There is little point in ‘doing’ social media if it does not meet your business objectives, according to Robin Hamman. Too many organisations are ending up with a presence that’s not interesting and does not help its audience.

“It is about the user,” he states. “It needs to be meaningful and it needs to result in measurable outcomes.”

Robin Hamman is Director of Digital at the UK office of global PR firm Edelman. Born in Illinois, he has lived in the UK since the 1990s. Hamman was previously the BBC’s Senior Community Producer, teaching BBC staff how to engage new audiences online.

The aim of his work in broadcasting was to bring audiences closer to programme- makers and editors by “letting them ask questions, point to facts or people that they think might be interesting within the story, and providing feedback once that story has gone out.”

He realised that this approach could be applied elsewhere: “People with skills like this, skills to seek out and engage directly with audiences and stakeholders, are becoming increasingly important within businesses.”

Hamman adds: “It’s not just about describing products and services that already exist, and then trying to flog those. It’s increasingly about understanding what audiences and stakeholders want and getting the business to actually point itself in the direction to fulfil those needs.”

Edelman sees the world of digital as three “different but interconnected” spheres: own, social and search.

The first sphere includes the corporate website which puts forward the organisation’s views “but in most instances it does very little to attract people who don’t know about you already or to meet their needs.”

In social media, people participate “across the web wherever they choose to”.

The ‘social media embassy’ is a concept that sits between those two spheres. This is a brand- or organisationally-controlled presence in social media. It’s not owned by the brand but, like a real world embassy, offers a door for constituents or stakeholders to “knock on”.

Hamman continues: “People are increasingly spending time in social media and, rather than trying to attract them and bring them across to their organisational website, it’s a lot easier to be out there participating, where they might stumble into you and then engage.”

Links from other websites or in online discussions will raise a company’s search visibility on Google.

To look at it in another way, brands and companies exist in a “multi-stakeholder ecosystem”. Those stakeholders include the media, investors, regulators, unions, employees, customers and potential recruits.

However, organisations tend to silo their activities into different departments (marketing, sales, recruitment etc.) with each one having its own budget, digital systems and internal processes. He describes that space between the silos as the “gulf of organisational complexity” and social media can help to cut through it.

“With the tools available, it is possible to understand what your audiences and stakeholders want from you, to respond to them, to engage them in coming up with new products and services, or indeed to get them to assist you when a problem does arise,” Hamman remarks.

On the last point, social media allows companies to create spaces where customers can help other customers to overcome their problems with a service or product.

When approaching social media, businesses must recognise that all staff are representatives of the brand. The average person on the street does not see the person to whom they have spoken as a ‘someone in recruitment or marketing’ but instead sees “all one business.”

Businesses can “harness” how employees talk about their jobs online (e.g. via facebook): “Most of the time it’s positive, sometimes it’s neutral and occasionally it’s negative.”

First and foremost, this means having social media guidelines. As an extension, a brand can encourage its staff to communicate with their own networks on its behalf.

PepsiCo, for example, employs around 150,000 employees globally. He suggests that getting even a small percentage of those employees to “communicate on behalf of the brand in a way that’s contextually relevant” to their friends would have a “multiplication effect”. The employee would share that message with audiences that have similar interests to him or her.

From an historical perspective, social media brings back one-to-one contact between businesses and their stakeholders or consumers.

“Over the last 50-100 years [there] has been a time of mass production, mass communication and mass consumption,” he reflects. “You still get the benefits of doing things at a mass scale but you can engage directly one-to-one with those audiences and consumers. It’s quite interesting what that allows businesses to do.”

Customers and stakeholders are potentially “much happier” and engagement “helps them feel part of what the business or organization is trying to achieve.”

Edelman promotes “digital public engagement” and “meaningful participatory frameworks” that align the behavious of stakeholders with measurable business outcomes. Relevant questions include: “Who is my audience? What do they want to achieve? How can I help them to achieve it? And then how does that meet my business objectives?”

The BBC, for example, learnt lessons from its initial audience forums. Viewers and listeners were asked to simply ‘have their say’ on programmes. This resulted in “a flood of content that was oftentimes inappropriate or low quality or not relevant”.

Better results came when the audience was asked a specific question e.g. whether they knew someone who had experienced a particular medical condition and might like to be interviewed about it. Two or three people came forward; the contact was useful for them and the broadcaster.

“When you look at social media more broadly,” he surmises. “It can look like anarchy and where it’s interesting is where it’s doing something meaningful.”

Mobiles and silos: a case study

Robin recounted the experience of a mobile phone network that has become somewhat of an industry case study of how connecting up external and internal facing processes can cut the time required to deal with customer service incident. The network is said to have launched a new mobile phone handset where the battery was meant to last four or five days. Customers soon realised that it went dead in three to four hours.

The launch took place on a Friday and the customer care team cancelled leave over the weekend to take complaints. However, no-one told the marketing and advertising teams. Front page ads went ahead in the Saturday papers. The problem only got worse.

On Monday morning, a member of the technical team happened to be at a meeting with the marketing and communications reps. He soon figured out the problem: default software settings meant that antennae were always looking for connections, causing battery to burn out. A video was shot, put on YouTube and was used to show customers how to change the settings.

A summary of BT’s work

BT has developed an impressive track record of providing transformation for local and devolved government bodies, including those in Northern Ireland. Our expertise in this arena has evolved to complement BT’s long-standing core competency in ICT. It now embraces innovative commercial models, a complete range of people and change management skills, and the ability to deliver economic benefits such as job creation and regeneration at a regional level.

Here is a look at our track record: different challenges, bespoke solutions, and the consistent delivery of significant benefits.

Case Studies

In 2000, BT was chosen as strategic partner by Land and Property Services for Northern Ireland (LPS), formerly known as Land Registers of Northern Ireland (LRNI). The agency is responsible for recording details of legal interest pertaining to land in Northern Ireland. LRNI was faced with legislative change, reliance on paper records and manual processes and a requirement to enhance customer service.

BT provided the capital for the transformation programme, and an incentive structure was created to drive growth of the LRNI business. BT delivered a range of systems integration and implementation services, as well as change management and business consultancy and a full upgrade of the

LRNI ICT estate. The outcomes have included major productivity gains, customer satisfaction and external recognition for the project.

At about the same time, BT was embarking on a strategic joint venture with Liverpool City Council, creating Liverpool Direct Ltd., with a £58 million investment from BT to enable a wide range of service improvement initiatives. As with LRNI, ICT transformation was fundamental, along with creation of call centre capability to drive customer service and process re-engineering. BT also effected significant culture change for the council, creating HR and payroll systems that foster a proactive, engaged ethos.

In the first five years of the partnership, the council’s cost base was reduced by over £100 million, and Liverpool went from being a poor performing council to one showing upper-quartile performance across all its KPIs when measured against industry standard. Employees and users of the council have benefited immensely.

In 2008 BT embarked on a radical and ambitious partnership with South Tyneside Council, with objectives far beyond business transformation alone. Given the economic decline of the 1970s and 1980s in the region, the council has decided to prioritise socio-economic regeneration alongside the improvement of already high-performing authority services.

BT has created a wholly owned subsidiary, BT South Tyneside Ltd., which has committed to investing £23 million in service transformation. BT is also committed to creating 750 jobs over the 10 years of the partnership, generating over £200 million in gross value-add. Targeted reductions in procurement costs, streamlined processes (for example, for housing benefit claims) and enhanced benefits and career opportunities for council staff who transferred to BT South Tyneside Ltd via TUPE, are also part of the commitment.

The early indications point to success on Tyneside. 375 jobs were created in the first two years, ahead of the target of 300, with another 280 announced just last month. 84 per cent of service performance indicators have improved, and customer and employee satisfaction ratings are both above 90 per cent. BT’s approach is delivering on the ambitious commitments made to the people of South Tyneside.

Looking to the future, BT has just signed a strategic, 10-year partnership with Lancashire County Council which has resulted in the creation of a jointly owned subsidiary, One Connect Ltd., to provide ICT and back office services for the county council and schools in the region. Among other benefits, this will deliver £100 million in savings to the council over the lifetime of the deal, by delivering new technology more quickly, and providing core services such as HR and payroll more effectively.

The challenge for Northern Ireland

HM Treasury’s consultation document of March 2011, “Rebalancing the Northern Ireland Economy”, summarised the UK Government’s view:

“The Northern Ireland economy faces major challenges over the next decade [the] economy has some historical strengths which it can build on, underpinned by the peace process. However, it also has some long standing weaknesses such as the low productivity and low employment rates.”

This is a challenging message to leaders and stakeholders in the economy here, but the opportunities to drive productivity and employment cannot be ignored. Technology can be the cornerstone of improving existing services and delivering new ones, but BT has now developed the innovative commercial and partnership models that allow the management of risk, the transformation of capability and the delivery of wide-ranging economic benefits.

Ed Vernon is Strategic Advisor to BT Ireland, and his comment on how to respond to the challenges of the last few years is resonant: “Business leaders have become more risk-averse and need to reinforce financial disciplines. They need to be flexible with costs by aligning to incentives and performance; move online to drive scale and efficiency; bring in others to look out for blind spots; and stay close to their people and customers.”

At BT, we believe our track record demonstrates what we can offer local and devolved government authorities in Northern Ireland, building on the strategic partnerships and shared services we are already delivering with the public sector here. Our local expertise is available to co-ordinate and leverage the experience of our global brand and capability.

Testimonials

Our partners discuss their experience working with BT

“We were impressed with BT’s track record and its technology made the proposal stand out. BT’s innovative approach to financing the project was extremely attractive to us and made the whole programme possible.”

Wally Gamble landweb Project Manager Land Registers of Northern Ireland

“We’re getting the benefit of BT’s expertise in communications technologies as well as support for the process of business transformation. I think that’s a pretty compelling offer. The joint venture partnership with BT has been a huge asset in the recovery of Liverpool and the transformation of the city council.”

Colin Hilton Chief Executive Liverpool City Council

“We were looking for a partner to help drive the long term strategic priorities of South Tyneside. With a proven track record, we chose BT to help improve economic prosperity, generate significantly more jobs and locate BT’s local government operations in the borough, kick-starting our major regeneration of the South Shields riverside.”

Martin Swales Chief Executive South Tyneside Council

“Almost two years in, the partnership has met or exceeded all service delivery targets. Despite the recession, job creation is now ahead of schedule, the business centre is under construction and savings are being delivered to the council as promised. Satisfaction amongst TUPE’d staff remains high. As an excellent council our standards were high and BT has shown that our outsourced services and staff are in safe hands and that they can be relied upon to deliver what they promise.”

Alan Holt Partnership Director South Tyneside Council

To find out more about BT’s new model for central and local government in Northern Ireland, please visit us online at:

www.btnorthernireland.com/business

Reducing duplication, making procurement easier for SMEs by only allowing ICT projects that cost less than £100,000, implementing cloud computing and making the internet central to engagement with citizens are at the core of the Coalition Government’s ICT Strategy.

Announcing the strategy in March, Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude said: “For too long, government has wasted vast amounts of money on ineffective and duplicate ICT systems.”

The strategy document notes: “The Cabinet Office will also work with the devolved administrations to develop a shared vision that aligns with the principles of the strategy.”

In four parts, the strategy aims to tackle problems such as:

• projects being too complex;

• wasteful duplication by departments, agencies and public bodies;

• systems not being interoperable; • over-capacity in data centres; and

• procurement timescales being too long and costly for all but multi- national suppliers.

Actions to be undertaken by the Government within six months, one year and two years are outlined in the strategy. A Cabinet Office spokeswoman said that a strategic implementation plan would be released at the end of September dealing with the implementation of these actions but would not confirm if the specific six- month actions have been implemented or were underway.

Part one aims to reduce waste and project failure and stimulate economic growth by sharing and reusing ICT services.

Within six months the Government had said it would:

• implement the first stage of a cross- government ICT register;

• introduce a new ICT procurement system;

• establish an open source implementation group and advisory panel; and

• publish guidance on the presumption against government ICT projects valued at over £100 million.

Part two outlines how the Government will push ahead with its plans to reduce the cost of using data centres by 35 per cent over the next five years thereby cutting its carbon footprint.

Within six months the Government had intended to publish a cloud computing strategy with detailed implementation plans. Over the year, it plans to develop a desktop prototype for the cloud and publish guidance on delivering interoperable and open ICT solutions.

Part three examines using ICT to enable change and outlines the Government’s vision for “agile, personalised and responsive services” that will replace the traditional face-to-face, telephone or paper channels of communication with citizens.

The Directgov website will be the single point of contact for services such as job seeker’s allowance. For those without internet access, the post offices and UK online centres (which were established by the Labour Government in 1999, operating in community centres, schools and churches, providing free internet access) will operate as “assisted digital service providers.”

In addition, social media and e-petitions will allow citizens to have more dialogue and involvement with government and Parliament (see agendaNi, issue 48, page 127.)

Part four focuses on strengthening governance. This is under way with the establishment of a new ministerial committee: the Public Expenditure Committee (Efficiency and Reform). Chief information officers (CIOs) from the largest delivering departments will sit on a CIO Delivery Board and will be in charge of implementing the ICT Strategy.

The strategy points out that “many of these actions represent not just technological change, but changes to the operating culture of government [therefore] strong leadership within and across all departments will be required to drive this strategy forward.”

The Republic’s Programme for Government committed to making Ireland a “first-mover” in information technology by making more progress on e- government, moving government services online, and investing in ICT in schools and the healthcare sector.

Currently, citizens can engage with government through the gov.ie website which includes links to the 16 departments, plus eight e-government websites (see box).

At the end of June, Public Expenditure and Reform Minister Brendan Howlin launched an online portal making 300 services available online. These include: social welfare applications, court fine payment, proof of age applications, live Oireachtas debates, birth certificate purchases and access to the 1901 and 1911 censuses.

As part of the new ethos of transparency within government and the comprehensive review of public expenditure, Howlin also launched a databank providing information on every aspect of government expenditure since 1994. Users can create tables, spreadsheets and graphs showing how spending on current, capital, or pay has evolved across government and in individual departments.

The Government will organise existing state supports for cloud computing into a package to promote Ireland as a progressive place for IT investment. However, work must be undertaken to ensure that public sector information stored in the cloud is secure. The Government will not move its information to the public cloud until it irons out concerns over security, reliability, vendor lock-in and saving data outside the jurisdiction. Since 2002, the Irish Government has used ‘government networks’, a countrywide private telecommunications resource used by all public bodies.

A cross-departmental taskforce on cloud computing was established by Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Minister Richard Bruton at the end of June to tackle the above security problems and to review legislation to see what steps need to be taken to ensure a supportive regulatory environment.

Bruton said that while cloud computing held great economic potential for Ireland “it is also crucial that government, as a major user of IT in the economy, take a lead in this area in order to provide opportunities and economies of scale for growing businesses in this sector.”

The taskforce is chaired by Seán Gorman (Secretary General of the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation) and includes representatives from the department and its main agencies (IDA, Enterprise Ireland, Science Foundation Ireland, Forfás), the Data Protection Commissioner’s Office, the Department of Justice and Equality, the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. Other representatives including industry will attend taskforce meetings as appropriate.

Bruton has said that cloud computing is at the forefront of the Government’s thinking. The department is engaged in research and conducting trials with a number of major international ICT companies “to determine what works best for public bodies and to develop compelling commercial models for adoption.”

In education, the Government will integrate ICT into teaching and learning across the curriculum. Investment in broadband development will ensure schools have access to fibre-powered broadband and will be paid for by pooling ICT procurement.

More subjects will be taught online and schools will be able to ‘share’ teachers via live web chats.

However, Education Minister Ruairi Quinn has said that due to financial constraints he “is not currently in a position to commit additional resources to ICT capital investment.” However, he remains committed to investing in this area “as resources permit.”

The Programme for Government does not outline any specific ICT strategy for the healthcare sector.

e-government sites
www.citizensinformation.ie
www.e-tenders.gov.ie
www.irishstatutebook.ie
www.irisoifigiuil.ie
www.merrionstreet.ie
www.pensionsboard.ie
www.publicjobs.ie
www.revenue.ie

Leading public services provider Amey is helping to create ‘Libraries of the Future’ across 99 sites in Belfast, where state-of- the-art technologies will improve the customer experience and generate efficiencies around the clock.

As public libraries face unprecedented financial pressures, Amey and Libraries NI are implementing a single computerised library service. New technologies will allow customers to check multiple items in at once, pay charges and return items without assistance from library staff. This means staff are freed up to provide additional support to customers.

Amey also expects to save 520,000kg of carbon emissions in one year, through introducing power-saving software in around 2,000 computers.

It forms part of the Electronic Libraries for Northern Ireland project, which is aimed at improving customer satisfaction through creating a single, computerised library service with a common catalogue and stock, providing free internet access in every library and expanding public access and learning opportunities.

Amey, which employs 250 people in Northern Ireland, has been responsible for managing the entire library information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure across 99 sites for the past 10 years through a contract with Libraries NI.

This approach means Amey can use the most innovative solutions to make efficiencies and manage thousands of assets in the Libraries NI estate.

In 2002 the contract was recognised by the Office of Government Commerce as an exemplar ICT PFI. It was the first contract of its kind in the UK to share between library authorities, a single network infrastructure across all areas of business.

The Library of the Future

Under this scheme, Amey provides a number of ICT services, including IT infrastructure and network managed services, desktop and network management, software technical support, network security and disaster recovery, public user authentication, 3G and satellite technology and RFID which allows library customers to check multiple items in at once without assistance from library staff.

Delia Campbell, account manager at Amey said: “Libraries are not just about books; they’re multimedia centres. We believe in continuing that modern approach throughout the service to generate the best experience for customers as well as create efficiencies, at a time when budgets are being tightly squeezed.”

Radio Frequency Identification

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology allows a device to read information contained in a wireless device, and provides a method to transmit and receive data from one point to another.

Amey, in partnership with Intellident (the leading provider of RFID solutions for libraries in Europe) successfully proposed the installation of the innovative RFID solution into two libraries as part of a pilot: Bangor Carnegie Library and Antrim Library. Amey manages the solution after installation.

The benefits from implementing this technology include significant savings on operating costs by maintaining current staffing requirements despite the increase in library size. Staff can now interact with customers more and provide activities and programmes, making better use of the libraries resources, as traditional library duties are controlled and monitored by RFID technology.

RFID technology allows library customers to check multiple items in at once and pay their library charges as well as return items without assistance from library staff. This provides staff with extra resources to offer additional learning services to customers.

Power Management

In April 2011 Amey implemented an innovative and sustainable power management solution across the entire Libraries NI estate to allow for a more energy efficient ICT network.

Amey has installed Verismic software in around 2,000 computers enables them to enter a low-power sleep mode when the library is closed. Amey regularly monitors these machines and report savings to Libraries NI. Current predictions for the 12 months since installation suggest carbon savings of over 520,000kg and a 56 per cent reduction in inactivity time.

Virtual Data Centre

Virtual Data Centre (VDC) on-demand delivers the benefits of cloud computing. It lets organisations create, use, monitor and manage their VDC service through a secure portal.

Deployed out of a BT data centre, the system gives Amey 99.9 per cent service availability and a disaster recovery solution that can fully restore data in days rather than weeks. Amey is the first full deployment in Ireland of BT VDC.

From its Belfast office, Amey can create, deploy, monitor and manage the library disaster recovery (DR) service through a self-care portal. A crucial part of BT offering, it means services can be stopped or started in minutes. Virtual servers are deployed in less than an hour, giving Amey the agility to ‘flex’ the business up or down to meet the needs of the libraries.

“Electronic Libraries for Northern Ireland is one of our most exciting and innovative projects, dramatically changing the way libraries are run in Northern Ireland. The Amey team in Belfast has formed a key part of facilitating the delivery of library services across Northern Ireland.” Desi Curry, Head of Intelligent Customer Unit, Libraries NI.

For more information visit: www.amey.co.uk

The largest ever auction of mobile phone spectrum has been delayed, and is now likely to happen in the second quarter of 2012 at the earliest, paving the way for the advent of fourth generation mobile phone technology. The spectrum to be purchased by the mobile phone network operators will be needed to deliver demand for mobile broadband services on smartphones, which are becoming increasingly popular. Twenty-three per cent of Northern Ireland mobile phone users use a smartphone.

Auctioning of fourth generation (4G) licences was expected to happen early in 2012 but has been delayed reportedly because of threatened legal challenges by some of the larger mobile phone operators to Ofcom’s proposed auctioning terms.

Currently, there are four mobile phone operators in the UK: O2, Vodafone, Everything Everywhere (T-Mobile-Orange) and Three. Three, however, has less spectrum capacity to carry data traffic than the other companies. Furthermore, in January Ofcom gave the other companies permission to reallocate spare spectrum from phone calls to data activities. The auction will represent 25 per cent of the total spectrum (the airwaves that carry information between mobile handsets and the internet).

There has been a massive increase in the demand for mobile broadband data services such as video streaming, email, social networking and mapping services. The issue is also relevant to the Government’s commitment to providing universal access to broadband by 2015 (see page 56). With fibre and copper broadband unlikely to provide universal broadband access, 4G technology will become more important. Northern Ireland has 100 per cent broadband access and 75 per cent penetration (74 per cent in the UK).

Ofcom’s Communications Market Report for Northern Ireland, published in August, revealed that 92 per cent of people in the province use a mobile phone (the highest proportion in the UK), with 23 per cent of mobile users using smartphones (30 per cent in the UK). Thirty-seven per cent of 16-34 year olds in Northern Ireland have smartphones. Smartphone users in the UK are more likely to use the devices for phone calls every day (81 per cent) compared to regular users (53 per cent).

The report also showed that only 54 per cent of people in Northern Ireland live in a postcode area with good 3G coverage from at least one operator. This is the lowest rate in the UK.

Auction of the 4G licences will involve the sale of 80 per cent more spectrum than the third generation auction in 2000.

Ofcom research published in May showed that 4G mobile technology will deliver more than 200 per cent of the capacity of existing 3G technologies, using the same amount of spectrum. Users, for example, will be able to download a video in a third of the time it takes today on a 3G network. By 2020 it is expected to be five and a half times more efficient. It also found that 4G technologies on its own will not be sufficient to meet the expected growth in demand for mobile data.

In its consultation document on the auction published in March, Ofcom proposed establishing maximum and minimum limits to the amount of spectrum bidders can win by disregarding any auction outcomes in which four companies do not win the minimum amount of spectrum necessary to provide quality data services.

Ofcom also wanted to set a maximum limit to how much spectrum one company could gain, as well as an obligation in one licence for the 800 MHz spectrum to provide mobile broadband service covering 95 per cent of the UK population. It proposed to supplement this with a requirement to cover a certain proportion of the population in rural areas.

The regulator expects 4G services to be widely available across the UK a few years after roll-out in 2013.

Northern Ireland will receive £4.4 million of the UK Government’s £530 million Broadband Investment Fund but an MLA claims that much more action is needed to reach into rural areas.

The money will be used by the Executive to help extend high speed broadband. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) also expects the Executive to match the package, bringing funds up to £8.8 million.

One hundred per cent broadband access in Northern Ireland (at a minimum of 512 Kbps) was announced in January 2006, although some customers could only receive this by satellite rather than the conventional telephone line. Around 420,000 broadband connections have now been made; approximately 1,000 customers still use the satellite service.

At present, 97 per cent of the province’s homes and businesses can receive superfast broadband (i.e. 24 Mbps or more).

Northern Ireland’s allocation is 0.8 per cent of the total package. If the funding matched its population share (2.9 per cent), it would rise to £15.4 million. However, Westminster decided to share out the funding according to need i.e. the cost of taking of taking superfast broadband to premises that would not receive it from the market alone.

The Government is also considering holding a pilot in Northern Ireland to explore how to take superfast broadband to all homes and businesses. Pilots are already operating in the English and Scottish countryside and each one is worth £5-10 million. It is not yet clear when this announcement will be made.

Its UK-wide aims are:

• creating the best superfast broadband network in Europe by 2015;

• 90 per cent of homes and businesses in each local authority area having access to superfast broadband; and

• everyone having access to at least 2Mbps.

“Our investment will help provide everyone with decent broadband access and ensure no-one is left behind in the digital age,” said Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

However, Fermanagh and South Tyrone MLA Phil Flanagan is sceptical. The Sinn Féin representative told agendaNi that at least £30 million was needed to provide broadband over 2 Mbps for all residents. Wales, he pointed out, was “similarly sparsely populated” and received £56.9 million: “We are a very rural population here. We need to be looked at in that light.”

In response, a DCMS spokesman emphasised that Northern Ireland is already ahead of other regions and repeated that funding was allocated by need. “In some remote areas, it will cost more to reach households than in others,” he commented. “We have calculated the size of the problem in each area and how much it will cost to fix it. The allocations are based on that calculation.”

DETI already has a separate Northern Ireland Broadband Fund, which was worth £1.9 million when it was launched in August 2008. The fund supports trials run by telecoms companies and covers up to 35 per cent of a project’s costs. Its sixth round (for £500,000) closed for applications on 12 August and the resulting projects must be completed by 31 March 2012.

Separately in July, Ofcom reduced the prices that BT Wholesale can charge internet service providers in areas where there is currently little or no competition, including most parts of Northern Ireland. The reduction, for consumers, will be 11 per cent below inflation per year.

The charge controls came into effect in August and apply until 31 March 2014. ADSL 2+ technology is exempted, to encourage BT to invest in this technology.

In Stephen Stewart’s view, ICT in health is the means to the end rather than the end in itself. “I think IT in the Health Service is about enabling people to help people. It’s a real enabler and becoming more and more of an enabler.”

Stewart is Assistant Director of Technology and Telecommunications for the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust, and is based at the Ulster Hospital in Dundonald. The trust employs around 9,000 staff and serves around 345,000 people in the North Down, Ards, Down and Lisburn districts.

His priorities are two-fold: to maintain existing services for the trust’s 6,000 ICT users (a third on the Ulster site) and “making sure they get best use out of the current infrastructure and the technologies that they’ve got access to.”

On the second point, he manages a £2 million capital programme which involves implementing new systems and changing existing ones.

“This Ulster Hospital site’s being redeveloped so one of my priorities is to service that capital development to make sure that we can plan the IT infrastructure and the systems that are going to be used in the new hospital and any other capital developments around the trust,” he says.

Stewart notes that there is increasingly a “greater dependence on ICT to help deliver services and enable services to be delivered.”

The Northern Ireland Picture Archiving and Communications System (NIPACS) is a prime example. Launched in November 2009, it stores radiology images generated in hospitals across Northern Ireland as digital files on a large central archive. These can then be accessed by authorised staff, who can view all of the patient’s scans and reports on desktop computers.

“There’s probably not one group of staff who are delivering health or social services that doesn’t use some element of IT,” he continues, “so we interact with everybody, and everybody at some point will depend on some of the services we deliver.”

“If the services weren’t there, then people would start to notice. It’s becoming more and more critical that IT services are there whenever people need to have access to them,” comments Stewart.

Patients and clients can view more information about conditions and treatments on the internet. As a result, they are better able to challenge doctors, nurses and other health professionals.

The proposed electronic care record (to be implemented in 2012) will combine information about a patient or client’s care. For example, if a person is admitted to A&E, staff could log in and check all previous treatments, their GP’s notes, X-rays and any contact with social services.

“That composite view is becoming more and more important,” he explains, adding that the Health Service’s aim is to “try to create an environment where there’s a single view of your treatment, my treatment, everybody’s treatment available for those people who are delivering care.”

Electronic care records, he expects, will eventually be available on mobile devices as well as desktops, a development that reflects how society uses technology.

A district nurse would, for example, be able to check a patient’s details when she is out and about. Other community staff such as social workers and health visitors could also benefit.

“Everybody uses iPhones; they’re becoming more and more prevalent in personal life,” Stewart comments. “Everybody’s using iPads. People are comfortable with mobile computing and I think there’s going to be a pressure on us to deliver the systems that we have in that type of environment”.

The five health and social care trusts and related health organisations are in the process of developing a single organisation to carry out and update common services such as human resources, finance and payment of GPs and dentists.

Overseen by the Business Services Organisation (which provides regional business support and professional services to the health and social care sector in Northern Ireland), the Business Services Transformation Project (BSTP) is to be implemented by 2013. The BSO Programme Board expects that the new systems will create a more efficient health service, reduce operational costs and absenteeism and improve governance and accountability.

When the project is completed, staff will have access to their personal records and their payroll details via a web-based application. Staff will be able to change their own address and contact details. In addition, suppliers will be able to register and tender on-line for goods and services, submit on-line invoices and monitor payments.

The transformation project will also apply to the BSO, the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service, the Health and Social Care Board and the Public Health Agency. The overall shared services project is divided in three: the HR, payroll, travel and subsistence (HRPTS) project; the finance, procurement and logistics (FPL) project and the family practitioner services project.

The preferred bidders for the new business IT systems are due to be announced in September 2011.

The BSO programme board concluded the final round of dialogues with bidders for the HRPTS and FPL projects in April. Meanwhile, regional project boards are arranging meetings to discuss how the changes will affect them and to begin preparing their offices for the changes. ‘Work packages’ currently under way include an inventory of existing ICT system contracts, preparatory work to meet with ICT technicians to identify any hardware and ICT infrastructure issues and planning for an audit of basic ICT skills.

Approximately 1,000 members of staff took part in road show events prior to a public consultation in 2008. More road shows are planned to raise awareness.

Originally, the BSO planned to build two purpose-built shared services centres at a cost of £20 million, however, funding for this is no longer available. A spokesman for the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety clarified that “decisions on the model, timing and location of sites, have not yet been determined, these will be matters for consideration by the new Minister in due course.”

In November 2010, the BSO’s Chief Executive David Bingham told an agendaNi conference that the procurement process would drive the rest of the process and that the BSO “can’t introduce shared services until we have our new systems implemented.”

According to the BSO’s HR Director, Hugh McPoland, shared services “whilst creating the need for real cultural and organisational change for all of us, [have] the potential to offer its HSC partners substantial financial and qualitative benefits.”

The new systems would “not only provide us with an opportunity to update technologically but also to improve efficiency, change the culture, and move HR and payroll functions forward,” observes Jacinta Melaugh, who chairs of the HRPTS project.

Fines of up to £500,000 can be issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for data protection breaches.

To date, though, the biggest fine the authority has levied is £100,000. Hertfordshire County Council was forced to pay out after it faxed information on child protection to the wrong recipient in two separate cases.

Assistant Information Commissioner Ken MacDonald explains that on the first occasion “rather graphic” information was sent to a private individual and in the second case sensitive legal papers were faxed to a solicitor’s firm, which were mistakenly “passed around the whole office” to determine who was dealing with the case before it emerged that nobody in the firm was responsible.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) was set up in 1984 as the Data Protection Registrar to uphold information rights, promote openness by public bodies and ensure data privacy for individuals. MacDonald leads the Scotland and Northern Ireland offices.

“When we look at monetary penalties, one of the things we will take into account if we are considering levying one is the resources that are available to the organisations,” he remarks.

The ICO recognises that small companies may not be able to pump the same level of resources into data security as large corporations or the public sector. However, this is “not an excuse” if there is a breach and the full picture would have to be examined before a decision on penalties would be made.

Failure to follow an enforcement notice is a criminal offence so it is a “very powerful sanction”.

Many companies have a different view of what measures should be taken to protect data but MacDonald contends that they must appreciate that it’s not all about technical solutions.

“Appropriate measures will be determined by the characteristics of the data which you hold, the sensitivity of it, whether or not it’s very basic information,” he comments.

Sensitive information

Encryption is becoming “increasingly important” and the ICO is planning to take action in cases where sensitive information is lost from laptops or USB sticks that haven’t been encrypted.

Blocking ports should be a priority for companies and questions should be asked as to whether it is necessary for an individual to be able to download things onto USB sticks and other portable media. “If it’s not, then block the port because otherwise there is a risk,” advises MacDonald.

Every organisation should have an up-to- date asset register so that they know “exactly what sort of IT equipment they have” and where it is. He cites the example of the old Belvoir Park Hospital where computer equipment and patient files were left in derelict buildings: “It appears that there was no clear register of ownership of what had been in that site before the trust merged.”

Holding onto data when it is no longer useful is asking for trouble, warns MacDonald, because “every piece of data that you hold is a piece of data that could go missing”.

Information should be disposed of carefully and securely, which may mean employing a specialist contractor to ensure hard drives and other sensitive information is “destroyed appropriately”.

MacDonald recommends that companies request an audit of data protection by the ICO: “We’ve had a couple of audits on aspects of data handling within Northern Ireland public authorities over the last few months.” He says that the ICO is “broadly happy with what is happening” in the province.

One of the biggest data security breaches occurred in 2007 when two HMRC CDs with the personal details of 25 million people were lost. MacDonald states: “This is the case that suddenly we realised exactly the volume of information that could go missing.”

In his concluding remarks, MacDonald advised: “You will have to give data out at times but make sure that if you are giving it out it is given out in accordance with the law and not on one of these USB sticks.”