This article is from the October 2002 Issue of Update.
Like all local authorities, Essex County Council (ECC) is under intense political pressure to make use of information communications technology (ICT) to improve the delivery of services to citizens. Within the public sector generally there is also now a growing awareness of the emerging new business model for creating added value by using ICT, in particular internet technology, to manage information and knowledge as corporate assets.
Since the publication of the white paper Modern Local Government: in touch with the people1 and the consultation paper Modernising Local Government: improving services through Best Value,2 local authorities have had a statutory obligation to provide more ‘cost-effective’ and ‘efficient’ services for the communities they serve. Authorities are expected to prepare annual performance plans and set local performance targets, and regular Best Value inspections are undertaken by external auditors to ensure that these targets are being met.
Every local authority is also required to prepare an Implementing Electronic Government (IEG) Statement, in accordance with Local Targets for Electronic Service Delivery3 and the Guidelines for Preparing Implementing Electronic Government Statements.4 The IEG Statement for Essex shows how the authority plans to use ICT to improve local service delivery. The statement also indicates how the authority will share information more widely with partner agencies, in compliance with the technical standards for data exchange set out in the e-Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF).5
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| Fig 1. The proposed new structure of ECC |
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| Fig. 2 The proposed new structure of Information Services within ECC |
The management of information as a strategic asset
The Modernising agenda, Best Value and e-government — defined by Holmes6 as ‘the use of information technology, in particular the internet, to deliver public services in a much more convenient, customer-oriented, cost-effective way’ — have significantly affected the way Essex organises its functions. Value for money has been particularly high on the agenda since new organisational arrangements for Essex were introduced in 1997 as a result of the local government review process.
These new arrangements brought about a prolonged period of enforced downsizing and restructuring within the authority during the late 90s. Boundary changes resulted in a reduction of approximately half a million in the population being served, and a proportional reduction in the number of employees. Despite these losses, Essex remains one of the largest local authorities in the UK, employing around 32,000 staff serving 1·3 million people.
As a result of Modernising initiatives, further significant changes have been introduced into the council’s political governance arrangements since 2000. The outmoded committee system has been replaced with an executive cabinet and six select committees. Such major change has had a powerful influence on management structures and working arrangements.
Well-informed decision-making is required for both change management activities and e-government initiatives. Corporate information and knowledge resources need to be redeployed to support the decision-making process and improve service delivery, using ICT wherever practicable. Steps have therefore recently been taken to bring the management of these resources into better alignment with the overarching policy objectives of the authority as defined in its corporate strategy, The Essex Approach.7
Aligning IM and IT
The council employs a significant number of practitioners in jobs with information management (IM) responsibilities. These practitioners include archivists, auditors, educationists, lawyers, librarians, policy planners, record managers, researchers and statisticians. Until recently such professionals were employed in specialist niche roles located in different parts of the organisation, usually within service-specific silos such as Education, Libraries, Planning, Transportation or Social Services. Because these specialists generally worked in isolation from each other, important information was not shared and efforts to manage information were often duplicated.
In an attempt to break down the barriers to information sharing and joint working between practitioners in different service areas, a Corporate Information Unit (CIU) was established in 1997 with a remit to manage the ‘core’ information assets of the authority. Core corporate information was defined as data of relevance to all services, maintained in support of service delivery or evidence-based strategic policy formulation.
Information management arrangements were changed again in 1999, when an executive-level Head of Profession role was introduced to oversee the establishment of an Information Management and Technology (IMT) division. Combining the previously separate functions of IM and IT, the division was formed with the intention of leveraging ICT to support information management better.
IKM as a new organisational function
Further significant changes followed on from the IMT initiative. In 2000 a Head of Profession role was introduced for information and knowledge management (IKM), with the aim of encouraging joint working across different service areas on projects designed to improve the use of corporate information and knowledge resources. In the following year the CIU extended its remit to become the Centre for Information & Knowledge Management (CIKM).
Pending the imminent outsourcing of ICT to a private sector partner, Information Services has recently been established as a strategic core function with responsibility for providing support services to a number of new service groups (Fig. 1). By outsourcing the management of ICT while retaining information management in the business, it is anticipated that Information Services will be better able to align service objectives with the strategic objectives of the authority. The partnership with BT Syntegra will allow the more effective use of ICT and other resources to satisfy the information needs of the new citizen-focused service groups.
Four functional areas are currently being organised to deliver corporate Information Services (Fig. 2). The Information and Knowledge Management (IKM) function is an integral part of a Community and Information Group, which has responsibility for the co-ordination of all IM-related activities. The IKM function will act as a focal point for the activities of practitioners across the whole organisation, including:
- the management of workplace libraries and resource centres;
- data acquisition, indexing, classification and coding;
- the development of metadata standards;
- information sharing and information security;
- information architecture;
- web content management;
- research and intelligence;
- training and development in IKM competencies.
Improving access to corporate IKM resources
The primary goal of the CIU, set out in a corporate information strategy and subsequently incorporated into its own local service plan, was to identify and manage core corporate information (CCI) as a strategic asset. CCI was defined after the Hawley Board Agenda8 as ‘assets of value and importance meriting special attention’.
Within Essex this included information in the form of computer records or documents, derived from disparate sources but considered to be of organisation-wide significance. When in 2001 the CIU extended its remit to become the Centre for Information and Knowledge Management, its responsibilities then included identifying and managing knowledge resources in addition to CCI.
Hawley suggests that, having identified the strategic goals of the organisation, an information audit should be undertaken to provide an up-to-date information asset register (IAR) of the resources available. Indeed, under the legislative requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000,9 the auditing of information holdings and the creation of an IAR effectively now becomes a statutory obligation for all public sector organisations.
To organise the resources constituting core information within Essex, a subject classification scheme was prepared in 1998. The generic elements considered suitable to provide the top-level descriptors for a corporate subject listing were identified as being economic information, housing, land & property, and people. To help in facilitating access to CCI data the elements of the subject list were represented as metadata,10 and the asset register was first published as a corporate metadata directory. The directory was intended to provide a means of using individual metadata elements to identify and evaluate a CCI resource for fitness of purpose before searching across different service area domains for that resource.
The register was reviewed again in 2000 when a more detailed classification by narrow subject heading was derived for the individual data sets constituting CCI. In 2000 a project was initiated to establish the metadata directory as a web-enabled computer database, with the aim of compiling and maintaining a comprehensive inventory of both core and non-core data sets maintained within the organisation.
After successful completion of the project in early 2001 the database was published as a resource locator on KnowledgeNet, a newly launched specialist IKM website developed for the corporate intranet. KnowledgeNet was specifically designed to encourage communication and co-operation between members of the IKM community of practice working within the council, and also within partner agencies by way of an extranet.
Using geo-codes to join up the dots
In consultation with the strategic partner and practitioners throughout the organisation, IKM professionals within the strategic core are now preparing a service plan intended to improve access to corporate IKM resources. Facilities such as the metadata directory database, an enquiry management system and a geographic information system (GIS) are being developed and deployed on the council’s intranet as integral components of a digital library. The piloting of information systems such as the metadata directory database and the enquiry management system has confirmed the feasibility of using a subject classification to improve information retrieval within a web environment and provide better access to corporate IKM resources. Plans are now in hand to link the components of the digital library through a corporate taxonomy,11 which is being constructed to make it easier to search for and retrieve information online.
GIS is being incorporated into the suite of digital library systems to ensure that all core data can be geographically referenced. Geographic references (geo-codes) include OS grid references, administrative area codes, individual addresses and postcodes. Postcodes in particular are likely to assume greater significance for information management purposes,12 as they will enable linkages to be made between local data sets and important national statistical resources such as the 2001 census, detailed results from which are due to be released in 2003.13 GIS-enabled IS will also have the advantage of making it easier for public sector agencies to key into important national initiatives for e-government such as the National Land Information System (NLIS),14 the National Land Use Database (NLUD)15 and the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG).16
Geo-codes can indeed be considered as the missing link between disparate data sets. They enable information from local land and property registers, client records and transport networks to be brought together in geographically-defined service catchment areas. Integrating information systems with GIS also adds value to IKM resources by allowing data to be analysed and displayed graphically as maps or charts.
By integrating back office information systems with a GIS, the time spent by IKM practitioners in responding to requests for information can be significantly reduced, thus helping to meet Best Value and e-government targets by cutting costs and improving service delivery.
References
1 DETR (Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions). Modern Local Government: in touch with the people. HMSO, 1998.
2 DETR. Modernising Local Government: improving services through best value. HMSO, 1998.
3 DETR. Local Targets for Electronic Service Delivery: 2001 (http://www.socitm.gov.uk/egov/detrtargets.htm)
4 DTLR (Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions). Modern Councils, Modern Services. Access for all: guidelines for preparing Implementing Electronic Government Statements. 2001 (http://www.local-regions.dtlr.gov.uk/egov/modcouncils/07.htm)
5 Office of the e-Envoy. e-Government Interoperability Framework version 3, second revision, October 2001 (http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk/publications/frameworks/egif3/e-GIF3.pdf)
6 D. Holmes. E-gov, E-Business Strategies for Government, Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2001.
7 The Essex Approach 2001-2005. Essex CC, 2001.
8 Hawley Committee. Information as an Asset: the broad agenda. KPMG IMPACT programme, 1995.
9 Freedom of Information Act 2000. HMSO, 2000 (http://www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/20000036.htm)
10 M. Cumming. ‘Metadata for e-government.’ Library & Information Update, 1 (3), June 2002, pp. 41-2.
11 A. Gilchrist and P. Kibby. Taxonomies for Business: access and connectivity in a wired world. TFPL.
12 J. F. Raper, D. W. Rhind and J. W. Shepherd. Postcodes: the new geography. Longman, 1992.
13 www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/op.asp
14 www.nlis.org.uk/docs/2000/index.htm
15 www.nlud.org.uk/
16 www.nlpg.org.uk/
Bill Wood is Knowledge Manager, Essex County Council (bill.wood@essexcc.gov.uk).