North Wales councils share education system deal

Six local authorities in North Wales have jointly procured an information system to support their education services. The deal aims to provide savings and promote more collaborative working in the region. A consortium involving Conwy and Wrexham county borough councils, the Isle of Anglesey, Denbighshire and Flintshire county councils and Gwynedd council have done a three year deal with Capita for the use of its One system to manage data on children. Peter Weston, the project manager for the implementation, told GGC that it derives from the widespread use of the system in Wales and the influence of the regional schools improvement and effectiveness service. He is aiming to begin implementing the software modules in April 2012 and to have the whole system in place by August. The system will provide a secure, single view of a child, including key information such as pupils' attendance, behaviour and achievement in school. Authorised staff will be able to access information from other councils. Weston said the consortium used a voluntary exante transparency notice for the deal - under which it announced the intention to buy the system from Capita and allowed time for other suppliers to raise a challenge - and agreed a pricing model and terms and conditions with the company. The six councils will continue to purchase their own licences and run their own systems, but these will be hosted at a single location and use a set of commonly agreed modules. "By planning to use one system we've been able to agree a set of software modules, harmonise data and standardise codes, and this will lead us to be able to harmonise business processes," Weston said. "We're already working on data quality and integrity. "If you're using the same sets it can enable the authorised, secure access from any one of the councils to their shared data. It's removing constraints on organising the provision of services." He said the use of core modules and harmonisation of databases will support more collaborative working across the region. "A number of regional services will emerge in which people from across councils will have to and be able to contribute to all six of the management information systems," he said. "We've done a privacy impact assessment based on guidance from the Information Commissioner's Office, and looked at all of the issues that might impact on the privacy of individuals. "The IT security officers are working collaboratively to provide guidance, and formal protocols will be agreed across the consortium." Initial efforts to standardise data are expected to focus on pupils' addresses, school admissions and transfers, and the transfer of data between schools and councils. Weston added that it will be possible to run data searches and analysis across all of the councils' systems. The One system can help to identify common problems - for example, a cohort of boys with low attendance and poor progress in some subjects - and prompte the authorities to take appropriate action. The consortium is currently looking for one of its member councils to take the lead in implementation; a decision is expected by the end of November. It has also reached an agreement to have access to Wales' Public Sector Broadband Aggregation network for the creation of a secure extranet for the six councils. Weston said the deal will provide savings of about 60% on maintenance costs and more on licensing: "Potentially the greatest savings are from efficiencies, but at the moment it's difficult to identify these." Geraint James, statutory head of education services at Conwy and chairman of the North Wales Consortium, said: "Having a single IT system in place across all six authorities in North Wales is absolutely essential to ensuring councils and schools can work more closely together and intervene earlier in children's schooling to raise their achievement." This article is published by Guardian Professional. For weekly updates of news, debate and best practice on public sector IT, join the Government Computing Network here.