Service Birmingham, the joint venture company established by Birmingham City Council and Capita, has been in operation for two years this month.
Its objective is to support the UK’s largest transformation programme in Local Government so how does it do this and what have been the benefits to date? This piece highlights perspectives from both partners.
Glyn Evans, Assistant to the Chief Executive for Transformation, of Birmingham City Council
The creation of our public/private partnership, focusing on the transformation of the Council, really was the first of its kind in local government and I’ve been heavily involved since the start of the procurement process. Being responsible for the entire procurement process, at a potential value of £470 million for the IT element of the contract alone, we had to make sure that we picked the right partner so we carried out a robust selection process.
The Council’s initial driver had been to find a supplier of technology and associated services. But what developed was much more radical. A partnership that, whilst including IT service delivery, would make supporting the Council’s ambitious plans for radical service improvements its main goal. The concept was transformational – to deliver services more effectively and more efficiently and give staff greater job satisfaction. The ambition was and still is huge, and so therefore is the challenge. For example, the Council intends to achieve efficiency savings worth £1 billion by 2016.
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We knew that in transforming the Council’s services, highly trained employees would be an integral part of the process, so we made this part of the agreement for Service Birmingham. We wanted 500 support staff in the Council’s Business Solutions and IT Division to be part of the new venture. Understandably, many of these employees were initially sceptical – it can be daunting transferring from a local authority structure to a private organisation. However, in this instance, we believe we were able to provide them with sufficient reassurance by offering them a choice in their method of transfer. They could opt for a secondment to Service Birmingham or take the more traditional TUPE route if they so wished. In the end, all but a handful elected for secondment and so remain employees of the Council.
The Service Birmingham board consists of members of both Capita and Birmingham City Council. We hold a monthly joint venture meeting as well as a quarterly strategic board meeting. But it’s the two-way communication with all employees that has been vital in building the team. Every member of staff was fully involved in consultations from the planning phase onwards. Today Service Birmingham uses a range of communication tools, including email, newsletters, intranet and informal forums and question times to maintain excellent consultation.
So, was it worth it? Well, like any large scale public sector project, there have been challenging times but as a joint venture we address these together. At this two year milestone we are proud that we can identify significant and wide reaching improvements to the IT service. More importantly, the major transformational projects are beginning to deliver benefits. For example, there is a net contribution of £9 million to the 2008/9 revenue budget, which would have otherwise have had to be found through service cuts or an additional 3% on Council Tax. We’re also pleased that Service Birmingham has contributed to the Council’s CPA rating increasing from one to three stars. I can therefore firmly say that “yes, it was worth it”.
Helen O’Dea, Chief Executive, Service Birmingham
Our two year milestone for Service Birmingham appears to have come around quickly and when you take stock of what has been achieved during this time it’s really quite impressive. I wasn’t here at the start of the venture, but I am fortunate to have joined a well established team that has already achieved notable success. This includes a transformation of the core IT service delivered to Council employees with the implementation of a more resilient network infrastructure, upgraded computer servers, consolidation of core applications and the commencement of a comprehensive desktop refresh programme. In November 2007, Service Birmingham employee Andy Mackey won the coveted IT Professional of the Year award and Birmingham City Council won the ‘Outsourcing Project of the Year’ in the ‘Computing Awards for Excellence’.
From the start, we knew we had 500 committed ICT and Business Solutions professionals at the core of the partnership and keeping them motivated would be key. Continuous training has been at the forefront of our agenda to equip the team for the new challenges that working for Service Birmingham presents. Our Talent Management programme identifies employees’ key strengths and any skills gaps and provides IT and project management training from PRINCE2 to ITIL. Our employees are also in charge of a benefit scheme from which we make five per cent of Service Birmingham’s profits available to donate to local causes that they choose to support.
Part of the ICT services consisted of creating a new network to provide Birmingham’s citizens with improved access to public services. The challenge was to connect 450 schools, 60 libraries and 240 Council-related offices in Birmingham. These sites needed to evolve and become focal points for the community where citizens can access a range of online Council services such as Council tax and benefits information, health services, social care and ancillary services. Completed in just over a year, all three legacy networks were replaced. This has already saved the Council £350,000 a year on improved communications and infrastructure costs as well as reduced network management costs by 40 per cent per annum.
In addition to managing and delivering the Council’s ICT services, Service Birmingham is also supporting the Council in its groundbreaking Business Transformation programme.
The first workstream of delivery in the Council’s transformation programme was Corporate Services including finance and procurement. The challenge was to implement a single system to streamline procurement of goods and services from 20,000 suppliers. This also required new processes and working practices across the council. This was a major system implementation and despite some early teething problems, we have achieved initial efficiency savings of £35m. Service Birmingham is also supporting the Council in all of the other eight live business transformation programmes.
Along with our business objective to create better council services for citizens, social responsibility is at the core of everything we do and we are reinvesting savings back into the community. We’ve just launched an initiative to securely recycle old PCs from the council to be made available to the community at a nominal cost. We have also launched a schools mentoring scheme and to begin with, six of our employees will be coaching students during their GCSEs at Sheldon Heath School.
As for the financial impact on our local community, the Council achieved around £9 million in savings in 2007 from the first business transformation programme. This has helped the council achieve the three per cent a year savings stipulated by the government’s Comprehensive Spending Review 2007 and helped maintain a low increase in council tax.
In the context of our ten year partnership, it’s still early days for Service Birmingham. Given our early success and the growing strength of the partnership, we are confident that we will continue to grow and deliver substantial benefit to Birmingham City Council.
