ICO infrastructure
Information technology
The long term managed services agreement with Fujitsu expires in 2007 and cannot be renewed. As a result, the year has been dominated by a project to procure IT services. This was completed in May 2007 when the Commissioner agreed a new five year agreement with Alfred McAlpine Business Services Ltd.
The procurement has provided an opportunity to ensure services are well defined and meet our business needs now and in the immediate future. Considerable effort is being made to ensure our in-house team is well prepared to manage the new agreement.
During the year our work focused on developing the functionality and supporting infrastructure of our core applications and internet environment to meet current business priorities. For example, we developed online knowledge bases to support casework staff in the decision making process. In addition developments have taken account of lessons learned, particularly from the early experience of handling freedom of information cases. The changes improved our ability to produce detailed management information.
A further development in the year has been the decision to establish an in-house IT forensics unit to support the work of our investigations team.
A project was launched during the year with the objective of improving the ability of our staff to work remotely, but in a secure environment. It takes advantage of a new service offering from the Government Secure Intranet (GSI) framework agreement.
Records management software (Meridio) is an integral
part of our casework management system. During the
year the ICO assessed whether there are business
benefits in exploiting the use of Meridio further and, in
particular, using it for the management of the ICO’s
corporate documents and records. As a result of a
successful pilot the ICO will be extending the use of this
software in 2007/08.
Accommodation
The ICO has accommodation on seven different sites. During 2006/07, the Wales office moved to its new permanent location, we re-negotiated the lease on our storage facility and expanded our Northern Ireland estate to house additional staff.
The main office in Wilmslow required considerable imaginative space planning in order to meet business requirements and to accommodate new temporary and permanent staff. There is now no more room for additional staff.
Plans to take additional accommodation in Wilmslow were shelved due to financial constraints, but the ICO continues to seek a cost effective way of moving the main office to one site.
The environment
All used paper is confidentially shredded on site and recycled. This includes archive files for which four recycling days are held each year. Newspapers and cardboard are also recycled. In 2006/07 our recycling saved 162 trees, an increase of 25% over the previous year.
We use paper from well managed sustainable forests, controlled sources and recycled wood or fibre. Low energy light bulbs are used throughout our offices, and our vending machines contain Fair Trade tea & coffee.
