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This case was written by Anthony Westenberg, Research Associate, under the supervision ofTheodoros Evgeniou, Assistant Professor of Information Systems, and Kishore Sengupta,Associate Professor of Information Systems, all at INSEAD. It is intended to be used as abasis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of anadministrative situation.

Copyright © 2003 INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France.

Kent County Council: Implementing IT for E-Government

12/2003-5174

N.B. PLEASE NOTE THAT DETAILS OF ORDERING INSEAD CASES ARE FOUND ON THE BACK COVER. COPIES MAY NOT BE MADE WITHOUT PERMISSION.

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“…to be the best place in the world for e-commerce by 2002, to have all government services electronically available by 2005 and internet access available to all who want it by 2005.”1

Tony Blair, UK Prime Minister, 1999

Four years after the British Government had articulated its e-government vision and set strict information technology (IT) targets for UK local authorities to reach by 2005, Craig Griffin, an ex-paratrooper with an MBA and Programme Director of the Kent Support Services Improvement Programme (KSSIP), was preparing the final thrust to meet the government deadline. The past two years had seen a major transformation at Kent County Council (KCC) and he was realistically hopeful about IT success in the future. Sitting back in his chair, Craig exclaimed with satisfaction, “We’re now confident we can do IT!”

In one year KCC had implemented an IT system to support its Finance and HR functions in-house, a major success for an organization paralyzed until 2001 by the mountain of IT tasks and targets ahead, spending £43 million annually on IT yet struggling to deliver projects of sufficient scope to have a step-change impact. What were the catalysts for this fast and impressive transformation? What was wrong with IT before, and how was it resolved? What lessons from the successful IT implementation so far could be drawn for the road ahead? And what could KCC have done better during the implementation?

Kent: Background and Vision

Located in south east England (see Exhibit 1), KCC is the largest county council in the UK serving a population of 1.3 million people with an annual turnover of £1.4 billion. It is governed by elected representatives assisted by a body of executive officers, and supported by 32,000 employees who deliver services to Kent constituents (the voters). Local authorities deliver three main types of services: Social Services, including services to children and the elderly; Strategic Planning Services, including highway infrastructure planning and economic development; and Education Services, including primary and secondary schools. KCC, which currently delivers approximately 700 separate services, has identified a number of priority areas that need to be addressed to achieve its goal of raising the quality of life for all constituents. These range from improvements in education, health and transport, to efforts to reduce crime. KCC is committed to “continuously improve services and make sure they represent good value for money”. It was recently rated “excellent” by the UK Government Audit Commission, one of only 22 to reach this category out of more than 140 local authorities in the UK inspected in the first cohort.

KCC’s ability to deliver its goals hinges critically on its information technology capabilities. The role of IT in Kent was made clear in 1999 when Mike Pitt, Chief Executive of KCC, articulated a vision of “harvesting IT for service gains” -

“…to significantly improve the access, responsiveness, quality and volume of KCC services to the public by radically changing the way we work: investing in

1 UK Government's e-targets in 1999, http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk/MediaCentre/ESummitArticle/

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new technology, introducing modern business methods, reducing costs of administration, and enhancing resources on the front line.”2

Unfortunately, vision is rarely the same as reality and in 1999 IT at KCC was far from being “harvested for gains”. Indeed, project activities were undertaken on a small scale – with an average budget of £150,000 per project – by various departments acting autonomously. None carried enough critical mass to support the e-vision or lead to any change. Oversight was exercised by the director of the functional area served by the respective system. Many of its 200 in-house IT Service Group (ISG) personnel were deployed in the functional areas that these systems supported, blurring lines of authority and responsibility for ISG over time and spreading resources thinly (see Exhibit 2, ISG Organization Pre-KSSIP). IT budgets were allotted to project teams on the basis of requests made by directors of functional areas. All requests purported to address immediate needs and were invariably stamped “urgent”. This led to a many-headed technology Hydra – multiple small IT systems working in isolation. For example, for HR alone there were 14 different personnel IT systems, some originally developed internally in the 1980s by ISG which by 1999 required hard-to-find skills for expensive maintenance simply to survive. Clearly the £43 million annual spend on IT in KCC was not being maximised. Meanwhile the Council’s mandate had expanded over time and with it the functionality required of its IT systems.

Time to Move and… a False-Start

Juggling with a host of disparate IT systems (many on the verge of collapse) and growing pressure from central government, a major IT initiative for HR was launched in May 1999 by the Assistant Chief Executive, known as Kent First. Craig was appointed to lead the programme of technology-enabled change in August 1999, the centrepiece of which was to be the implementation of an organization-wide HR system that would provide full sight across all 32,000 employees. This was the first major IT project in a sea of uncoordinated IT initiatives cohabiting in KCC. “In 1999 we went to the market alone (as HR),” Dave Cox, KSSIP Programme Lead for HR, recollected.

But the dream was short-lived. The Social Services Directorate of KCC was in urgent need of money and so the budget for the HR IT was withdrawn. It was a disappointment but also a defining moment – the realization that bigger IT guns and more critical mass were needed. “It was a turning point for us,” Craig acknowledged.

Having had the carpet pulled from under its feet, KCC went casting about for solutions to its IT challenges and sources of funding to support a major infrastructure renewal. At the time, the UK Government, through its Public Private Partnership Programme, was trying to encourage an injection of private sector know-how and funding into UK public services. This had fuelled the rapid expansion of service outsourcing companies such as Capita and Hyder Business Services Group. Sceptical of its own IT abilities, KCC felt that it needed external help to satisfy its IT needs. “We first tried to outsource partly because the political decision makers didn’t believe we could do it on our own, and given the track record on large projects

2 Kent County Council’s Implementing Electronic Government Statement, October 2002. p 3.

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in KCC you couldn’t blame them!” Craig admitted. Moreover, other county councils such as Lincolnshire and Liverpool had recently struck major back-office outsourcing deals which looked very attractive, so Kent was following something of a trend.

In 2000 KCC took a major decision: to transfer its HR, Finance, and IT services to an IT outsourcing firm. It issued an information pack for its ‘eBusiness’ procurement in April 2000 and a tender in October 2000. Negotiations with potential partners, including Hyder, began in January 2001. Throughout the long process, KCC and Hyder mapped out who would do what. Hyder would design and build an IT structure according to KCC’s needs and specifications, maintain, update, coordinate and store data from both the HR and financial departments, and deliver services to KCC in a reporting structure both could agree to.

It was not clear, however, whether the external provider could achieve the service levels required by a local authority and make an adequate return on its investment. At the time that KCC went to the market these margins were believed to be in the region of 20% on turnover, although Hyder was winning deals by significantly undercutting this margin perhaps by as much as half. But although initially thinking that a deal could be struck somewhere in between, KCC came to realize that neither side was willing to make the trade-off between the risks involved (“How would KCC explain to its citizens a potential IT-based failure in the future?”) and the rewards expected (“What profits would Hyder generate to motivate them to do a very good job?”) required to strike a deal. KCC felt that if it outsourced IT and something went wrong, it would still be accountable for the quality of services delivered to its departments and, down the line, its constituents.

In the midst of uneasy negotiations with Hyder in late summer 2001, Craig set about calculating the price tag if KCC conducted its own IT integration in-house. Through exhaustive research he realized that, besides being cheaper, going in-house would also provide a number of spin-off benefits: morale in the ISG, Finance and HR offices would rise in the knowledge that they were “part of the solution”, anxiety over calls for headcount reductions would also be assuaged. Moreover, Craig realized that the companies “out there” – the experts to whom KCC wanted to outsource – were no further ahead in their understanding of what KCC really needed in terms of IT support. Throwing out his ideas internally Craig learned that many people within the organization felt the same way. As Mary Mallet, Director of Organization and Development, put it, “During the whole negotiations around outsourcing we were learning a lot. Suddenly we realized that we could do it – and better too!”

In September 2001, Hyder and KCC issued a joint press release stating that, while the split was amicable on both sides, negotiations had failed and the £200 million outsourcing deal was dead. KCC would go for a major in-house IT implementation of Finance and HR systems.

Feeling Brave: Going In-House

“The biggest question is how fast and how far we are willing to go.”

Craig Griffin, KSSIP Programme Director

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From the ashes of the negotiations, a new cross-party group was born on 20 September 2001 to oversee the KCC-led project, now officially named Kent Support Services Improvement Programme (KSSIP). “KSSIP was Kent’s ‘do-it-ourselves response’ to the failure of the eBusiness Service Negotiations,” Craig explained. The programme was initiated by Mary Mallet, Officer e-Champion for KCC, and Project Sponsor Tom Veitch, Cabinet Member (elected Council member) and Member e-champion for KCC. Their main role was to keep the politicians and senior level officers up-to-date on IT developments. Throughout the implementation of the IT projects, Mary’s support in “protecting” the implementation team from the politicians, fighting off misinformation, and demonstrating the savings due to IT while making sure the expectations of the politicians were reasonable, would be indispensable. To cynics and critics she would respond, “Don’t keep pulling out the plant to see if the roots are growing.” Tom Veitch, the other external conduit for KSSIP, was important in identifying the demands of the political decision makers and ensuring that the programme outcomes met their needs. (Tragically, Veitch, whose experience and influence were a major factor in securing funding and political backing for KSSIP, died during the first phase of KSSIP. His portfolio was taken up by Kevin Lynes, another cabinet member, who was also a firm supporter and enthusiastic champion of IT-enabled change). The rest of the core team was composed of Dave Cox, Programme Lead for the HR transition, John Carter, Programme Lead for Finance, and June Mills, Personnel Information Services Manager. Craig would be the KSSIP Programme Director (see Exhibit 3a, KSSIP Organizational Chart).

KSSIP’s aims were defined as:3 1. To make the administration of finance and personnel processes throughout the Council

quicker, easier, and more cost effective.

2. To provide accurate management information available on-line to Cabinet and all managers within the Council.

3. To provide a web-enabled back-office platform capable of supporting the Council’s eGovernment ambitions.

4. To achieve efficiency savings that will, as a minimum, pay back the cost of investment within five years of implementation.

The newly formed team immediately prepared a brief making the business case for the in-house decision to present to the elected Council members whose political and financial backing was needed in order to launch the programme. To convince the elected officials would require a well-crafted document that showed the estimated benefits and cost of the programme and identified how the cash required would be sourced. The total projected cost of the programme was £10.9 million, which compared favourably with the investment needed for a potential external service provider. The team argued that they would break even within five years. Savings would come mainly in staffing, estimated at ₤1.2 million a year, equivalent to around 55 posts across the Authority, nine of which had been already secured for the 2002/3 budget in Finance and Personnel.4 Further efficiency savings would be made from re-engineering and automating processes, thereby delivering back-office services for less. Another major saving would be realized on the cost of Kent’s externalized payroll service: complex procedures and multiple re-keying of staff information were proving to be

3 “Cabinet Briefing, KSSIP”, January 28, 2002.

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expensive and cost reduction was fully in line with the e-vision of the Council. A number of other pressing reasons for the new IT implementation were argued: the core existing financials system, based on a previous version of Oracle Financials (Version 10.7) would be de-supported in 2002; the payroll services contract would need to be replaced or extended by the end of May 2003. Meanwhile, there would continue to be disparate HR systems unable to produce a ‘single version of the truth’, and no information was available online for managers. These combined would make the cost and risk of not proceeding very high.

After months of preparation a fully detailed plan was presented to Cabinet on 28 January 2002 for consideration. The implementation plan was formally approved and KSSIP was officially launched.

The immediate aim was to gain momentum. As Craig said, “We’d been talking for almost two years. It was important both for the project and for the business to get moving and to get up some unstoppable momentum quickly.” The plan was to deliver IT in two phases:4

• Phase 1, from September 2001 to May 2003: to establish a sound systems infrastructure and re-engineer business processes to enable the Council to transact its internal business electronically.

• Phase 2, April 2003 to March 2004: To extend electronic transactions across the full range of suppliers and partners and integrate front and back office operations.

Craig would later say that “Phase 1 got us out of a hole”.5

Preparations for the first phase had already started before the Cabinet approval in January 2002. Throughout the outsourcing negotiations with Hyder and the subsequent attempt to rationalize bringing the project in house, Craig and his colleagues had done a significant amount to lay the foundations of the KSSIP programme by assessing the project’s scope and setting financial and time targets early on:

“It was crucial to set very early on challenging financial and time targets for the programme, to set out how fast and how far we wanted to go and then be ready to challenge those targets,” Craig acknowledged.

4 “Cabinet Briefing, KSSIP”, 28 January 2002. 5 “Kent County Council – establishing an Oracle platform and getting business benefit”, Craig Griffin,

standard communications presentation

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The first phase was assessed to improve back office administrative processes in Finance and Personnel. For Finance the goal was to upgrade the previous Oracle Financials version 10.76 to the latest release version (11.5.6) and make the system available to approximately 550 users with direct access to the Finance information at the time. A new chart of accounts would also be created – the first in over 10 years. HR would require the implementation of a new system capturing information across the whole organization. At the end of Phase 1, the system would only be used by Personnel and Development (P&D) people and approximately 300 other staff who entered P&D data in the current HR systems. It was decided that some functionality such as self-service for line managers and a module for training, administration, and benefits would not be delivered in Phase 1. The configuration of the HR system should also take account of Phase 2 requirements7 such as partial access to relevant information for teachers in schools around the county and self-service access for all staff to a networked PC. During Phase 2 the Financials system would also be rolled out to 2,300 users with budget accountability.

The KSSIP team had already mobilized during the Fall 2001 to communicate their decision to both internal and external audiences, thereby getting buy-in and preparing the organization for the IT implementation. Getting support and working up realistic enthusiasm – especially after years of dormant IT – was crucial for the KSSIP team: “If you make it too dull, people will get bored and ultimately leave. At the same time, too high expectations will disappoint. It’s finding the balance that’s tough,” Mary affirmed.

Plans were presented to working groups in Finance, P&D, ISG and to a senior Business Advisory Group – basically everyone who would be involved with implementation and affected by the new IT. The draft plan was also shared with business partners such as Oracle Corporation for challenge and input.8 All groups agreed that while the plan was ambitious, it was achievable. A key task was to identify at that early stage the potential risks, such as a need for multiple software customizations or risk of technical crisis, which would require tight management. “The challenge before actual implementation is to line up all your ducks first and make sure everything is in place,” recalled John Carter, Programme Lead for Finance. Simultaneously, an ‘invitation to tender’ was drafted for final approval by the Council so that Craig’s search for a prospective implementation partner for KSSIP could begin.

Choosing an Implementation Partner

KCC already had a strategic partnership in place with Oracle Corporation and a strategic intent to become an ‘Oracle House’. Since it had already purchased all the licenses it required in Finance and had selected Oracle as its preferred HR platform during the original HR project in 1999, the choice of application was already made. Moreover, the KSSIP group

6 KCC has been using Oracle Financials since 1999. Previously the Authority had been using the Dun and

Bradstreet product ‘Millennium’ which was not Y2K compliant. The application was configured by ICL and managed by the Council, the hardware was leased and hosted by BT Syntegra.

7 “KSSIP Implementation Partner Tender”, February 2002. 8 Based on an already existing relationship, the plan was to have Oracle supply the platforms.

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argued that there would be both operational and economic efficiencies by operating the Finance and HR systems in a single ‘instance’.

With a technology platform already chosen and the go ahead given from the top, KSSIP now needed technical assistance to achieve the configuration and implementation of the Oracle suite. For this reason, and in accordance with the procurement rules under which European Union Public Sector organizations are regulated, KCC issued an invitation for expressions of interest from suppliers of implementation services via the UK Government’s Services Catalogue (SCAT). After receiving responses to a qualifying questionnaire sent to potential partners, KSSIP issued a formal “Requirement and Invitation to Negotiate” to shortlisted suppliers. By February 2002 bids had come in from five groups, including Oracle and CGEY.

KSSIP’s approach to choosing partners was straightforward. First, the partners needed to show that they fully understood the requirements and could deliver the required services within the available budget. Detailed evaluation criteria had been developed but it was clear that in a multi-stakeholder environment complex scoring matrices would be difficult to apply if not meaningless. “Eventually we distilled it down to a simple series of questions which required a yes/no/maybe response from the candidates,” Craig said. An overall assessment of the capabilities and experience of each candidate was also taken into account. Finally, KSSIP had to get a feeling for how the collaboration with the partner would develop. “We were open to challenge,” insisted Craig. “We wanted an implementation partner who would let us know if they disagreed with aspects of our approach. We weren’t looking for ‘yes-men’, we were looking for a partner.” Some of KSSIP’s basic questions were: Can we work with them? Are they committed to KCC’s area of business? Will they be able to sort things out when something goes wrong, and how? Is there reasonable sharing of risk?

After evaluation of the partner bids, KSSIP decided to go with CGEY, recognizing their capabilities by the effort they put into making their bid succeed. Indeed, as Craig indicated, “It’s important to look very carefully at the prices that are quoted in a bid. You have to understand what is being offered for the price quoted. Quite often, what on the surface looks like very good value for money won’t get you where you want to go because of carve-outs and exclusions. Conversely, some of the higher priced bids might actually represent good value for money because they encompass all the services you’re looking for with no caveats.” The £4.9 million contract signed in May 2002 covered, among others,9 completion of the Finance and HR system design, system build, data population, creation of interfaces, user acceptance testing, training, and three months support after ‘go-live’. With Oracle and CGEY now at their side, KSSIP was set to get down to business. “We multi-sourced, putting together a strong client-side team with key individuals recruited specifically for their knowledge and skills, paired with the best that CGEY could provide, and with priority access to Oracle support. So, really we did not go it alone,” Mary Mallet said. Expected date of completion was set for May 2003.

9 “Kent County Council – establishing an Oracle platform and getting business benefit”, Craig Griffin,

standard communications presentation

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Building the IT

“We took a building, cleared and kitted it out and made it the KSSIP center so people identified with the project.”

Mary Mallet, KCC Director of Organization and Development

For Phase 1, KSSIP divided tasks into five stages (see Exhibit 4, The KSSIP Roadmap for Phase 1) from preparing the organization for the IT implementation (started in Fall 2001), all the way to post-live support. CGEY would be involved throughout stages two to five. To ensure quality and overall schedule monitoring, at the end of each stage deliverables would be required to achieve sign-off. For example, the stage 1 deliverables already completed by January 2002 contained a project definition document, a scope document, definitions of current and future business processes, systems maps analyzing Oracle functionality to support future business processes and mapping interfaces, resource estimates, and a risk log.

Besides KSSIP people from Finance, HR and ISG, the implementation team was comprised of CGEY staffers and people from Oracle. “We created a team where it was hard to tell who was CGEY and who was KCC – there are many anecdotal stories about this,” Mary explained. Throughout the implementation she held a monthly meeting with the VP of CGEY responsible for the project. The KSSIP group also met once a week to discuss the IT implementation process and address potential pitfalls. These meetings were aptly called “Bright Ideas”.

Acknowledging that “people can’t stay focused for long time on IT, so it needs to be done quickly,”10 the team set about breaking down implementation into a series of parallel tasks. The idea was to rapidly implement HR and Finance along parallel tracks each consisting of design and definition of requirements, data migration requirements, training and pre-live testing, with a go-live for Finance in late October 2002 and December/January 2003 for HR (see Exhibit 5, The KSSIP Journey for Finance and HR).

Designing and communicating the new business processes was managed through iterative stages called “Conference Room Pilots” (CRP). These business user workshops, up to three days in length, were designed to ‘drive out’ answers to key configuration questions such as how information is interpreted in the business and the best ways of holding it on the Oracle system. “I don’t think I’ve come across a single organization that has managed to use the Oracle product straight from the box,” Craig said. “You’ll meet lots of salesmen that tell you they have a model solution that will meet 80% of your needs. That’s fine, but it’s the 20% that actually costs you the time and money! The really successful projects balance the elegance of their system set up (how ‘vanilla’ the implementation is) with the realities of their business. In the end, the longer and more complex you make it the more it will cost you.” Training needs were also identified in these workshops. Once the requirements were better specified, development would continue and a second round of CRPs would be set up to take the process one step further.

By sheer hard work and successful collaboration the CGEY and KCC teams kept the highly complex Finance implementation on time according to plan with go-live on 5 November. But

10 Mary Mallet, July 8 2003 Interview.

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as Craig said, “We’d taken our eye off the HR implementation and it came back and bit us hard.” When the focus was on the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) phase for HR, the team suddenly had to deal with a data migration crisis that threatened to halt the whole process.

Crisis

Projects involving multiple partners have a few defining moments around which the whole project turns - moments of decision that can make or break the partnership. The real crisis in the KSSIP project arose because of the way in which KCC had maintained data on ‘hiring and firing’ on its legacy HR systems and the assumptions about the effort involved in migrating this data. “Each time an employee swapped assignments internally we effectively terminated their employment and then set up a new record for them. Over the years, and because many of our employees stay with us for a very long time, this meant that we’d created a huge number of separate data records that needed to be migrated,” Dave Cox explained.

The initial assumptions on which CGEY had based its resourcing allowed for transfer of data from 250,000 transactions, when 1.5 million was closer to the number required. Both the volume and complexity of this data now caused a major problem for the team. (CGEY, who were working on a fixed price contract, had hugely underestimated the manpower required to complete the task. On the other side, Kent argued that CGEY had had a chance to carry out due diligence). Not only that, but much of the work on data migration scripts had to be revisited which introduced a serious time risk to the project – indeed the whole implementation risked being dragged to a standstill. “It took an intense weekend of effort with seven to eight key business and functional experts facilitated by a specially drafted in expert from CGEY to turn the situation around,” Craig said. “This is where CGEY really showed their commitment to the deal. They made their mistake but then shook themselves down, picked up the pieces, and together we moved on. The whole process and the added complexity around reporting probably cost about £400K. In the end, after some fairly intense discussions we ended up splitting the cost. What was most important was that we solved the problem and kept the project momentum going.”

Because implementation had been running at a resounding clip resulting in some flexibility in the schedule, and the reaction to any issue was immediate, the crisis was not as critical as it might have been. But with Christmas looming, the deadline to go-live set for January, and thousands of UAT still to be done, the team was starting to feel the pressure.

Implementation Resumed

Once the data crisis had been resolved, development of the User Acceptance Test (UAT) scenarios, which had ground to a halt in November, could be resumed along with system-wide training. The UAT process involved a carefully scripted set of scenarios covering the full range of business processes e.g., following an employee through the full assignment life cycle from appointment to exit; or processing the purchase-to-pay procedure from raising a requisition to payment of the supplier. Thousands of tests were run with the significance of emerging problems listed on a scale from 1 to 4 (See Exhibit 6, Examples of User Acceptance

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Tests). A score of 1 meant that the system would not be able to go live. Anything above that indicated that the issue needed to be addressed but was not so serious as to prevent the system from going live. Of the thousands of tests, 400 errors were recorded of which only 12 needed to be addressed before going live. This low error rate represented a huge achievement for the KCC/CGEY/ Oracle coordination.

KCC went live with its new system in November 2002 for Finance, and in January 2003 for HR. This represented a start-to-finish of five and a half months for Finance and eight months for HR. Go-live was ‘Big Bang’ as Craig explained, “Parallel running increases the complexity of input and perpetuates old practices. We put in place rigorous rehearsal and test procedures to ensure there were no surprises.” However, go-live is not the same as handover. A system can go live with much left to be completed and the user is rarely happy until all the niggling faults and problems are resolved. A number of problems appeared immediately after cutover. A snag list similar to the UAT list was created and continuous help-desk support and system fixes with assistance from CGEY was feverish. After all, part of the contract with the implementation partner was that they would provide three months post go-live support. This was good planning: it was three full months before the new systems were stabilized and the champagne could be poured.

Where Did We Come From and Where Do We Go?

During Phase 1, KCC was looking for a better way of doing its internal back-office business transactions. The aim was to cut costs, increase the predictability and reliability of services, and improve the way business was run by advising on the most appropriate information flows. The new, rationalized system platform would allow KCC to make significant reductions in the number of staff supporting its back-office services without affecting the quality of service offered, and move extra staff to front-line positions which the county’s citizens could see and judge. These benefits are yet to be quantified but one other result is sure: the culture of KCC has changed. “We started developing a philosophy and culture within the KSSIP programme that properly planned and properly timed our mission would succeed,” Mary explained. “Our ‘we can do it!’ attitude was a huge change,” she exclaimed. “In addition, the model of operation that the KSSIP team established was a blueprint for the way in which we would reshape our Information Systems Group. Eventually we would reduce our systems support teams from 150 to less than 80,” Craig continued.

KSSIP’s next challenge is to push forward with Phase 2 of the plans: to extend electronic transactions across the full range of suppliers and partners and integrate front and back office operations. Slated for completion in March 2004, work has already started behind schedule. But with the hard part of the Financials and HR IT implementations and the integration of back-office systems out of the way, KSSIP expects to finish on time and on budget. Optimistic? Maybe, but surely more realistic for the KCC of today than for the KCC of 1999. The journey through Phase 1 has left a feeling of confidence at KCC. After years without achieving any integration of its back-office IT systems, eventually its efforts and decisions paid off. What made it work for KCC? What were the critical points on its path from IT paralysis to IT success? What were the critical success factors for the IT implementations? And what were the most important gains from this adventure?

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Exhibit 1 Location of Kent11

Kent County Council

11 From www.mapquest.com

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Exhibit 2 ISG Organization Pre-KSSIP

Corporate ISM

Strategic ProjectsManager Strategy Manager Contracts Manager Monitoring &

Resources ManagerCounty Services

Manager ISM Social Services ISM Education &Libraries

ISM StrategicPlanning

Project Managersx 7

Admin Supportx 1

Contracts Officersx 2

Procurement Officersx 2

Admin Supportx 1

Quality & StandardsOfficer

x 1

Training &Development Officer

x 1

Programme OfficeManager

x 1

Operational SupportOfficers

x 2

Office Managerx 1

Office SupportOfficers

x 6

IS Advisorx 3

Kent Access ProjectCo-ordinator

x 1

Strategy SupportOfficer

x 1

StrategyDevelopment Officer

x 3

Project SupportOfficer

x 1

Technical Consultantx 2

Technical SupportOfficers

x 3

Telephone ServicesManager

x 1

Telephone Engineerx 1

Machine RoomManager

x 1

Team Leaderx 1

User SupportOfficers

x 16

IS Advisorx 1

Technical LiaisonOfficer

x 1

Team Leadersx 4

Developersx 16

Business Analystsx 7

SystemAdministrators

x 3

User SupportOfficers

x 11

Admin Supportx 2

IS Advisorx 1

Regional SupportOfficers

x 30

Operations Managerx 1

Adminx 6

Technical LiaisonOfficer

x 1

NGFL Officersx 2

ICT ProjectsManager

x 1

Admin Supportx 1

Regional SupportManagers

x 2

Technical Assistantsx 3

Training, Marketing &Events Manager

x 1

Developersx 15

Technical StrategyManager

x 1

Technical Advisorx 1

Team Leaderx 1

Developersx 3

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Exhibit 3a KSSIP Overall Organizational Chart

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Exhibit 3b KSSIP Organizational Chart

Peter MarsdenQuality Assurance &

Project Support

KSSIP Active / Programme Office / Programme Management / Structure Diagrams / Overall Programme Structure v1.11 -16.12.02 PM

Joel BrassingtonDevelopment

Manager

Rob ThompsonTechnical Design

Authority

Mike TaylorPMO Manager

Jackie BourneHelpdeskManager

Claudia BrackImplementation Delivery

Manager

Clive GreavesPurchasing Manager

Andy Heynes (to Dec)Steve Richardson (Jan)

Release Management & QA

Julian FerreiraHR

Development Lead

CGE&Y Development

SupportSemi IdowuJide Lipede

Richard PickettMatthew Crone

Paul GoodSanjaya Patro

Sreedhar SangaAmol ParkhiDarren ScottOkari Roberts

Sandeep KamraJunaid Karim

Emma HirstProgramme Administrator

Paula GwynneTeam Secretarial /

Admin Support

Craig GriffinProgramme Director

Dion MetcalfeHR Functional Lead

Lawrie IrvineHR Implementation

Manager

Carol SpinkCath Head

Judith MiltonJohn CarterPhil Stone

Vicky TompsettNancy Seaton Dave Cox

Business Lead

Nikki EvansLeon HolmesBen Rashud

Ray LongChris Steer

Graham DugganDele AdeleyeRichard Outen

Guy Parker

Charles WhitmoreTechnical Infrastructure

Manager

Andrew DarfoorSystem Test

Manager

Shaz AnsariSarah CrabBrian Frost

Charles DavisSheetal Patel

HelpdeskSystemTesters

Marcia EpsteinPMO Analyst

Paul LampeImplementation Manager

Marcia DruryColin TitzellIan Jenkins

CGE&Y FunctionalSupport

Philip Pursglove

Fiona PerryFunctional Support

Lead

John CarterFinance Team

Lead

Paul StuddKim HowardDanielle Gear

Stefani Thurkle

Lynda McMullanCounty Finance

Officer

Nick VickersFinancial Services

Manager

Finance Support KSSIP - Finance Finalisation & HR Implementation

Helen OwenSarah Thrift

Sandra Lawrence

HR Areas

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Exhibit 4 The KSSIP Roadmap for Phase 1

The Road Map will apply to each Project within the Programme!

• Configure new Organisation Structure and Processes

• Undertake Change Management across KCC

• Prepare for Directorate benefit realisation

• User Acceptance Testing• Systems Implementation• Develop Reports & Forms• Integration Testing• Project Teams Training• Prepare and agree cutover plan

• Identify Aims, Scope, Approachand key issues to resolve

• Produce Programme Brief• Launch Programme• Produce Programme PID• Define & assign organisation• Define skills & establish

resources• Set-up risk & issues log• Produce sub-project PIDs• Develop Programme Plan

with Directorates• Outline Technical

Requirements• Recruit project staff

Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3

Stage 4Stage 5

ProgrammePreparation

Implementation

Pre-live Testing & Training

Go live & Support

Design & Set-up

Jan 2002

Programme Launch22nd Oct 2001

• Hold requirement workshopswith the business

• Define and communicate newbusiness processes and organisationstructure

• Refine Programme Brief & PID• Review impact on systems &

organisation environments• Commence data cleansing• Programme Team training• Procurement• Detailed technical requirements

• Agree go-live strategy• Finalise cutover plan with Directorates• Role based Training & Education• Data Conversion• Resolve all outstanding crucial issues

• Set-up support organisation• Bed down new processes

& systems• Establish Super users• Monitor “go live”• Client acceptance• Develop lessons learnt• Close Programme (Projects)

Programme Coordination / Project Brief / KSSIP Road map 05.04.02 v3.3

KSSIP Road Map

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Exhibit 5 The KSSIP Journey for Finance and HR

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Exhibit 6 Examples of User Acceptance Tests

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