London shares services
The capital's boroughs are aiming high with plans to share ICT - and therefore reduce service delivery costs - across London. Geoff Connell, CIO at both the London boroughs of Newham and Havering, talks to UKAtv about the East London Solutions group of six authorities that are sharing a technology road map 'vision' up to 2020 and best practice across the area. However for items such as data centres, he says, the willingness to share resources is growing across all 33 boroughs following the success of the Athena shared ERP project. At present, every authority spends between 1/3 to 1/2 a million pounds on data centre services, says Connell - pan London therefore, there is an opportunity for all 33 boroughs to rationalise and reduce costs. But sharing ambitions will not stop there: the group has applications in its sights next.
