Essex Online Partnership (EOLP)

Essex Online Partnership is a combination of 16 public sector organisations working together on ICT projects across Essex. Our vision is to secure the best use of resources, to improve local services and reduce costs in support of the ongoing changes within the public sector, particularly incorporating New Technologies.

Formed in 2002 in response to the Government’s “e-government programme”, we support the development of integrated and accessible local services to Essex residents and businesses in ways that are convenient to them, helping organisations become more efficient.

Since its inception, the partnership has developed significantly to support key aims of delivering cost-effective ICT solutions where partnership working is appropriate.

 Our Vision:


Local authority business is undergoing a radical change as financial pressures mount,
citizen expectation for service quality increases and new ways of working emerge.
Essex authorities will also need to be able to respond to the national vision for the
use of technology. The opportunities afforded by emerging information technology
can, if appropriately applied, support the development of local authority services to
accord with their key business drivers within the context of:
• Supporting business initiatives at a local (e.g. clustered shared services) and national (e.g. Tell Us Once) level.
• Enabling customer access to local services from any location.
• Enabling local authority staff to work flexibly from any location using any device.
• Driving value for money through the commissioning of operationally effective and innovative technologies.
• Supporting digital inclusion for Essex citizens and business.Pioneering Value for Money:

Shared Infrastructure:

The partnership created a secure network called the Essex Public Sector Network. It provides a platform for secure information sharing between partners as well as for sharing systems. This can be countywide or just a local agreement between a few partners. It also provides the secure infrastructure where accommodation is shared between partners.

Another success is the implementation of our aggregated link to the Government Connect Secure Extranet. The Secure Extranet links to most central Government departments and all local authorities as well as many other public sector organisations, such as the NHS and police, and accredited commercial organisations. Instead of 14 different connections from our participating partner groups, our partnership has established two aggregated connections, an approach which cuts connection costs every year by at least £51,000. Partners also benefited from working together to share experiences, ideas and approaches as well as technical expertise.

Pioneering Value for money:

ll our members pride themselves on achieving value for money in all we do and in the past three years our combined purchasing power has saved our organisations, and ultimately the taxpayer, nearly £4million.

The partnership, with the support of the Procurement Agency for Essex, collaborated with the Office of Government Commerce for one of its national e-auction programmes. Technical specifications for client hardware (PCs and laptops) were agreed within the partnership, which were then used to influence the e-auction specifications along with many public sector organisations across the country. The e-auction resulted in one of our biggest individual savings – about £1.2million in 2008/9.

Subsequently, the partnership was invited to participate with the London Primary Care Trust procurement organisation for the establishment of a price competitive framework for servers. Building on our engagement with both this and the e-auction, the partnership has now implemented its own hardware procurement arrangement, continuing to make savings for our partnership.

 

Other partnership achievements:

  • Shared knowledge and technical skills
  • Joint research to keep abreast of technological advances
  • Joint procurement leading to 35% savings on list prices of encryption products to provide security for mobile devices
  • Discounted pricing framework for a variety of software solutions
  • Support for shared accommodation between partners
  • Shared systems between partners
  • Shared disaster recovery arrangements
  • The resource team provides consultancy and training services to the partnership
  • County wide telephony network 

 The Future:

We are continuing to develop to ensure our work remains relevant to the changing needs of Essex authorities and our residents.

Future priorities include:

  • Establish a route to joint delivery of IT to maximise Business Benefits
  • Capitalising on partnership opportunities arising from new Technologies
  • Supporting, from the ICT perspective, the changes needed for the Essex public sector services
  • Further development of the secure ICT network for partnership members
  • Supporting initiatives such as shared services, shared accommodation and mobile and flexible working
  • Continually updating and improving joint framework policies and toolkits
  • Maintaining infrastructure operational support
  • Searching for further collaborative buying arrangements to maximise savings
  • Exploitation of opportunities offered by network access to the wider public sector through Government Connect to ensure Essex authorities and residents are best placed to achieve cost-effective benefits
  • Fostering relationships with similar partnerships, other local government bodies and health organisations to achieve mutual benefits

 

Our Governance:

The partnership is sponsored by the Essex authority Chief Executives. The partnership’s management group consists of representatives of all partners, meets monthly and controls and commissions the annual programme of work. It is the overarching strategic governance body for the partnership. The partnership is becoming increasingly engaged in business-led projects in addition to its earlier technology-focused activities and so a “mentor” Essex Chief Executive has been appointed who will provide guidance on the partnership’s high level objectives.

The Opportunities Through Technology group is an investigative group meeting monthly to identify new opportunities for joint working to improve effectiveness and efficiency within individual authorities and partners. This group searches for common solutions, shares experiences, lessons learned and policies as well as organising and receiving presentations from existing and potential suppliers. The Infrastructure Board manages and monitors the Essex Public Sector Network. The board reviews all new partner requests for use of the infrastructure. It also reviews issues and incidents affecting the infrastructure and looks for solutions or recommendations.

The partnership supports Pan Essex business groups such as the information governance group covering freedom of information and data protection, geographical information, the web group and the collaborative procurement board as well as projects which are commissioned by the management group.

 

 

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