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On the Outside - Ray Berry

Ray Berry | Friday May 09, 2008



Ray Berry is Customer First Programme Manager at Aberdeenshire Council with 10 years in mainstream ICT management at the Council and over 30 years in the ICT industry. Ray started his career in the private sector with the FMC Group in Wiltshire after leaving university working on solutions to automate pricing and payment to farmers across the UK for stock processed at slaughterhouses. In 1975 he joined a small software house - Data Logic - the first of a number that provided a rich variety of projects ranging from radar systems through manufacturing to large scale distribution systems at Bass Brewers before he joined Aberdeenshire Council in 1997.
Aberdeenshire Council is the 5th largest Council in Scotland with a net expenditure of ￡476 million.


Hi-Tech Scotland (HTS): Describe your current role.

Ray Berry (RB): As Customer First Programme Manager at Aberdeenshire Council I'm responsible for coordinating, within the Council, a number of Scottish Government Customer First programmes to deliver better services to residents enabled through the use of ICT. Today’s residents, in their dealings with the Council, no longer tolerate being passed from office to office, phones unanswered and having to repeat the same information every time they interact with Council officers - their expectations are rising in line with that seen and delivered in the private sector.
My role is to interpret strategic requirements and guide, plan, communicate, coerce and cajole colleagues into adopting modernisation programmes; making improvements to deliver better service through holding accurate and consistent information about people and property; making information available to those who interact directly with residents at the front office, in the telephone contact centre or through home visits using mobile technology as well as exploiting new opportunities for efficiency gains through investment in ICT. It's a difficult task at the best of times but compares well with how to eat an elephant - one bite at a time!

HTS: When and why did you decide to pursue a career in IT?

RB: In the late 60's I had a particularly good physics teacher at Aberdeen Academy, Mr Dalziel - we weren't on first name terms then - he gave me the interest in logic gates and how these could be combined to perform Boolean logic and their practical implementation using valves and transistors to deliver computers. Getting my hands on a DEC PDP8 computer at university led to writing assembler programs, compilers and the joys, for those old enough to remember, of keeping your programs on punched cards and paper tape !

HTS: As an “IT person” working in a non-IT environment, how much of your role is acting as a technical “translator” for other members of your organisation?

RB: Customer First is a programme, led by the Scottish Government, in partnership with 32 Councils, to deliver more efficient services within Councils through changed business processes, supported by technology. The benefits of Web 2.0 may not mean much to Directors of the Council but when translated as to how this can be used to deliver better services and new efficiencies, as part of an integrated programme of development, can stir support from Directors and Councillors.
Councils, in the main, deliver a vast number of services to their community, however, each operates in their own service "silo" holding their own data even for common information such as a resident's current address.
If a resident tells their Housing department that they've changed address - do we share this internally with other Council departments - no, and as a result information, over time, becomes less accurate. It would seem common sense that if one department is notified of a change of address then we should share this with other departments but this is perceived as additional workload - not as an efficiency opportunity to the Council.
Highlighting opportunities for improvement, often reflecting best practice from other Councils, is part of what I do.
ICT is pervasive in almost every area of the Council but using ICT to go beyond mere automation, to deliver real savings and improved services will mean changes to how Councils operate their business and this can be perceived as a threat to established processes. Of course, if we don't change and improve what we do for the community our performance, good or bad, will be published in the Audit of Best Value and Community Planning.

HTS: Are there any particular challenges to implementing ICT solutions in a public sector environment?

RB: Today, the traditional visit or telephone call to the Council is now supplemented by new access channels - self-service facilities from the Council website (Aberdeenshire's website is in the top 10 in the UK), use of text messaging for reporting road faults and a single smartcard supporting library lending, leisure access, concessionary travel and cashless payments. Many of these new channels are readily exploited and already deliver efficiency savings but, traditional channels still have to maintained, in particular, for older residents who prefer to visit a Council office and maintaining both old and new channels can significantly increase service delivery costs.

HTS: In your experience, what are the worst mistakes an ICT salesperson can make during a pitch?

RB: Doing research and checking your market, especially in the Scottish public sector, is very important and too many companies just don't do basic research with many still thinking Scottish legislation is exactly the same as that in England. The number of times I've been asked about how I'm reporting our IEG Statements or addressing BVI 157 are too many to mention
- both of which don't apply in Scotland - although Scotland has similar aspirations for outcomes.

HTS: Professionally speaking, what are the big issues you face in 2008 and beyond?

RB: It's easy to talk about the budget pressures for Councils and this will always be one of the more significant challenges. However, this does not mean that we can't think and plan how new technology, combined with changed business practices, can deliver the "efficiency agenda" sought by politicians and management alike, without losing the quality of services we deliver to the community. Council are, to some extent "conservative" and when current practices have been refined and honed to the pinnacle of efficiency there's not always the incentive to make changes, especially involving new technology, it's easier just to ignore investment in ICT as it's frequently seen as an overhead rather than a key vehicle for modernisation. However, it's good to see many Council officers, brought up in a period of technological change and financial constraint, are willing to grasp new opportunities for innovation and improvement.

HTS: What types of technology do you think will prove most important over the next 5 years?

RB: Community demographics are changing and we are fast becoming an older society - it won't be long before half of Aberdeenshire's 240,000 population will be over the retirement age so delivering improved care services to the home, using automation, will become enormously important.
Remote sensing in the home to check for elderly people falling and not being able to call for help, or, the capability to deliver blood pressure and other medical monitoring, without a trip to a doctor will, for a rural communities, become part of the way forward in caring for our society.
For me, the technology of high-capacity, broadband, available in every home delivering significantly more than it does now is the necessary future, of course, closely followed by the ubiquitous, ever improving, do everything, always in your pocket, mobile phone!

www.aberdeenshire.gov.uk

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