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• Management
• Public Sector

By Colin Barker, 15 October 2008 08:59

NEWS

Microsoft on Tuesday launched the Business Value Framework (BVF) tool, which aims to help local authorities around the UK assess the impact of information and communications technology on their business investments.

According to Microsoft, the BVF is "designed to help local authorities align ICT to their business requirements while proving the economic and service-level value of ICT investment in terms of value for resources".

In practical terms, the aim, according to Microsoft's government and strategic marketing manager, Mike Haigh, "is to provide a way in which councils can assess the value for money from the ICT functions they undertake".

The goal is for companies to learn from the best practice of other local authorities, with Wakefield, Warwickshire and Edinburgh councils as two early adopters and examples of best practice. This best practice is pooled to draw up the BVF, which councils can then implement.

Wakefield Council's systems and technical manager, Michael O'Malley, said that in using the framework the council will achieve more than £4m in revenue savings.

O'Malley said: "We've made incredible savings through our Worksmart programme. Flexible working is not only helping to achieve productivity gains of more than 15 per cent in some services but it is also helping to achieve environmental savings."

The program has been produced with the help of the National Computing Centre and, according to Haigh, "is the only [business value] model available for local authorities as far as we know".

Haigh admitted that the BVF, as with all tools of its kind, does depend on the quality of the inputted information to produce meaningful results. "The idea is that this is a dynamic tool and the more councils that supply the information, the better the output," he said. "We are getting some very good feedback already."

The BVF is currently under beta test, and that is partly for that reason there is currently no charge for it to councils, Haigh told silicon.com sister site ZDNet.co.uk.