CIO of Essex County Council David Wilde is a former CIO at Westminster County Council. At Essex he runs the IT estate at a council with a population of around 1.4 million. Wilde has told this magazine previously he plans to be fully private cloud by 2015, while he is also looking to take a data approach to understand and organise all of the councils data through geographical information system. Wilde has also implemented plans to improve customer access to services through digital means, such as website and mobile apps. The council has also introduced technology which aims to improve its corporate network and internet speeds. Essex also plans to upgrade its telephone systems to IP telephony, which will help efficiency by allowing incoming phone calls to be directed to mobile or desk phones. This will reduce the amount of fixed line telephone headsets that the council needs to invest in. What is your job title?Director for Information Services and CIO When did you start your current role?July 2011 Have you completed an MBA?No, but have completed the Chertered Certificate in Company Direction with IoD and now doing the Diploma Order the following sources of advice/information by value to you:1. Peer group2. Consultant3. In-house4. Vendors5. Analyst Technology strategy and spending What is the major transformational IT project that has been recently completed, or is underway at your organisation?IS Modernisation Programme, overhauled and replaced the entire end user, networked and information architectures and services What impact will it/does it have on the organisation?New end user experience (devices, access, connectivity, security and storage) for all 12,000 staff enabling mobile and flexible working across the county and totally different ways of working as a result. Reduced ICT costs by 30% (down to £34million pa) and improved KPIs by 25% across the board What new strategic technology deals has your organisation struck and with whom?Converged networked managed service for all of Essex and wider public services with Daisy Updata Consortium Ltd. Covers, voice, video and data for both wired and wireless provision (1100 sites and over 150,000 users) Name your strategic technology suppliers?Daisy Updata Consortium Ltd, Microsoft, Dell, Methods Consulting, LiquidLogic, Oracle, IBM, What is the IT budget?£34 million pa OPEX, £52million CAPEX over 4 years What is the strategic aim of the CIO and IT operations for the next financial year?establish an Essex wide Information Sharing and governance framework for collaboration across public services and to support technology enabling integrated health and social care for the future Transformation achievements Would you describe the CIO role as a transformation leader in your organisation?Yes, which is why it is part of our strategy, transformation and commissioning support function Describe the transformations you have led / been involved in, how did they transform operations, customer experience or the organisation?IS Modernisation, taking an expensive and end of life IT environment and replacing it with a modern, fit for purpose architecture which enables mobile and flexible working across the county. This has been achieved in only 20 months and work pactices have moved to highly mobile working and take-up of collaboration tools like ShartePoint, Lync and OneNote. Multi-agency working is also now being delivered with Health, Fire, supported living and other local authorities, most recently resulting in the successful opening of our new community hub in Colchester providing a wider range of public services. On the economic side I am responsible  for the Next Generation Access programme which includes superfast broadband for Essex as well as the Next Generation Network service. BDUK is investing £27million in improved broadband provision for 300,000 premises and NGN (which is our PSN service) has improved network provision tenfold across the county whilst also converging voice, video, wired and wireless. Within the technology arena I have driven the adoption, implementation and running of ITIL and SFIA to both deliver high quality services whilst ensuring our staff have the capability to do so. Costs have come down considerably yet service levels have improved over 20% across the board. Beyond technology, can you describe a business transformation programme that you own or contribute to?As the county's Senior Information Risk Owner, I have been responsible for enabling and taking through a culture change programme to ensure all staff understand their roles and responsibilities around information security, ownership, sharing and asset management. This has set the scene for moving into collaboration, analytics, business intelligence and knowledge and we are now leading the way across Essex public services, unlocking new ways of working across agencies and jointly supporting our residents and businesses What key technologies are being considered to enable transformation?Collaboration tools (SharePoint, Yammer, Microsoft 365), customer intelligence (Lagan CRM, Essex Insight, Mosaic), analytics tools (Cognos, SharePoint, SPSS) and GIS (open source cloud tools) What percentage of your applications / infrastructure is run from the Cloud?30% How is the use by employees of their own technology, use of mobiles and social networking impacting operations, customer experiences or the organisation at present?It has transformed the way we work. Printing has gone down 25% in the last 8 months alone through greater on-line and collaborative working, staff meet informally when needed and their laptops go everywhere with themas they are alwys on through wifi and off-line seamless working through Direct Access technology. Customers can now access many more services through end to end web services and some mobile app capability but this is an area of investment for the next year Do you have a plan in place for how to deal with shadow IT and BYOD. How do you influence and engage executives, place the right controls around employee choice and engage with the organisation on this issue?Yes, we ensure we provision the need and work with the rest of the organisation rather than fight it or block it but we have a very strong ethos around information governance and security which supports it Where do you seek transformational inspiration from?Michael Dell from the business side over the last year, the Asia Pacific region generally for public service and technology take-up and John Lewis for custome services The CIO role in the business Who do you report to?Other: Exec Director for strategy, transformation and commissioning support and CEO for information governance Do you have a seat on the board?Yes How often do you meet with the CEO?Monthly Does your organisation have a digital leader and what is the difference in their responsibilities to yours?No, it falls within my role What percentage of IT budget do you control and what percentage of IT budget does your digital peer hold?100% The IT department How many staff make up the IT team?(What is the split between in-house/outsourced staff)350, 200 in-house, 150 outsourced Describe the CIO’s management team, do you have direct reports that develop the relationship and services between the business and IT?Heads of Service for service delivery, IS strategy, architecture, configuration and security and programme management And how many log-in accounts do you issue across you organisation?16,000 What is the primary technology platform? ( for example ERP, Website, trading system)MS Windows 7