Responsibility for development, promotion and implementation of ICT strategies to establish the direction for ICT over the next few yearsImplemented new technologies and information management systems plus upgraded existing applications. Owned the life of the project from pre-business case research through to post project Business As Usual support.Successfully managed projects within an appropriate Prince 2 environment to maximise business benefits to the council.Actively engaged in providing support, advice and information to other services, Members and Committees of the council and partners, taking account of relevant legislation, guidance, best practice, emerging technologies (such as Bring Your Own Device) and existing council policy.Led on Council’s approach to information management, ensuring compliance with appropriate legislation including Freedom of Information and Data Protection Acts and with internal and external ICT audits including government security assessors.Managed the outsourced IT support contract through partnership approach with the service provider, working jointly to monitor, improve and develop the service. Negotiated amendments, changes and exclusions to the service level agreement and ensured the quality of service was maintained within the cost parameters defined in the contract scope. Provided line management to a team of staff with an annual capex and opex budget of over £1m. Responsibilities included not only ICT but also the council’s geographic mapping systems along with procurement, energy and vending machines contracts . A varied and general role ranging from making patch leads for a computer, to writing import scripts for the council’s income management system to making decisions on software licensing affecting the council for the forthcoming years.Generated savings in excess of £100k of per year through negotiating better contract terms, using alternative lower cost suppliers and consolidating software products.

Created a single ICT team of 12 staff by merging three existing teams and then assumed line management responsibility.Presented to a national conference on approaches to Channel MigrationRepresented the council and sub-regional Shropshire IEG Partnership at a regional levelRepresented all 200 plus district councils in the country in work with Central Government on an integrated secure networkPublished case studies on the work undertaken by the council on its website and understanding customer usageLed the authority’s work in a number of national pilot projects such as LocalDirectGov and DirectGovChaired the West Midlands regional esd-toolkit local community and represented the West Midlands at the national development group and local government at the steering group.

Managed a formal Prince 2 project on behalf of the Shropshire IEG Partnership for the implementation of a single website search engine and A-Z and a common forms engine/Customer Relationship Management (CRM) product for all six authorities in Shropshire.Planned and directed technical implementation and maintenance of the common forms engine/CRMImplemented an electronic payments service as part of the CRM which processed over £500,000 in its first 12 months of operation, the majority either having been taken by telephone in the front office or through the internet, freeing back office staff for other work.Had overall responsibility for the authority’s programme on making all public facing services available electronicallyEnsured the authority delivered against targets to secure the maximum grant for the e-planning section of the Planning Delivery Grant and the Implementing Electronic Government targets, resulting in over £900,000 of funding.Implemented the Council’s website so it was regularly in the top twenty of all authorities nationally for technical correctness through the SiteMorse league tables and twice ranked best in the country.Undertook Business Process Redesign to enabled efficiency savings in excess of £50,000 through diverting customer contact to the website as opposed to other methods (e.g. telephone) and the reduction in printing and postage costs for committee reports with their publication online.Led on work on Customer Journey Mapping through the website which was subsequently used as an example of good practice at an international Human Computer Interaction (HCI) conference.

First and second line support to the Council’s schools’ network, one of the largest education networks in Europe with over 3500 workstations and 26,500 teachers, pupils and support staff.Providing support on ATM and Ethernet technologies, NT workstation, NT server, Windows 2000, MS Exchange, Internet Explorer and many specific educational packages.Dealing with customer queries, installation of servers, workstations, printers and scanners, commissioning of new sites and customer expectations management.Management of backups, Sophos anti-virus, print quota management and Internet content filtering.

Project management of network specification for community youth project. Implemented and managed Council’s Internet demilitarised zone for two thousand clients.Redesign of Education network to address changes since its original installation and to provide speed enhancements throughout the whole network.Monitoring network and identifying rogue devices having detrimental effect on performance

Management of construction of new server room and network redesign and migration from thin Ethernet cabling to Category 5 UTP within a grade 2 listed building containing asbestosProcurement and operational management of NT servers and Netware technology running MS Exchange, SQL Server 7, IIS, Sophos anti-virus and Oracle database running the county’s Education Management System.Implemented of support systems including Veritas Desktop Management Suite, Veritas Backup Exec, WRQ Express Meter Council’s lead technical officer on Year 2000 compliance.Responsibility for technical implementation of departmental Intranet providing services to the 340 schools in Oxfordshire

Administration of NT4 network, daily backups, first line support supporting 150 staff on the full Microsoft Office suite and various other packages.Research and creation of website to demonstrate Internet technology to senior management;Testing of all PC equipment for Year 2000 complianceModernisation of helpdesk software.General role encompassing all aspects of support from procurement of new machines through their lifecycle to destruction.