…ICT Strategy continued

The Highways Agency’s ICT Strategy

Introduction

This Strategy sets out how Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is to be employed across the whole of the Highways Agency. It sets out how we will take advantage of the opportunities presented by sound and innovative ICT to support the achievement of the Agency’s Business Strategy, including our Information Strategy.

The strategic use and exploitation of ICT is now an integral part of our business planning and change processes, which are driven by business need, rather than being technology-led. Business planning and change decisions can be informed and influenced by technological possibilities, but business-need remains the paramount consideration. Technology must become a servant of the business, and an enabler of progress.

We also now recognise a strategic requirement that ICT must be employed consistently, and in a joined-up way, across the whole Agency. Inconsistency equals inefficiency, equals poor value for money, equals poor customer service.

The Highways Agency

We recognise that the Agency is a single organisation made up of a number of connected and interdependent business domains. We use ICT on the roadside and in our control centres to actively manage traffic on our road network. We use ICT in our offices to support all our business processes. Our supply chain makes full use of ICT. In addition, we use different ICT facilities to communicate with, and serve, our customers.

We recognise the need to work cooperatively and seamlessly across these domains by adopting an integration approach where possible and a “federated” approach where not. We recognise the need to work collaboratively in Partnership, both within the Agency, across directorates, and with our supply chain partners and other stakeholders. The more we can work together, amalgamate and co-ordinate our use of ICT, the better job we will all do.

Our People

We recognise that to be fully effective, our people need to have the right skills to use ICT, and that ICT systems need to be designed to meet business needs, which include ease of use. We recognise that good ICT can make a significant contribution to valuing and encouraging diversity within our workforce, and equally that bad ICT can have a damaging effect.

Working with Our Partners

We recognise the importance of our delivery partners to the success of the Agency. We will give clear strategic leadership and direction to our partners on the way ICT is to be employed by the Agency. Importantly, we will look to our delivery partners to use their expertise and experience to develop and deliver systems and services that best meet our strategic business needs.

Governance

We recognise the need for strong Governance over the deployment and use of ICT to ensure adherence to the strategy and architecture – see our Executive Briefing – Central Design Authority.

We believe that strong change management is essential to good Governance of ICT. We expect everyone concerned to recognise that the Agency has an existing landscape within which there are many complex deployments of ICT. We require that proposals to make changes to that landscape must take full account of the existing state, describe the proposed “to-be” state and present a clear plan to achieve the proposed changes. In this way, we wish to encourage innovation and improvement, but within a controlled environment.

We now recognise that management at the Agency Portfolio (Programme of Programmes) level is essential, and the only way that an ICT Strategy can be effective. We have established a set of principles for the use of ICT within the Agency, and these are set out in our EA Principles.

We expect as a fundamental requirement, that ICT and its development must offer value for money. We also require active prediction and measurement of the benefits from our investments in ICT.

We expect everyone to manage risk in an appropriate manner. That means that risks will be routinely and actively identified and reviewed, and appropriate mitigation will be put in place. We will not be risk averse in our approach: we will look to mitigate risks to a residual level which is acceptable to the business. This is particularly relevant to our information security architecture and risk assessments associated with any change proposals.

The Economic Climate

As part of the Government’s fiscal stimulus programme the Agency is bringing forward £400 Million of investment in 2009-10. In contrast the Agency has been tasked with producing £294 Million in savings during 2010-11. Some economists suggest that the budget deficit could peak at 10% of GDP, compared to the Treasury’s 8% forecast[1]. Predictions are that departments will need to cut budgets by 6% across the board but in order to protect front-line services (Health, Education and Welfare) some departments will be worse affected – thus the Agency could be faced with further cut-backs of up to £600 Million per annum. The message is that we must do more with less. A key theme for our strategy, therefore, is “Invest to Save” through the deployment of Common Services and their underlying technical infrastructure. This will facilitate re-use across multiple services so that the duplication and inefficiencies of legacy silos will become a thing of the past and not replicated in future deployments.

From Systems to Services

The HA’s strategy is to transition our ICT capabilities to a service-based, modular architecture, rather than building large monolithic systems that serve only their own local silos. Service-based modules will allow and encourage their re-use by other services. By re-using modules to provide common services, the HA will gain efficiencies and reduce overall expenditure. This move to a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) provides a direct linkage with Service Management and procurement through Service-Based Contracts. We will drive Service Providers to deliver cost-effective solutions based on Commercial of the Shelf (COTS) packages and/or Open Source Software (OSS) through selection of the Most Economically Advantageous Tenders (MEAT).

Transformational Government

The Agency’s ICT Strategy is a microcosm of HMG’s Transformational Government – Enabled by Technology. We will develop a single, unified virtual network in line with the Public Sector Network (PSN) concept with its common design, standards, SLA’s, security and governance. We will overlay business and operational services to create a private, domain-based “HA-Cloud” as per the “G-Cloud” model, using Cloud Computing – an extension of the SOA concept in a net-centric world. We will pursue our own “Greening of ICT” agenda in order to meet sustainability targets for CO2 emissions.

Infrastructure Enablement

Migration to the HA-Cloud cannot be achieved at “the flip of a switch” – a transitional step-change is needed in order to position the Agency to realise this vision. As our first priority, we will therefore invest in Common Services and the infrastructure to support them. The initial step in this process is to establish an Agency-wide Integration Centre of Excellence – a service provided through partnering with a recognised Systems Integrator with a proven track record which includes Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). We will then select the standard architecture building blocks required to support enabling infrastructure services such as: 1) an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) or Service Fabric; 2) an Identity Management (IdM) and Enterprise Single Sign-On (ESSO) service; and 3) a Directory Service.

In parallel, we will build out, through re-use of our existing infrastructure assets and investments, Agency-wide services for Geographic Information Systems (GIS) including the Unified Road Network Model (URNM) – these form key components for our Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) which aligns with the EU INSPIRE Directive and UK Location Strategy. Key to the realisation of our “One Agency” vision is our network convergence strategy which requires secure inter-connection of NRTS and HAbIT networks.

As more than 95% of every thing we do is delivered by the supply chain[2], we will enhance our partner’s access to ICT through improved location transparency. This requires secure access though a portal framework which integrates and builds upon our assets and investments in Intranet and PartnerNET portals, Web Content Management and Document Management capabilities. Allied to this, we will enhance our collaboration capabilities (including web and voice conferencing) in support of sustainability plans to reduce unnecessary inter-office travel.

Further information

For further information see the Enterprise Architecture pages on the Portal and HA Website. These contain a number of PowerPoint’s which elaborate on specific aspects of ICT Strategy – there are also a number of supporting Technology Policies.

Version: 0.3 30 August 2009 2 of 2

[1] “Dealing with debt: Reforming public services and narrowing the fiscal gap”, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, 2009

[2] “HA Procurement Strategy”, 2009