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Corporate Services Scrutiny Panel Government Plan
Witness: Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security
Tuesday, 17th September 2019
Panel:
Senator K.L. Moore (Chair) Deputy S.M. Ahier of St. Helier Deputy K.F. Morel of St. Lawrence
Witnesses:
Deputy S.M. Wickenden of St. Helier , Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security
Mr. J. Quinn, Chief Operating Officer
[15:41]
Senator K.L. Moore (Chairman):
Welcome to you both, thank you for joining us. We are a slightly depleted group today. It is a mixture of Economic Affairs and Corporate Services who are both looking at different aspects of this part of the Government Plan, but of course it is an extremely important part of the Government Plan, given the amount of money that is being identified and spent under these lines of business. We are going to start with our introductions. I am Senator Kristina Moore and I am the Chair of the Corporate Services panel and a member of the Economic Affairs panel.
Deputy K.F. Morel of St. Lawrence :
I am Deputy Kirsten Morel . I am Chair of the Economic Affairs panel.
Deputy S.M. Ahier of St. Helier : Deputy Steve Ahier .
Assistant Scrutiny Officer:
Theodore Stone, Assistant Scrutiny Officer.
Scrutiny Officer:
Simon Spottiswoode, Scrutiny Officer.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
I am Deputy Scott Wickenden and I am Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security.
Chief Operating Officer:
John Quinn, Chief Operating Officer.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Thank you. We will look predominantly at the business cases in part 71. We would just like to start and if you could succinctly describe the I.T. (information technology) strategy for us within the Government Plan and how it will affect both the Government and other non-ministerial bodies and Islanders also.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
The idea around the I.T. plan at the moment is to try to bring Government services together with a digital platform to create a secure and safe environment to give efficiencies across the service. Some non-ministerials will be fully aligned in with the plans that are happening. There are some instances where that may not be the case, due to things like independence in areas where there is need for that.
Senator K.L. Moore :
For example, the court digitisation project, I would assume.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: Possibly the police as we go through.
Senator K.L. Moore :
In terms of the vision and where we are going with this, are we anticipating that we are going for an Estonian-style model, where we are completely digital, one point of call, auto-populating tax records and tax documents?
Chief Operating Officer:
No. I think it is a fallacy to think that we are going to be Estonian. Estonia is a country of several million people. It has a history of conformism from its history, so that people do not mind carrying I.D. (identification) cards, people do not mind putting all their information into Government if they are told to. To be fair, I think we are a long way from having the kind of infrastructure, even if we had the other 2 conditions in place, to deliver that. What I came into - and I have been here just under a year - was a world where the basics are not in place. The eGov programme I think was founded on sand, because while the ambition was fantastic, the infrastructure was not there to deliver it. For example, what we have ended up with is a theoretical Tell Us Once process, but because none of the systems behind that join up, you cannot do the Tell Us Once other than by sending emails around the organisation to update systems that do not talk to each other. What this strategy is founded on is coming at it from 2 distinct ends.
[15:45]
One is putting in place the basics that you would expect of a modern workplace, so you would expect to have Windows 10 as an operating system across all the workplaces. We still have machines running Windows 2003; we have a lot of Windows 7 machines; we still have - although not on the networks - some XP machines. You would expect to have Office 365, you would expect to have the basic collaboration tools of a workplace. None of those exist today. You would expect to have ...
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Can I just stop you there, sorry? Office 365, I am a great proponent of it, I think it is fantastic, but you would not necessarily expect to have it. You would expect to have tools which can do that work, but you would not necessarily expect to have Office 365.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: I think that is a product ...
Deputy K.F. Morel :
That is a choice that an organisation makes, to take that product, to use that vendor, and there are other products, other vendors, other ways of doing things, so it suggests to me that you have come in and said: "I expect this to be the case" and ...
Chief Operating Officer:
If you are a Microsoft shop, which we are, then you would expect to have Office 365.
Senator K.L. Moore :
A Microsoft shop? I do not quite understand what you mean. We are not a shop, we are a public body.
Chief Operating Officer:
All of our core systems, desktop systems, are Microsoft-based. We do not use Apple; we very seldom use Apple products. We do not use the Google suite. We have tied ourselves historically to Microsoft. We have operated a Windows operating system; we have used Word, Excel, PowerPoint. If you are a Microsoft user, then you would expect, in a modern workplace, to be using 365.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Okay, but could you just remind us exactly the sum that we are looking at in terms of capital and revenue expenditure on I.T. programmes for the States of Jersey?
Chief Operating Officer:
Over the 4 years, the capital programme is, I believe, £99 million and the revenue is £42 million.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Yes. So, when a public body is spending such significant amounts of money, one would assume that there was an opportunity to go back to basics, and no matter we have been using Microsoft since the year dot, since computers were first sold, we could start again and use a different company.
Chief Operating Officer:
We potentially could, but I cannot think of - in all my 30 years in the industry - anyone that has.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
It would be significantly more money if we were going to go across the whole of education, health and every department and look at saying: "We are going to go down a Linux route or a different route." The costs associated would be much higher than the £99 million that we are putting in here.
Chief Operating Officer:
Training implications would be huge, to retrain 7,000 people to use new products.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Sorry, you said 30 years in the industry, but you have not worked 30 years in technology, have you?
Chief Operating Officer:
I have worked 30 years with technology, yes.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
With. Yes, I have worked all my life with technology. It does not mean ... I am just asking, because I am just looking here. You were an enforcement director.
Chief Operating Officer: Sorry, enforcement director?
Deputy K.F. Morel :
An enforcement director at the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission. Is that correct?
Chief Operating Officer: Yes.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
That is not a technology job and you were there for 4 years, 5 years. It is only because you said that you had 30 years in the industry and I just happened to have your LinkedIn page here. Yes, you have done some work. You have been acting chief executive at the Pay and Pensions Agency.
Chief Operating Officer: That was an I.T. ...
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Those are not 30 years. I do not like it when someone claims 30 years and I can quickly see that that is not 30 years all in the technology industry.
Chief Operating Officer: Okay.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
The fact of the matter still would be that to try to do it on an organisation this size, to change from the systems that we have got, the servers that we have got and everything to link in to a different way of doing, it would be a significant programme that would take a lot of time, a lot of training and an awful lot of money.
Senator K.L. Moore :
These programmes, they have been developed from the C.O.O. (Chief Operating Office) of this for the whole organisation?
Chief Operating Officer: Yes, the whole organisation.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Yes, which means that each individual department has not had input.
Chief Operating Officer:
The approach we went through, we went out to every department and we asked: "What would you like to do in an I.T. space?" and we got just over 500 requests for things that people would potentially like to do across their departments. We de-duplicated those and took out the ones where we already had capability that we could simply redeploy and we got to a number just north of 400. We then put in a prioritisation process and grouped things together and we came up with the 10 foundation projects. This has been driven by going out and asking departments what they wanted to do. We have then been through a process of socialising it with officers to make sure that the Corporate Strategy Board and the E.M.T. (Executive Management Team) are supportive that these are key things that will deliver the foundations. This is a foundation; this is not the end game, unfortunately. This gets us to being where we ideally should be today.
Senator K.L. Moore :
So, the following years will require considerable additional expenditure?
Chief Operating Officer:
If we wanted to go more towards the Estonian model, as I say, I do not think the Estonian model is the right model, but if we wanted to go down that sort of route, then we will need expenditure, yes. But we will have in place the foundations on which to build that and the power to leverage what we have already expended.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
We also tried to look at capacity. There is no point trying to get lots of projects going at the same time, because (a) there is not the capacity in the Island with the workforce and the skillset; and (b) we do not have the capacity in-house, so we need to make sure which ones get the priority and what point you do which bits of work.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
Do you believe there will be a requirement of £100 million of investment in I.T. every year for the next 4 years in the Government Plan and thereafter?
Chief Operating Officer:
First of all, the £100 million is over the 4 years, not every year. Secondly, I would not expect the level of expenditure to be at the same level as we require, because we are dealing with some very big core systems in the first phase.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Do you have an idea of what that level of expenditure might be in future years?
Chief Operating Officer: I do not at the moment, no.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
It puts off most of the spending until the third and fourth years.
Chief Operating Officer: Yes.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Yes, and is there a reason for that?
Chief Operating Officer:
Because we need to develop detailed business cases for each of these. What we have provided you is an outline business case for the programme. What we will now do is develop either outline business cases and then full business cases, or in some cases go straight to full business cases for each of the sub-programmes within that programme.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Why has there not been adequate time during the last 2 years to develop those business cases to full business cases, like many other projects that are applying for growth bids in the Government Plan?
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
The way that technology works is if we would have gone out and scoped exactly what the costs would be and exactly what the project would do right now, by the time we have gone through the summer and we have gone through the Scrutiny process, we have got to November and we have debated it and then we get the money by January, those cases would be out of date anyway.
Chief Operating Officer:
I think, more importantly, we started the development of that outline programme at the beginning of this year.
Senator K.L. Moore :
But we are now almost at the end of September.
Chief Operating Officer:
The focus has been on developing an outline business case for the overall programme, developing an outline business case for the cyber programme and developing the outline business case for the Integrated Technology Solution.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Can I just check? Sorry, I need to clarify, when you say the cyber programme, do you mean the cyber security programme?
Chief Operating Officer:
Yes, the cyber security programme, sorry.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
When you get invoiced, you tend to be invoiced towards the end of programmes as well, when a lot of the cost comes in. If you ask for the money too early on, and these projects do take a good time to do ...
Senator K.L. Moore :
Sorry, how many people are working on developing the outline business cases, please?
Chief Operating Officer:
Developing the overall programme outline business case was about half a dozen people. Developing the Integrated I.T. Solution was probably only 2 or 3 people, led by Ian. It was part of the Finance Transformation Programme.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Where are the lines of responsibility? It is the Assistant Chief Minister who has political responsibility, is that correct?
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: Yes.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Do you, as an Assistant Chief Minister, have the relevant authority to sign off these projects?
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: Yes.
Senator K.L. Moore : Who granted that?
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: The Chief Minister did.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Okay. In terms of the civil service side, how do your lines of accountability ... if you are working within or started off working within the Finance Transformation Programme ...
Chief Operating Officer:
One part of that was part of the Finance Transformation Programme, so I work through the OneGov Officer Board, the OneGov Political Oversight Group and then into C.O.M. (Council of Ministers) with financial signoff coming through the Investment Appraisal Board. For those 2 cyber security and I.T. business cases where we have got to outline business cases, we now need to spend money to develop a full business case, so the next step is then to get funding for that phase between the outline business case and full business case.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
I understood that probably at least a year ago we were on the cusp of bringing in Office 365 and here we are a year later, and it is only just beginning to hit our desktops. What was the cause of that delay?
Chief Operating Officer:
What we had was a pilot, which is about to hit.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
But a year ago I understood that it was put on hold. Why was it put on hold?
Chief Operating Officer:
We have had considerable technology issues in rolling it out.
Deputy K.F. Morel : Such as?
Chief Operating Officer:
Such as one of the biggest problems we have got is that the States does not have standard hardware.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
As you mentioned earlier.
Chief Operating Officer:
We have a myriad of operating systems and we have a very aged estate in terms of laptops and P.C.s (personal computers). What you would ideally do ... and this is what I did in my previous place, we replaced all the kit with a standard build and literally you walked into the office, you gave your old laptop in and you got your new one. We do not have the money to do that, so we have had to roll on to the existing kit, which means we have to take people's kit away from them; we have to build it; we have to find the problems with it. That is why we are doing it as a pilot. That is why we are doing the 500 and that is why we are doing 500 across the breadth of the organisation, to learn all those mistakes, or not mistakes, all those issues.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: The challenges.
Chief Operating Officer:
We have got something like 600 applications that have to be tested against the estate, again the new profile. We have tested just over 200 of them and we found about 15 to 20 that will not work under Windows 10/Office 365 in their current guise, so we have to have a plan for remediating those. It has taken a lot longer.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Those 600 applications, did you do a project initially to work out if they are still necessary, all 600 of them?
Chief Operating Officer:
We are working through that, yes.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
So, when you come to test them on the estate, as you called it, they are ...
Chief Operating Officer:
We tested 200 and something high-priority ones.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
... the ones that definitely do need to be maintained?
Chief Operating Officer:
The ones we have tested so far, the 200 and something-odd ones, we definitely do need to maintain them. Before we can roll out fully, we will need to address some of those applications working on Windows 10.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Yes, I can understand they would not. Do you think it is likely that some of these applications will be withdrawn because they are fairly redundant?
Chief Operating Officer: Either withdrawn or virtualised.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Are we paying licence fees for them at the moment?
Chief Operating Officer:
I do not know the answer to that. I assume so, yes.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Yes, so that they are potentially a cost that we can withdraw.
Chief Operating Officer: Yes.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
I think the challenge was of the old ways of working with the different departments and the silos. Everyone went out and bought their own things, their own computer programmes, so we have multiple versions of C.R.M. (customer relationship management) tools across the organisation that are all being used differently in different ways. That is the unfortunate thing of the past.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
So, if we have 5 C.R.M. applications, for argument's sake, will you be saying: "Right, we only need one. Let us work out which one we need, which is best"?
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: Yes.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Because we will be paying licence fees for all 5 of those.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: We will, yes.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
In your business plan, do you take into account the savings that you will make in not paying licence fees for software that we no longer use?
Chief Operating Officer: We have not got that far yet.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Because I note you have not added it up yet.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
The C.R.M. business case, when we go down that route, will take that into account.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
But not just ... C.R.M. was an example ...
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: Yes, but that is one example.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
... across the software estate.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: Yes.
Senator K.L. Moore :
When we have spoken in the past, the understanding that I had was that these investments are being driven in order to make the organisation more efficient. It seems somewhat surprising that aspects where a potential efficiency could be found, there is no idea of what savings we can ...
Chief Operating Officer:
In the business case we have got a figure I think you will find there for software retirement, but if you said to me: "Which systems are you going to retire?" it has been done on a: "You would expect to retire X amount."
[16:00]
That is why we put a range - high, medium and low range - into the business case.
Senator K.L. Moore :
It is well-documented that we, as scrutineers, had a frustration with the efficiencies not being included in full in the Government Plan when it was first published. We assume - and perhaps you can correct me - this piece of work is going to be the main driver for the following £20.3 million of efficiencies that we are waiting to see.
Chief Operating Officer:
I think realistically it is going to be a driver for the 2023 £20 million, but it is going to take us 2 years to implement the big thing, at least 2 years, and some of them beyond that. If you take the first big project we are tackling that will drive some benefits, because putting in Office 365 and Windows 10 should drive benefits that are quite hard to realise, other than retiring old licences. In cyber security, again very little in the way of realisable benefits, although a huge avoided dis-benefit if you have a cyber-attack. The first programme that will deliver cashable benefits will be the replacement of JD Edwards. That is at least a 2-year programme.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Who have you chosen to replace them?
Chief Operating Officer: We have not yet. Deputy K.F. Morel : You have not?
Chief Operating Officer: No.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
I had heard otherwise.
Chief Operating Officer:
No. The outline business case is system agnostic. As we move to the full business case, we will then go through a process of selecting the technology, the systems integrator and the change process that we will use to deliver that. We are assuming that it is 12 months to get us to that point where we have got a full business case and those things selected and then 12 months to deploy and start using.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
And train. One of the big important parts, certainly when we are doing the JD Edwards, will be to make sure that all the people that use it and their finance managers are brought along with the programme, so we do not have the mistakes of the past, like we did with the Integrated Care Record at the hospital.
Senator K.L. Moore :
If I could just go back one moment, you mentioned cyber security and that there would be benefits of improving our cyber security as an organisation. Has any consideration been given to the benefits to the greater economy and the opportunities for growing business and encouraging business to move to Jersey as a jurisdiction due to this investment that is about to be made?
Chief Operating Officer:
Not in the way you phrased that, I think. The issue I would say is that I think the world assumes we are already secure, so simply making ourselves slightly more secure or a lot more secure does not necessarily prove benefits. We do have a strategy though within our procurement to look at local suppliers first, where possible. We will derive economic benefit from stimulating local suppliers to deliver some of these services. In that connection, we have an industry day planned next month, where we have invited in all of the core I.T. suppliers on the Island and we will take them through the transformation programme plan so that they can start to think about and prepare for bidding for those contracts.
One of the things John did when he first came in was make sure that the contracts that the Government give out to our local economy were fair, that there was not one particular company getting more pieces of the pie than anyone else and try to make sure that it was evenly spread so that it is fair within our economy, which I was very happy to hear.
Chief Operating Officer:
We will also look at how we allot contracts to make them more available to local companies, so rather than going out with it, when we do the Window 10/Office 365, you could go out with one contract for everything and it will be a £10 million to £12 million contract and lots of the off-Island suppliers will bid for it. What we can do is we can allot it into building the hardware, deploying the software, doing the training, managing the migration to Azure. If we do it in 4 lots and we let people bid for individual lots, then we are more likely to get on-Island suppliers.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Speaking to that, we have I.T. service providers over here entirely capable of delivering these things. I would expect to see an appropriate process, so it is good to hear you say that you will be making it ...
Chief Operating Officer:
Yes, and I have been talking to Ports of Jersey, who have used one, and I have been talking to schools who have used another one, so we know of at least 2 I.T. suppliers who have rolled out Office 365 to related organisations and we are talking to them.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
What impact will a developed I.T. infrastructure have on allowing the Government to deliver its established Common Strategic Policy and what are the key areas of the Common Strategic Policy that will require a developed I.T. infrastructure?
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
We are going to be digitalising the health records. The C.R.M. tool that we have would allow Government to deal with its customers as a Government, rather than departments dealing with customers, so you will be able to see an overall picture of how we deal with our Islanders. There will be higher security, so the safeguarding of children in schools within the cyber security programme and those areas. It will help a lot of the Common Strategic Policy to be able to be delivered more efficiently and faster.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
What are the longer-term aims of OneGov that this I.T. infrastructure will help to deliver?
Chief Operating Officer:
I suppose the 2 big things that it delivers, apart from just more efficient processes, if you look at some of our processes, a good example is there are huge chunks of JD Edwards where you cannot email an invoice, so what our staff do is they print the invoice and then scan the invoice, throw the printed invoice in the bin and email out the scan, because you cannot simply email out from JD Edwards, so a huge waste of paper, a huge waste of time, so more efficient in that way. Office 365 allows collaboration, and that is probably the biggest benefit long term in terms of what we are trying to do, that collaboration between departments, by starting to create a single source of the truth about the citizen, start joining up the views of the citizen across departments that might allow you to deal with say troubled families more effectively. If you think about how you deal with troubled families, it involves justice, it involves health, it involves housing, it involves potential adults and children and Social Services. At the moment all their data is siloed, so each department sees its own data and very little else. If we could, through the C.R.M. route, start to pull some of that data together so that people are looking holistically at troubled families rather than individually at their component of the troubled family, then joint working becomes much easier.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
How do you ensure appropriate privacy in that situation? Let us say you are talking about troubled families, and there are too many troubled families in Jersey, but as a percentage of the Island, probably a very small percentage of all the families in the Island, so the other vast majority of people, how do we make sure that you are not misusing our data, that people are not looking at the data inappropriately? We have had prosecutions of staff and often they are people in authority. How do you make sure this is not the case?
Chief Operating Officer:
First of all, we have comply with the data protection regulations.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Yes, but you were already complying with data protection regulations and people were being prosecuted because they were not individually complying with the data protection regulations.
Chief Operating Officer:
One of the things with a central C.R.M. record, it allows you to segment that data better so that you can comply, so as well as pulling it together, it also allows you to better segment it and better control it. Then when you want to pull things together, you do it either by express powers, by seeking
agreement from data subjects or through data-sharing agreements, which will have to go through what is going to be constructed, a data board within the Government.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
We will also have to have auditing. We went and met with the Jersey Financial Services Commission, who do a lot of security for our register of beneficial owners, but also their security looks internally at staff, so if somebody from their finance area was looking at the register of beneficial owners, it would flag up and they would be able to understand or ask them why they went and did what they did and why they needed to go into that area.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
One of the things that bothers me, before we go into individual business cases, is the Government's track record, and both on I.T. development and privacy, I believe the Government has got a very poor track record. Why should we trust the Government to get these things right now, given that you have had responsibility, Assistant Minister, in this area for years?
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
Yes. In the past, certainly in the last term when I was head of the eGov programme, we did not really have a Corporate Portfolio Management Office that oversaw the projects. We did not have the authority and were not given the authority by the Chief Executive Officer to enforce on the Chief Officers getting information on how they were delivering projects, were they hitting their targets, were they over or underspending in those areas. That is changing in this one. We are putting together a proper Corporate Portfolio Management Office that is not done by people part-time on the side of their desk. It is going to be a proper office.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Why did you not do it the first time, when you were first in your position as Assistant Minister with responsibility for I.T. and so on?
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
I did not have any budget to do it, because the eGov budget, by the time I had arrived, had basically already been spent. The Chief Executive Officer at the time did not give it the power or authority, no matter what I said.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Surely it should be the Chief Minister who gives power and authority.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
Yes, you would think so, but the Chief Executive Officer interfered.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Is that happening now? Is it the Chief Minister or the Chief Executive Officer who is giving the authority in this case?
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: What, for the Corporate Portfolio Management Office?
Deputy K.F. Morel :
For the success that you are going to have this time.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: It will be me.
Deputy K.F. Morel : It will be you?
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
Yes. I will be the one that will be overseeing, because it sits within the programme.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Yes, but you just said you were previously overseeing it and you said the Chief Executive Officer did not think ...
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: That was in the last term.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Yes. So now you are also overseeing it.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: But I have been given the appropriate authority this time.
Deputy K.F. Morel : From who?
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
The Chief Minister this time.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
From the Chief Minister, not the Chief Executive Officer?
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: Yes, not the Chief Executive Officer.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
What influence do the common strategic priorities and OneGov have on the design of the Government Plan or have they had any?
Chief Operating Officer: On the I.T. plan?
Deputy S.M. Ahier : Yes.
Chief Operating Officer:
Both when we looked at how you work, so the bottom up, as I say, I think there is an assumption within all of the common strategic priorities that we have an efficient and effective workforce delivering them, because without that they become much more difficult, so that is why we started the Windows, Office 365 and cyber security at one end. The other end was around data, particularly around children: how do we put children first in terms of that, and around health. Probably the biggest part of this investment goes into health, so they are to be scoped, but in there as an ideal is this electronic single patient record. The other bit of that is the scanning, the electronic document record management system that we want to put in place. The one thing we have got in health at the moment is an awful lot of paper. That has a couple of effects on the patient. One is that because of the paper records, we insist on bringing the patient to their record, not the record to the patient, so we can do very little treatment out in the community because the paper records are held at the hospital, so you have to go to the hospital to join with your record. I think Rob Sainsbury said to me quite early: "We drag sick people across the Island to join them up with their record, rather than being able to treat them in other parts of the Island." The other is that because we have paper records, it is quite hard for more than one medical person to work on the record at the same time, so your patient file gets passed from consultant to consultant because 2 consultants cannot have your file at the same time. Again, by digitising all of that, that means anyone can see the record, with the appropriate security, but appropriate people can view the record multiple times.
[16:15]
When you look at how you might then treat people differently - and I know this is part of the thinking of what the new hospital should look like - you could do far more treatment out in the community, in other places, you would very seldom go the hospital for minor surgery, it can be done in local clinics because all the information is there.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
Also, when we are scoping the new hospital, we will not need to put a massive basement in there for all of the paper records.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Where would that data be hosted? My medical data, where is it going to be hosted? I am already annoyed about my medical data from the G.P. perspective. Where is this going to be?
Chief Operating Officer:
We have not made those decisions yet.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: That will be part of the business case.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Going back to the Common Strategy Policy, there were 5 themes agreed by the States Assembly. In the Government Plan there is a sixth that appears, which is modernising Government, and it appears that the majority of this workforce under that ...
Chief Operating Officer: The majority of it, yes.
Senator K.L. Moore :
At what level was the decision to have a priority of modernising Government agreed?
Chief Operating Officer:
In the C.S.P. (Common Strategic Policy) published last year, there was a thing called ongoing initiatives. There was a whole group of things, including various bits around effectively modernising Government. The decision was made, where we started trying to pull that together, so rather than having 5 priorities and 6 ongoing initiatives and 7 common themes or whatever - I cannot remember the exact number of common themes there were - but to pull all that together into the sixth priority. People in I.T. are clearly a huge part of that.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Sure. So, you are quite right, there were 5 ongoing initiatives, but this is part of one of them. For example, the fifth ongoing initiative, which is: "A sustainable long-term fiscal framework in public finances that make better use of our public assets", why is that not in the Government Plan? Because that would be quite related to ... perhaps we ought to take that up with the Chief Minister. I might be straying somewhat from our ...
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
When we replace JD Edwards, one of the things that you will be able to do - when we get the appropriate system to replace it - it will be replaced with H.R. (human resources), a procurement system and it will come with a finance management system, so we will be able to get quality information about how much Government is spending easier and quicker and probably at the push of a button, which will come along with helping us build our sustainable finances.
Senator K.L. Moore :
On pages 143 to 144 of the Government Plan, the glossy version, it makes reference to the 5 key strategic elements. Earlier you outlined, Mr. Quinn, the 10 foundation points that were agreed after a consultation prioritisation exercise. Do the 5 strategic elements connect with the 10 foundations or are they separate?
Chief Operating Officer:
Not linearly, no. Not in a linear fashion, no.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Not in a linear fashion, okay. I guess what differentiates them and then how are the 5 strategic elements agreed upon?
Chief Operating Officer:
The way that we approached it, we have talked about the bottom end. When we looked at the top end, we said: "What are the enduring relationships that Government has with the citizen?" and we identified 3 key enduring relationships. One is health. From the day you are born to the day you die, you have a health record. The second is tax. From the day you start work to the day you die, you have a tax record. The third was Social Security. Again, you start work, and possibly before being on benefits, through to the day you die, potentially you have a Social Security record. We said: "Right, those are the 3 core things that we want to look at. How do we make them modern?"
There is already a programme on the tax. That is underway and that will go live next year. It is already live in terms of internal use; it will go live to the citizens next year. I filled in a paper tax return this year for the first time in years and I could not do it online.
Deputy K.F. Morel : Paid less tax though.
Chief Operating Officer:
So, the Social Security system is extremely old, and it is very hard to join up tax and Social Security data because of the way the systems are set up. Again, replacing that with an online portal where citizens can go in and view their records, and similarly thinking about health, how do we produce a world where ... in other jurisdictions, the thinking is the citizen owns their health record, not the Government, and it is the citizen who decides how it gets shared and makes sure that it is right. That is a way we could potentially go. I am not saying we would, but we could if we had an online joined-up health record that joined up the G.P. practices with the pharmacy and with the hospital. That was where we looked at. We are saying: "How do we produce an enduring online relationship with the citizen?" There is lots of transactional stuff we will continue to do and build, your driving licence and your scallop licence and all those other things, but those are 3 things that then start to build that real core data that gives you potential insight both at a macro level into the population. That gets over some of the data-sharing, because you are not sharing personal data, you are sharing anonymised data, but you get to understand what is going on. What is the age of the population? What are the health issues of the population? You can start to do strategic needs assessments of the population, but then potentially - subject to data privacy - it allows you to do the micro stuff as well at an individual level. Also, potentially it starts to let you do things proactively in terms of identifying mismatches between ...
Senator K.L. Moore :
Earlier on you referred to the Tell Us Once project. How do the 3 enduring relationships differ from the Tell Us Once project? Because they appear to be similar, very similar.
Chief Operating Officer:
This goes back to my experience of the Tell Us Once project in the U.K. (United Kingdom). By defining the scope much more tightly into a few, you can then start to join that data together. The problem I see with the Tell Us Once, as it was scoped out in the original eGov, was it tried to do everything. The reality is at the moment we do not know all the relationships you have with Government. It was, in my view, almost inevitable, that even if you had gone out and we had rolled it out that it relied on - in some cases, because they could not join the systems up - emails to the hospital to say: "Please change Senator Moore 's address" which then relied on someone in that
hospital picking up that email and doing it. There will be a failure at some point in this process. Inevitably we were in a situation where ultimately we were going to miss someone's sports club membership or their vehicle that we did not pick up when the email went to D.V.S. (Driver and Vehicle Standards) to say ... and then you are going to get that failure that says: "Well, I told Government and I told the Tell Us Once and it did not." When Tell Us Once went live in the U.K., it focused around death, and it focused around death in a few key departments, mainly D.W.P. (Department for Work and Pensions) and H.M.R.C. (Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs). Because it focused around one activity, which for most people only happened once, and in these core departments, it allowed that joining up of systems. What we are trying to do here, so there are 3 key things. We could feed all of those into a single C.R.M. system, because we can create a relationship between your health number, your National Insurance number, your tax number that says: "This is a unique person that has those 3 numbers" and anything that is related to those we can pull together. I think it is a more realistic starting point. You can then grow out into driving licences and vehicles and everything else, but I think it is more realistic to say: "Here is something where we do have unique identifiers and we can join those 3 unique identifiers at once and know it is you."
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Can I just ask, and again, it is not covered in the Government Plan because there is not enough spending, you have clearly understood that I am concerned about privacy and so on. When you talk about bringing all this data together, you mentioned it can then be manipulated and analysed anonymously and so on, so the Government can have an idea of the entire population and where it is going, what is happening. My concern is - and I am just looking at it here now - a study by MIT showed that in any given city, it is fairly simple to figure out who is who from anonymised data. Jersey operates in that sense as one small locality, like a city is. Is it possible to anonymise data effectively in that respect? This is not the only study, but this is MIT. On top of that, have you asked the citizens if that is what they want? Because while citizens might think: "Yes, I would love to go ..." because there are 2 ways of asking the question. Do I want to go to the Government and be able to access every service instantly myself online, or do I want the Government to know everything about me? They are 2 very different questions, but they mean the same and they lead to exactly the same project that you are talking about. Have you at least gone and spoken to the citizens about this?
Chief Operating Officer:
We have not, but we plan to as part of the Common ...
Deputy K.F. Morel :
But you are asking for the funding to go ahead with the project regardless.
Chief Operating Officer:
Because the bit that joins it together is the data-sharing regulations.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Which have not been passed. I am still waiting to see it back on my desk.
Chief Operating Officer:
Yes, and there will be a public consultation as part of that programme. But even if we do not share the data in the way I have described ...
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Because it does create a Big Brother Government. It does create the ability for the Government to know every aspect of every individual in this Island, their health, their tax status, everything. While that might be great for the Government for delivering services, we all know what happens when Governments have too much knowledge about the individuals within that jurisdiction.
Chief Operating Officer:
The programme is not predicated on that, because even if you did not do that by joining that data together, you can limit the aspects you join. For instance, you could just limit it to address so that we are sure that Senator Moore 's address, when it is accessed, the Social Security system and the health system are the same, or if they are not, we know why they are different. At the moment we cannot do that.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
You are going to consult on the data-sharing regulations and so on, but how are you going to maintain that conversation with the public so that they genuinely understand what you are doing and that you genuinely respond to their feedback and it is not just some tick-box consultation exercise? Because these are fundamentally important questions about the relationship with Government and citizens. I know what people ... given the opportunity: "Yes, let us all do this." I know what it is like. Your staff will be very excited about all the possibilities, about how they can manipulate the data: "Would it not be amazing? We will be able to see this, we will be able to see that." That is what they are going to be saying. I know that, but you have to take a step back and you have to say: "But is that what people want and is it in their best interests?" because the Government is not meant to rule people, it is meant to be the servant of people. Are you having these conversations? Will you be having these conversations? In terms of the Government Plan, how much are these conversations going to cost?
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
It is one of these things, is it not? When you go out to the public and ask them something about: "What do you want Government to do?" or: "How do you want Government to do it?" and you ask 100 different people, you get 100 different answers as well. There will always be a challenge around there will be some people who do not like Government having anything to do with them and there are other people, like myself, I am happy for Government to have my data, to use my data and provide me services. I have no fear of that at all, but some people will be fearful of that and some people will not. It is about what you were saying, the appropriate service that we are delivering, so it should be customer-led, about the services we should be providing and how we best do it for the customer, not for Government.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
What conversations are you going to be having? That was my question. What conversations will you be having with the public to determine what they want?
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
We can go out and do focus groups, the same way as we do for lots of other things and go and see what people think in these groups, which cross lots of different types of people.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Are you pushing ahead with the project without engaging the public? That is what I am asking.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: No.
Chief Operating Officer:
We are not proceeding with the data-sharing project. The next stage of that data-sharing project is the public consultation.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Let us hope it is a meaningful one.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
Once these departments are all connected up through the I.T., will that mean the loss of other certain departments like the manpower services commission, for example? Because if all the information is held by all departments, there will not be any requirement for the manpower services commission.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
As in the people that currently work at the hospital delivering all the papers here, there and everywhere, that kind of thing?
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
Yes, but all the information would be held, so there would not be any need for the manpower commission, returns from businesses, for example. I just wondered if there was going to be any savings in departments that are there now which would not be there in the future.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Will there be any job losses as a result?
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
I would say that what we are trying to do across this whole programme is that when there are possible jobs at risk that the people are informed very early on and brought into a programme to see what other opportunities there are, if they would like to go and move into other areas and have training to do other things. But there is one thing that you do not do, if you pave over your front garden, you do not continue to pay the gardener, do you?
[16:30]
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
But if jobs are lost, will those who may be made redundant by these initiatives be provided with the option to retrain to fulfil tasks required by these new positions?
Chief Operating Officer:
We have a redeployment and within that retraining. If you look at it in total, the first year of the Government Plan talks about £80 million worth of new investment. That is going to require quite a lot of people, so even if you took the total efficiencies - and I know we are not here to talk about efficiencies, but the efficiencies delivered by I.T. down the line - even with the £40 million efficiencies in the first year, a lot of that does not come from people, but even if it did, you would still at the end of it need more people if you were spending an average per capita, because you save £40 million and spend £80 million. There will inevitably be individuals who are not able to retrain or do not want to retrain, but do I think that this will lead overall to a huge reduction in manpower? No. It will be people doing different things. We have an awful lot of robotic tasks undertaken by people today. That printing and scanning of invoices is not the most fulfilling job you could possibly ever have in the Government. If we could automate that and give those people something more interesting to do, that would be a good thing.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
But they would still be employed?
Chief Operating Officer:
I cannot say every individual will still be employed, but I do not foresee the I.T. transformation programme, alongside the investments that are there to support the Government Plan, leading to a net reduction.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
Everyone will be given the opportunity to be involved in other work, if that is what they so wish, but it will be a personal choice.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Can I just ask, under the I.T. capital programme, it has 3 departments listed as being main partners, the C.O.O., Growth, Housing and Environment and Justice and Home Affairs. How are each of the programme areas going to link up and will there be any centralised co-ordination? How are you going to make all that work together across departments?
Chief Operating Officer:
All of the I.T. transformation is managed, as Deputy Wickenden said, through the portfolio management office. All of them will be subject to the same architectural standards, so we have a design authority within what will become the architecture team who will approve the designs, so they will be architecturally compliant and then we will monitor programme delivery through the programme management office.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
We have got some excellent architects in Jersey as well, so again, there is not necessarily any need to go overseas for that. There are a number of non-ministerial projects, such as the installation of Phoenix software in the Viscount's Department. What interaction, how does that work with you as the C.O.O.?
Chief Operating Officer:
We have very little impact on those at the moment.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
So, they kind of go off, and as non-ministerial departments they do their thing?
Chief Operating Officer:
Yes.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
As far as the Phoenix software is concerned, you do not know anything about that?
Chief Operating Officer: No, I do not.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Another capital programme, health services improvements. It contains something which is described as: "vital I.C.T. (information and communication technologies) investments." Again, you mentioned de-duplication earlier, but our concern is how does that link to the I.T. capital programme that you have? You have got health separated from the I.T. capital programme. Surely they should come as one, but you have separated them out. How are you going to ensure that there is no duplication?
Chief Operating Officer:
Again, health will be subject to the same. Part of the health team are moving into the central I.S.D. (Information Services Department), what was I.S.D. and is now the Modernisation and Digital function. When I.S.D. was created, there were 3 key groups that were outside of it, which was schools I.T., police I.T. and health I.T. Those are merging in as part of the Modernisation and Digital ...
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Police I.T. is merging in as well? All of them?
Chief Operating Officer: That is the plan, yes.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: It is being looked at.
Chief Operating Officer:
What we will not do initially is merge, truly merge, but the reporting line will be so that they will be subject to the same standards and operating procedures.
Senator K.L. Moore : What is the benefit of that?
Chief Operating Officer:
The first phase is just bringing them together. It is around that ability to start to share and enforce standards. One of the things that Deputy Wickenden mentioned earlier is around the C.R.M. systems. We have a myriad of C.R.M. systems. When I first arrived, I was sort of struck by one set of systems and I thought: "Well, maybe you made the decision not to use the Microsoft Dynamics platform and you are using this instead" then I got a letter from someone else offering to upgrade our Microsoft Dynamics platform somewhere else. Because each department did its own thing, what we are trying to do is to standardise components and reuse them. The first example of that is we have looked at our automation tools and we have looked at the market of automation tools and we have made a decision around which one we are going to adopt, because they do similar things. It is just a question of which one is best for us. We have done research, we have done some piloting and tried a number of them in pilot projects and we have decided which one we are going to adopt. In future now, whether it is a hospital, whether it is a school, whether it is G.H.E. (Growth, Housing and Environment) that wants an automation tool, we now have one tool which we will deploy.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Can I just ask - and excuse my ignorance - an automation tool, what does it automate?
Chief Operating Officer:
Robotic process information, so something which ...
Deputy K.F. Morel :
So it is kind of for all different types of information in departments?
Chief Operating Officer:
Yes. It automatically will produce a task, like a typical thing it might do is if you employ someone to go into various systems and pull out information and put them into a spreadsheet and then present that to someone, you could get a tool, a large number of macros joined together in a tool, that would go off and do all those things.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
We have already looked at one we are just kind of testing, which was the billing for schools. At the time, the process was very manual. It involved going into multiple systems and manually keying information in that has always got a chance to make mistakes. We have managed to run an automation tool across it that does it all in a split second and then sends out the invoice. It is a much better way of doing things and it removes a lot of areas where there could be multiple errors through manual input.
Deputy K.F. Morel : Absolutely.
Chief Operating Officer:
But traditionally each department would have gone off and done its own thing with this. What we have now got, we have said: "This is going to be our tool."
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: Common system.
Chief Operating Officer:
"This is our common architecture. We will reuse it wherever we can." That is some of the benefits we get from joining up. Ultimately, I think what we would like to do is opportunistically, as things come up where we can closer integrate, then we will. A good example, one of the parts of the organisation which is slightly separate has a service desk contract with a third party, despite the fact that we have our service desk. When that contract expires, the default will be: "Why do we not move that activity into our service desk?" There might be a reason why we cannot, but that will be the thinking that says: "Can we consolidate an activity into using our resources more effectively?"
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
Will the taxes helpdesk be absorbed into the Government's digital infrastructure after the current 4- year funding is finished?
Chief Operating Officer: The taxes helpdesk?
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
The taxes helpdesk, yes. We were speaking to the Treasury today and we understand they have had a reduction in staff and they are struggling for staff. We wondered if it was going to be permanently done away with.
Chief Operating Officer:
It is not something I am aware of.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
No. The business plan from Revenue Jersey refers to: "eliminating most face-to-face services." Is this the aim across the board and how will you cater for people who do not wish to use online services?
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: That would be one for Customer and Local Services, Director Ian Burns.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Commercial services, which is the project on page 95, refers to supporting the rollout of cyber security and G.D.P.R. (General Data Protection Regulation) across the supply chain. How will it do this?
Chief Operating Officer:
That is about looking at our suppliers and first of all asking them to comply with something called Cyber Essentials, which is a standard. What we are doing is going through our contracts where suppliers process data on our behalf or hold information on our behalf and getting them either to confirm that they do meet G.D.P.R. standards, they have got Cyber Essentials or I.S.O. 27001 standards. If not, then going through what they do have, because not everyone will have everything.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Managing contracts tenders, it is something that arose earlier. If we are going out to tender and using contractors for a particular piece of work, is there room to have no-compete clauses in that contract or: "Please do not poach our staff. If you do, there will be a penalty", for example, the cost recovery of the recruitment of that person? Such clauses are commonplace in the private sector. Is that an area that will be looked into or will be done through this project?
Chief Operating Officer:
I do not have that level of detail, to be honest.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: Procurement sits in Treasury.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Okay, but this is a business case that we have got here. It clearly states that: "We will also ..."
Deputy K.F. Morel :
It is the Chief Operating Office.
Senator K.L. Moore :
It is on page 95 of R.91: "Support development of a broader range of cross cutting Procurement Strategies, Exemptions, Tenders, Negotiations, Mediations, Contract and Supplier Management." When we spoke to Treasury people this morning, I think it was felt that this was one of your projects, so we should ask you.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
It clearly is one of their projects. It is their office.
Chief Operating Officer:
It is a project. It is business as usual of the commercial function.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
What is the commercial function?
Chief Operating Officer:
So, the commercial function is what was Procurement, so it is part of it. It sits under the Minister for Treasury and Resources' portfolio and it was and currently is still largely Procurement.
Senator K.L. Moore :
What is going to be achieved from the further funding to enable the Commercial Services function to deliver the following projects that are listed in the business case that we have, and the public has in R.91?
Chief Operating Officer:
What we currently have at the moment is a piece of work being done to scope out what that will be, so because we do not have a commercial function today, although we have a commercial director, we have a Procurement function, but it only does some procurement activity. It does not do full commercial activity. We have a piece of work ongoing that will report in January to scope out what that will be.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Okay, so forgive me for pushing the point, but for the last 2 years we have been hearing that our contracts are not good enough and that we are wasting money because of them, and this process that we are going through is aiming at driving better value for money and making savings for the public by doing this, yet we are told that this piece of work is not going to start until January of next year. Why was it not higher up the list? It is one of the core pieces. It was identified as one of the core failures in our system that was wasting money for us.
Chief Operating Officer:
We are doing some basic work on new contracts, but the broader work, the Procurement team is a very small team and we need the resources to do the work and they do not have the funding this year to do it.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Why would things like cyber security and G.D.P.R. come under this? Why are they not under other projects, the I.T. projects? There are other cyber security and G.D.P.R. projects going on in here. Why do we need a duplicated one?
Chief Operating Officer:
They are around the supply chain, so they are not projects as such. They are simply part of getting certification from suppliers.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
You would expect that to cost the suppliers.
Chief Operating Officer:
One of the things in our contracts, because they are a commercial arm, is that there is no requirement for G.D.P.R. compliance in any of our contracts, so we have been going back through those contracts and building that into the contracts and getting our suppliers to amend their contracts and getting them to confirm that they are G.D.P.R. compliant. That is not about our Government estate being compliant, it is about third parties who do activity for us being compliant.
[16:45]
Deputy K.F. Morel :
The Minister for Treasury and Resources is asking for another £300,000 a year to cover the cost of bank charges for online payments and I guess we want online payments because it is quicker and more efficient, but it is interesting that there is a cost of £300,000 a year.
Chief Operating Officer:
I cannot comment on that. I do not know anything about that.
Deputy S.M. Ahier : Page 99.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
It might be something for the Minister for Treasury and Resources.
Senator K.L. Moore :
It is under Treasury, but I think it might ... it is a line that might have been connected to online and I.T. services because ...
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
There was a programme last year to align our payment system, so when we are taking money in from any source that it all happens in the same way, rather than what we had, which was every department was doing it their own different way, so there was a programme, but it does sit within the Treasury for that.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
What are the core components that you expect: "Modernisation and Digital - enhanced capabilities" to deliver on page 104? The: "Modernisation and Digital - enhanced capabilities" that comes under your office.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Would you like me to pass it over?
Deputy K.F. Morel :
You did know that you were going to be asked about the Government Plan today, did you not?
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: I rushed out and I left them all at home when I got changed.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Yes, I appreciate that, but the Officer.
Senator K.L. Moore :
We have all been carrying this around with us for the last goodness knows how many weeks.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
We did not just drop it in July and run away.
Chief Operating Officer:
Sorry, it is the Target Operating Model. I did not recognise the title.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Welcome to our world. We are trying to understand the jargon.
Chief Operating Officer:
So, this is about building the key elements of Modernisation and Digital, so what I inherited from I.S.D. was effectively the run part of the technology platform or technology organisation. What this is about is building that Corporate Portfolio Management Office, it is about building the architecture function, it is about increasing the capacity of the change function and building the cyber and information management functions, so the things we will get as a result of it is we will have a business architecture function that will join up both technical architecture and process architecture, which will allow us to reuse components, to standardise components, to retire, going back to Deputy Morel 's earlier question, technology that is no longer required. It will give us the Corporate Portfolio Management Office that will oversee all of the big programmes and provide reporting both to C.O.M. and to the Officer Executive about performance of the portfolio. The change function we need to increase the capability of because of the big projects to do and we will need more change resource to manage that, particularly business analysts and project managers, and the last bit is our information management function, which is very weak at the moment. We have one records manager for the whole of Government, or we do not at the moment because they have left, but ...
Deputy K.F. Morel :
May I ask how many records officers have we made redundant in the past few years?
Chief Operating Officer: I have no idea.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
How many project managers have we made redundant in the past few years?
Chief Operating Officer:
I do not think we have made any project managers redundant.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
I am just wondering, making sure that we are not hiring people that we have just sacked.
Chief Operating Officer:
As far as I know, since I have been here, there has only ever been one record manager post and they left voluntarily. In that space there are 3 key areas. So, we need to get on top of records management because we are not on top of records management. Again, cyber security is currently overseen by one person and one support person. We need a bigger cyber team to do that properly. I mean, 2 people for an organisation the size of the Government to run the whole of the cyber security estate is just too lean.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
How many are you expecting to hire there?
Chief Operating Officer:
A team of 7 and that team of 7 with an outsourced security centre.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
So, you would be able to provide us with ... it seems like you know exactly, understandably, what you want, so would you be able to provide us with the information as to what those 7 people would be doing?
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: We have got a business case for the cyber security stuff.
Chief Operating Officer:
Yes, we have got a business case for the Target Operating Model with all the structure charts in it.
Senator K.L. Moore :
We only received the majority of these on Thursday of last week and have not yet had the opportunity to get through them all.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Contrary to what the Chief Minister said we have only had these for days.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
Have you got the ones we have just spoken about, the cyber security one and the Target Operating Model?
Deputy K.F. Morel :
We have the cyber security programme.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
Why did you discount E.Y.'s (Ernst and Young) calculated underfunding figure with the Modernisation and Digital Transformation Programme from £6 million to £5 million, and is this figure year-on-year?
Chief Operating Officer: Sorry?
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
The Modernisation and Digital Transformation Programme was underfunded, apparently. Do you have any knowledge of this? No knowledge of the E.Y. ...
Chief Operating Officer:
I do not know the answer. On the Target Operating Model E.Y. ... yes, sorry, again talking about the T.O.M. (Target Operating Model) I was confused between the Digital Transformation Programme and the T.O.M., sorry.
Senator K.L. Moore :
I think we are trying best to understand how these things all fit together.
Chief Operating Officer:
Yes, sorry, so the T.O.M, we looked at EY's model and the reason I took £1 million out, one was because I thought it was quite rich, their model. The other is that what we will look to do is fund part of it through projects, so rather than having a big standing army and hoping projects come along, we will have a core change resource and then we will gear up as individual projects come along, so a good example, within the Integrated Technology Solution when we stand the programme team up, because it will have such a huge impact on the Corporate Portfolio Management Office, we will stand up a person for that project specifically to sit inside the Corporate Portfolio Management Office to manage all of the streams of work coming in, because it will have both a technology stream, a data stream, a process re-engineering stream, a business change stream, so it will need a dedicated resource, so we will pay for that through the project. When that project finishes that person will fall away. We will not leave that person sitting there waiting for another project to come along, so that is one of the reasons that we took £1 million out, was to say we will do some of this on a flexible basis, rather than having a larger standing army.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
How long do you expect this Corporate Portfolio Management Office to last?
Chief Operating Officer:
If you just look at the business case for the T.O.M. you will see that in the structure chart for the Corporate Portfolio Management Office they have got the one that we have agreed to go ahead with and they have put in an appendix an alternative model, which had more people in it, but we will move to that alternative model as capacity is required, rather than building the capacity and waiting for things to come in.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
I understand that. How long do you expect the C.P.M.O. (Corporate Portfolio Management Office) to exist?
Chief Operating Officer: Overall, permanently.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
It is a permanent thing?
Chief Operating Officer: Yes, but it will flex up ...
Deputy K.F. Morel : Are you setting it up?
Chief Operating Officer:
Yes, so you will have a core team and then you will flex up and flex down as the volume will change.
Senator K.L. Moore :
So, change will be a constant feature of the organisation going forward?
Chief Operating Officer: I think so.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
Certainly, within the next 4 years. We do not know what the next Government will decide to do.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Why have you chosen a 4-year timeframe? It does strike me that the amount of money you want to pour into this dwarfs other areas, which you know the public are far more interested in. I am saying why could you not spread this over 8 years?
Chief Operating Officer:
So, if you look at the Technology Transformation outline business case, it is a 7-year business case. It is just the first 4 years have been picked out ...
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Why could you not spread these 4 years further? Why not? Why could you not spend half as much each year?
Chief Operating Officer:
We could. I mean, there are some burning platforms that have to be addressed.
Deputy K.F. Morel : I appreciate that.
Chief Operating Officer:
The later you complete the longer you put off the benefits, so in terms of going back to how do you get some of these benefits in by the end of the Government Plan, like I say, we did not do the technology case as a 4-year case. If you look at the thing it is a 7-year case, because we did not think that 7 years was ... but to finish in 7 years you have to have started everything within 4 years.
Senator K.L. Moore :
What are the ultimate benefits? Are they a modernised Government? There's the 6 common strategic priorities that tells us or is it something else?
Chief Operating Officer:
For me the key benefits of delivering the Technology Transformation Programme is much better online service, so this is being able to interact with Government digitally for the 3 big things we have talked about plus a whole bunch of transactional activities.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Okay, and then it is going to be an efficient and effective modernised Government, security and resilience, those 3 items that are highlighted in R.91?
Chief Operating Officer: Yes.
Chief Operating Officer:
We should not underestimate security and resilience. If you look at what has happened - I do not know if you have looked, you probably have not - but Google: "Baltimore cyber-attack" and see what happens to the council when it comes under cyber-attack. They had to shut down everything, revert to doing everything on paper. They could not make any ...
Deputy K.F. Morel :
I appreciate the importance of cyber security.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Yes, absolutely, but it does go back to the Deputy 's question though in terms of these items or these benefits are not going to make a massive difference to the general public on a day-to-day basis, therefore there is an opportunity to spread the cost over a greater number of years potentially, and that I assume is a political direction in terms of who has directed the timescale here.
Chief Operating Officer:
We looked to see how quickly we could do this, and this is spread out over the minimum time it would take. There are some obvious drop points where you would think ideally you would have these in place, so if you take the electronic document record management system, the 2 big volumes of paper records are health and tax. What you want to avoid is building a new hospital with a big store full of these paper records and then coming along a year later and digitising them all. You have got to digitise them before you build the hospital. Similarly, if we build a new headquarters building for the civil service you do not want to build a new headquarters with a big tax store in it and then digitise the records a year later. You have got to get a ...
Deputy K.F. Morel :
You could always put off building the new headquarters building.
Chief Operating Officer:
You could, so what we were working around is saying ...
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Because I am pretty sure the public did not ask for that in the election.
Chief Operating Officer: That is not for me to comment.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
The thing that I see is while I fully appreciate and understand how poor the systems are for the Government right now, and I do get that, for me it is about the staging of it. What I see is for every pound that is being spent servicing your office there is a pound not being spent in education, there is a pound not being spent on the environment, there is a pound not being spent in health and obviously I know we do need ... this is all against the idea that we do need to improve technology in this Government, I totally get that, but does it need to be done as quickly as you are suggesting is what I am saying. Things like a big building for the Government, that does not need to happen. We have just rented a big building for the Government.
Chief Operating Officer:
I am simply saying that if you have a ...
Deputy K.F. Morel :
I am just saying that, no, the new technology in that big building, what I am saying is that we have just rented one and it is not ...
Senator K.L. Moore :
I would like to hear from the Assistant Chief Minister on this in terms of the political prioritisation around these enormous sums of money.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
We have certainly robustly discussed such things in the C.O.M, but there is a misunderstanding. These projects, as we do them, are about providing better front-line services for health and education and other areas. It is about trying to make it more efficient and provide better services to our customers, which are the Islanders. So, putting these things off is putting off benefits that will directly affect the way that we treat and serve our customers.
Senator K.L. Moore :
What we are trying to understand here is, is the bang worth the buck really in terms of we have been through an election process relatively recently? The people told us they were interested in getting a new hospital. The people told us they were interested in improving health services and they told us they were interested in education and being able to employ people who had the right qualifications to do the jobs that we have here in the Island and businesses want to be able to employ people who meet the standards that they require to make their businesses thrive. Therefore, we need to ask you what prioritisation is given and whether the benefits of this project and the others that are connected to it justify the inability to therefore spend on other things that interest the public far more.
[17:00]
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
I would say that the people that probably did not tell us anything during the election were the younger members of our society, but if you asked them how they would like to deal with Government when they grow up and they have to deal with Government it will be more digitally, but we do not wait for them to say: "Why have you not done it yet?" and then start the programme for the next 7 years.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Sure, but that is the Deputy 's point, that you can stretch it over a longer time period in order to better frontload things that have a direct impact on people's lives day-to-day.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
Do you feel that there is not enough money in there for education as it is now or do you think ...
Deputy K.F. Morel :
No, I absolutely do not. I have just been saying about the Economic Development ...
Senator K.L. Moore :
But our role here is to objectively ask and challenge questions. We are here as your critical friend, to sit here and understand how you have gone through this process and achieved the information or lack of information that we find in this document and the other documents that we have been provided with confidentially in the last week.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
The longer that you do these projects as well the more chance of things like scope creep coming out or being redundant by the time you have finished it, as we all know how technology moves quickly.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Exactly. That is exactly the point, we are going to go and spend £100 million on stuff that might well be obsolete by the time we get to the end of it anyway, so ...
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: Or might not.
Senator K.L. Moore :
... we need to understand this.
Chief Operating Officer:
What I would say about the obsolete question, one of the ... and I think the Integrated Technology Solution is a good example, so what we currently have is a 2005 JD Edwards platform that was implemented and customised to such an extent that it cannot be upgraded, so we are stuck with 2005 technology. If you think about 2005 technology, the iPhone had not been invented, the first- generation iPhone had not been invented in 2005. So that is the kind of technology we are trying to operate the Government's finances on.
Senator K.L. Moore :
It is very cyber-secure though, because it is so ancient that people cannot hack it, so there is always a benefit.
Chief Operating Officer:
Yes, but it also employs an awful lot of people.
Senator K.L. Moore :
But you have to weigh that against ...
Chief Operating Officer:
Most of the accounting is done on that other platform called Excel, which is fraught with danger and issues. What we will do, and if you read the outline business case, our chosen route is to go software as a service and to go to an accounts solution that is evergreen, so we will never get trapped in that one system we implemented once and can never change. We will have software as a service that is upgraded constantly, so that we will always have a non-redundant system.
Senator K.L. Moore :
I have to say that as a States Member for a number of years and previously a journalist, I have had many experiences of asking for information and being told: "Oh, we can give you the information for the past 3 years but then we had a system change so we cannot give you any information prior to that or we can give you ..." and so would that not reoccur?
Chief Operating Officer:
I would hope that our archiving strategy and our data transfer strategy will not give us that problem, but what we will have is a modern system that was maintained modern by the software vendor.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Can I ask, the Integrated Technology, so you are saying software as a service, so I appreciate that it can evolve and continue, but what I do not understand is that you have not chosen a supplier yet, have you?
Chief Operating Officer: No.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
So how do you know it will be £7.4 million next year that you need for it?
Chief Operating Officer:
We have made some estimates on what we think it will cost. Next year's costs are not about the system, they are about the project to identify the system and do the business change, so ...
Deputy K.F. Morel :
How can you do the business change before the system comes in?
Chief Operating Officer:
Because we know the process, we know what kind of processes we want to do, and we know the data needs an awful lot of cleansing. Even if you did not go to a new system you should do this data cleansing, because the data is in an awful state.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Sure, I do not doubt that. Absolutely.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
It is very much like in the Medium-Term Financial Plan, the last one. When the Senator was the Minister for Home Affairs there was a sum of money for upgrading the prison, but there was not a business case that says: "This is exactly how much it will cost." It was an estimate.
Senator K.L. Moore : Well, I think perhaps ...
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Somebody had to arrive at £7.4 million. You just did not come to it.
Chief Operating Officer:
No, this is based on ... so working with EY it is based on what you would expect an organisation of our size, so at an O.B.C. (outline business case) level. That will be firmed up at full business case when we will have exact costs for everything, but within the bounds of Green Book accuracy for an O.B.C. we have used my experience. I mean, this will be my fifth, and you can check my C.V. (curriculum vitae), the E.R.P. (Enterprise Resource Planning) platform that I have been involved in implementing. EY have been involved, Camilla Black has been involved, who has done several. We have used a reasonable expectation of the kind of effort you expect in an organisation of our size, given where we are, to come up with that. Now, I think the envelope is probably right. When we do a full business case, will it be exactly £7.4 million? No.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
No, I am just trying to work it out. We have got to vote on this.
Chief Operating Officer:
It will be £5 million to £10 million.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
You have got to convince me.
Senator K.L. Moore :
I am mindful of the time. Are you gentlemen happy? Is everybody happy to continue for a short period of time? Can we agree to carry on until 5.15 p.m.? Would that be okay?
Chief Operating Officer: Yes.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: That is fine.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Thank you. That is very helpful. So, another quick question is how did you estimate the £70 million cash releasing benefits that are described in the proposal under ... sorry, I am still under the Technology Transformation Project.
Chief Operating Officer:
Yes. Again, in the business case you will see we have done a range and we looked at each of those projects and we looked at what would you ... particularly using EY's knowledge, where they have done these projects in other places, what sort of benefit would they expect to get out of them.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Is it commensurate with the £42 million spending between 2020 and 2023?
Chief Operating Officer:
Yes, I mean, the capital and the revenue spend delivers the benefits, but as I say, each project will be subject to its own business case and we might find that one of or some part of one of those projects does not stack up, in which case we will not do it.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
How come you have got the cyber security business case but then cyber security is part of this Technology Transformation Programme money as well?
Chief Operating Officer:
The Technology Transformation Programme business case was put together to support the overall portfolio, so there are 10 elements in which tax has already funded, so 9 to come. Each one of those will have its own business case, so the Technology Transformation Programme sits at the top. The cyber security O.B.C. is a subset of that.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
So, what does the Technology Transformation Programme do rather than just sit at the top? What does it do?
Chief Operating Officer:
It created that vision of where we are going to go in the next 7 years. What do we want to invest in?
Deputy K.F. Morel :
£42 million to come up with a vision? Is that what you are saying?
Chief Operating Officer:
No, no. Sorry, the programme, the document, creates the vision. The £42 million is then an estimate of what those 10 projects will require.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
But then you have separately a business case for each of the projects, so that is duplicating the money, surely?
Chief Operating Officer:
No, because the business case for each project is to draw down on that technology.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
It is to draw down, so it is not £42 million plus £5 million for cyber security?
Chief Operating Officer: No, no.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
It is £5 million of the £42 million?
Chief Operating Officer: Yes.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
I understand. I apologise if I was being thick and not understanding.
Senator K.L. Moore :
No, no, that is a really helpful thing to clarify.
Chief Operating Officer:
So, we will then produce ... so this is a portfolio review that requires £99 million of capital and £42 million of revenue over the 4-year period. We will then create individual business cases to say: "This is the business case that draws down under the I.T.S. (Integrated Technology Solution) because it will cost this much" of which we have approximated £40 million in that £141 million total spend, so each one will then prove its business case, which will allow us to draw against it to add up to the total portfolio. At the portfolio level I think the numbers are right. Will each individual business case come in exactly? Will I.T.S. be £40 million and will cyber be £10 million? I do not know, but I believe at a portfolio level ...
Deputy K.F. Morel :
I just have to say my problem, and deep unease, with I.T. and Government and spend, the 3 things that tend to go horribly wrong and overshoot. If you just look certainly at this Government, if you look at the U.K. Government, project after project after project, and that is why it is very concerning when I see hundreds of millions of pounds suddenly being put towards I.T. because you can look around and see what happens. Most of it is spent badly and most of it is never ... they always need more than they budgeted for. How do you make sure that is not going to happen? I know that is your job.
Chief Operating Officer: That is my job, yes.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
But it is concerning, as it constantly happens.
Chief Operating Officer:
So again, if you take the Integrated Technology Solution as an example, because other than cyber, that is the one most vital, some of the things that we are looking at, so what causes the overspending is scope creep is one, so nailing down a scope very early on. The second is customisation and one advantage of going by software as a service is that you cannot customise, so you take out that big risk of someone saying: "Could you just change the process so that it prints it in green rather than blue?" and the answer is: "No" whereas if you have got ... when we went with JD Edwards we accommodated every department's little whim into a huge change to the system, so the disadvantage obviously is that people have to conform with a single process, which means that you have to do a bit more business change work upfront, but once you have done that business change you have locked people into that process.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
The business case for replacement assets on page 176 is 7 words long. Do you agree this is inadequate for an investment of £20 million over 4 years?
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Do you want to know what those 7 words are? "Replacement costs of various I.T. infrastructure assets."
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
That is just making sure that we have got the money if things will inevitably break down, like monitors and desk tops and those things. Just various I.T. stuff, but if we did not have ...
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Again, how did you come up with the £5 million figure?
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
You need to put a pot of money aside to do it. If you do not do that at all, then you would be having a go saying: "What happens when it breaks? How are you going to replace it?"
Deputy K.F. Morel :
You could put £300 million aside. Why did you not put £300 million aside? Why did you choose £5 million?
Chief Operating Officer:
The reason we chose £5 million is we have - and I think you have been supplied with it - a schedule for next year, which is £5 million.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
And the year after. It is amazing how it does not change.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: The Government Plan next year ...
Chief Operating Officer:
Historically, that is roughly what we spend.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
How much of that is taken up by the Azure cloud computing platform? Is that incorporated within this figure?
Chief Operating Officer:
No, no, the Azure platform is not. That is within the Technology Transformation Programme.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
The £5 million here will be in the next year's Government Plan and it might be £5 million, or it might not.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Can you understand how the public have enormous disdain or feel that your office has enormous disdain for the public when it spends £20 million with 7 words? Can you understand how that goes down?
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: It has not spent £20 million.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
No, wants to spend £20 million.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: Is allocated £20 million.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Can you understand how unhappy the public are when they see £20 million of their money being wanted and spent on 7 words? Can you not see that incongruity?
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: It says it is for various I.T. asset replacements.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Yes, but you do not then say what those assets are. I would expect that to be ...
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: Do you want a list of 15 monitors, 25 servers?
Deputy K.F. Morel :
It is longer than 7 words.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: We do not know if they will break during the next year.
Senator K.L. Moore :
If that is the case you could say: "On a year-on-year experience the States of Jersey finds that X number of computers break down and generally what you would expect when you employ 7,000 people that you would need a replacement of X, Y and Z." Some information, rather than 7 words.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: I give the public of Jersey credit that they know what that means.
Senator K.L. Moore :
How many people have contributed to the taxes and the revenue that will ... this is a capital spend item, but it is still public money.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
The fact that there are 7 letters I feel describes itself. The fact that we have put £5 million a year aside is the right thing to do to make sure that we are covered for the future.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Or it does tell the public that this has been cobbled together in a bit of a hurry?
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Presentation is most of everything.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: No, delivering is most of everything.
[17:15]
Deputy K.F. Morel : No.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: Doing it right ...
Deputy K.F. Morel :
It is presentation. When you are asking for money, presenting ...
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
The outcomes are the important things, that we get the right outcomes and that we are doing what is required of us.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
But you could, as the Chairman said, have explained why £5 million. That is what I would expect. Why did you come up with a figure of £5 million? Not just to say that you want to replace digital assets. You should then say, exactly as the Chair said: "Every year we spend between £4 million and £5 million on replacing digital assets, therefore this feels like a good figure to put in" explaining that, not just expecting the public to accept 7 words.
Senator K.L. Moore :
At the end of the day the ability to deliver this plan rests on the States Assembly and there may be a majority Government at play at the moment, but we as an Assembly need to be reassured that the figures and the information that has been provided to us stands up to challenge and that we are comfortable and confident to vote for it. If we are not, then we will not, and then there will not be an ability to deliver £5 million on asset replacement, because the money will not be there. That is the decision that we all face, and we need to make sure that we are absolutely certain.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: It will be my job in the Assembly then to make sure that they understand.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Yes, so do not treat us with contempt by giving us 7 words when you are asking for £20 million.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: I think John said there was a schedule that was handed over.
Senator K.L. Moore :
This is the public document. This is what we are working from and have been since 22nd July.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
This is what the general public will pick up and they will look at it. Sorry, I am going to change the topic slightly, so moving on to page 183, how does the electronic patient records project for the Ambulance Service lead into any wider plans to digitalise all health records? You have both of you mentioned health records this afternoon.
Chief Operating Officer:
It is a separate project. The one that is in there is around the handover from ambulance to hospital. It is not about a more general patient record. It is the specific one for the Ambulance Service.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
So where is the more general patient record incorporated within the Government Plan over the next 4 years?
Chief Operating Officer:
It is within the Technology Transformation Programme.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
How much is allocated to the project?
Chief Operating Officer:
The funding for it is not in the Government Plan funding.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
So, is the funding intended to come out of the health budget itself?
Chief Operating Officer:
No. Because it is an enabler of the new hospital it is intended that that will be funded through the hospital project.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
How much do you believe will be allocated to the electronic patient records for the new hospital itself?
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: £30 million.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
£13 million or £30 million?
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: £30 million.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
£30 million, and you think that will be an adequate amount? Why I say this is because I am sure you will have heard, the Epic system is being incorporated in some of our hospitals. Cambridge University Hospital in 2014 was the first one to take it on, and it cost them £200 million to put into their hospital. Devon and Exeter have also incorporated it and U.C.L.H. (University College London Hospital) this year in April went online with it and that cost £100 million. There is a problem that you are not going to be allocating enough funding, as Kirsten has just mentioned, that these costs will increase dramatically, and you do not seem to be prepared for it, and will there be an effect on the provision of healthcare due to this lack of provision for the funding?
Chief Operating Officer:
I do not believe it will impact. It will be subject to a business case, so we have not even got an outline business case for it at the moment.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
But surely it is essential that we move forward with it. As you have already said, you need to have it in place before the new hospital is even started to be built.
Chief Operating Officer:
The health team are working on it at the moment, yes.
Deputy S.M. Ahier :
But they have no ... there seems to be a lack of information. I think we need to get the electronic patient records up and running well before the hospital is developed and I do believe that a provision should have been made earlier.
Chief Operating Officer:
Yes, we could do it all earlier, but as to Deputy Morel 's point, we could also do it all later.
Senator K.L. Moore :
We have got one final question if you are content to move on.
Deputy S.M. Ahier : Absolutely.
Senator K.L. Moore : Okay, one final question.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
The Government Plan refers to an I.T. investment fund, which it says: "It will be considered whether the establishment of an I.T. investment fund is appropriate." There is no other detail about this I.T. investment fund. What is this I.T. investment fund? How is it going to be funded?
Chief Operating Officer:
There was discussion around whether the funding of this £99 million and £42 million be done as a specific fund.
Deputy K.F. Morel :
In terms of just from Government money?
Chief Operating Officer:
From a funding perspective. You can check with the Treasury, but I believe the answer is we are not going to. When we were writing this, to your point, it is a big sum of money. Do you go to the market for a bond or whatever to create a fund to fund this or do you do it from general reserves?
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Not for our I.T. infrastructure. We do not do that.
Chief Operating Officer: That was the point.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security: Looking at options.
Chief Operating Officer:
Looking at £140 million and what are the funding options other than just going to general reserve?
Deputy K.F. Morel :
Yes, but your I.T. infrastructure does not aid money like a toll road does or an electricity park does, so no.
Assistant Chief Minister and Assistant Minister for Social Security:
You have got to look at every option, just so you make sure you have looked at everything.
Senator K.L. Moore :
Okay. Thank you both for staying longer and for answering our questions. We look forward to continuing our questioning, I am sure, as time goes by and we have an opportunity to absorb all of the confidential information that we have received to date, for which we thank you. Thank you to everybody who stayed as well.
[17:21]