Computer Weekly Oct 2010 on ICT in Isle of Man

1. CW + a whitepaper from ComputerWeekly
Isle of Man government
in race to deliver IT with
ANDY HOOPEr/ASSOCIATED NEWSPAPErS/rEx FEATUrES
£10m annual budget
Island drives on Microsoft with Windows 7 roll-out
by Bill Goodwin
The Isle of Man is only 11 miles long and 33 miles wide but it has a reputation for a cutting-
edge approach to IT that would put a larger country to shame. Although known to many for its
TT motorcycle races and prowess as an offshore financial centre, the island has also built up a
reputation as a leader in electronic government.
Its 82,000 residents are able to file tax returns, pay rates and buy fishing licences online. It has
succeeded in introducing a summary health care record system, where many health trusts in
the UK have struggled. And it has delivered a high capacity IP network, offering data telephony
and mobile telecoms using 1Gbit per second across the island’s 237 government sites.
Isle of Man stats
The country’s Information Systems Division (ISD) is the powerhouse behind this innovation. Its
68 staff are responsible for supporting a vast array of IT systems, ranging from vehicle l
licensing, to mobile systems for ambulance crews, and the financial systems used across l
government. It has a budget of £9.8m a year. l
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It is no accident that there are empty desks in the former church occupied by ISD in Douglas, l
the island’s capital. It’s a virtual organisation which regularly boosts its numbers with contrac-
tors to deliver new projects for the island’s government departments. They work seamlessly l
alongside the core IT team.
Driving technology strategy
ISD is responsible for more than just the raw technology. It plays an integral role in driving the
Isle of Man government’s technology strategy, which encompasses everything from monitor-
ing the speed of bikes during the TT races to providing cutting-edge e-services. Yet, its Facts: Information
expenditure on IT per government employee is low – £2,948 compared with an average of
£5,511, according to Gartner. Systems Division
“I think I have the best IT director’s job in the world,” says Allan Paterson, director of the
Information Systems Division and Isle of Man government’s CIO. “It’s so wide. It is measuring
the height of the waves in the Irish sea – we have technology out doing that. We provide all the
technology for the race management system, from rider registration, right through to who
comes first or second. It’s such a broad front.”
The Isle of Man is firmly a Microsoft shop. It took the decision to standardise on Microsoft and
Cisco technology some seven years ago. Its aim was to rationalise an increasingly unwieldy
portfolio of IT platforms. They included 12 different operating systems, and technology ranging
from IBM, SCO Unix, Apple, Novell and Microsoft, and mainframes. Moving to a standard
desktop and server cut infrastructure costs by a fifth.
“We had an Oracle desktop client with every variant of Oracle. It came down to the skillsets of
the suppliers,” says Paterson. “They would dictate for us historically what the tool would be for
the application. Effectively a supplier would say: ‘We support this Oracle client and we are not
ready to support that Oracle client’.”
Paterson considered open source, but says the technology did not offer an end-to-end
solution. And, aside from the offices of Ubuntu in the Isle of Man, there was limited open
source capability on the island.
“We get the open source arguments thrown at us regularly. We have people who say you
should be using open source for the economic development of the island. But I have to provide
a range of national and local government services.” And all for a budget that is less than Tony
Blair’s expense account, he says.

2. CW + Isle of Man case study
For a small organisation in a small jurisdiction with finite resource, building a best-of-breed IT
system, is not an option, he says. “The best is the enemy of the good, so we have gone for IoM government
good. Good is the level that allows us to support what is going on here and be leading edge.”
IT systems
ISD signed its first three-year Microsoft Enterprise agreement in seven years ago, and began
transferring some 200 applications running on half a dozen versions of Unix onto Windows
Server 2003.And it decided to standardise on Microsoft’s CrM product Microsoft Dynamics
Ax, formerly know as Axapta, rather than better known CrM (see Big risk, big bang box
below). Paterson acknowledges that the move was risky.
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“Of course there was a risk. But there is a risk in moving to Oracle. We actually tried Oracle
before and we had a failed Oracle project,” he says.
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Windows updates
Paterson has a deliberate policy of keeping up with the latest software releases and operating
systems. Skipping an operating system generation, he argues is a false economy. This is why, l
unlike many organisations, the Isle of Man government chose to move from Windows xP to
Windows Vista.
“If you leave the estate for a period of time it’s an enormous cost. It is a capital cost, it has
revenue costs. It is a pain cost. You need to think that you have Windows, not a particular
operating systems subset,” he says.
“We actually saw a cost in staying with xP with the next service pack coming out. And we
would have had to do a lot of the revalidation. It is almost as if it cost 10 units of work to update
xP. Going to Vista cost us three units of work. Going to Windows 7 cost us one unit of work.”
And then there is an opportunity cost, he says. If you want to take advantage of the next
version of Sharepoint, you have to have the right version of Windows.
“Staying with xP meant you were going to inhibit yourself with the opportunities that come
along in the short- to medium-term,” he says.
ISD identified the need to upgrade 2,500 users across government to Vista in 2007.
“A lot of precursor work was done in advance of any roll-out, so we could identify what
standards we could adopt for it, what we needed to do, how many users were affected, and
how many companies were affected,” says Nick Leece, technical manager.
As part of the project, ISD introduced Microsoft’s Application Virtualisation (App-V) package to
deploy software automatically. This was one of the main drivers behind the Vista project, says
Leece. It delivered an 80% saving in application upgrade costs.
“We were taking applications off the desktop, putting them into App-V and then deploying
them back,” says Leece. “It allows us to deploy to a wide variety of users in real time.”
Halfway through the upgrade project, ISD switched from deploying Vista to newly-released l
Windows 7. The decision meant that Isle of Man government departments could take
advantage of the latest versions of Microsoft products including Exchange and Sharepoint. l
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“The work we did for Vista enabled us to be in a very healthy position to switch the operating
system to Windows 7. So no additional work was needed in redoing the applications,” says l
Leece. l
At the same time, the department began work on a programme to virtualise desktop applica- l
tions. The decision cut the cost of deploying applications by a further 50%. It also gave the ISD l
the ability to give staff temporary access to applications on their desktop as they needed them.
It was important for the ISD to liaise closely with the other government departments. Peter l
Clarke, chief technology officer, began speaking to individual departments two or three years
ago to explain the project. ISD upgraded to Windows 7 first, followed by other government l
departments.
ISD left the biggest department, the Department of Health and Social Security, until last. The l
department split into the Department of Health and the Department of Social Care in April, but
has a common back-office infrastructure.

3. CW + Isle of Man case study
Simon Jackson is director of finance at the Department of Health, which manages the IT
estate. “Clearly when you are dealing with the sort of budget and the range of services we Technology estate
provide, it has to be absolutely spot on in terms of IT infrastructure,” he says. “If we have a
failure in the benefits system, a failure in the payroll, a failure in the payables side of things, it can l
really impact on the front line.”
The department started planning for the Windows upgrade in 2008, working closely with ISD.
Project members audited the estate, making sure applications were in a fit state to migrate.
“In experiences I have had elsewhere, the 80/20 rule seems to apply, where you can get away
with having 80% working and sort the rest out later. You can’t do that with some of our
systems. Everything had to hit the ground running, a lot of preparation, a lot of planning,” he l
says.
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Some 60 desktops were involved in the project in finance, ranging from payroll to payables
and receivables. The Department of Health upgraded some 1,600 desktops. They were
moved directly from Windows xP to Windows 7.
The department went live in spring 2010, with few reported problems.
“It was a fairly easy transition. We obviously worked closely with ISD, because of the scale of E-services
the project, on preparation, planning and understanding the risks,” says Jackson.
“I can honestly say that when we did the migration, the issues were really minor domestic
issues, printers not working for an hour or so, and things like that. It was absolutely excellent,”
he says.
“One of the things I found satisfying this time around was that we did not have to replace any of
the base units. It was just a quick audit of what we had. Quite literally overnight it just switched
over.”
Windows 7 has produced a positive reaction from staff, says Jackson.
“The feedback I have had is that the system is quicker, more reliable. The functionality is much
better. In particular the printing utilities are far better. It is a far more reliable and efficient
operation.”
Business benefits
For the Isle of Man government the move to Windows 7 has allowed the ISD to reduce its
support costs, and keep its IT estate up-to-date with the latest software.
“We chose to move to Windows 7 because it was reducing our support costs,” says Paterson.
“It has been a journey all along. When we put xP in, we suddenly had people saying they were
experiencing 60% fewer desktop faults. That journey has been improving from xP to Vista to
Windows 7.”
ISD’s progressive policy of reducing support costs is important, says Paterson. It has allowed
ISD to expand the number of users on its systems from 2,500 to 5,500 with no increase in
cost.
“When we started the xP journey we had a much lower number of PCs and users. We have
gone through that journey and we are doing it with the same revenue budget and the same
headcount. And we are supporting a vastly increased number of applications,” he says.

4. +
CW Isle of Man case study
Isle of Man government’s CIO keeps systems simple

5. +
CW Isle of Man case study
Department of Home Affairs plans unification project
ANDY HOOPEr/ASSOCIATED NEWSPAPErS/rEx FEATUrES

6. +
CW Isle of Man case study
Big risk, big bang works with CrM
PATrICK FrILET/FEx FEATUrES

7. CW + Isle of Man case study
Chronology
WESTEND61/rEx FEATUrES
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8. CW + Isle of Man case study
Chronology resources for IT
WESTEND61/rEx FEATUrES
departments
l Computer Weekly
> Microsoft white paper: Modernising
your business processes with
l Microsoft Dynamics
> Microsoft white paper: How will
Windows 7 Professional help my
business?
> Microsoft white paper – What is
Windows 7?
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