BEYOND EXCELLENCE

1
BEYOND EXCELLENCE

• Ged Fitzgerald
• Chief Executive
• Sunderland City Council

2
Sunderland

• A medium-sized city in North East England
• Significant deprivation but.
• Created more jobs in past 10 years than lost in
  previous 10
• High quality public services but
• High public sector dependency

3
The Council - 2004

• Excellent status
• Well-regarded services - league tables generally
  favourable
• Working partnerships
• Strong political leadership
• Good capacity
• Strong central management (especially Finance)
• Strong compliance culture
• Major ICT-led change programme announced

4
The Council - 2004

• Translated as
• We are excellent - why change?
• We win so many awards - we must be excellent

5
2004 - My Analysis

• Sunderland has great potential, quality of life
  and people
• But.(some) low aspiration, expectation and
  confidence limited challenge
• Council had empire and silo culture, some cant
  do attitudes
• One-sided partnerships
• Insufficient communication and engagement
• Need to align Efficiency, Effectiveness, Equity
  and Economy

6
The Council - 2006

• (Still) Excellent
• Strong services
• Strong partnerships public and private sectors
• Strong political leadership
• Strong capacity now more empowered (and still
  accountable)
• Strong balanced corporate management
• Stronger performance management culture
• Business-led change management using ICT

7
The Change Strategy

• Leadership
• - Vision, ambition and aspiration
• - Values
• - Visibility
• - One Council
• - One City
• Customer focus
• Open, people-oriented culture
• Communication internal and external
• Profile and reputation management
• Process improvements

8
The Change Tools

• PEOPLE -
• Staff - top 10 collective management top 100
  alignment empowerment
• Members more engagement
• Partners more engagement AND more partnership

9
The Change Tools continued

• PROCESSES -
• Communication, communication, communication
• City-wide Customer Service Centres Programme
• Business Improvement Programme
• Project and performance management
• Strategies and Plans
• Focus - alignment of Community and City
• Awards, knowledge management, peer review, CPA
• Focus on outcomes and impact

10
The Change Tools continued

• RESOURCES -
• Medium term financial plan
• Capital programme
• Efficiency by-product of what were doing
  anyway
• ICT common infrastructure to enable us to meet
  business and customer needs
• Intelligent use of consultants and peer review
• Excellent people

11
The role of ICT

• Get basics right
• Infrastructure and platforms (including VOIP)
• Network and servers
• Security
• Support Business Need
• Strategy and investments are business led
• Enable efficient, effective service
• Co-ordinate ICT and business expertise
• Facilitate organisation development
• Business continuity

12
The role of ICT Continued

• Collaborative Working
• In Council
• Community
• Partners (eg Northumbria 101)

13
Summary

• Lead by example
• Empower people
• Focus and deliver
• Recognise that assessment of proper excellence
• is shown by quality of services delivered
• and is judged by the people of our City