10 November 2003

Briefing: RYOGENS National Launch and Reference Group Event
4 November, London

What is RYOGENS?

RYOGENS, short for Reducing Youth Offending Generic National Solution, is one of the National Projects funded by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to support the national strategy for Local eGovernment. The project's aim is to protect vulnerable children and young people at risk of becoming involved in crime and reduce youth crime and anti-social behaviour. Interest is mainly focussed on one of its three key outputs - a generic, information-sharing tool to capture, share and analyse practioners' concerns on children and adolescents before their needs become critical - which ties into developments of Identification, Referral and Tracking (IRT) schemes in local government and proposals in the Green Paper, Every Child Matters. Other outputs will be the RYOGENS implementation toolkit and continual dissemination. The project is being developed and piloted by Warwickshire County Council and the London Boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Lewisham, in collaboration with programme managers Deloitte & Touche. The project website at www.ryogens.org.uk provides updates and background information.

Who's Who

	Phil Robson	Programme Chair
	Denbigh Cowley	Programme Director
	David Valls-Russel	Tower Hamlets Project Manager
	Lesley Celic	Warwickshire Project Manager
	Trevor Gordon	Lewisham Project Manager
	Judith Mapanje	Lewisham RYOGENS Management Function Co-ordinator
	Alan Ogston	Business Design Worksteam Manager
	Mark White	Technology Workstream Manager
	Julian Walker	National Communications Workstream Manager
	Katie Thomas	Lewisham Consultant
	Liz Mckerney	Tower Hamlets Consultant

Introduction - RYOGENS in Context
Phil Robson
Key Points:

	·	We have £2.8m government funding to deliver the project by March 2004
	·	Not just an IT system - it's about enabling key agencies, social services. education and health with key youth and criminal justice (CJ) agencies, and practitioners in each agency having access to a system they feel comfortable to use.
	·	They will 'feed' the RYOGENS system as the 'Core contributing agencies' (CCAs) with information about risk factors and concerns and access it via a web-based front-end.
	·	Once a set of concerns reaches a certain threshold, it's referred out to CCA's who may be better placed to reduce that risk. After intervening, CCAs will provide feedback on RYOGENS. Challenge is to ensure its as widely used as possible.
	·	The RYOGENS solution will also enable aggregrated and anonymised data to be fed into Local Strategic Partnerships and Crime & Disorder Reduction Strategies - contributing to wider goals of child protection and well-being, neighbourhood renewal and crime reduction.
	·	RYOGENS targets vulnerable young people not yet in the 'high-risk' sector - both at risk of being victims and offenders - most agencies concentrate on this 'hard-end'
	·	RYOGENS is not duplicating the work of CJIT (although a representative sits on the boards) - a different set of agencies and RYOGENS is not attempting any significant system integration
	·	In a very short time we expect RYOGENS to be able to contribute to the IRT agenda. Focus is more on the 'I' and 'R' so we can offer quick wins and assist youth teams developing preventative services
	·	RYOGENS is not pre-empting the work of Youth Justice Boards to specify and develop a case management system for youth justice, but might be able to contribute a step along the way.

See Denigh Cowley's presentation below for the timetable of activities by clicking here.

Update on Progress in Local Areas
Lesley Celic - Warwickshire

Warwickshire will pilot RYOGENS imminently within the existing, well-established multi-agency intervention panel, CHARM. Interestingly, the pilot will initially run without the core IT system. The intention is to collect live data in a 6-week pre-run before system go-live to provide a test environment for the RYOGENS working principles and enable the system to be active from day one. For the pilot period in mid-November, Warwickshire has reduced the scope to look at 8-13 year-olds and wil look at how practitioners use RYOGENS and how it can intervene as a result.

Judith Mapanje - Lewisham

Lewisham's RYOGENS pilot will have a more limited geographical focus and be based in both the Lewisham Youth Inclusion Support Panel (YISP) in Downham focusing on crime reduction among 8-13 year-olds only and in Bellingham through the Neighbourhood Management Structure (NMS), funded by the Government's Neighbourhood Regeneration Unit, which dealing with problems on estates but also looking at the wider issues. Lewisham also leads the work on extracting data for the LSP. Lewisham believes RYOGENS will result in streamlined business processes and an improved audit trail for children and young people; it is conscious that the technology needs to be straightforward and user-friendly.

David Valls-Russell - Tower Hamlets

The Tower Hamlets RYOGENS pilot will be Borough-wide, centred on crime prevention and contributes to IRT and the pilot Children's Trusts which am to bring together services working with children within one organisational structure. Tower Hamlets is leading work on migrating data from existing databases into RYOGENS - system integration is not in the scope of the project - with agencies 'dumping' data into RYOGENS to create a list of children (not entire databases, just name, date, case number, reference). There is great enthusiasm among practitioners who want to make this project a success. To make ICT happen, you need the technical platform and also the ethos of sharing information.

Technical Solution Update
Mark White

	·	Esprit Limited has been contracted by Deloittes as technical build partner for the RYOGENS solution - it has a product in place which can be taken further to meet the RYOGENS requirements
	·	Go-live is expected on 12 January in three areas, with a three month evaluation period to see if the product works.

Overview of the Technical Solution
David Dorling, Esprit Limited

	·	Work has started on building the RYOGENS solution. There are five main 'building blocks':
		▪ Data model - flexible representation of the information objects needed to drive the solution   ▪ Functional specification - translates the user requirements into a working application   ▪ User interface - easy-to-use, powerful and web-based   ▪ Data integration - interfaces between existing systems and RYOGENS   ▪ Solution hosting - secure and reliable environment for delivering access to the RYOGENS solution
	·	Pilots will be hosted by a supplier and this option will be available for authorities and agencies taking the solution
	·	Customisable - Display will depend on the user profile
	·	The web front-end displays an inbox, details of practitioners cases and concerns; users can raise and read concerns which lists by type, author, current status and when added; search for a child on the database.

Panel Question & Answer
All speakers

"We have concerns over competition and duplication of work elsewhere... RYOGENS appears to be doing the same work on our IRT Trailblazer"

We obviously don't want two systems running in competition... we are trying to deliver a generic tool that will be applied differently, how this is done is up to you... It's enabling local authorities and practitioners to do the fundamentals. Inevitably there is competition in the sector, including the IRT Trailblazers... RYOGENS can deliver in nine months as a building block... We don't want the impression given that it's the 'poor cousin' of IRT.

"How much will it cost"

There is a fixed one-off cost of £25,000 regardless of the size of authority. Ongoing costs are an annual £5,000 maintenance and optional support charge (compulsory in the first year). Participating agencies and authorities can also request the hosting service and or partner to share costs.

"What about the security and legal issues"

Information stored on the system should not be confidential and at the most restricted. Sharing of information can not be a concern from data protection view. We have taken legal advice from the DCA on the position of data protection - the position is that we are within the law and fulfilling statutory duty... There will be a rigorous registration process to control who is able to gain access.

Wrap-up and RYOGENS Next Steps
Denbigh Cowley

A diagram showing a timeline of the next steps:

	Nov	Dec	Jan		Feb	Mar	Apr
In the Pilots	◊ Warwickshire launch pre-planning		◊ Go-Live 12/1         ◊ Enhanced System Go-Live
		◊ User acceptance testing & RYOGENS System Adminstrator Training
				Piloting Go-Live
	Implementation planning			Evaluation by Oxford University
National Comms	◊  Reference    Group Event		◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊  Regional Roadshows				◊ Close Event
	◊  Youth Justice        Convention
	◊  eGovernment                  Conference
Policy	◊ Queen's Speech - legislation to support Green Paper, Every Child Matters?	◊  Deadline for responses to Green Paper				Deadline◊   for evidence of improved information sharing	◊ Legislation on Information Sharing?
		◊  DFES Review of IRT Trailbl'rs

	·	Enhanced version of the system will be available mid-February
	·	Oxford University will conduct an evluation during the pilot period, providing an independent review of RYOGEN's success
	·	The Improvement and Development Agency will be holding a series of events to promote the National Projects in the New Year
	·	By March 31st 2004 every local authority will need to show evidence of improved information sharing
	·	Legislation on information sharing, perhaps having something to say on current barriers, may be due next April.