The shared network approach

Ongoing pressures on local government were confirmed this week with the finance settlement's formula grant cuts. Devon county council will see a £26m funding reduction in the coming financial year but, despite these circumstances, our authority is finding new ways to meet economic challenges, carve out extra savings, and maintain the best frontline services for local people. Like other parts of Britain, Devon is now competing on a global basis for growth and jobs. We have to keep investing in better communications. We need common networks that foster the entrepreneurial spirit we are famous for. To support our innovation, we need to establish common business strategies and IT infrastructures to bring together all our region's public services and their business systems. By sharing different public organisations' business systems, our decision-makers will be able to view shared information and data. We can harness all staff's extraordinary local knowledge so we can make faster, more informed decisions to improve customer service, support entrepreneurs and drive down overheads. If we set up shared contact centres, different departments can answer any inbound enquiry or we can keep in constant touch with mobile council or agency workers as they assist local people, especially the old or the needy. Sharing resources turns our expert knowledge into better frontline services. Devon is now at the forefront of 'bottom-up' efforts by local government and its partners to build a multi-organisation shared network, with assistance from expert IT providers. With a technology partner, Siemens Enterprise Communications, Devon county council has built a common county-wide network on which all our public sector partners, and eventually private sector ones, can connect. Organisations that join will gain faster access to services, cheaper telephony costs and IT systems with 24/7 resilience. There are wider benefits of this approach. Councils and public agencies will deliver better local services because they can connect and collaborate with colleagues elsewhere, using networks or Internet channels that run to strict and secure common standards. Current spending challenges This uplift in the way public sector IT can operate and deliver services will help executives like me to align Devon's resources to meet the current spending challenges. In addition, it will help ensure that local people – whether entrepreneurs, investors or residents - receive 'more from less' - when they seek help from the public sector and its partner organisations. The Devon network is also a practical realisation of the Public Sector Network (PSN), the emerging common IT network specification. This approach is helping to bring about cost efficiencies, promoting and facilitating the shared services, which are all at the heart of this network. When the PSN specification is fully ratified, there will be a wider opportunity for our authority to connect to like-minded networks beyond Devon to create a much bigger "network of networks" in the years ahead. We have shown our plans to the south west's public sector organisations, community groups, voluntary organisations and other public bodies. We have received strong support from senior executives, planners and IT personnel alike for our practical approach. Devon county council and its public and private sector partners have the best technical infrastructure to support economic development and help deliver sustainable growth. Heather Barnes, deputy chief executive, Devon county council