TOWARDS AN ICT STRATEGY FOR NEWHAM
Introduction
The Council has been an active supporter of Newham Online (NeOn) since its establishment in October ’97 and gave its formal support to the Newham Online Statement of vision, commitment and values (see appendix 1) that recognised the Council’s leading role in promotion and implementation. Since this time people from many borough based organisations have played a part in working to put this vision into practice and the Council has played a key enabling role in the successes that have been achieved. NeOn has operated as an informal cross sector strategic network and strongly welcomes the opportunity to assist in the development of a more formal approach. The concept of an ICT Strategy for Newham has been discussed by Newham Online’s Steering Group and this paper outlines a first response from Newham Online for consideration by the Council’s ICT in the Community Sub-Group.
There is general support, we believe, for the following aims:
Ø maximise local ability to control our own destiny
Ø regenerate the borough
Ø ensure the best possible quality of online service delivery
Ø support the widest access to that service delivery
Ø provide the best possible e-environment for local talent to grow and prosper.
We believe that much of what any local organisation would like to see happen is a matter of common not just individual interest – and likely to be achieved by a series of collaborative actions. There is also a likely consensus that any strategy cannot be prescriptive – organisations and individuals have to subscribe because to do so in some way adds value for them. Otherwise, there is the temptation for each organisation to go it alone, secure behind their firewall. In this scenario, there is no prospect of the sum being greater than the parts. So, if the aim of a strategy is a development process which has more people involved and high-level backing for common over-arching aims, then that process has to be fuelled by a win-win view of development.
A strategy for the borough as a whole will also differ from the strategies of individual bodies as it will be cross-sectoral. The key issue is not the remit of any one organisation, but the potential in common action and the consequent opportunity to promote personal, educational, commercial, cultural and social benefit locally. It is also fundamental to a strategy for Newham that it can be integrated with both national government strategy and evolving strategy for London.
Key common issues include:
Ø attracting and deploying resources through partnership work
Ø integrating systems wherever appropriate
Ø sharing information and plans
Ø addressing common challenges (eg external change)
Ø benefiting from joint marketing.
A possible approach to consultation around a strategy is outlined at appendix 2
NeOn’s steering group has identified the following critical development factors:
· EXPANDING EXPERTISE - increasing the staffing available for development, in particular to develop local e-communities, generate high quality local content, expand the cluster of local technological expertise and grow project management capacity.
Recommendation: Invest in the emergence of a Newham Online development organisation with charitable status to attract external funds and pump-prime this. Specifically, agree the strands of action set out at Appendix 3 Table One, ie:
a) accept this approach
b) initiate the establishment of a charitable body (e-Newham Ltd)
c) employ a development manager on behalf of e-Newham Ltd
d) fund that post for up to a year
e) act as the employer of project staff who are managed via agreements between e-Newham Ltd and lead community partners
f) participate in the board of e-Newham Ltd.
g) participate in the board of Newham.Net Ltd
· SECURING EXISTING ACHIEVEMENTS – for legal reasons securing the success of Newham.net Ltd is essential for the continuing development of the extranet as an affordable network. Newham Online has established Newham.net Ltd as a local telecommunications operator with company limited by guarantee status.
Recommendation: Council to appoint a director to the Board of Newham.net Ltd and continue to support its development. (See Appendix 4)
· INTEGRATING THE ONLINE AGENDA - raising the awareness of senior level decision-makers in order to move from tacit support of partners to active ‘whole organisation’ commitment and to ensure that the online dimension to local development is factored into decisions on anything from education to inward investment.
Recommendation: Council enters into a process of consultation (see Appendix 2) that results in the formal adoption by leading local organisations of an agreed strategic approach to local ICT developments.
· STRATEGY THAT LEADS NOT REACTS - developing a much richer quality of thinking about the possible directions of technological change and the value Newham could extract from this - a local Foresight exercise, in effect, aimed less at a sector and more at the inter-relationship of activities in one geographical location.
Recommendation: Undertake a study which profiles the kinds of impact that technological change will have and what kinds of response local partners can make.
· RECIPROCITY – having an approach which not only extracts information but feeds it back continually so that Newham people are potentially themselves owners of knowledge wealth.
Recommendation: Develop a policy of e-involvement which supports the widest inclusion.
These are derived from consideration of successes to date, development work being undertaken, weaknesses in NeOn’s approach, and additional opportunities. Each of these is described below.
NeOn came into being nearly four years ago. Terms of reference (Appendix One) were agreed by participating organisations which have since served as an implicit borough-wide strategy. They have been actioned with considerable support from Newham Council and input from many partners. An independent evaluation of Newham Online was commissioned by Newham Council and carried out by the University of East London's Department of Innovation Studies. The report can be found at
http://www.newham.org.uk/Library/Articles/Neon-Evaluation-2001.html
Outcomes of NeOn’s partnership activity are set out below. These outcomes are the starting point for an explicit strategy.
NeOn’s creation has pulled together a community of individuals, groups and companies with both experience of co-operating in developing local services, content and communications and a sense of shared purpose and values. A strong people network exists which supports genuine and extensive collaboration aimed at securing local benefit from technological development. This differentiates what is happening in Newham from activity in many other places.
Technology
network
There is a broadband extranet (a fast network linking organisations’ own networks to create a Newham-wide network in joint local ownership) which links Newham Council, University of East London, Newham College of Further Education, Newham Sixth Form College, East London Centre, St Lukes’ Centre, Stratford Circus (when open this year), Theatre Royal (ditto), and Waterhouse Studios. UEL’s Business Development Centre used the extranet to provide online training for Newham Council, including streamed video. NewVIc, Stratford Circus and Waterhouse Studios are planning a local music network. There is a NeOn video server, owned by Computer Access, that hosts a promotional video about Newham that can be viewed at near TV quality across the extranet and other material is being sought.
www.newham.net is operative and growing as a portal for Newham, providing a searchable single point of access to information about organisations and activities of any kind in the borough. The portal has been live for six months. With no promotion, it currently links 274 local web sites and attracts around 1,000 visits a month from local and international users. Work is now in hand to integrate this site with a new borough promotional site and the existing Council site. The newham.net portal, newham.com, newham.gov.uk, newham.co.uk and newham.org.uk will be re-designed so that together they will constitute the Newham portal. This will then be promoted actively to ensure higher levels of use and to ensure that every organisation and individual in Newham setting up a website links it to the portal.
Newham.net Ltd has been established as a local telecommunications company (limited by guarantee) and is managing the extranet and portal. It is also playing a critical role in developing new connectivity across the borough and beyond.
NeOn supported the development of Newham Young People Online which is Newham’s first online community and is viewed as a model of good practice nationally. NYPO is a group of young people networking and developing their own web presences. It is supported by Gavin Sealey, a youth worker from NewCEYS (Newham Community Education and Youth Service). NYPO members have built websites some of which are generating commercial income. NYPO has attracted national and international attention (respectively Social Exclusion Unit policy action team report and conference in Barcelona with Manuel Castells, one of the world’s most famous academics in the ICT field).
Loraine Leeson from Art of Change has run a follow-up project to the national award-winning Infinity Story. Planet Volco grew out of a contact between Davenport School in North Carolina USA generated by Stratford Circus and Newham Education Business Partnership. Funded by Forest Gate SRB and Domex (cross borough DfEE Excellence in Cities project supporting City Learning Centres), Volco created a virtual planet peopled by the imaginations of the children involved in Forest Gate (Godwin School) and North Carolina. The project used the communications and creative logic of the Internet in ways which directly supported the national curriculum and are transferable to other schools.
Newham Online partner Computer Access manages servers to host a number of projects, eg http://www.newham.org.uk/ict-community/index.htm, the Council's ICT in the Community site.
The Extranet currently links many of the main local providers of services. As it stands, the Extranet links organisations with a direct potential role in the production of content and in education. The main challenge now is to extend the reach of the Extranet into homes and workplaces. European funds are being sought to expand the extranet to become an active local marketplace focussed initially on the Council’s intent to procure goods and services online.
The ERDF-funded Affordable Broadband Connectivity project, supported by the Council, Newham.net Ltd and private partners, has proved the concept that Newham’s tower blocks can be used to build out the extranet (using broadband microwave, infra-red laser connections) so that many more businesses and homes could connect. The Council has recently concluded a deal with Sky that will rewire 21,000 tower block properties with communal aerials so as to enable the transfer from analogue to digital TV. This data network could facilitate access to other content so discussions are being held about linking this network to the extranet. The planned switch off of analogue TV means that private and other social landlord freeholders of blocks will have to do the same and could equally strike a deal with Newham.net Ltd to connect to the local extranet.
NeOn co-ordinated a bid for the Carpenters Estate in Stratford to secure £1m+ of Wired Communities project funding from Government (DfEE) to provide a broadband connection to every home on the estate and develop and deliver online services. The bid was successful and the project will now provide the means to demonstrate the capability of the Extranet to deliver services from the main participants to the residents of one local Estate. Plans are in hand to enlarge on this so, for example, the West Ham and Plaistow New Deal for Communities area similarly has plans to create access in every home.
The end result of this activity, say by the end of 2003, could be a local online community of many hundreds of businesses, as many as 40,000+ residents and public service, educational and creative organisations. Such a community has the potential to be:
Ø a vibrant local marketplace
Ø a networked means of public service delivery
Ø a common focus for democratic and community organisation
Ø a key part of Newham’s regeneration strategy in terms of marketing and being an attractor for development.
The description "E-Newham – a working wired borough" would be accurate, not spin!
Further European funding is being sort so that the Extranet can be extended through the roll out of ADSL (Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line), technology which increases the transmission capacity of ‘home to recipient’ traffic by some 10 times (eg 56 kbs modem to 500kbs) and the speed of ‘supplier to consumer’ traffic by around 80 times (eg to 4mbs). This greatly enhances individual communications speed and makes possible the commercial supply of video on demand and other similar bandwidth-hungry applications. ADSL enables the next big change in what can be transacted in the online marketplace.
Newham is highly unusual in that all of the key domains (.net, .com, .co.uk, .org, .org.uk, ac.uk, .gov.uk and so on) are in local ownership. Excepting newham.gov.uk, NeOn was responsible for securing these domains. This action has helped secure Newham’s online identity - something which is, as far as we are aware, unique in the UK. Thus, Newham owns its own virtual space or cyber environment; it is an internet freeholder which creates the capacity to 'lease' local cyberspace to local residents and businesses very cheaply.
Planning is underway to ensure that Newham can organise its
overall presence online to the advantage of the borough as a whole and many
local partners. ‘Hits’ on Newham sites
will be organised to generate a systematic web presence which will push Newham
up the world search engine ratings and offer searchers of all kinds an organised
way into local business, local public services, local voluntary organisations,
etc. Every addition to the Newham
‘family’ will boost this, not conflict with it.
This approach makes a whole series of things possible. For example, it becomes possible to offer to host any community organisation’s web pages and ensure they are easily findable so, for example, finding all the borough’s playgroups, their timetables, vacancies, etc, would present no difficulty. Multiply this example many times and a great deal of information and the opportunity to use that information becomes available to Newham, residents, organisations and businesses.
All the main education providers, Newham Training Network, Newham.net Ltd and others submitted a successful bid to the New Opportunities Fund to establish a Newham Community Learning Grid to co-ordinate a local online presence for education and training. The first stage of the project to create a working collaboration is now underway.
Newham.net Ltd submitted a trans European bid for funds to
develop secure online voting systems that integrate web and smart card
technologies. The bid was successful and, subject to negotiations, Newham will
be a pilot area for the TruE Vote project. For financial reasons this project
is now Council-led.
The Smart Communities/DK TV project in the Plaistow New Deal
for Communities (NDC) area could ultimately provide some 3,000 people with
broadband connectivity served by cable/satellite TV, online citizen services,
and other e-developments. Among the
partners are Newham and Camden Councils, local housing associations, BBC and
Arthur Andersen. The Carpenters Estate
project will also act as a pilot for this facility.
The Council is developing a ‘data warehouse’ to enable data sharing between local
organisations. Currently, all public
service organisations (NHS, Council, Police, further/higher education etc)
maintain their own databases. If they
do this in non-compliant ways, it is impossible to match data sets. This has a number of negative effects. It inhibits joint service delivery, eg of
primary care and social services. It
means that the mass of data that exists cannot used for analytical purposes to
map (on an anonymised basis) correlations, say, between truanting, school
exclusions, incidence of mental health problems and of crime in a given
area. At the moment, co-operation
between local agencies is largely based on responding to a problem once it has
happened. Effective use of the power of
a data warehouse could open the door to more anticipative service delivery by
better targeting of resources jointly supported by local agencies. This has
been piloted in the NDC area. It can
provide a new means to address quality of life issues on a practical basis.
The Thames Gateway Technology Centre has in two years successfully put in place the basis of a technology transfer service. The next stage of development is the creation of the Knowledge Dock Centre (KDC) and Network (KDN). KDC will be a physical centre on the UEL Docklands Campus, with a prime focus on developing new business, education and research related to knowledge industry of all kinds. KDN links this to centres of a similar kind elsewhere in the world – currently, contact has been established with institutions in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, USA, Germany, Belgium and elsewhere in the UK. The aim is to make possible a transition from a local economy which is significantly under-supported in terms of technology transfer to one that is integrated with the mainstream of international R&D. The basis of this is the internet and the Newham.net Ltd can provide the point of access for business.
Newham Sixth Form College and Theatre Venture, both partners in Stratford Circus, are working with the performing arts centre to develop a new media centre which will support the use of new technologies in the arts. The combination of Stratford Circus’ video wall and local websites creates a new way of exhibiting and profiling creative activity of all kinds.
The new City Learning Centre at Forest Gate School is a location where expertise can interact with community and business demand for learning. It can be a flagship for a model of provision which could be rolled out to a variety of organisations who have PC suites for public use of one kind or another.
As is the case with virtually any development process happening in rapidly changing circumstances, there are all sorts of obvious and less manifest obstacles and inhibitions to progress. NeOn’s steering group has reviewed these and they are also referred to in the University of East London’s evaluation. ‘Weakness’ issues which a strategy must address include:
There is a clear lack of local content beyond the volume of webpages made available particularly by large public sector organisations. The most visited local webpages have been those hosted by the Council for local history and local jobs. The most interactive site is the www.newham.net portal in terms of adding links and adding events to the online calendar. There is a large offer of open and distance learning and access provision from local education providers, but barely any local education content is available online as structured courseware and learning support material. There is little content which recognises the language diversity of the borough.
The implication of this is ‘resource export’ - the advent of broadband technologies enables lots of companies from elsewhere to sell into Newham. As a result goods and services are traded in, while local cash flows out. The corollary of that is that the potential for Newham to develop a role as centre of production, and hence wealth creation, is lost.
NeOn represents very successful online community development activity, eg there are half a dozen active online groupings. However, these are not growing significantly and are not being replicated in other areas of interest. There is a shortage of people to be developers, hosts and mediators of e-communities. There is also a very clear shortage of local technical expertise which places a real limit on the ability to support and host growth of online access and participation.
Although NeOn and Newham Council have put in place the basis of being considered an interesting point of experimentation, this has not yet translated into either becoming a real laboratory for development which external partners will pay to join or into being a place of large scale exploitation of new ideas. Through NeOn and of course Newham Councils Computer Services Dept, Newham has a very real, very positive reputation for ICT in the outside world – significant private sector development enquiries are being generated, for example. However, we are far from the point where this opportunity is being traded on to create large scale value locally as regeneration requires, not least because there is no underlying strategic approach to understanding the requirements of ICT-based business and systematically setting out to attract it. For example, one strong prediction for the direction creative industry development will take, enabled by ICT development, is the emergence of ‘experience industry’. The presence of Excel – the UK’s largest meeting centre – is clustering a set of event enterprises in Newham. There might be a significant prospective interest in how face-to-face activity translates into ‘virtual eventing’, with the potential to capture commercial and employment benefit locally – but this won’t happen without much more rigorous analysis of potential. Far more extensive thinking needs to take place about selling Newham as a location for development of new industries.
Those with better jobs and more social status already have 4-5 times the levels of internet access than the poorest. That access represents capacity to continue to have advantage in a whole range of ways, from use of networks to labour market attractiveness. NeOn’s current planning has one part of the problem in view, ie providing the network capability to enable access. There is still the question of individuals, families and small businesses having not only the devices (eg PCs, digital TVs) to use the connectivity but also the skills and time. There are large questions of resource and learning here.
There is long standing liaison between public and voluntary agencies in Newham, as elsewhere. However, there is much less collaborative activity in terms of shared mainstream resource for joint work (as opposed to temporary project resource) and this undermines the opportunity to develop coherent local strategies for the deployment of ICT. The Council has recently established an ICT in the Community Group which brings together senior officers from different Council departments to ensure that the Council is able to achieve a coherent cross departmental strategic approach to its deployment of ICT in the community. For a borough, as distinct from a Council, strategy it will be necessary to obtain the formal commitment of the key borough based service providers from all sectors to support the functioning of a well serviced, high level group that can ensure that a strategic cross sector borough strategy is both developed and implemented.
The current position is that NeOn has helped organisations align strategies informally though information sharing but has not had the resources needed to carry this task out effectively. The need for a coherent borough wide strategy has become more urgent with the “wiring” of the first Council owned estate and the possible wiring of a further 20,000 Council homes. A potentially appropriate route for formalising such a strategy across the public sector would be the Local Strategic Partnership but this will still leave the challenge of achieving buy-in from the private sector and the community at large.
In terms of implementation and monitoring it is worth noting that the internet is steadily enforcing compliance to common standards and systems and could facilitate an efficient means for supporting the development and implementation of coherent local strategies. See appendix 5.
There is a diversity of online project activity. However, much of this is short term – funded by limited life external funding programmes – and fundamental issues of continuity and sustainability are raised. Newham Young People Online is a very successful venture – it does not have a significant expansion path however. There is currently no analogous activity for pensioners or school governors or any other actual or potential interest group. NeOn and its successes have occurred on the back of local organisations giving certain staff members some freedom to devote part of their time to NeOn projects. The resource directly applied to NeOn has not grown and turnover in NeOn’s steering group is diminishing not expanding the current core of organisation.
These are as many as local creativity can envisage. The following provides an idea of what’s currently in view and which a strategy could adopt as targets:
The speed with which the Carpenters Estate £1 million proposal was put together (2 weeks) and the number of partner organisations involved (Newham Council, Carpenters Road TMO, Inter Digital Networks (now Neos), Mase, Newham College, Newham.net Ltd, University of East London with DkTV, Go2Find, Plato and Tag Learning Ltd as agreed content providers) is indicative of the potential of NeOn’s contacts to work together efficiently. With adequate resource invested in co-ordination and bid writing it should be possible to pull in considerable additional resources because a shared vision and good partnership practice is in place. There are obvious sources of funding, eg lottery, that have not been tackled at all simply because of the lack of development capacity.
The development of the Extranet and its linking to local homes and businesses provides a test bed for development and exploitation of broadband applications enabling Newham to achieve a lead in online service delivery and also to attract commercial investment. Just as importantly it could attract leading edge companies to work in the borough thereby providing a greater degree of local expertise.
The Council’s Smart Card project, True Vote, the Extranet and the Council contract with Sky and UeL’s commitment to a pilot provides an ideal opportunity and resources for developing the type of online services that require security and trust.
The wide diversity of languages and cultures in Newham can be exploited to provide services within the borough and across the world. NeOn’s servers already host web sites for Newham Tamil Information Centre and the EU Tamils both of which aim to provide services internationally.
Development of broadband services capable of supporting speech and video provides the means of providing easier access to services regardless of ability to type or get out of the house or to speak a particular language. In a community as diverse as Newham’s, there are considerable advantages in what might be organised through a ‘video call centre’.
In addition to local business, the Council, the University, the two FE institutions, not to mention a range of voluntary organisations such as the Theatre Royal, all sell things to the public. Many of the things sold can be booked or reserved. London Transport now sells seasons tickets online and delivers them to your front door – more convenient in terms of waiting time for both season ticket holder and for those otherwise standing behind them in a queue to buy tickets. The logic, wherever feasible, is for anything sold in Newham to Newham people to be available online. This applies from tenants accessing their rent card online to booking a course at Newham College. This doesn’t obviate the need for other forms of payment, eg for those who don’t have credit cards and bank accounts. However, the underlying likelihood is for each citizen to have a ‘Council account’ covering all bought services – and to pay it off by whatever means is appropriate. Smart card technology extends this to other sellers of services on a similar basis as registering with Barclays, say, to take money from Barclaycard holders.
Developing and extending online communities based on the experiences of Newham Young People Online could increase participation in local affairs, fight social exclusion and make available the expertise of far more people. Newham’s community forums might be one vehicle for developing work, partnership with the health service another. Virtually any group, from tea dancers to asthma sufferers or from the housebound to Clapton FC fans, could be supported to find their own use for the web. The inbuilt advantage of this approach is that it begins with how people see themselves and what their interests are. It supports learning and skill development which is straightforwardly transferable into, say, the workplace. Once enough people are online and confident, a powerful dynamic is in place. Formal learning opportunities can then support those who want to go further and do more, not least because there is sufficient demand to justify developing courses.
Both these propositions are more evidenced by policy generalisations than new organisational realities. The amount of real underlying change in the organisation of education in Newham is still small, despite the improvements in the quality of outcomes and management. The web is a means to rethink provision of education, overcoming limitations of conventional organisation. It is also prospectively a vehicle to make Newham ‘stickier’ in terms of keeping talent in the borough.
For example, further and higher education (FHE) can attract talent and help it develop locally; or it may simply assist individuals to develop the capability to leave – arguably the opposite of regeneration! By playing an active development role in community and business life, FHE institutions can stimulate new development, eg of web-based commercial and cultural activity. The development of new online collaboration between FHE and other local organisations, eg NHS trusts, could open the door to new kinds of provision, eg continuing professional development for health service professionals.
The forming of new institutions – trade unions, co-ops, housing associations, university settlements, football clubs, etc – was an essential part of forming communities as the industrial revolution redeveloped and populated Newham in the nineteenth century. The borough’s regeneration now similarly requires not just new thinking, but new organisations. Some of those, given the technology context of economic development and cultural life today, should be web-based – the building of Newham’s cyberspace out of individual creativity, not just large public sector websites.
Newham Online is reaching the limits imposed by the people resource available to it. There is a long way to go before Newham’s people and local organisations and businesses are gaining from use of ICT to the maximum possible and further still to travel before NeOn’s original vision of a digital city involving the whole community is achieved. There is more development possible and more funding available than can be achieved. The point of a strategy for Newham therefore is to structure a process of obtaining new resources, creating new development, and achieving local benefit.
Appendix One
Our vision By the year 2005 Newham will be recognised as the leading UK centre for information and communication technologies in terms of both their commercial exploitation and their use to benefit the local community.
Our commitment Newham Online is a partnership of academic, private, public and "not for profit" bodies the members of which agree to work together to ensure that maximum local benefit is obtained from the development of information and communication technologies. In particular we will work together to use these technologies to:
· improve the local economy,
· provide opportunities for learning and creativity,
· improve our service provision,
· provide improved and cheaper local communication,
· facilitate access to local information,
· develop leisure and entertainment opportunities
· provide increased opportunity for participation in local affairs.
In pursuing our vision we will seek the best designs, develop applications that bring real benefit to local people and ensure that online access is easy, cheap and widespread in order that as many as possible of Newham's citizens and locally based organisations of all kinds can share in the benefits we foresee.
Our values We share the following values which will guide our partnership:
Participation - We will seek to involve all sectors of the community in the development and implementation of our vision whether or not they currently have access to online technology.
Social inclusion - We will work towards ensuring that everyone in Newham has access to Newham's online services.
Partnership - We will welcome into partnership any who share our vision, commitment and values.
Content and communication - We will seek to enable all who use our services to contribute as well as receive content, to engage with wider online communities of interest, to use the network to resolve local concerns and to build a shared vision for the for the future of Newham and its people.
Freedom of speech - We will provide space for discussion forums that guarantee freedom of speech within the law.
Knowledge - We will support education, training and independent learning to help people benefit from the opportunities available through the use of information and communication technologies.
Evaluation - We will ensure that our work together has clear objectives and that our achievements are evaluated and publicly reported.
Sustainability - We will ensure that any services provided through Newham Online are designed so as to ensure their sustainability.
Inter-operability - The individual partners of Newham Online each commit themselves to supporting the implementation of such standards as provide the best integrated communications platform for local people whilst maintaining compatibility with global communication standards.
Leadership - The partners recognise the leading role of Newham Council, as the representative of the people of Newham, in promoting, implementing and interpreting these principles.
NeOn’s Steering Group suggests that the following approach might be followed
Ø LBN’s ICT in the Community sub-group approve approach
Ø further draft of strategy
Ø Online
consultation
Ø Consultation
via 2010 partnership
Ø Community
Forums
Ø Newham
Business Forum
Ø Launch borough ICT strategy at Conference in 2001
The immediate resource implications are:
Ø short-term allocation of Council ‘link officer’ to NeOn + resourcing NeOn steering group member to work on strategy consultation process
Ø costs of consultation process
Ø investment in strategy ‘start up’ to begin expansion of local resource.
The Newham Online steering group has been working towards an ICT strategy for Newham. A specific feature of that process has been the need to develop a response to the emerging position in Newham, ie
Action on the last two critical points is possible through application of available project funds, eg SRB, New Deal for Communities, from trusts and so on. Three things are missing to achieve this:
Without the latter, it will also be difficult to integrate development with work that other prospective partners, eg further and higher education, are doing.
The NeOn steering group has identified five key strands of action to change this position. These are set out at Table One.
This approach is consistent with wider strategy work Newham Online, NeOn network partners and Newham Council are undertaking. It can be initiated quickly. Initial consultation with local funding programme managers indicates support for an approach which maximises value from investment and enhances the chance of sustainable continuation strategies.
The trigger actions are Newham Council agreeing to:
h) accept this approach
i) initiate the establishment of a charitable body (e-Newham Ltd)
j) employ a development manager on behalf of e-Newham Ltd
k) fund that post for up to a year
l) act as the employer of project staff who are managed via agreements between Newham Online Ltd and lead community partners
m) participate in the board of e-Newham Ltd.
n) participate in the board of Newham.Net Ltd
Table One -
|
Key roles |
Responsibility |
Comment
|
|
Newham
Online (network of online partners) |
Borough
strategy and baseline targets for online community development work targeting
constituted and other interest groups: §
learning
inc. home-school links, adult and community §
health §
access
to employment §
e-involvement,
eg with community fora |
NeOn
is an accepted means of developing strategies and creating this
baseline. The targets reflect local
interests, are relevant to regeneration, are aligned with funding
opportunities and are of interest to a range of local and other
partners. The aim is that activity
evolves through participation – the baseline is simply a starting point. |
|
Newham.net
Ltd |
Establishes
itself as local ISP and Public Telecommunications Operator. Undertakes
network development and related funding development. Acts
as a local Application Service Provider, hosting websites and providing
email. Manages key elements of Newham portal site. Advises
on technical issues (with Council) Secures
relations with other network and service providers so as to facilitate import
and export of services and information. |
Enables
continued development of Extranet and extension to other partners which is
otherwise not legally possible. Ensures
communication and hosting capacity is in place. Facilitates adoption of common standards and applications to facilitate local online development. Helps
ensure coherent development of local infrastructure and services. An
in principle peering agreement has already been established with SohoNet |
|
Newham
Council |
employment
of area-based project staff funding
consultancy for first step fundraising funding
development worker for eNewham Ltd for one year access
to community fora support
for local and external partnership building |
Provides
initial platform to create necessary organisational and funding base. |
|
eNewham
Ltd (charitable
vehicle) |
has
relief of poverty, education and research functions and raises funds for
online community development work contracts
with Newham Council to employ staff forms
agreements with community lead partners to create programmes of work integrates
work into a virtual Newham team across projects and partners board
oversees work of development manager (who also provides secretariat service
for Newham Online) |
Fills
significant gap in capacity and opens door to new development through
stimulating community interest. Means
to identify needs like levels of technical support and to promote action on
these. Ethos is partnership, working
across projects and organisations in line with community demand and interests
to build capacity. Aims to avoid
becoming ‘the’ organisation which does online community work. |
|
Lead
community partners |
point
of agreement for community online development programme targeting particular
community of geography, interest or affinity point
of public evaluation of progress |
LCPs
should ideally be legally constituted and independent, eg Carpenters Estate
Tenant Management Organisation, to ensure autonomous community voice directly
guides development. |
The decision to establish a local Public Telecommunications Operator (PTO) and Internet Service Provider (ISP) was taken by Newham Online on 2nd April 1998. We wished to:
1 develop a broadband-based extranet, i.e. a
network made up of networks across Newham to comprise a borough-wide, cross
sectoral environment for large scale Internet uses of all kinds
2 provide access to the extranet that was free at the point of use to people in their homes, workplace and public spaces
3 make profits that would be put back into improving both local infrastructure and take-up of information and communication technologies by local businesses and residents.
As the extranet expands, it is legally necessary for the organisation operating it to be registered as a PTO. A company has been established for this purpose supported by Newham Online’s ERDF-funded Internet Gateway and Extranet project. Since the Gateway’s URL is http://www.newham.net, it was decided to name the company which would manage the gateway and extranet “Newham.net Limited”.
The Memorandum of Association sets out the objects for which the company is established, i.e.
(a) trade as a Public Telecommunications Operator and Internet Service Provider offering public telecommunications and ancillary services in Newham;
(b) provide efficient interconnectivity between telecommunications networks serving the borough of Newham;
(c) support the development and exploitation of information and communications technologies;
(d) promote the interests of its members.
In practical terms its
immediate task is to put in place the maintenance and service contracts
required for the efficient management of the existing extranet. This comprises
the infrastructure which already links the East London and Lee Valley
Teleregion, Newham Council, the UEL’s Business Development Centre, the East
London Centre and the St. Luke’s
Centre. In the near future it will also link NewVIc, Three Mills Studios,
Waterhouse Studios and, on their completion, Stratford Circus and the
Children’s Discovery Centre.
Negotiations are in hand to secure cheap, fast Internet access for the extranet so it is linked to the worldwide Internet as effectively as possible. Computer Access, another Newham Online partner, is working with the Council to deploy a server network. This will provide common online services for the extranet, including hosting the Newham Gateway site that will provide easy access to all Newham-based online content. Newham.net is also in negotiation with a prospective partner able to make available extensive information resources and services to be accessed through the extranet.
The organisation operating the extranet must be able to enter into contracts, own property and achieve PTO status. The challenge was to create a company that would be for public benefit yet be a commercial operator capable of being licensed as a PTO. The company had also to be capable of involving a wide range of organisations and people, guaranteeing accountability appropriate to a body receiving public investment and yet be capable of responding quickly in a field changing extremely fast. It was also essential that outside commercial interests should be unable to purchase or otherwise control the company, yet it should be capable of participating in commercial joint ventures to improve the local infrastructure. To meet these requirements, Newham.net was established as a Company Limited by Guarantee. This means that it cannot be bought or sold nor can individuals benefit from selling a share. Although unusual, there is no reason why a Company Limited by Guarantee should not trade commercially and covenant profits to a separate charity. To be a PTO the company has to provide services to the public not just it’s members. There are strong restrictions in the articles on how members will benefit, in particular the restriction on directors benefiting has been written as if the company were a charity. The disadvantage of this status is that it is not possible to raise funds by selling shares. Conversely it can be seen as a safe and appropriate body to own infrastructure investments made by its partners. Joint ventures with private sector partners to develop particular aspects of the infrastructure will be possible.
The geographic area of operation of the company is restricted to Newham and the networks serving it. There is no intention that Newham.net should offer network services in other boroughs though it may well support initiatives in neighbouring boroughs that would improve the value of the Newham extranet. To re-inforce the local connection there is a requirement that all General Meetings must be held in Newham. In order to create the widest scope for involvement, the Articles require that organisations using the service be offered membership. However, not all members will be equal. Different classes of membership will be established to ensure that the owners of key infrastructure (such as the Council and University of East London) that become members will have a