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The ICT Professional: Ian White, Oracle
Posted by admin on Fri, 30/07/2010 - 15:02
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Oracle is now such a familiar staple of the public sector ICT landscape that it's difficult to remember that there was once a time when rival database vendor Ingres - in tandem with hardware firm ICL - had a stranglehold on this section of the market and Oracle was frozen out.
That was back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Now ICL is gone and Ingres (in its original form) is gone and Oracle is still here. Indeed it was among the 19 ICT suppliers called into the Cabinet Office to meet Francis Maude to be asked to come up with ideas for public sector ICT going forward.
“That's quite a challenge,” says Ian White, business development director of Oracle's public sector division. "It's all still at a very early stage of development. Francis Maude has set the challenge and we're all now considering how to respond to it. There's a lot of pressure from government to come up with ideas on how we can save them money. That might mean us giving them better deals of course, but it's also about them changing the way that they work.”
White argues that the sheer breadth of Oracle's offerings positions it well to do portfolio deals with government. “Oracle has a new strapline – Software, Hardware, Complete,” he notes. “There's a real appetite for a combined Oracle and Sun solution. It's an important trend for us. We expect to be pushing those kind of joint solutions to the public sector. In the public sector there's a real focus on having more effective data centres that are both cheaper and greener. We think that the Sun/Oracle product range running Oracle software plays strongly to that mood. “
Pan-government portfolio management of suppliers has been suggested before of course. “That hasn't made as much progress as it might,” argues White. “The obstacles to this working of course is that government can like to feel that we treat them as one customer, but they don't have a big central ownership mandate or budget to buy on a pan-government basis. But there is now a mood to do so. They could be buying as one customer. If we as suppliers are dealing with one customer in the shape of the Cabinet Office, for example, then that changes things. It looks like the early signs are good. The appetite is there now with the Coalition."
Why not just outsource?
But there must be a temptation for the Coalition simply to reach out to the outsourcers for quick cuts in operational costs? “Before the elections, the Conservatives were talking up outsourcing as one way for government to be more effective, but there doesn't seem to have been as much emphasis on that since the Coalition was formed,” ponders White. “I imagine they are keep their options open there. We had thought that there would be more emphasis on dealing with outsourcers, but so far that hasn't come through.
“We do think that sharing services has some way to go and can deliver. The present approach to shared services in central government, where there can be some mandating, hasn't progressed as well as it might. The government only mandate to a degree and there is much less mandating of course the further out you go from central government.
“Culture has been the main blocker, but given that all public sector organisations are going to have to look for substantial savings as part of the spending review the necessity of finding those savings will perhaps overcome the cultural resistance,” he adds. “Are services really as varied across government departments as some people have maintained? Would there be much lost by complying with a set of standard business processes? That isn't necessarily challenged enough in some cases.
“There is a lot of variation in the way that Oracle ERP is implemented in government. It has been commented that the implementation of Oracle Financials in shared environments are often more varied than SAP implementations. That's not our decision, that's between the systems integrator and the department.”
Forecast Cloudy
While outsourcing hasn't been mentioned much, there's been a lot of talk about Cloud Computing. “The G-Cloud will come in time, but it's not going to be easy, quick or at zero cost to achieve the Cloud Computing nirvana,” argues White. “Getting to the Cloud apps store idea from where we are today is not going to be easy. If the IT strategy that was drawn up under Labour is more or less re-established, then that mentions data centres, standard desktops and the public sector network, all of which are more achievable and more easily beefed up to ministers than Cloud Computing which is a bit more tecchie. If the G-Cloud needs political buy-in then that could be quite challenging.”
While the shape of ICT strategy for the Coalition is still forming, it's been made clear that the days of the grandiose, multi-billion pound, multi-year programmes are at an end, replaced by lots of smaller projects with a spending cap of a £100 million each. But aren't those multi-billion pound initiatives the bread and butter of Oracle's business?
It's perfectly feasible for us to run with smaller project and I can see why the government is keen to do so,” counters White. “There is an adverse publicity that some large projects have attracted. The NHS National Programme has had bad publicity, but you shouldn't extrapolate too much from that particular case. It's perhaps not a good example. If you look at ID cards and e-Borders, then it's more useful to draw lessons from them.”
What is needed with larger projects is a change of technique and tactics, he argues. “They need to have an overarching enterprise architecture so that they can easily see how projects fit into that overall architecture,” he suggests. “A number of smaller projects can be kept in place. The larger organisations in the public sector still don't have that approach and there still a silo-ing of projects.”
Standardisation needed
Overall, government needs to be looking towards technologies that support greater automation and standardisation, suggests White. “There's a lot of interest in government around policy automation, for example,” he says, “This automates front office processes, like eligibility for benefits. This has multiple benefits in the form of improved services and reduced costs. When a policy changes, it's easier to change those policies in the systems. Changes can be introduced at ministerial diktat and these can be expensive to change manually. “
It's ideas like that that Maude and the Cabinet Office will be looking to hear. Given that 19 vendors are being asked to pitch their own ideas there's likely to be a wide range of offerings. “Although we are all in the IT business, the balance between software and services and hardware varies from company to company,” admits White. “We will all look commercially at our business with government and come up with valid but different responses which will help it achieve those objectives. A general approach would be that there are a number of ways in which we think that government can do business differently which we would also find attractive.”
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Comments
The best kind of government tech pitch...
The best kind of government tech pitch would indeed be one that involves standardisation and automation. Standardisation has worked wonders on the web, with standardisation comes the ease of upgrading and the ease of automation.
If you look at styles of programming such as design patterns in object orientated programming, and communications methods such as the web frameworks... it just works! and makes future development just work too. The thing that people don't see is that if you know these frameworks, then they can be just as speedy to develop as un-standardise methods, and they have more pros in the future.
Some Knowledge Engineering needs to go into the mix too. We should look at the coalition government and use technological methods which are inspired by the ideals of the two parties involved. "Conservativism" would indicate a strict adherence to standards and traditions, with a spotlight on family. "Liberal Democracy" would indicate an openness, freedom and equality, and would have the ability to share decisions. Therefore all technology plans should try to replicate these ideals.
Government Technology:
Just some thoughts!
Cheers,
Daniel