Agenda Content (London)

 

 

 

Welcome address
Ken Eastwood, Director Digital Nomads and National Lead, Public Sector Nomads

Welcome and scene setting discussion about the Digital Age and opportunities available to public sector organisations working in a time of ever increasing austerity.

 

The NDL Public Sector Mobile Working Report 2012 & Mobile Working in Action
John Shaw, NDL

Key findings of the 2012 Mobile Working Report. In particular focusing on some of the challenges facing local authorities when implementing mobile working, the cost & efficiency savings that are being realised and the processes involved.

An Approach to Bring Your Own Device – the Cambridgeshire CC Way
Alan Shields, Strategy and Architecture Team Manager, Cambridgeshire CC

Currently, it is very difficult to miss the many news articles either extolling the virtues or warning of the dangers of the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) phenomenon. It also appears that companies, even with a very tenuous linkage to the subject, see themselves as the panacea to every IT Manager’s dreams. However, in my opinion, BYOD is nothing new and not really what we should all be talking about.

So, what has changed and created this explosion in the media. True, more people now have smart phones and are very comfortable in using them as part of their everyday life. This is very attractive to businesses that see possible savings in equipment costs and training. I do not doubt these drivers, but “bringing” you own device is only part of the story. Once I have my device at work, what can I use it for? Therefore, I propose a change of title. Not BYOD, but UYOD – “Use Your Own Device”. And this is the point companies should start developing their strategy and polices to allow their staff the freedom to choose how they interact with the business and their colleagues.

So, what are we doing in Cambridgeshire? We have run a Pilot around BYOD using a piece of software called Dynamic Mobile Exchange (DME). The Pilot was limited to 50 users and to get volunteers, messages were posted on the Council’s intranet pages. Within 3 days we had over 150 requests. Whilst that does not seem many out of a 5,000-strong user base, it proved there was some appetite for staff wanting to use their own devices. We are planning to get the users to complete an evaluation questionnaire towards the end of the pilot.

BYOD (or UYOD) is here to stay and will become a demand from both your current and future employees. Introducing a proper BYOD strategy will wrestle just enough of that control back to hopefully make everyone happy.

• Suitability of the software (incl. usability and security)
• Acceptance by staff to use their own devices
• Effectiveness of “light-touch” training and support
• To determine and calculate any cost savings/benefits

 

Protecting Data, Systems & Access: getting CoCo compliant remote access
Tony Acharia, Local Authority Account Manager, BeCrypt

With the unpredictability of business, changeable weather, staff illness and an increasingly geographically spread workforce, home and mobile working is now becoming adopted by many private and public sector organisations. It also addresses many issues of needing to reduce office costs, provide flexibility for staff and green issues by reducing travel.

However, with remote working the boundaries change. IT departments are faced with the challenge of providing anytime, anywhere access to corporate systems and data, while maintaining network security and data integrity.

Users may access corporate data in many different ways via email or the web, using a home computer or laptop, These may become vulnerable to external attack with malware and viruses (malicious code that can infiltrate a machine) that can enable others to gain access to computers illegally.

A mobile security presentation will be given to identify how mobile & flexible working solutions can be GCSx CoCo compliant and will draw on the experiences of councils such as Isle of Wight and Islington Councils

 

Change Management and Employee Engagement in Mobile & Flexible Working

John McPherson, Internal Communications Manager, Leeds City Council

What started in 2009 as an asset rationalisation agenda has now become a significant programme of organisational change. The importance of balancing people, process, technology and workplace became very apparent to ensure we sustained the wider benefits on our journey to become a more agile organisation.

Whilst we will reduce our workplace capacity by at least 35% in the city centre the wider benefits around improving services to customers, increasing staff productivity, improving health and wellbeing, improving the workforce’s ability to readily adapt to change are all evidenced. Leeds City Council has led on the development of a RIEP funded business change toolkit working with our West Yorkshire authority partners and this is now successfully employed as part of our change agenda.

We have focused this presentation on our change agenda that sits at the heart of our programme of work and has proved to be a critical success factor in delivering our agenda and sustaining the wider benefits.

Key Messages

• You will deliver successfully for the longer term if you take people with you
• You should deliver change with people, not to them or for them
• You need to build in time for this, at all three phases of change
• It is worth the effort and will help to sustain improvements/ benefits long term