Service Birmingham is our joint venture with Europe’s largest local authority, Birmingham City Council. By providing world-class information and communications technology (ITC) systems it’s transforming the way the council operates, improving services, cutting costs and increasing staff’s job satisfaction. Investment in ICT forms the bedrock of the Council’s transformation and aims to deliver cost savings of £1bn over 10 years.

Since April 2006 we’ve implemented major enhancements to the infrastructure, including a £2m investment in a new server estate. We’ve consolidated seven Service Desks into two and are rationalising 550 applications to 150. As a result, e-mail speed is up 500%, traffic has grown 30% and reliability has increased significantly. The number of help desk calls now answered within 20 seconds has increased from 40% to nearly 90%.

The corporate services transformation programme has already saved the Council £9.5m and should generate savings of £800m over 10 years. As a result, we’re expanding our role. In July 2006 we contracted to support additional corporate service transformation programmes to transform the way Council interacts with its citizens and stakeholders, both to increase customer satisfaction and support increased investment in front line service delivery.