Chief Information Officer Bob Brown has transformed ICT at Manchester City Council. The final 12 months of his three-year strategic plan has seen him complete the creation of a service-oriented organisation from an unpromising clutch of non-collaborating teams. He has improved the capabilities, talent, processes and operating model to improve the speed, quality, communication and level of customer service. ICT is now a valued business partner, with streamlined technologies and vendors realising significant cost savings and laying the groundwork for a sustainable, cost-efficient operational structure with an overarching digital blueprint. Following his shift from a legacy infrastructure with high fixed costs to cloud and exponential-based technologies, over the past 12 months Brown's team has replaced an ageing printer estate with a rollout that includes cloud-supported wireless printing, integrated the waste recycling provider's systems with the council's, and delivered service desk and project portfolio management tools that will drive efficiency and excellence in business-as-usual and change landscapes alike. He has delivered the council's first corporate digital strategy, fed from digital strategies and roadmaps for each product and service. And he also recently embarked on a datacentre programme that will deliver a resilient and robust solution with disaster recovery capabilities. As well as continuing to transform services based on new technology, Brown is looking further ahead, putting considerable focus on data, analytics and information sharing. He has now set out a £50m transformation journey for the council over the next four years.