See also:CIO Profile: Newham Council's Geoff Connell Olympic hosts Newham Borough Council will be centre of world attention in 2012. The authority was created by the 1963 Local Government Act and replaced three East London boroughs; East Ham Borough Council, West Ham Borough Council, and the Woolwich Metropolitan Borough Council. Newham is unique in that its executive body is controlled by a directly elected mayor, a model the coalition government is keen to expand. IT Leader: Geoff Connell, Joint Head of ICTIn role since: April 2007 became acting CIO of NewhamReporting line: Group Director (Finance & Commerce) in Havering & Executive Director (Resources) in NewhamBoard level seat: NoIT budget: Combined £14M Revenue, £4M capitalIT estate and or number of log on accounts under the control of the IT leader: 7000 desktops, 9000 usersLevel of the workforce that relies on technology to carry out their tasks: All office based staff and an increasing number of mobile staff, approximately 75 per centIT staff currently employed: 160Split between in-house/outsourced staff: 90 per cent in-house and 10 per cent outsourcedPrimary technology platforms at the organisation: Oracle ERP, Microsoft Dynamics CRMPrimary technology suppliers: Cisco, HP and MicrosoftTechnologies considered by the leader to offer their organisation potential: Two big IT strategies in the run up to the 2012 games are remote working and online self-service.How do you see technology transforming your organisation in the near future? It's the council's goal to reduce its overall budget by £116m over the next four years. Connell has a remit to achieve around £11m in savings by 2015.He thinks that within five years most of his services will be cloud sourced, as well as remote working, web-driven self-service, shared services and collective procurement