Quocirca's Straight Talking: Public sector goes mobile

For mobility to take hold in public sector organisations, they're going to have to look at the big picture of what the technology could do for them, explains Quocirca's Elaine Axby.

The UK government certainly puts a high degree of importance on mobility in helping to improve productivity, find efficiencies and offer better services to citizens. But what will it take for wireless data to be widely adopted across the public sector?

The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) has allocated £4m to Project Nomad, with the aim of providing a central repository of information and assistance for local authorities to develop mobile solutions. Initiatives such as 'Every Child Matters' imply closer working and more information sharing between various agencies involved in childcare, with the consequent implications for IT systems. Some pilots are starting, Barnet Council in north London being a recent example.

Quocirca has been tracking the development of mobile access to IT applications for some while, and our research gives insight into how the public sector differs from the private sector - but also highlights the similarities.

Pilot activity is almost as high in the public sector as in the private sector. Quocirca research carried out at the beginning of 2005 showed that slightly less than 70 per cent of public sector managers of mobility were aware of wireless email and other pilots - not the highest amongst the sectors covered in the survey but not the lowest either (see chart below).

In the same survey, we asked whether a firm wireless access strategy was in place. In general, we found very low levels of widespread planning for mobile working - only about two per cent of those in the public sector had any sort of strategy in place. There was, however, a very high level of interest in remote access activity in general from public sector respondents - more than 70 per cent were already active in this area or planning to be so in 2005. Here, levels of activity were a bit behind those in the private sector but not by much.

So there is interest and there is pilot activity, and these are not far behind the interest and activity in the private sector - but what are the challenges in actually getting any further towards large-scale rollout and significant benefits for the citizen?

For public sector organisations, the first challenge has got to be looking at the bigger picture and deciding where wireless access fits into the organisation's overall plans and priorities.

Here there are a number of difficulties: firstly, the very diverse nature of many public sector organisations means that trying to set a mobility framework is fraught with hardship. Some organisations are fairly monolithic, particularly central government departments but others, particularly in local government, consist of very different services and applications.

Many central IT departments struggle to put together a single IT strategy in the face of competing demands from individual departments, and the widespread outsourcing of much IT only adds to the difficulties in managing the development of new technologies such as wireless access.

This assumes that the IT department is involved in the development of this planning in the first place: Quocirca research has found that while IT and communications departments share responsibility for mobility in the private sector, in the public sector communications people still predominate. This is all very well if the main task is to get the best deal on voice minutes but not if access to IT systems is to be developed.

Next comes the business case. Here, one key challenge is in setting out the scope of what is to be achieved, particularly in an environment where so much could be done but where significant changes in business processes might well need to accompany the mobility strategy.

The benefits of any investment in wireless access also need to be clearly set out. Financial concepts such as return on investment or total cost of ownership are commonly used to justify IT investments but are less useful in the public sector which also relies on qualitative assessments of improvements to service delivery, as well as on delivering government targets for efficiency savings. Quocirca's approach to the problem is to look at the total value proposition (TVP).

TVP consists of assessing three core issues: value, risk and cost. In terms of value, public sector organisations need to consider in what ways mobility will add value to the services they offer and the lives of their consumers (ie us citizens). Risk is important and often underestimated in public sector projects; they want the solution to reduce business risks, and if there are risks, around security for example, then they must be aware of them and put measures in place to reduce them. Cost assessment needs to take account of both upfront and ongoing costs, and needs a good understanding of the utilisation of the service being proposed.

The final major challenge for public sector organisations is to try to find their way around the technology choices. There are issues of devices, access networks and the underlying IT architecture to consider.

Quocirca has in the past advised mobile operators to be more than just 'bit pipe' players and become more involved in helping organisations with their strategy. Interestingly, our research shows that public sector organisations are a bit less inclined to see mobile operators as strategic partners, and they tend to get advice from a wide range of suppliers, including focused vertical sector software vendors as well as more general systems integrators and large software vendors. Government initiatives such as Project Nomad also offer supplier and technology advice, and there are multiple conferences and presentations organised by a wide range of organisations. Yet this diversity of information sources does not seem to be helping a coherent approach to wireless access to emerge across the public sector.

What then can be done to improve the chances of wireless access being widely adopted? There are technology challenges which are common across public and private sector organisations, and lots of advice at a detailed level about the possibilities but in Quocirca's view, the major issue seems to be the lack of emphasis on the total value proposition.

In other words, how can wireless access to IT have a positive impact on the lives of our citizens? We can't address the wider political issues but will continue to provide strategic business and technology advice in this area.