of 93pre employment checks94 and 93contracts issued within 40 working days from receipt of instruction94. This is as expected as these targets were not being met prior to transfer. It is anticipated that these KPIs will improve once People Services are able to issue contracts and statement of particulars direct from ResourceLink as standard letters. It is very important that the Council provides the standard contracts and statements in order to progress this area of work. KPIs are being reviewed with the KPI Sub Group and the reporting categories may change in the second year.

Future

The introduction of the Recruitment Module of ResourceLink will radically change the way the service is delivered and enable the redesign of the HR Administration side of the business. Once this process has begun HBS will be in a position to restructure the team and create team leader roles in both HR Administration and Payroll. These appointments will be key to the redesigning of the service.

Our immediate goal is to continue to revise and streamline all documentation to ensure that we have one way of dealing with an item of work. People Services comprises staff from 5 different teams and as a result we currently have 5 systems in operation. This work has already begun and we hope to have completed by the end of 2005. A major influence on this period of change and improvement will be the implementation of the training and recruitment modules of ResourceLink. This new functionality together with Managers Access and Employee Self Service will transform the way that People Services and its customers interact. New functionality together with increased communication with customers through training etc via the PeopleLink Project will result in improved service for managers, employees and People Services.

It is encouraging that one school in the B&NES area has started to make enquiries regarding a return to the B&NES payroll and to People Services (they have already returned to the HR Administration service). This is hoped to be the first of many, and that schools will provide additional work for the department. We will be attending the S3 event in January with the intention of encouraging more schools to return to People Services. Schools returning to this service will reflect positively on the LEA and well as bringing benefits to HBS.

In another partnership HBS is piloting the use of e-forms in schools to remove the need for the input via paper and slow courier services to transfer the paper forms to the centre for processing. This has many advantages, not least the capturing of data at source and the ownership of the data which results from this process. Another associated activity that needs analysis to determine improvements is the transfer of payroll information via the ledger back to the schools. Currently this is not robust and is the subject of complaints.

When ResourceLink has bedded in we will be looking to benefit from the e-forms pilot, and in conjunction with the Council consider the use of Manager's access in the schools. Improving the service to existing schools could have the effect of encouraging schools that have opted out to come back into the fold.

Benefits of the Service Stream structure

The HR Service Stream has enabled us to liaise and share knowledge with fellow People Services teams across the business. We have been able to share best practice, procedures and even information on the KPIs that other contracts report on. This has proven to be a valuable tool and we hope to be able to continue dialogue with our HBS colleagues in the future.

Customer ratings from Questionnaire

People Services were very excited to receive the highest rating from the first BIP Customer Satisfaction Survey, achieving a score of 3.46. The team have worked very hard over the last year to improve services. Now that the Payroll and HR Administration staff are located in the same office, communication is far more effective and there have been benefits and improvements in service as a result.

Baseline statistics for 2004/5 -Payslips, starters, leavers and contact adjustments

The Baseline volumes for 2004/5 are:-

Starters and Leavers 3055 per annum

Contract adjustments 77721 payslips per annum

Payroll 77721 payslips per annum

People Services are currently reviewing the Starters and Leavers workloads with a view to separating them for volume variation purposes

Service Improvements through ResourceLink

People Services were extremely pleased with the smooth transfer from MDIS Prov-IV to ResourceLink in March. Both the PeopleLink Project and the team worked hard to make the transition as easy as possible. This was particularly important to those in the team that worked on the previous transfer to MDIS in 1998 which was quite a stressful time.

The introduction of the Training and Recruitment Modules of ResourceLink early in the new year will mark the transition to the next phase of service improvement. For the first time the council will have one data base holding employee training records and this will be linked to the employee record. In addition, the module can be used as a training administration package and courses will be booked and joining instructions sent automatically from the system. The Recruitment Module will enable People Services to automatically generate standard letters to be sent to applicants. We will be able to build a record of applicant history eg how many posts individuals apply for, what stage in the application process they get to, their ethnic minority status etc. In due course we will be able to create interview letters using the module. The applicant record will then become the employee record once they have been appointed and a standard contract of employment merged from the system.

Issues

We have already taken on some of the outstanding embedded work eg CRB Umbrella Service, Leisure and Amenities HR Admin. Some areas of work have yet to be transferred to People Services and is still being undertaken by the retained HR team namely work in Operations and EED Personnel. We are keen to bring the remaining work into People Services. This is subject, however, to resolving the budget and staffing issues and requires planning to ensure staff are adequately trained before the transfer.

Working relationships with the HR Professionals have been strained at times, however, we are working hard to improve this area and have regular meetings with the HR Managers to ensure we continue to communicate and address any issues as they arise.

BIS Service

This new service has been created through the Partnership between the Council and HBS, as opposed to the existing services, IDS, Payroll and HR administration, which transferred as part of the agreement.

Governance arrangements for monitoring this service have been put in place and these have bedded in over the past year. The group that allocates priorities and resources to BIS projects, and then monitors them, is the BIS Development Group (BISDG).This group has delegated authority from the Directors' Group and the Partnership Board. BISDG was the last of the governance groups to become established and this, in association with the lack of awareness of the role of BIS, resulted in progress on projects being slow and a general lack of momentum. At the end of the last financial year there were 149 BIS days unused. Although there is no contractual need to carry these days over into the following year, it was agreed with the Council that on this occasion they would be. This was in recognition of the slow start up of the BIS service and so that the Council, and the Partnership, could benefit from increased project development in the current year.

At the end of the first year the role of BISDG was reviewed and changes are being considered to further establish this group and consolidate its role in the wider decision making processes in the Council.

A Communication Plan has been approved by the Partnership Board and during the year regular bulletins or articles have been issued, utilising the existing mechanisms within the Council. However, at the beginning of the summer of 2004 a Customer Survey was conducted by the Council. One of the outcomes of this survey reinforced the fact that there was a lack of awareness of BIS and its role. As a result each Director of the Council has been approached with the view of a BIS team member attending their DMT. BIS will also have a presence on the BIPSDG liaison groups. It is hoped that this face to face communication used in conjunction with regular bulletins will improve the Partnership's profile. One other factor needed to make a more speedy and lasting improvement is for there to be a wider ownership of 93spreading the message94. There are already many people involved in making a contribution to the Partnership, whether by being a representative on one of the governance groups or being part of a project. Everyone must become a champion for the Partnership and cascade information out across the Council.

Project Register

From the commencement of the Partnership a project register was established and this has been refined over the past months to improve management information, transparency of process and control. The register is subdivided into categories, e.g. Headroom, IEG, with the intention of delivering a balanced programme of projects. Whilst it is acknowledged that the momentum on project identification was slow to begin with the pace has improved in the last six months and there are currently approximately one hundred (100) projects on the register all at various stages of development.

An online register is currently being implemented for use within HBS (B&NES), and will be 93live94 from 1^st October 2004. This system is in use in other HBS locations and doesn't exactly match the BIS procedures in use here. Following implementation changes agreed with the Council will be made and this on-line register will be made available to Council staff. This will greatly assist the visibility and awareness of projects across the wider Council, and help in monitoring and controlling them.

A key element of the original agreement in relation to BIS was the creation of a three year rolling programme of projects. The work done to-date on the register has gone some way towards this. Over the coming months, in line with the Corporate and Service Planning timetable, this prioritised three year programme will be established. This programme will be subject to periodic review, particularly at the annual planning round, to ensure the changing needs of the Council are met.

Review of progress on projects to-date

BIS projects progress from Project Brief through Feasibility Study to Business Case. When the business case has been approved, a Project Initiation Document(PID) is prepared and the project moves into the delivery phases. The processes around these procedures have been refined and lessons learned, particularly in the hand-over following a business case being signed off. Internal procedures have now been implemented so that sections/staff responsible for project delivery are involved in the project and sign it off prior to the feasibility study and subsequent business case being finalised.

Another lesson learned over this first year is the importance of preparing a PID in a timely manner so that e.g. the project plan, budget, roles of the people involved, are clearly understood from the outset.

A number of service specific and corporate projects have progressed well over the past year.

B7 CORE projects

Metastorm e-Work

This is a business process management package (workflow) which is one of the market leaders and has the advantage of an extremely user-friendly facility which allows non-technical managers to map their own processes before they are turned into a full procedure. As part of the partnership contract HBS supplied both authority-wide user licensing and appropriate hardware.

The hardware (a dedicated server) and software for this project were purchased and installed in September 2003. This installation was agreed as part of the original proposal from HBS. The only application currently using this product is Executive Work Programme (see below), although a further project around enterprise workflow is about to commence (subject to BISDG approval) with the specific task of exploring the scope for use of e-Work included in its terms of reference.

B7 E-FORMS Project

Project deliverables agreed as part of the original proposal from HBS are:

B7 The supply of electronic forms for deployment on and accessed through the Council Website

B7 To initially deliver 20 forms selected from a list of 30 forms already developed

B7 To deliver a further 30 forms at a later stage

This commitment has been delivered in a slightly different way than proposed. There are currently over thirty Formfill e-forms available, plus two generic forms that can be used in many different scenarios. In addition we have also agreed licence arrangements with Formfill so that forms can be deployed to the Council's web at no additional charge.

In delivery originally 11 forms were prioritised using a combination of ODPM E-GOV Priority Outcomes, B&NES Corporate Plan, BIS Project Register, Transaction Volumes and Good PR. Of these original 11, we reduced to 5 forms based on complexity and need using scoring techniques. These forms are

1 Complaints, compliments and suggestions (could be 3 separate forms)

2 Service Request / Incident form

3 Planning applications

4 Claim for housing benefit

5 Enquiry form

At the end of September the B&NES procedure for the complaints form had been formalised with the relevant departments and a functional specification is being produced. Compliments and suggestions will follow as they are a similar type of form.

B7 Payment Terms projects

Executive Work Programme

Agreed as part of the original proposal from HBS this application has been purchased and installed, although progress in implementing has been slow. HBS has recently commissioned additional bespoke work requested by Democratic Services. These modifications are currently undergoing further testing prior to roll out to users. It is intended that the application will be run as a pilot in two monitored service areas prior to full deployment.

The pilot is planned for the beginning of 2005 with a view to full deployment later in 2005.

Planning Application Tracking

This application was proposed by HBS but the Council subsequently decided to implement the Planning on-line solution. As mentioned above this project is well advanced and the public are now able to access planning applications on-line via the internet. Completion of the project is scheduled for early in 2005.

HBS proposed a capital investment of A321k in the Planning Application Tracking system. With the change of solution this capital, not revenue, is still available to the Council.

Web Content Management

The commitment to provide hardware, software and implementation is complete.

Finance Change

93As-is94 process maps have been produced and areas where anticipated savings can be delivered have been identified. This project has now moved on to the production of a Business Case for Project Costing and Billing, a module of Agresso not yet deployed. The target is for this business case to be presented to the February meeting of BISDG.

B7 ADDITIONAL projects

Other projects are being developed jointly and are well advanced:

B7 Contact Centre and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software which forms part of the Customer Access Programme. The business case for this project is completed and is now being presented to the Directors' Group and Heads of Service as part of the approval process. A Member Group has given approval to proceed.

B7 The Managed Print Service, which will deliver cost efficiencies to the Council, has been signed off by the Directors' Group and has entered the implementation stage. The implementation begins with surgeries to agree floor plans at the first three sites, Northgate House, Plymouth House and Riverside, and the setting up of a test environment in IDS. Phase 2 is now underway.

B7 Pupil database business case has been approved and is implemented.

B7 The project to provide Corporate performance management software has been approved and is being implemented.

B7 A major upgrade to the existing Education system to provide Co-ordinated schools admissions.

B7 A National project for e-payments is on target and phase 1 has been completed successfully. Phase 2 has only recently been given the go-ahead. Bath & NE Somerset Council are part of a consortium.

B7 The business case for a legal case management system has been approved.

B7 A Feasibility Study covering a review of back office processes within Social & Housing has been presented.

B7 The feasibility study for a corporate electronic document management system has been approved and the project is now proceeding to business case.

Certain projects require further note, either because of their criticality to the Council and/or the Partnership, or because they were part of the original proposal submitted by HBS. These are:

Payroll Upgrade(Peoplelink)

This was a major achievement in terms of the tight timescale to complete, the resources required from both HBS and the Council, and the impact on the Council and indeed the partnership if it had failed. The upgrade was successfully installed on time in March. It was a great achievement to all concerned. Expenses and car mileage claims were then implemented in April. The second phase of the project is ongoing with Recruitment and Training Administration well advanced and scheduled for implementation in the autumn. This key element of this phase will enable managers and their staff to be more self sufficient, and reduce the need to create and pass large volumes of paper around the Council. This is an exciting development and goes hand in hand with other initiatives that will help change the culture of the organisation.

Procurement

The procurement effectiveness project has reached the proposal stage details of which including the financial model will be presented to the authority's steering group in October.

The proposal is clear in its offering i.e. Three phases, cash releasing savings on overall corporate spend, process savings and cash releasing savings in specific services areas e.g. Social and Housing Service.

The first phase which should implemented in time to deliver cash savings (some of which are guaranteed) to the authority this financial year is expected to start in January 2005 after the baselining process is complete, agreed and signed off. HBS will recruit and transfer procurement expertise to Bath and North East Somerset to deliver the service.

Projection for use of BIS days

A 3-year rolling programme of business improvement projects to be delivered by the Council in partnership with HBS is currently being produced. This plan is being delivered in parallel with the corporate and service planning process and is to be finalised and agreed by February 2005. This plan will drive what projects are to be delivered and as such where BIS days will be allocated.

However work has already been done by BISDG and approved by the Partnership Board which specifies the criteria upon which BIS projects are prioritised. These are:

B7 Improvement Priority / Service Standards - projects that demonstrate contribution to Improvement Priorities and which raise service standards. These are further subdivided into

2D IEG Statement

2D Customer Access

2D Other (mainly service specific)

B7 93Headroom94 / VFM - projects which incorporate structured process analysis and BPR and which demonstrate potential improvement in value for money and/or financial headroom.

B7 ICT Infrastructure - projects that enable the Council to maintain and develop its technology base.

This section of the Investment Plan builds upon the work done to-date and recommends how BIS days should be utilised during 2005/06, taking into account the key initiatives being driven forward by the Council, namely:

B7 Long Term Office Accommodation

B7 Customer Access Programme

B7 IEG

B7 HR Strategy

B7 Culture Change

The establishment of the Business Improvement programme has enabled better utilisation of BIS days, clarity of project purpose and outcome, minimising duplication and gaining benefits from synergies.

As the BIS process matures, enhanced by the transparency and accessibility provided by HOAP, the BISDG will find itself in a position to progressively improve the monitoring and prioritisation of projects and allocation of BIS resources to deliver them.

For the remainder of financial year 2004/5 it is recommended that the remaining BIS days are used for completing projects in hand and targeting IEG4 and BPR initiatives.

The balance of projects is diverse in its content and magnitude and cut across all service areas

BIS days 2005/06

The table below identifies the programmes and projects where it is recommended BIS resources are allocated in the next year. In arriving at this recommendation a number of Council pressures were taken into consideration in conjunction with the priorities mentioned above that were agreed by BISDG and the Partnership Board. These other considerations are the BVPP, CPA and PSA.

In summary the projects that are recommended for next year addresses the priorities to:

B7 Improve cost effectiveness

B7 E-delivery of 100% of appropriate services

B7 Improve Planning performance

B7 Customer Access Programme

Looking forward into next year BPR resources will be important for a number of projects not least Contact Centre, LTOA, Document Management etc. It is suggested that 1 FTE (180 BIS days) be allocated to this. To maximise this resource investment, equivalent resource should be allocated to E-work and E-forms with its obvious synergy with the national workflow project, thus providing the opportunity for some of this work to be partially funded with cash.

Although delayed there is now a clear and agreed E-Government strategy document in place. Working with the E-Government manager a number of new projects have been identified and agreed by Directors' Group. It is estimated that at least 1 FTE will be required to deliver these. The time committed to E-work will also support the E-government targets for getting services online and the Customer Access Programme. We have looked at the outcomes that need to be delivered in the coming year to identify areas of common themes and processes so that we can benefit from any synergies. See appendix 2 for this analysis.

Although some services will be benefiting from EDM, already it is envisaged that the rolling implementation program will continue into 2006/7. Dependent on the financial or service model the authority takes up 0.5 FTE should be allocated.

Irrespective of the outcome of the LTOA project (property rationalisation or single site) a number of projects will drop out of this and require co-ordination with existing work e.g. EDM, flexible working and portals.

With no days to be carried forward next year it is essential that BIS resources are focussed on the activities in hand, and to facilitate this BISDG must have a clear strategy and agreed acceptance criteria for projects that fall within it.

Proposed Usage of BIS and Development Pool Days 2005/06

The figures contained in the above schedule have been contracted based upon work that is known to be in the BIS/IDS pipeline or likely to accrue in the period concerned. All these potential projects have been subject of discussion and evaluation prior to being added to the list. Furthermore, it should be noted that many of the provisions cover elements contained in the Government's IEG4 guidelines and, although not fully scoped, will require action by the Council in the period concerned. Whilst it is not possible to calculate the amount of the work required, the figures produced are based upon an estimate of the likely resource requirements given our current knowledge of the subject matter.

Issues

B7 Decision making process

B7 Lack of robustness of Business Cases

B7 Data Storage and the Freedom of Information project

As mentioned in other parts of this document data storage is growing at an unsustainable rate. In addition data stored must be capable of quick and speedy access, and this is reinforced by the Freedom of Information Act coming into force on 1^st January 2005. The Freedom of Information (FOI) Act 2000 aims to make the public sector more open and transparent by giving people a right of access to information held by public bodies. Alongside this aim there are also benefits to the organisation in being compliant with this legislation (and related legislation such as Data Protection). One of the main benefits is the need it places on public sector organisations to have efficient information management and in particular records management. In the Freedom of Information Act there is a records management code of practice - this is seen as central to compliance. Organisations must know what they hold, where it is held and how it can be retrieved when requested - otherwise it would be impossible to answer requests for information.

Also within the Freedom of Information project guidelines will be issued as a recommendation on how long various types of records should be kept. These guidelines use the retention schedules devised by the Records Management Society of Great Britain. This will assist in any efforts made to reduce the amount of information held by giving clear guidance on how long various records should be retained, therefore giving service areas confidence in their decisions to dispose of certain records.

The benefits of records management go beyond just compliance with information legislation. It will bring cost savings by disposing of documentation and information that are no longer useful. This will make location and retrieval of the remaining information easier. Finally in the longer term, adhering to the records management code of practice and the implementation of an electronic document management system, coupled with the necessary organisational culture will in turn facilitate a Knowledge Management programme.

Development Pool report

Background

The current Development Pool was established as part of the Partnership agreement and is designed to provide staff resource for major IT projects and small works. The initial arrangement was for some 165 days per month to be dedicated to both IT development work and to cover various other pieces of work that were more SLA rather than implementation based. This situation was reviewed at the end of the Financial Year 2003/4 when all non-project work was stripped out and a new monthly quota of 135 days per month was set. IDS have consistently delivered more Development Pool days to the Council in the first year of the Partnership and are likely to do so into the near future. However, this is likely to be at a far lesser rate than previously has been experienced.

The management of the Development Pool lies within the Programme Management Team. The latter's staff are responsible for taking the installation of major IT projects after the preparation of the Business Case through to the close of the implementation and ensuring that the associated changes are reflected in relevant the system SLA. Additional elements of work include management of the IT element office moves and small works. A summary of the first twelve months usage of the Development Pool together with a projected figure for the period until 31.12.04 is shown below:-

Comments

As stated previously, the time prior to 1.4.04 contains elements of non-project work whereas chargeable days after this date represent time purely spent on implementation work.

The figures contained in the table above show that major upgrades and implementations have taken place in respect of almost the Council's entire major core of business systems. Additionally, IDS have undertaken major upgrades to the Council's desktop operating system which will allow better and more efficient management of the hardware. The breadth and depth of the work undertaken serves to emphasise the scale and complexity of the work carried out during the period of the Partnership. The vast majority of this work was undertaken using IDS own internal resources and skillsets and it is expected that this approach will continue into future years.

Section 3 : Infrastructure Report

Introduction

There has been a significant increase in IT service requirements during the first year of the contract and this trend is continuing. Such growth has an impact not only on staff resources to support the applications and infrastructure but also accommodation requirements and increased risks related to security and business continuity. This report outlines the growth within applications and infrastructure whilst the Investment Report seeks to deal with proposals for managing the impact

Systems growth between 1/8/2003 and 31/7/2004

Application Systems

During the last year the Council's new Financial system (Agresso) has come into corporate use, considerably increasing the number of users across the Council. This new system introduced 6 new servers. The former Pro4 FMS system is still in use by a number of staff. The PRO4 system provided 100 logins on a single server.

Social Services introduced the Carefirst system for managing their clients needs. Some 300 people were trained to use this system. The Carefirst system uses 3 servers, with 2 more planned in phase 2. Approximately 140 people log in to this system on a daily basis. Phase 2 development will add some 25 further users in 2005. The former Crissp system provided only 50 concurrent logins on a single server.

B7 Agresso (Resources Financial Management System) +300 users

B7 CareFirst (Social Services Care Records) +100 users

There are a number of application systems which have been introduced during the last 12-18 months which has inevitably led to an increase in requests for advice or assistance. The Applications team is now providing support for 80 Application Systems through the Systems SLA.

The number of Servers being supported has grown from 68 to 80 during the first year of operation.

Many of the new Applications now depend on three servers to provide a fully working system. These systems are composed of a Web server to connect to the application, an application server and a database server. Clearly this design has more potential points of failure and is more complex to support than the previous single server arrangements.

The growth in server use and backups has resulted in additional costs of A32500 for new tapes. Clearly there is a corresponding increase in staff effort to carry out backups. The backup systems are rapidly approaching maximum capacity and now need replacing.

Further technical development in Server deployment will incur a broader understanding of Blade Server and SAN technology on a much wider scale.

Growth in this area is not covered by volume variations within the Pricing Schedule and it is proposed that a unit of measure is applied to Server support based around the processing power of the server farm and the data storage taken up by the council. For the time being it is further proposed by HBS that the additional resources required to support the current server infrastructure is covered by an allocation of man days for 2004/5, with a recommendation that for 2005/6 server support is calculated on a measurement of server capacity and complexity of applications.

Client Services Growth

Growth has occurred in the number of network connections and client access devices. There is an increasing use of Laptop PCs and PDA devices. These devices are more complex to set up and keep operational.

Client Services now use Active Directory to set up User Accounts from start to finish. The task of setting up mail accounts is now also managed by this team. This process was formerly carried out by a PC officer visiting the client to do the work.

Desktop Support Services

Significant growth in the number of PCs and other Client access devices has been experienced. The XP desktop process has identified some 600 different application systems in existence. Support to Councillors and other homeworking staff has expanded. Growth in this area is covered by volume variations to the number of PCs supported

Network Growth

The number of network sites supported has grown from 60 to 85 during the first year of operation. This increase includes new projects such as Revs and Bens homeworkers as well as the addition of numerous small remote sites.

The complexity of the firewall/VPN infrastructure will increase due to an increase in use and due to the need for extra resilience. To cater for this extra demand the internet connection will need to be upgraded from 2Mb to 4Mb.

Telephone Services

The number of exchanges which now manage both voice and data has increased from 3 to 10 during the year.

For both voice and data there has been an increase in workload as explained above. Normally this growth would be covered by volume variations related to the number of PCs and telephone extensions but in these instances it does not. IDS will be undertaking a review of the other activity drivers within voice and data to determine the increased workload

Volume changes during the Year

Infrastructure Refresh

PC Refresh

During year April 03/March 04 496 PC's/laptops were refreshed. Whilst these figures are changing all the time IDS are still coming across PC's that are not on the Inventory, especially in remote sites. In these instances the Head of Service is asked to sign up to the SLA for the PC in question, or relinquish the PC.

Approx 90% of the Service Areas are opting for the upgrade to Slimline monitors so IDS would recommend the Council changing the standard SLA to take this into consideration. Benefits through doing this would include;

B7 Compliance with Health and Safety e.g. less glare, much lighter to move around

B7 TFT monitors take less desk space so can go on smaller desks which would assist with the Councils long term accommodation issues

B7 Council would not have to do individual recharges to Service Areas for the TFTS which would which would obviously have an impact on Administrative overheads, e.g. on a large site such as Northgate House this can result in several separate recharges to different budget codes, this would

Printer Refresh

IDS are updating the Printer Asset register. Managed Print Service will reduce the requirement for printer refresh and IDS will focus on the sites that will not be involved in Phase 1 and 2 of the project

Growth in Infrastructure Baseline

B7 Number of PC's/laptops has increased from 1829 in August 2003 to 2010 by July 2004 an increase of 9.9%

B7 Email accounts has increased from 3100 in August 2003 to 3389 by July 2004 an increase of 9.3%

B7 The number of applications IDS were aware of in August 2003 was 352, and through the site surveys that have been carried out as part of the XP rollout the number of application has increased to 680.

Non SLA work

The level of non SLA work prior to August 2003 was approximately 35 hours per week and therefore was absorbing 1 FTE within IDS. There has been a significant growth in this work as illustrated below:-

Oct 2003 -Jan 2004 48 hours a week

April 2004-July 2004 78 hours a week

These hours consist of mainly of small works jobs and support of non standard equipment. One area where there has been a sharp rise in requests for purchase is the handheld PC, e.g. Ipaq with 25 purchased in the past 4 months. It is proposed that a 10% mark up is applied to costs to cover the support of these devices

Starters/Leavers

Each month we are completing, within the KPI timescales, approximately 50 starter forms and 25 leaver forms. This was not measured prior to August 2003 so these numbers will be our baseline.

Section 4 : Investment Plan Report

The Investment Plan is in two sections in that it is seeking to achieve the following objectives:-

B7 Identify issues with regard to the future requirements on the infrastructure and IDS ability to support it. This section proposes recommendations for changes or enhancements to the existing infrastructure with indicative costs together with the implications for no change

B7 Explain the budget requirement for 2005/06 for the maintenance of the existing council's IT infrastructure and the service delivery from IDS

Section 1 : Investment Plan Proposals

Storage Growth

Over the last few years the council have witnessed an explosion in storage growth on the main file and application servers. The evidence of the growth and its nature are provided in Appendix 1 together with the detail around IDS proposal to resolve the issues raised.

The proposal is to install and commission a Corporate Storage Area Network (SAN) in the Guildhall and utilise one of the existing smaller SAN's to provide resilience for the other:-

Capital cost A3143k

Annual support costs A314k

Recommendations

1 Agree the investment plan for the corporate SAN 9 (see Appendix 1).This is an essential part of managing the growth.

2 Invest in storage management software to reduce the amount of time being spent managing storage growth and provide some statistical analysis of the growth. It is proposed that IDS review such software and make a separate cost benefit proposal to the council

3 HBS to propose the option of a Managed Data Service that would transfer future risk of providing storage growth, support and monitoring to IDS

Server Refresh

The budget for server refresh for 2005/6 was forecast at £350k .To reduce the investment cost impact of the above proposal for a Corporate SAN, HBS would look to reduce the cost of refresh by extending where possible servers for another year. If the impact of the council reducing its storage requirement is significant then future refresh programmes could be reduced. By taking this action the forecast saving from 2005/6 refresh budget is £50k. Therefore the effect of a delayed refresh programme of this nature would reduce the additional Investment for the Corporate SAN from £ 143k to £93k

Guildhall UPS Upgrade

Background and Brief Description

The Guildhall is currently the main computer room in Bath. Work has been underway for sometime to commission capacity in other server rooms to relieve some of the load from this room. However, because of a combination of delays in commissioning the Lewis House server room, additional projects requiring servers e.g. IKON, I-DOCS etc. the current UPS is nearing capacity.

The Guildhall is also the only computer room with a 3 phase power supply and the planned corporate SAN implementation next year requires a 3 phase supply. Therefore the Guildhall is the only location where the SAN can be installed. This will further increase or overload the UPS in the Guildhall therefore an upgrade is urgently needed.

Benefits

B7 On-going UPS Protection for all equipment

B7 Ability to continue populating the Guildhall

B7 Enables the implementation of the Corporate SAN and helps resolve the storage growth and physical server growth problems

Risks of not implementing

B7 No more capacity in the Guildhall

B7 Problems delivering projects that require servers

B7 Unable to implement SAN

B7 Ongoing storage and capacity problems.

Costs

2 costs are available for the UPS Upgrade. We would recommend the installation of Option 1

Option 1

Upgrade existing UPS A322k

Option 2

Replace with new more powerful UPS that's resilient to A339k

Component failure

Section 5 : Managed Budgets

Network Software Licenses

Due to volume variations the number of supported clients has increased from 1800 to 2100. This represents a 16% increase and as such the number of licenses has had to be increased. This has incurred an initial cost for the additional 300 licenses and has increased the annual license cost, therefore it has become necessary to increase this budget.

The current budget is approx A396K and a 18% increase would require a budget increase of A317.3k plus RPI

NT Maintenance

The existing maintenance budget does not reflect the move from a 3 year to 4 year server refresh plan or the growth in servers over the past year. Therefore this budget will need to be increased. However the scale of the increase is dependant on the storage growth recommendations set out below being accepted. If not then this budget will need a much larger increase than detailed below to help fund the additional storage growth expected on the main file servers next year.

Server growth since last year is 68 to 86 servers = 25% increase.

Additional budget requirement is A344,041(2004/05 budget) + 25% = A355051 plus RPI.

NT Server Refresh

According to the asset register 21 servers are due to be refreshed next year. This comes to a budget total of A3176,000. As IDS recommend the movement to blade servers next year this budget will not cover the cost of the blade infrastructure. Each blade infrastructure is capable of holding a maximum of 8 servers. Therefore a 21 server refresh assuming all servers could be hosted on blades would need at least 3 blade infrastructures at A311,000 each. Therefore the total NT server refresh budget requirement is A3204,000 plus RPI.

Network Line Rentals

There are two issues exist with this budget that needs to be considered.

1 Additional Network Connections and upgrades

2 Broadband

Network Maintenance

Due the general expansion of the network the existing maintenance budget is insufficient and will require an increase next year of A33k plus RPI.

Telephone Maintenance

This transferred budget for is now insufficient for the council's telephone infrastructure and requires a 5% increase plus RPI.

Telephone Line Rentals

The additional line rentals installed since August 2003 now need to be added to the original transferred budget. There have been increased costs this year over the current budget of A384k and the figure required for 2005/6 will be A397k plus RPI.

Appendix 1 : Storage Management Plan 2005-06

Over the last few years the council have witnessed an explosion in storage growth on the main file and application servers. The evidence of the growth and its nature are provided in Appendix 1 together with the detail around IDS proposal to resolve the issues raised.

The proposal is to install and commission a Corporate Storage Area Network (SAN) in the Guildhall and utilise one of the existing smaller SAN's to provide resilience for the other:-

Capital cost A3143k

Annual support costs A314k

This has resulted in some servers having to be rebuilt on an annual basis to cope with the extra capacity. IDS have now reached a point where they are having to research alternative technologies e.g. SANs which are very costly but provide the only sensible way of provisioning large pools of manageable storage. To help explain the extent of the problem it may be worth considering the following points.

B7 4 years ago at the end of the NT rollout the largest file server in Bath (Cleopatra) had 170GB of available storage and looked after the entire G:, H:, I:, and S: with plenty of room to spare

B7 This server has now been split into 4 dedicated G:, S:, Application and SQL servers. Providing a total storage capacity of over 2TB or 2000GB. This represents over a 1000% increase in storage requirements

B7 An identical problem has occurred in Keynsham with the main server (Anthony) being split in to 4 servers with considerably more storage

B7 The G: server in Riverside (Hera) was refreshed 12 months ago and had its storage capacity increased by over 100%. However, we are already in the position where we need to provide additional capacity and will need to rebuild this server to cope with the ever increasing storage demands.

As explained above the storage growth is also causing additional problems e.g. Hera needs an upgrade within the first year of it being refreshed and given lots of additional storage space. This server has another 3 years before it is due to be refreshed but at this rate it will need to be rebuilt and upgraded 3 times. This obviously incurs a significant cost in terms of hardware and labour (most of the work will have to be done over weekends to prevent unacceptable levels of downtime) and these expenses need to be been budgeted for.

Increasing storage growth also has knock on effects such as backups and disaster recovery. Ever increasing storage takes longer and longer to backup and restore in the event of a disaster. These longer backup reduce the window of available time to backup an increasing number of other servers.

The recommendations below are on the assumption that there are no significant changes in the way the council's users deal with data storage and on that basis it is anticipating there will be a continued growth issue to be managed. However council initiatives around the type and age of data stored, protocols around Email usage, personal archiving etc could produce reductions in the amount of data currently stored. It is recommended that an investigation on ways to reduce both existing data storage and future requirements is commissioned either through BIS or as a development pool project.

Recommendations

3 HBS to propose the option of a Managed Data Service that would transfer future risk of providing storage growth, support and monitoring to IDS

Corporate Storage Area Network

Proposal

Background and Brief Description

Recently with the ever increasing number of servers and the demands on storage, backups etc the council has had to go through some costly upgrade exercises. This has included:

B7 New Server Room in Lewis House

B7 Air Conditioning and UPS upgrade in Riverside Server Room

B7 Air Conditioning upgrade in Trimbridge House server room

B7 Small scale SAN Implementation in Riverside

B7 Additional Server Capacity in the Guildhall

B7 Upgrade Storage capacity on key servers (Osiris, Hera)

B7 Upgrade backup libraries to cope with additional storage (due Christmas 04)

B7 Upgrade Guildhall UPS (2005 Investment Plan)

IDS have now reached the point where we need to implement more advanced methods of storage management and server deployment or risk significant problems in the near future with regards to disaster recovery and project delivery. The following 2 technologies will help resolve these problems.

Blade Servers

These are small form factor server with very little local storage and reduced power requirements. Server deployment is faster and storage is held in a central resource (see below). As the servers are smaller the impact on the UPS, Air Conditioning systems and space is kept to a minimum.

Storage Area Networks

A Storage Area Network (SAN) is a method of removing local storage from servers and holding it as one central pool available to all servers. We already have 2 small scale SANs in operation but due to the scale of server deployments and storage growth we need to implement a large corporate SAN. This would allow us to centralise all storage requirement and provision storage in a much more efficient manner.

Benefits

B7 Reduce impact and need for continual upgrades to UPS and Air Conditioning systems

B7 Centralised storage pool allows for a more granular level of storage provisioning thereby reducing hardware costs

B7 Improved performance due to fibre based hardware

B7 Faster deployment of servers and storage for future projects

B7 Increased backup window because of the ability to perform snapshot backups

B7 Enhanced disaster recovery options for the future

Risk of Not Implementing

B7 Ongoing physical space problems for new servers means new projects may not be implemented or will be delayed Ongoing cost to UPS and Air Conditioning systems

B7 Individual Servers not able to cope with the local storage requirement demands

B7 Increased expense and downtime to provision additional storage

B7 An increasingly unmanageable environment

Cost

A large SAN will have to be implemented next year or we risk having an increasingly unmanageable storage and server environment. Appropriate funding needs to be found as a matter of urgency to guarantee that the project is properly implemented and funded rather than implementing an incomplete solution and therefore not being able to realise the full benefits of a Blade/SAN environment.

Approx total A3143k plus A314k annual support costs

The programme has the following implications

D8 Increase the number of planned pool days to implement the SAN from 60 to 95

D8 Reduce the growth rate for data storage to allow the revised infrastructure plan to accommodate the council's requirements for 2005/6

The DLT backup libraries will be refreshed in time for the new SAN implementation and this will provide a more flexible backup window, but is a short term solution if storage continues to grow at the current rate.

Obviously the significant investment that needs to be put in to help manage on going storage growth will not be sufficient if storage continues to grow at the current 15%-20% compound growth rate.

The following chart shows that almost 55GB of data is older than 2 years. An archiving or deletion

Recommendations

1 Whilst it is acknowledged that storage growth is unavoidable steps can be put in to place to reduce the rate of the growth.

2 Implement the corporate SAN solution to enable the dynamic provision of additional storage and help manage the current growth levels.

D8 Gives the ability to use blade servers thereby reducing the physical space requirement in server rooms

D8 Blade servers will reduce the load on UPS and air conditioning systems.

D8 Allow for more advanced methods of disaster recovery e.g. data mirroring

D8 Increase backup windows through the use of snapshot backups.

3 Implement and enforce document sharing and data retention policies.

4 Implement Quote Software for the G:

5 Look at additional technologies such as Email archiving and Tertiary storage.