NDL

Declan Grogan, CEO of NDL

In the next in our series of interviews with leaders in technology for the public sector, we speak to Declan Grogan, CEO of NDL. He talks about the changes he’s seen over the last five years and the challenges ahead, and assesses recent initiatives.

What path has your career taken?
I was determined to work in computing from the age of 13. At 16, I went to college to take A levels and, while there, I was offered a job as a part-time IT salesman. It only paid £2 an hour but that was it: I knew this was what I wanted to do. So I left college and went full time – and never regretted it.
I worked my way through various IT jobs, eventually joining NDL where I acquired the company in 2004. Over the years we have acquired Metascybe, Firefox/FTP Software and AppSwing, and have now become the company you see today.

How do you see your role at NDL?
I’m an innovator rather than an inventor. I try to bridge the technical and the practical commercial world. I see my role as bringing the right people together and creating an environment where they can put forward raw ideas. We then wrap marketing and product development around these, and deliver a vision and a plan. It’s all about building a strong team and giving them the right environment so they can work to their full potential.

How has the public sector market changed since you acquired NDL?
The biggest thing to touch our business - and the citizen - has been Implementing Electronic Government (IEG), in and around the Gershon review. This triggered a massive rise in public sector engagement with technology to deliver better customer services.
IEG set real targets. It was the impetus for self service, transactional websites and CRM implementations. It led to the introduction of one-stop shops: citizens are no longer prepared to wade through a directory to find the right telephone number; they want to be able to ring one number or visit one place regardless of the service they need.
This vision of e-government has now officially stopped and now we talk about Varney and the transformation agenda. But IEG’s biggest legacy is that it brought down cultural barriers, because a small number of leading lights proved it was possible to harness technology across departments to improve services.
IEG had real targets: I think this is where there is now a real vacuum. Yes, we’ve had the introduction of NI 14, but that’s more for reporting purposes. IEG dictated that a vision was created and dates set, which forced the pace.

How do you think the transformation agenda is going?
The transformation agenda is a three-card trick. It leads to vastly improved services at vastly reduced costs, but to achieve this it needs three elements: CRM, mobile and self service. And particularly if you consider mobile, I don’t think there has been anything that delivers a return on investment so quickly since the introduction of the PC – it’s a step change in efficiency.
There are benefits from implementing each of these individually but to do it properly you need all three; you need to break down the siloed barriers and integrate with existing systems. It’s just too expensive to rip and burn what’s there already: you must embrace and continue to exploit what’s been built up over the last 20 years.

What’s your opinion of the Government’s recent Digital Britain announcements?
I think it’s window dressing, and in many cases is simply unrealistic. Take the aim of giving innovative companies a bigger chance of securing government contracts: I’ll believe that when I see it. At the moment, it’s estimated that 80 per cent of spending goes to 11 companies, and that’s not going to change quickly. It’s a laudable aim but phenomenally difficult to pull off.
Then there’s cloud computing. Is this a real possibility? I’m just not convinced. Yes, there are some smaller local authorities who could exploit this: for example, if they can’t justify a full CRM system they can take a Software as a Service approach instead.
But the whole point of the cloud is that the physical location of data isn’t an issue: is there really any realistic chance of government data being held in this way? At the moment there are examples where authorities aren’t allowing PDA use with data held outside the firewall because of security concerns. If we can’t mark data for use in private networks, then how can we start to embrace the cloud?

NDL works with both the public and private sector. What are the differences and what can each learn from the other?
There used to be many more differences, but these are going away. The private sector used to be more adventurous and the public sector more risk-averse. This is less the case these days, most especially in the local government sector. Our customers are becoming more return-on-investment savvy and we are seeing real examples of innovation and savings. Take the ‘tell us once’ initiative: this is really happening and shows it can be done. Central government could do well to learn from that.
And Scotland shows that central government can indeed lead the way. For example, they’ve demonstrated the benefits of joining up health services and local services: it seems they are more prepared to make innovative decisions and go for it.

What’s on the horizon?
We all know there’s a storm coming. There can be no wasted resources: for example, back-office staff won’t be able to sit and type in the same name and address over and over again. Processes will have to be joined up, there will have to be more agility and efficiency. Local government has already started on this path, implementing CRM and self-service supported by integration with the back office. I’m not convinced central government is in the same position.
It’s going to be all about front line services: the back office will be squeezed. The focus will be on enabling the citizen to do it for themselves. Savings are going to have to be made on a scale not seen before. In short, everyone needs to prepare for the winds of change.