Case Study: Government
East Renfrewshire Council

The Background: Modernising Government Strategy
East Renfrewshire Council (ERC) is responsible for local government in one of Scotland’s smallest regions.  The e-Government department is responsible for ICT Infrastructure Services, Information Management and modernisation of client information services.

The Challenge: A Logical and Physical map of IT resources
As part of ERCs Modernising Government strategy, the e-Government Department was required to assess and measure the quality and effectiveness of all its IT resources and services.  A request to tender was issued to evaluate if outsourcing of IT was a viable option for the Council.

The department was also responsible for managing the relocation and centralisation of ICT infrastructure and desktop services when the Council relocated many personnel from a number of departments to a newly built office.  A new corporate backbone was required to service the telecommunications and data network requirements in the new building and the existing council facilities.

To successfully complete these major projects the client was quite specific about what was required: “Can you create logical and physical maps of all my Business and IT assets” asked Cathy Leleux, Head of e-Government. 

The Solution: Stroma^® Business & IT diagrams (B&ITs)
ERC chose Stroma^® because it creates clear, simple and logical pictures (Business and IT diagrams) of IT assets and their relationships with business processes.  The flexibility of the Stroma^® system enables business and IT assets to be portrayed in both a logical and physical context.

As part of a helpdesk system the e-Government department used an Asset Management system to populate an inventory of hardware assets.  Having used this inventory to populate Stroma’s repository other sources of information were cross-checked to insure that all key resources were captured. 

By using Stroma^® reports it was ascertained that a discrepancy existed between the Asset Management system and the deployed resources, due in part to the misreporting of information by agent software.  When factoring this new information into the proposed outsourcing contract it quickly became apparent that outsourcing was not in the best interests of ERC.

The e-Government department was tasked with a major department and personnel relocation project, the Project involved the relocation of some 300 personnel from various departments throughout the region into a brand new  purpose built office block.  This is where the power of the Stroma^® B&IT diagrams came into their own

B&IT diagrams were created to show the new structure and configuration of data and telecommunication networks, not only within the new building, but also in the numerous council sites across the region. Departmental assets and business processes were also added to the Stroma^® model to document how IT resources were used across the council to enable and support council operations.  By using the powerful features of Stroma^®, B&IT diagrams were built showing the physical location of assets and personnel, and also how these were logically mapped onto the IT infrastructure.  Additionally, during the process of building the B&IT diagrams departmental systems critical to the council but previously undisclosed to the e-Government department were discovered and subsequently added to the portfolio of supported applications.  Because Stroma^® portrayed the complexity yet made communication easier between business managers and IT managers, the relocation was much more straightforward than would otherwise have been the case.

Stroma^® B&IT diagrams were also used to accurately document how council servers and applications were used by the various departments across the region. As part of the relocation of the servers into a computer suite within the new office, a new corporate backbone was installed to allow the outlying departments to still gain access to applications and improve VOIP telephony. 

Stroma^® was used to accurately document the relationships between the infrastructure, the servers, and their departmental use.  Subsequent investigation by Internal Audit could see clear documentation and a concise record of an ‘as-built’ installation, highlighting the clear level of governance involved in the project.

Real Results: The Next Step Beyond Asset Management
Even though East Renfrewshire Council used an Asset Management system, Stroma^® was able to validate and find inconsistencies between actual hardware deployment figures and what was being reported.

Asset Management Reports don’t give a true picture. Stroma^® is able to take the next step to understanding the resources and relationships between them to achieve alignment.

Stroma^® provided East Renfrewshire Council with clear and simple models of the relationships between its business and IT resources, capturing the IT and departmental knowledge base.

The Stroma^® model enabled ERC to:

• quickly see what IT they actually owned
• Understand how IT was deployed and used
• identify critical vulnerabilities in the relocation project
• show clear governance for Internal Audit
• Understand how ICT is aligned with council service delivery
• formalise SLA requirements and support strategies
• provide a solid basis for outsourcing contract negotiations

Although one of the smallest local authorities in the UK, ERC had the same complex communication issues as any other government organisation – governance, legislative compliance, modernisation, value for money and efficient client service delivery.

Stroma^® enables IT and Business Managers to understand each other, talk the same language, achieve alignment and improve operations.