Interview: Nana Barfi-Sarpong, CIO of North Northamptonshire Council, talks about digital developments since its formation in 2021
There’s something daunting in the prospect of consolidating the digital teams and approaches of a handful of local authorities into one, which was the prospect facing Nana Barfi-Sarpong when he took on the position of chief information officer of North Northamptonshire Council in March 2021.
He was the first in the role following the council’s formation in a reorganisation that followed the effective insolvency with a section 114 notice then division into two of Northamptonshire County Council, and consolidation with the districts and boroughs of Corby, East Northamptonshire, Kettering and Wellingborough.
“It’s been interesting for me,” Barfi-Sarpong says. “I took on the role as I thought the proposition from North Northamptonshire was a unique one. Not many CIOs get to say they’re joining an organisation that needs to build a digital service from the ground up.
“This was that opportunity. It obviously has its challenges as there has been no ‘north star’ environment that you build everything into. It’s all separate, so you have to build a new version to take it forward.”
The starting point was an awkward one.
“In all the various sites we had different suppliers due to decisions made in the legacy boroughs. We had different versions of applications, estates and suppliers, so we had to try to do all the work around rationalising that and bringing it forward.”
He adds: “The initial piece of work needed was to understand the landscape. We had four versions of everything and there are still areas where there are distinct estates.”
The change has not been rushed. North Northamptonshire continued to work with its new counterpart, West Northamptonshire, for around 18 months while assessing the landscape and the various digital teams were disaggregated. Barfi-Sarpong also worked with colleagues on drawing up a digital strategy and laid the foundations for a new team.
Features of strategy
Key elements of the strategy include developing a single technical infrastructure for the new council, moving the data of all the predecessor councils onto a single platform, replacing end-of-life infrastructure, implementing a new telephony infrastructure, a rationalising of core applications and launching a new technology, digital and data service.
Building the team for the latter involved a mixture of finding people from the existing teams and bringing in new people.
“In creating my management team I brought in the managers from the previous boroughs, and a new head of digital from outside the organisation and a new head of infrastructure,” Barfi-Sarpong says. “That allowed us to keep the local knowledge and have people who understand how everything worked, and also injecting that new knowledge of what a unitary of our size looks like in terms of digital.
“It’s been quite successful because it not only allowed us to bring forward the work we did but also to fill in gaps where we had any. It’s been really useful.”
At present there are around 40 people in the team, and he hopes to increase the number to around 60, saying that while this will bring new costs it can also provide economies of scale for larger savings around the council.
Enterprise architecture
Another key element of the strategy was to create a new enterprise architecture to match the scale of the new council.
“When we looked at the older structure we didn’t have anything in terms of enterprise architecture,” he says. “The older boroughs had come together with their various approaches. It had been built up on what they had, whereas with a unitary you need a strategic approach, with an architecture that can deliver for your residents.
“That was very important for us, to have a strategy and an architecture behind it. I chose an approach of cloud wherever we needed to be rather than cloud first. Cloud first assumes that everything goes into the cloud, but cloud where necessary means you can take that decision on what goes into the cloud and what doesn’t.”
This has fed into some of the early procurements of new systems. The council has adopted a cloud based telephony system from 8x8 and a customer relationship management system from Liferay, along with contracts with Capita for revenues and benefits, Civica for an electoral system and Placecube for a low code platform.
But it is retaining two data centres, a primary and secondary, compared with the six it inherited, reflecting the intent to run some systems on-premise when appropriate.
Developing these over the next two years is one of the main works in the pipeline, along with a reprocurement of adult social care an education management systems, the provision of new devices to the council’s workforce and bringing all users under one domain.
Potential for partner
The North Northamptonshire digital team is currently doing the development work and managing relationships with suppliers itself, but it is likely to be looking for a technology partner in the future.
“I’m a huge believer in building skills in-house as you are able to use them going forward,” Barfi-Sarpong says. “But we have over 60 projects deemed high priority in the pipeline so we will go to market at some point to work with a partner as we can’t deliver some of these projects by ourselves.”
The team will also continue to work with other partners, notably the counterparts at West Northamptonshire, which supports the Northamptonshire Chidlren’s Trust for both councils. It is also part of the EastNet partnership of local authorities that provides a broadband network under a contract with MLL Telecom.
Barfi-Sarpong says the digital team also has an important asset in support from the council’s executive board, although it will have to take a measured approach in how it spends on new projects.
“A lot of the work we do ties into our corporate strategy which the executive is behind; it drives forward our work. We also have the ambitions of the ‘Big 50’, what the place needs to resemble in 2050, and there is a lot of conversation around how digital moves it forward and contributes to levelling up different areas.
“It’s the same in every council, your support goes as far as what you can afford in terms of that ambition, and that’s where choices come in about what you can afford and what you hold back until later.”
Spreading skills
Among the ambitions is to foster the development of digital and data skills in different parts of the council, reflecting a belief that the people who will know how to get the best out of systems are those delivering services to the public, especially in interrogating and taking insights from data.
Through our relationships with the business areas we want to hear about what’s happening, what’s new, their ambitions, and use our tech and digital stack wherever we can use it,” Barfi-Sarpong says.
“Another of my ambitions is to keep our stack very lean as an organisation, but I don’t see us in a place where we do all the interrogation and write all the reports. That is where the end user and service areas will get the most benefit when they can access that for themselves.”
All this is going to take some time and he is cautious about overstating the ambition, but he makes clear that he expects clear progress in areas that really matter to the council.
“We still have a significant amount of transformation to go ahead. Over the next couple of years, along with meeting the challenges that local authority budgets present to us, we’re looking to be very innovative, and to really achieve the core statutory functions and bring them together to increase collaboration and efficiency. That’s where our focus is.”
