By Natasha Lomas, 6 April 2009 08:00
INTERVIEW
Yet another IT modernisation change undertaken by the CIO on his quest for efficiencies is the rollout of a standardised desktop environment to 120,000 seats.
Standardising is a bit of a theme for Harley who takes the view that a leaner (in cost) and meaner (in function) government IT will come by jettisoning "bells and whistles" and being content with "standard services" instead. Or in other words almost the reverse philosophy of former PM Tony Blair's public services 'choice' rhetoric.
Citizens may be able to expect services choice but IT departments should not.
"I think it's about being satisfied with standard services," Harley says. "We don't need custom services, we don't need anything fancy. We just need standardised services on a pay-as-you-use basis and when you go to standardised models the costs drop. It's when you start to customise and look for bells and whistles on it that the costs go up disproportionately.
"So we have put in place a set of standard services and it's very, very difficult for anyone in the department to step out of those standards - we've protocols and procedures around that which kind of ask questions if people want to step outside it so our desktop is completely standard."
The advantages of such an approach are manifold - including cheaper support costs and the ability to benchmark services which also helps bring costs down, according to Harley. "We benchmark services rigorously - our application services, our infrastructure services, our network services. And those [benchmarks] are built into contracts," the DWP chief continued.
Like every government CIO, he is being leaned on by the Treasury to squeeze costs - hence the target of IT cost reductions of £300m per year.
"This is the trick to pull [off] to have quality going up, to have cost coming down and to modernise the enterprise such that it's robust for the future and some people say to me 'well, I can give you quality but it's going to cost you more' and I say 'no, I want the quality and I want to pay less so come up with that for me.' More quality, less cost and that's the hard act to pull off but I think we're just about there with that," he said.
Asked what makes a great CIO, Harley is unequivocal - "a business executive" committed to helping the business deliver "what it needs to do".
But a sharp suit won't cut it unless you can be creative too.
"A CIO who doesn't innovate or create is destined to be outsourced," he warns. "So innovation, creativity, challenge in a business context and alignment with the business is crucial. If you don't have those parameters you're condemned to oblivion and you should be outsourced."
New and emerging technologies of interest to the DWP IT chief are "the whole web 2 area" - and he says collaboration and staff social networking "is something we'll be progressing". He's also excited by the prospect of how social networking technologies could get the public more engaged with government.
Mobility's star is also rising and likely to be increasingly important for DWP service delivery - Harley says its outreach workers are having "quite good success" using laptops with 3G cards to help disabled people and pensioners less able to get out and about make claims in their homes.
"We're finding that really valuable. And the local authorities are welcoming that," he says. "It's also good for our fraud detection people who're out on the road all the time and can access our systems remotely so I think there's more to do in the mobile space."
Asked how he relaxes and unwinds from the day job Harley talks up the importance of taking holidays and switching off the BlackBerry occasionally.
"I make a point of always taking my holidays incidentally so many years ago I was carrying forward holidays and would never use them and so on but I've learned over time it's important to take a break and so now I make a point of using them all and that helps me relax," he says.
"I go to the football every week when we're playing at home and I enjoy that - the BlackBerry gets switched off at the start of the game for sure but the phone's always on because in my job it's an operational job - serving the needs of the country - and it's just got to be on and that's it."
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1. Graeme Teesdale
Good interview and commentary on what could be considered one of the most significant roles in IT in current times. So what else does he have up his sleeve? And where is the service going?