Comparison with Earls (1989) Nine Factors
Using Earls (1989) nine factors (see Appendix A) to show that IS/IT in the LIBRA project is a strategic issue.
“IT is a high-expenditure activity”
The implementation of the IT strategy was obviously a high expenditure activity due to the vast amounts of money funded, £183m, and a further £49m to ICL (later Fujitsu). The high expenditure rate was inevitable due to the scope of the project spanning England and Wales.
“The current economic climate favours IT”
The manual system in place was slow, labour intensive and costly and mistakes were being made during transits. To achieve strategic objectives stated earlier, new goals had to be achieved in order to meet the requirements of the functional areas of performance in the Magistrates’ Inspectorate.
“IT is necessary because of the information revolution”
The changing face of IT in the majority of organisations means that without an effective IT strategy it can become difficult to efficiently exchange information amongst services such as the probation service, prison service, etc. (see Appendix A: Diagram 1).
“IT matters at the highest level”
This is true also because for the new automated electronic case working and administration system to serve all of the Magistrates courts it has to a successfully working system which is fail proof. If failure occurs then this could seriously affect the business functions of performance.
“Management of IT makes the difference”
It will be essential to have IT managed well in terms of integrating both the LDC objectives and the strategic objectives. The documents involved in electronic transit will be of an important nature so IT needs to be managed accurately and efficiency.
Strategic Grid
Justification of the plotted points on the Strategic grid
The SG illustrates the strategic route of which the LIBRA project took in terms of LIBRA’s dependence of IT against the strategic impact on the business.
The first major stage (1), was the initialisation of the project, the strategic impact on the organization is low at this point because the system is useful but has low business potential. The dependency is also low because the new system may improve operations, but not essential.
As money was invested (2) into the project through the PFI we see a slight change as the project moves more towards the strategic quadrant of the grid.
The decision to contract ICL (3) to implement the entire project was a critical decision although later became the first fault as we shall soon discover.
Next (4) because of the LCD announced changes to the specification disagreements arose and consequently and the things changed drastically for the worse. This disagreement caused the IT caused the project to come to a halt. Looking at the SG for this stage we see that the strategic impact on the project was high as this was a critical decision however it had not change in operations hence the dependency level becoming lower.
The final decision (5) from the disagreement was paramount in the continuation of the project, however it came at a cost and caused problems with the human resources management, as IT staff where without work. This moves this stage into the strategic quadrant, however this decision will prove to be a fault in the long term, but this shall be discussed later.
The decision (6) to test the feasibility of the system in newly built courts buildings illustrated the first major problems in the LIBRA project. However this decision was a very strategic one but should have been thought about earlier on in the LIBRA project. The SG illustrates how this stage is both critical impact and IT dependency wise because with testing the IT infrastructure would fall apart in the real world, and consequently did.
Stage 7 was a consequence of the PFI’s involvement in the choice of contractors. As this stage is a consequence and not a decision we cannot plot this on the SG.
The decision (8) to carry out a study proved vital to the continuation of the project. It was a result of this study which showed that there were major discrepancies between LCD and contractors over the project specifications. This decision was therefore placed quite high strategically and the impact on the project was also high.
The survey carried out by Fujitsu (9) was very high impact strategically as this paved the way for all of the new and existing court buildings specifications for cabling and infrastructure. It can also be said that the survey was high dependency upon the project.
The Index Matrix
The index matrix shown above is split into three sections or zones. Zone 1 represents the Stand-alone or support applications, Zone 2 is DP or ‘factory’ applications and Zone 3 is Strategic applications
Justification of the plotted points on The Index Matrix
The Index Matrix illustrates the benefits of each decision set out in the stages discussed earlier. The Matrix should be used to improve the categories and to ‘spread’ the benefits from IS/IT as widely as possible throughout the organization. The index matrix shows both the benefits and the beneficiaries of an IT development.
The first IT development (1) was the decision to start the LIBRA project. This was a Functional Improvement because it was the right thing to do and applied to the functioning of the divisions within the organization.
The second stage (2) was placed on the matrix in the Service Enhancement cell because the PFI funding was beneficial to the whole organization and was effective in the way that it was doing the right thing for the LIBRA project.
Awarding ICL the contract (3) was placed in the Organisational Integration cell because the PFI believed they were doing the right thing by involving a company such as ICL in the project. The decision would be of benefit to the whole organization.
Due to a change in the specification made by the LCD (4) this coursed the LIBRA project to be revised, it is plotted in the index matrix as a functional redefinition as things were being changed and done differently. At this stage this was seen as a doing things differently by the LCD department. The question arises, should the LCD have issued this change and redefined the project into three separate sections. Its seems by all accounts to be a poor decision at the later stages as a communication breakdown evolved, and as a result of this, LIBRA standard equipment wasn’t installed into the new buildings.
So the decision to divide responsibilities of the project (5) again was a functional redefinition. It must be noted at his point that it seems that by the LCD changing the specification it can be argued that bad management practice was but into place, as this upset project in terms of time completion and costs.
With the testing of integrating the IT infrastructure (6) for the LIBRA project into the new building was a good idea, as it provided evidence for the future success of the project. This IT development has been placed on the matrix as a service enhancement because not only is the development catering of the whole organisation but it also doing the right thing for this organisation. Its if felt that this is a good decision but tests of this nature should of somehow been implemented earlier in the project development. Stage 7 isn’t an IT development benefit as such but more of a consequence of the testing phase in stage 6.
The study of equipment (8) analysis in the Kidderminster new building defined more errors in the project. This could be due to the fact that the contractors for setting up the network, Fujitsu has not specified a good specification, however, error and the blame, was due to the insufficient equipment installation. This stage is plotted on the matrix as functional improvement because it is applies the LCD and the idea of doing the right thing.
Due to a survey done by Fujitsu (9), arrangements were made to alter the original plan for the department as new suggestions were added to help the Kidderminster building reach LIBRA standards. This survey both should and shouldn’t have taken place. It shouldn’t have taken place because the building should have been up to standard in the first place and should have taken place in order to make the changes. Really it was a good IT/IS strategy decision in the end but shouldn’t of been implemented as the building should have been up to standards anyway.
Significant faults identified during the analysis of the LIBRA project
- The initial project specifications were unclear, resulting in later amendments.
- Late changes in specification resulted in increased project costs.
- Poor communication between PFI, LCD and contractors lead to a poor understanding of initial business and strategic objectives.
- Not enough research prior to implementation of the LIBRA project and leaving the testing so late.
- User needs were not taken into consideration when planning and implementing.
The Revised IT Strategy
Assuming that the LCD has ordered another major change to the LIBRA project, which has gone way beyond sectioning. The choice of contractors for the three section’s has been decided and a clean sheet to develop a successful IT strategy for the remaining Magistrates Court systems is in place.
In order to revise a new IT strategy a plan needs to be implemented to achieve certain IS/IT benefits. The achievements which will benefit our strategy are identifying the current role of IS/IT applications in the organisation. Planning new IS/IT applications and developments. Future opportunities also need to be identified as well as ensuring that IS/IT strategies are in line with the organizational strategies.
Figure 3. Method for Achieving Business Benefits
The diagram above shows the techniques which will be used to plan a new IS/IT strategy following a methodology to achieve business benefits. The following sub sections of this report will follow these techniques in detail along with a justification of why the techniques were used.
Before the techniques can be used however, the stages of the strategy need to created.
Revised stages of the LIBRA project
- Use results from the Fujitsu report on the insufficiencies of the pathfinder project court buildings, to update specification of new and existing buildings. A better, revised and updated specification was created.
- PFI agreed with Nick Jones, Justices Chief that the building contractors were over budget and decided to reconsider new contractors that would result in reducing the overall budget of building installation, to make the implementation of linking the IT strategy with the physical implementation of the buildings and systems more cost effective.
- Contracts with companies such as Rentokil were stopped, they were the building installation contractors. The LCD and PFI came to an agreement that Fujitsu should take on this responsibility to ensure that the installation matched their LIBRA project standards successfully. Fujitsu agreed and began immediate implementation.
- A LIBRA standards trained hierarchal managed IT department was created in all of the court buildings. These departments were responsible for the managing, user training and maintenance of the system.
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The new system was tested in each court building and a feedback report was generated to see if the system is consistent with the inspectorate’s review which stated the magistrate’s courts strategic and functional/business objectives (see Appendix A). A usability report is issued monthly. Minor modifications were made after testing where appropriate.
- The LIBRA system is now in place in all Courts in England and Wales. Full testing and evaluation has been carried out over time, and the system was updated, expanded and implemented to cater for the other criminal justice departments such as the Prison Service and Probation Service. Thus enhancing the service of the system. The procedures 1 – 5 were used again but in the Prison Service and Probation Service buildings.
Strategic Grid
The first stage which was developed to create an improved strategy, was the creation of a better, revised and updated specification (1) for the LIBRA project buildings. This decision will be essential to the survival of the project, if not the project would have carried on being massively over budget, and eventually failed.
Continuing on from this (2) an important decision is made in terms of cost and more importantly reducing cost. This is a critical decision in order the prevent costs further spiraling and therefore it is critical also to the success of the project and achieving the strategic goals specified.
You can see illustrated in the SG (3) that this is again in the strategic quadrant because a lot of strategic decisions are being made to ensure that that the strategic objectives are quantified.
The new IT department (4) integrated with full system isn’t essential to the project but is important to the successful maintenance of the system. This is high on the IT dependency scale of the grid, however quite low down on the strategic impact of the project.
With the system in place (5) it was tested by the users to ensure that the system was user focused, this is an important key factor is benefiting IT. This is a useful decision; however it is not critical in terms of the systems working. The SG shows that this moves the direction of the project into the support quadrant. So far our SG is representing a good natural cycle of the strategic root of the revised IT strategy.
Finally we move into the turnaround quadrant as decisions to expand the systems come into place. This is important in order to successfully restart the strategic route (6). It’s is important that new ideas are employed in order to deal with change and modernization in the environment around them. Without reconsidering the status of the project and the system developed in its environment it can lead to more serious faults later on. It has to be remembered that this project was initially to provide means of electronically transferring casework records between magistrate courts and act as an administrative tool. With the enhancements made whilst employing the system on a wider scale means that it should in theory, and if the systems is successful, become a locked in system. With the IT departments in place the system is well managed, this cuts risk of IT failure. With this process in production the future decisions to continue to update and enhance the system are easily applicable when repeating the strategic route used.
Transformation Graph
MIT 90’s identified 5 levels of transformation within an organisation:
An explanation of the transformation stages is explained below along with a diagram in Figure 5 to give a visual representation of the stages.
The first stage of the revised project (1) was the creation of an updated specification of the magistrate court buildings. The existing systems in place were mostly manual with a small amount of court buildings implementing the new automated IT system. This was a Localised Exploitation of IT within the organisation and showed a lack of integrated infrastructure throughout all departments. The next strategic stage (2) was the agreement with Nick Jones, Justices Chief that the building contractors were over budget. This stage was also placed in the Localised Exploitation section of the transformation graph for the same reasons as in stage 1.The agreement to stop contacts with building contractors such as Rentokil (3) who were overcharging for equipment such as network points and make Fujitsu responsible for such work was placed in the Internal Integration section of the graph. The reason behind this was to improve communications throughout the project by involving fewer parties in the building work. The fourth stage was the creation of the IT departments (4) in each of the court buildings to take responsibility of the managing, user training and maintenance of the system. This was definitely a Business Process Redesign stage as the creation of the new department was a business transformation.
The fifth decision was the testing (5) of the up and running systems in the court house’s to ensure that the buildings and the system were up to LIBRA standards. After testing, changes could be made and improvements implemented. This decision was placed in Business Network Redesign as it created new business ventures and markets.
The final stage is the rollout and expansion of the LIBRA system (6) which was placed in the Business Scope Redefinition phase because the system is enabling the organisation to perform business in new ways.
Conclusions & Recommendations
The current use of IT in the Lord Chancellor’s department is currently having to battle against a lot of problems concerning the way the LIBRA project has and is being conducted strategically. As a result of analysis it seems apparent that the decisions are strategic, however, they do yield poor results in concerns to the LIBRA project and the impact it has on the organizational objectives of the courts magistrates. The system from all accounts may be faultless, but it became highly obvious whilst installing the equipment, the process for setting up networking installations, to link the IT infrastructure isn’t. The objectives are not matched because the system cannot be sufficiently integrated physically in the in the buildings to provide the staff with a system to electronically automate casework records and administration roles, without the success of this, then the key functional areas of performance shown in the magistrates inspectorate (see Appendix A) cannot be met in order to measure the performance of the courts procedures. So far with the original LIBRA solution it seems that the lack of communication between the LDC and Fujitsu and varying project and system specifications caused a lot of implications such as loss of project time and as a result more cost expenditures. The Public Finance Initiative role also had a role in poor decision making as they were responsible for awarding the contracts to the various companies that were in charge of the development and implementation of the system. Examples have been made of poor contractors that were not only charging high prices and over budget but were also poor in matching the LIBRA system requirements.
The revised LIBRA system combats some of these problems and starts to eliminate errors in the old system such as better communication with up-to-date information on the system progress. Testing of the system after initial training given by a new IT managed department provides not only ongoing support, training and management but constant feedback on the systems progress or failure. This information is vital in order to make room for system enhancements or modifications, this is extremely important in order to help the system grow with the user and allow the system to be user focused and apply sufficiently to the functions of the department, again meeting the department objectives and hence organisational objectives.
The following recommendations needed for future improvements are:
- Continue and improve communication (meetings etc) between all parties involved in the project.
- Better strategic management needs putting into action, especially the planning phase.
- More research needed prior to implementation, into costs, contractors and systems networking to reach the LIBRA standards.
Diagram 1: Flow of manual system information exchange
Magistrates Inspectorate: Key findings of the review
Key findings of the review
This chapter sets out the headline findings of the review. The methodology of the review is detailed at Appendix 2.
Strategic objectives
The review found three strategic objectives to be common across the majority of MCCs:
- improving efficiency and effectiveness of court services
- improving quality of court services for all court users
- improving the value for money of the services.
Key areas of performance
In order for MCCs to know whether they are achieving these strategic objectives, they need information about their
Performance in a number of key areas. The review identified these as:
- timeliness of court processes
- maximising collection of monetary orders
- court utilisation
- improving services to users
- managing resources effectively
Functional areas of performance
These key areas were then broken down further into functional areas of performance. reflecting established MCC responsibilities:
- timely case completion
- timely provision of information
- improving enforcement
- best use of planned court time
- achieving agreed standards for quality of service
- efficient and effective use of staff
- effective financial management
- effective premises management
- effective use of IT
- effective use of magistrates
Measurements
In order to help Committees to assess their performance in these areas, relevant measures were established for use in the service. The review established that Committees would be best served by indicators derived from a small set of core measures which would be supported by others at a more detailed level of operation. The measures developed during the first phase of the review were tested and, as a result a set of CPMs has been finalised for the functional areas of performance:
CPM 1 - average length of cases from first listing to completion
CPM 2 - number of defendants/complainants waiting less than an hour as a proportion of all those appearing
- timely provision of information
CPM 3 -the percentage of cases for which specified information is provided to other agencies within the prescribed timescale
CPM 4 - the amount of arrears as a proportion of outstanding balances
CPM 5 -write-offs, due to failure of enforcement as a proportion of impositions
- best use of planned court time
CPM 6 -number of court sitting hours as a proportion of the number of planned hours of court time
CPM 7 -case load per sitting hour
- achieving agreed standards for quality of service
CPM 8 -percentage of user satisfaction
- efficient and effective use of staff
CPM 9- staff cost per weighted case
CPM 10 -weighted caseload per member of staff
- effective financial management
CPM 11 - total revenue cost per weighted case
- effective premises management
CPM 12 -actual court hours as a proportion of capacity
It is intended that MCCs should develop their own local performance measures for the remaining functional areas of performance -effective use of IT, and effective use of magistrates.
Costs of collection
As part of the evaluation of the draft measures, Justices' Chief Executives, from the MCCs which tested the measures, were asked to comment on the cost of implementing the CPMs under two main headings: set-up- costs (the one-off costs arising from setting up the systems to generate the CPMs) and recurring costs (the ongoing costs of using them). Nearly all costs were expressed in terms of person days of staff time.
Set-up costs for the set of draft CPMs were generally assessed at around one to two weeks of staff time, the cost varying according to the salaries of the staff used, Those CPMs considered the most time-consuming to put in place were CPMs 1 and 3. Assessments of recurring costs varied widely; from negligible to 78 days of staff time a year. with CPMs 1 and 8 the most time-consuming, It is not obvious what accounts for this disparity, although contributing factors may be the frequency with which the measures are used.. and the quality of the systems in place; the MCC which considered that recurring costs were negligible had ,Successfully tailored its computer system to generate much of the data automatically.
The variations in assessment of cost militate against hard assertions. While implementation of the CPMs undoubtedly requires investment in terms of staff time, the costs of that investment from the responses received. are outweighed by the reported value of the measures to MCCs.
Computer systems
The main reason for the investment in staff time required to implement the core measures is the fact that. With different computer systems. Data collection for a majority of the measures remains a manual process. Data is far more likely to be used by,MCCs and nJ.anagers if it is readily available at the push of a computer key, Critical") the success of'the LIBRA system will be the ,; extent to which it is able to provide the key information required by managers to run courts efficiently, particularly in the area of Case
management Delay in completing cases has been recognised as an issue of national concern. yet none of the three main computer systems is able to provide reliable information on how long cases take to process: CPM 1, although regarded as a key performance measure. is among the most time- consuming CPMs to generate.
Weighted caseload
The Inspectorate is aware of concern which some in the service have expressed about the use of weighted caseload figures. A common argument is that the weightings are too crude; that they fail to reflect the complexity of cases, and do not take account of differing plea rates. There are also concerns about the differences between the three main computer systems in calculating weighted caseload and, therefore, about the reliability of comparative weighted caseload data. Some CPMs, nevertheless, use weighted caseload data in their calculation. While recognising the concerns of the service, the purpose of the thematic review was to improve the practice of local performance management rather than create new ways of measuring the work processed by magistrates' courts, which is a much greater task and not one for the Inspectorate alone. At the time of drafting this report, the LCD is considering what can be done in advance of LIBRA to improve the reliability of weighted caseload data. For the moment, however, weighted caseload remains :he most appropriate measure of workload to use.
Earl (1989) Nine Factors
puts forward nine factors that makes IS/IT a strategic issue. These are
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IT is a high-expenditure activity – IT is of a strategic importance because firms spend a lot of money on it;
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IT is a critical success factor – IT is strategic in some industries because it is used for competition. Businesses must be ‘better at it than their rivals;
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IT is a strategic weapon - IT is strategic because firms use IT to do business better & to do better business;
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The current economic climate favours IT – IT is of strategic importance because it is used as a means of achieving business objectives (relating to time, customer service, etc.) in a modern environment:
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It affects all business functions – IT is strategic because it is used everywhere in some businesses;
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IT is necessary because of the IT revolution – New applications of IT, new uses for information are being developed constantly;
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IT systems involve many stakeholders – As more business partners (allies) and competitors share IT systems, they become more strategic;
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IT matters at the highest level – IT is strategically important as it enables business success or causes business failure;
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Management of IT makes the difference – It is a strategic issue because it must be managed strategically
Links
- www.vnunet.com/news/1133953
- www.vnunet.com/news/1135158
- www.vnunet.com/news/1133809
- www ./bladerunner?REOUNIO= I 031668992&REOSESS=d 1253 85P&REOHOST= I &2250REOE VENT=&CF A1 0/09/2002
- www ./bladerunner?REOUNIO= I 031668992&REOSESS=d 1253 85P&REOHOST= I &2250REOE VENT=&CF A1 0/09/2002
Books and Journals
- The Essence of Information Systems, C. Edwards, J. Ward, A. Bytheway. Prentice Hall. 1995
