Delivering reform through ICT

Interim Government CIO Michael McGrath talks to Owen McQuade about his priorities for implementing the Government’s Public Service ICT strategy.

The Public Service ICT strategy is “truly a collaborative document” that was developed by CIOs across the public sector through the CIO Council, according to Michael McGrath. The plan was approved by the Cabinet earlier this year and a detailed strategic implementation plan on how to deliver the five key principles in the strategy will be available in June.

Going through the five elements of the new strategy, McGrath sees build-to-share as about moving from the current model where every department, government agency and public sector body procures, builds and manages its own ICT internally in terms of infrastructure, with their own computers, servers, storage and email systems, to a much more shared service model.

This will be similar to the IT Assist model in Northern Ireland.

McGrath says that this has two main advantages. “Firstly, it creates huge efficiencies,” he comments, “At present IT budgets, as in the private sector, are focused on ‘business as usual’ or ‘keeping the lights on.’ If we can move away from spending most of our budget on just running things to a best practice operation of 60:40, this then frees up money that can be invested in digital services. It also frees up departments and agencies to focus on the stuff that matters. The head of IT for an agency doesn’t have to worry about putting in an email system or needs a TB of storage; they can get that out of this build-to-share model.”

McGrath emphasises: “In a nutshell, it is about efficiency and cost savings and allowing people to focus on what is the priority for their area.” There are three elements to build-to-share. The first includes all common infrastructure such as storage, servers, email and communications tools. The second covers government networks. “We have delivered a central government network and there are opportunities to expand that,” he says. The third element consists of common applications across public sector bodies and in the Civil Service there is a range of common systems that could be centralised such as parliamentary question (PQ) systems, e-submission, records management and document management. Doing this centrally would also support Civil Service renewal in that it would create a much more connected Civil Service.

Digital first

Digital first is more externally focused. “It says that whatever we do, we should do it digitally. It is not just putting stuff online. True digital means end-to-end from engaging with the citizen right through to the processing at the back end,” says McGrath. The Revenue Commissioners have been very successful at digital delivery. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has also been successful with the mapping of farmers’ lands: “There are lots of great examples and there is a huge potential to do more. The other benefit of digital is that it also drives efficiencies. Digital, in its essence, is about engaging with citizens.”

The third enabler is around data and being able to join up the data as part of that digital service offering. Good practice includes the Department of Social Protection which has used facial recognition technology to improve benefit fraud detection. There is an internal benefit but there is also an external benefit – McGrath sees digital and data as being very closely connected.

On the implementation of the strategy these three elements are being progressed in parallel in what is a five-year programme. In addition to meeting “the normal challenges” such as recruitment and resources and around public procurement, there are softer challenges: “It is not just a technology change it is about transforming how a critical service. ICT is delivered across a wider range of public services. Those cultural changes can be very difficult to achieve.”

Cloud

McGrath sees cloud computing as a “huge opportunity” particularly under the build-to-share approach. “If you look at the fact that other organisations have done this years ago, they’ve built big shared services models on ICT, they’ve procured a lot of infrastructure and they run it centrally,” he observes. “We’re now in an opportunity to actually leapfrog that.”

He sees cloud deployment as being a hybrid model: “I think there are certain things that absolutely have to be kept within the four walls of government and then there are certain other things that probably don’t need to be kept within the four walls of government.”

The cloud catalogue is a procurement mechanism in order to deliver certain things and McGrath sees it role as being limited to the core IT services across departments and agencies. “If you’re trying to have a connected ICT strategy where you’re saying: ‘Look, everyone’s on the same document management system,’ then the last thing you want is variety.”

McGrath remarks: “I fundamentally believe that the business of local IT – in terms of operational IT for a department – is its direct responsibility. The centre shouldn’t dictate to individual departments or agencies how they use ICT to deliver critical business services such as social welfare payment, tax collection or agricultural grant payment, but things that are common have to be driven centrally and managed – and that’s the essence of the strategy.”

Future

Looking to the future, McGrath sees a number of trends that will impact on how government delivers it services to citizens. The first trend he highlights is analytics: “We have a huge quantity of data across the public sector and, hopefully with the new legislation that’s being put in place, we’ll be able to share that data much more easily but it’s important to know it has to be done under the data protection laws.”

Another trend is mobile: “As we deliver more digital services, I think mobile is going to become important. The next generation of millennials, they’re going to expect to be able to engage on an iPhone or a mobile device rather than their computer but we’ve got to get the core digital services in place first of all.”

In closing, McGrath emphasises that his priority for 2015 is to get the implementation plan “up and running and start moving on showing delivery on the key areas of the strategy.” He notes: “It’s really if we can prove that we can deliver IT services out of the centre. We’re talking to a number of government departments about how they could use our shared common applications. We’re talking to a number of agencies about how we could use shared infrastructure and networks.

He concludes: “If we can prove by the end of the year that those things are doable and workable and are delivering value, then that puts us in a great position next year to start ramping that implementation up.”

Profile: Michael McGrath

Michael McGrath was appointed interim CIO for the Irish Government in March 2014. He was previously Vice-President at Icon PLC, a $1.2 billion Irish-headquartered pharmaceutical development company. He has found his new role “very challenging but interesting. It’s, in many ways, very different from the private sector which is where I spent all my life. In other ways, it’s very similar. A lot of the same problems exist. It’s just that the structures and mechanisms to do things are very different and I’ve been amazed and very encouraged by the talent and the willingness of good people to do the right thing.” He holds a BSc in information technology from Dublin City University, is a sigma six black belt and a member of the Irish Computer Society.