Scotland plans groundbreaking joint IT infrastructure

Aberdeen is to head up a groundbreaking plan to create a joint IT infrastructure for 10 councils, the emergency services, universities and other public bodies.

The Aberdeen City Council-led plan has been on the drawing board for two years and has now been given added impetus by the Scottish Executive efficiency review, which aims to take £1bn out of public sector back-office costs to re-invest in frontline services by 2009.

The project would see the creation of a shared IT and communications infrastructure for Aberdeen City Council, Aberdeenshire Council, Moray Council, Grampian Police, Grampian Fire and Rescue, Aberdeen College, Aberdeen University, Robert Gordon University and the NHS Grampian Trust.

Nigel Landy, ICT strategy manager at Aberdeen City Council, told silicon.com that the Scottish Executive has given the council until September to come up with a sound business case for the plan.

The council is currently seeking a consultancy to help put the business case together for each of the public bodies and work out how to bring the IT infrastructure together and how the governance of that organisation would work in practice.

The rough outline is to initially create a joint communications infrastructure, including voice, and then establish storage area networks (SANs).

"From there it is not a quantum leap to see we could get into joint computing, and the holy grail of it all would be the operation of joint systems for ledger, personnel and payroll with a view to creating significant economies of scale," said Landy.

No timetable has yet been set for the project, but Landy warned that such an ambitious and broad undertaking would only work on the clear understanding that it is a non-partisan exercise.

More details of the tender can be found here.