House of Commons Commission - Twenty-first Annual Report 1998-99

Twenty-First Annual Report 1998-99

Annex A – Department of the Serjeant at Arms

Department of the Serjeant at Arms
Annual Report 1998-99

Purpose

"The Serjeant at Arms Department aims to provide the best possible service to Members and all those who work in or visit the House of Commons, on the authority of the Speaker and within the regulations of House".

To carry out those functions which derive from the Serjeant at Arms' attendance upon the Speaker and as the executive authority of the House. In addition to ceremonial duties, these include responsibility for regulating security and access, as well as the maintenance of order within the Precincts. As Housekeeper, the Serjeant has charge of all accommodation and associated services including the Works Directorate and Communications Directorate.

The Department interprets its purpose and responsibilities as requiring high performance in the following Key Result Areas (KRA).

	Delivery of high quality customer services which are to an agreed standard, are relevant and accessible to all who work in and visit Parliament.
	Ensuring the Parliamentary Estate is a good place to work in and visit by providing a quality environment and infrastructure for Members of both Houses and all others who work in and visit the Parliamentary Estate.
	Provision of a safe and secure environment and infrastructure throughout the Parliamentary Estate by ensuring that the risk from violence, accident, fire and IT system misuse for those who work in and visit the Parliamentary Estate is managed and minimised.
	The preservation of the Heritage Site by managing the Parliamentary Estate in such a manner that its heritage is safeguarded for future generations.
	The provision of high quality direct support of the legislative process by ensuring that the necessary staff and facilities are available to enable the Chambers and Committees of the House to function effectively, and to support Parliamentary ceremonial.
	Delivery of all services in a cost-effective manner by ensuring that the services provided by the Department are delivered effectively to agreed standards and costs, and offer value for money.

Services provided

To carry out ceremonial duties involved in attendance on the Speaker and to ensure that the provisions of the Sessional Order are met by the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis.

To maintain order and security in the Chambers, Galleries and Committee Rooms in the Precincts of the House, to control admission and access to these areas and the Members' Line of Route;

To ensure through the Works Directorate that new building works, maintenance, conservation, furnishing, heating, lighting, ventilation and cleaning are carried out satisfactorily and that works are closely supervised, on schedule and within budget;

To provide through the Parliamentary Communications Directorate effective and efficient communications, including the Parliamentary Data and Video Network (PDVN), telephone and division bells systems, together with advice on information technology and related topics for Members, their staffs and departments of the House;

To advise on and administer the allocation of accommodation throughout the House, including the booking of committee and conference/interview rooms;

To oversee the provision of parking facilities and also other office services, such as mail, laundry stores, newspapers and stationery for Members and their staff at the most economic cost;

To process applications and ensure that appropriate security checks are undertaken for the issue of photographic and day passes;

Organisation

The organisation of the Department and complement as at 31 March 1999 are shown on the chart.

Change of Head of Department

The Serjeant at Arms, who is appointed by the Crown, is the Head of Department. The Serjeant at Arms is scheduled to retire on 31 December 1999 and it is anticipated that following a selection process, the new Serjeant will be appointed to be in post on
1 January 2000.

Current and future activities

The report on current and future activities has been presented for each of the six key result areas for the Department outlined in section one.

Quality customer service

The Departmental objective of delivering the "Best Possible Service" (BPS), has continued to be given strong emphasis, new staff are being given training and a programme of reinforcement coaching for current staff in BPS is being put in place. The success of this work is illustrated by the results of the recent Members survey which show a marked improvement in the level of service delivery in the Department.

High quality staff are essential if the Department is to be able to deliver excellence and their training and development remains an extremely high priority. The Department has formally committed to Investors in People and has an action plan in place to achieve accreditation before August 2000. Issues, which need to be addressed to achieve this goal include communication, consultation, training and business planning.

A structure of Working Groups reporting to senior management has been put in place with the aim of utilising the skills and experience of as many key staff as possible in developing policies and plans for the future. Early successes include a more broadly based Business Plan for the Department, the development of improved systems for
co-ordination of IT projects, a system of post project appraisal and the identification of management competencies required by staff in the Department. A team briefing process was introduced in February 1999 as part of the Department's communication strategy, to improve the flow of information between management and staff. The communication strategy will be further refined and implemented this year.

The Secretariat directly supporting the Serjeant at Arms has been set up to allow better management and co-ordination of the three elements of the Department; Core Serjeants, the Parliamentary Works Directorate and the Parliamentary Communications Directorate (PCD). Initial successes have been an increased flow of regular financial and operational information to the Senior Management of the Department; better co-ordination of the Department's complex web of information systems with an extension of their use to the House of Lords; the co-ordination of inputs from other departments leading to the development of an accommodation strategy for staff in the House.

The Help Desks are now enabling the Department to identify and track service work needs on the Parliamentary Estate. The next stage will be to use the data generated by the system to take managerial action to improve customer service.

The fully integrated Help Desks were further developed during the year and links created to the Serjeant at Arms database which is now in place and providing data for the allocation and management of Members' facilities. Computerisation of Committee Room bookings has been achieved and Meeting Room and special permits booking systems have been replaced, achieving year 2000 compliance. 65 staff have been trained on the use of the database and 35 computers are set up to access the system.

Work is currently underway to record and track IT assets in the Department, and to collect data to manage the use and performance of photocopier facilities used by Members and their staff and to develop more advantageous contractual arrangements. Further sub-systems are also under development, for the management of telephone extensions across the estate.

Good place to work and visit

The work on Portcullis House has continued and the building façade is now clearly visible. The final stages of completion to be followed by fitting out are expected in the next year. On present plans Portcullis House should be ready for occupation in late 2000.

The accommodation strategy for staff of the House has been approved by the Board of Management and will achieve good use of accommodation following the opening of Portcullis House and the subsequent refurbishment and relocation projects.

A thorough review of the effective operation of the Houses cleaning and janitorial services is being undertaken. Portcullis House has been included in the review and it is intended that these services should be provided for this flagship building on an outsourced basis. A specification for the delivery of these services will be developed and put out to competitive tender, under E.C. rules, before the end of 1999.

Work on installing air conditioning in Committee room 14, and enabling work for future phases of the programme has been completed. Work has continued in the Palace on the maintenance of the building's fabric and service infrastructure. This has included electrical distribution, heating, water supplies, roofs and restoration of decorative interiors. The rolling programme of lift renewals, lavatory refurbishments, stone cleaning and restoration of works of art continued. The completion of staff changing rooms, and offices as part of the Refreshment Department modernisation has taken place, the major work on the refitting of the main kitchens (Phase F) is planned for the coming year.

The electronic locking installation programme for Members' offices and other sensitive areas has continued this year with the completion in Norman Shaw North and work in 1 Parliament Street and the Palace. The programme has been a success and will be extended to other areas of the estate during the coming year.

Wiring for the PDVN was extended to further areas of the Palace, including the offices around Speaker's Court and areas off the Colonnade. The cabling programme for the PDVN will continue in the Palace with work taking place above the Speaker's residence and in the Liberal leader's and whips offices, and the opportunity will again be taken to install automatic detection equipment and new telephone cabling at the same time.

Work has continued to introduce more resilience and capacity into the PDVN network. A major upgrade of the system infrastructure will be carried out during the summer recess this year.

The remote access service to the PDVN has been extended to 1410 users. In the coming year the feasibility of using encrypted virtual private networking (VPN) technology to access the parliamentary network will be assessed. This will deliver substantial benefits to network users if adopted.

There will be much attention to extending the PDVN to provide improved links to constituency offices together with the arrangement of strong voice and data communication services with the devolved assemblies.

To enable an increasing number of requests for PDVN connection to be satisfied in those areas which the ongoing cabling programme is not immediately addressing, a pilot wireless local area network (LAN) system has been set up in the Commons Court block of the Palace. This has proved extremely successful. A business case is being prepared to look at a planned extension of this service to other parts of the estate without cabled access to the PDVN. If this is agreed work will take place in the summer to provide this service in Norman Shaw South

The strategy for convergence of software, applications and networking systems, for all Departments has commenced and will continue for the next two years.

The pilot rollout of the Exchange email software to the House of Lords, the Parliamentary Communications Directorate and the Serjeant at Arms Department is nearing completion and the remainder of the programme is due for completion at the end of 1999 summer recess.

The installation of Voice Mail commenced at the end of the year and it is planned to offer this service to all users who require it. An improved and enhanced Messaging system to supplement the existing paper based system is also being introduced. The project to replace all telephones in the Parliamentary Estate with new handsets is expected to be completed this year. This will greatly reduce the high telephone engineering cost of office moves.

The Communications Directorate has taken steps to provide services aligned to the business requirements of our users, an example of this customer focus is the plan to establish a PCD desktop support team to enable in depth assistance to be provided for desktop applications to Members, Peers and other Departments requesting such help. Arrangements to facilitate central purchasing of IT equipment and software on behalf of Members are being implemented to provide this facility.

The number of visitors to the Galleries has increased to over 188,000. Visitor facilities have been improved with new signage, and information being made available to public visitors to the Galleries. A pilot reception desk has been set up and its performance will be monitored this year. Future initiatives involve the possible provision of an electronic notice board in Central Lobby and on the Committee Corridor.

Safe and secure environment

This section includes progress and plans for fire protection, health and safety and IT security as well as physical security measures for the House.

The installation of strategic fire precautions in the Palace continued. These include fire compartmentation and automatic fire detection. The majority of the recommendations of the report on the Fire Section are being implemented. An evacuation of the House on a sitting day has been successfully undertaken and is an annual requirement of the Palace fire certificate. Staff training in fire risk and safety for all who work on the estate is a priority for the coming year.

The Department recognises the importance of health and safety and has approved a strategy for Health and Safety Risk Management in line with House-wide strategy in this area. An implementation programme will allow work to commence on putting this strategy in place during the forthcoming year.

The Serjeant at Arms IS/IT Manager has been appointed House IT Security Officer, and in the next year proposals to enhance IT security risk management within a framework of a formal IT security policy will be put to the Board of Management via the Information Strategy Steering Group.

A review of the physical security arrangements for the Parliamentary Estate has been carried out in conjunction with the House of Lords and with the co-operation of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). A new contract is being negotiated with the MPS and it is planned that the recommendations of the review will be implemented in the next period.

Preservation of the heritage site

Conservation and restoration work has continued and has included the cast iron roof over Royal Gallery, internal stone cleaning, Committee Room 14, the historic clocks and bronze windows of the Palace. Work is now beginning to restore the stone work in Royal Court, and design has started to restore Old Palace Yard. After a long development process, encaustic tiles of sufficient quality are now being made and a rolling programme will begin to restore the tiled floors in the Palace.

Direct support of the legislative process

Feasibility and detailed design plans for the parallel chamber in the Grand Committee Room have been prepared. The main upgrading of these facilities to accommodate the parallel chamber will take place in the summer of 1999.

The second Commonwealth Serjeants Conference will be held at Westminster in 1999. This provides an opportunity for the dissemination of best practice between the various Parliaments in the Commonwealth, and the sharing of solutions to common problems and issues. Some 34 visitors, many with partners, are expected to attend the Conference in August.

Cost effectiveness and value for money

The Department has introduced a number of initiatives with the intention of raising the profile of cost effectiveness and value for money. These include the appointment of a Deputy Director of Contracts and Procurement with a view to benefiting from best practice in the purchase and management of large contracts.

Work will continue on developing value for money initiatives in the next period. The introduction of resource accounting and budgeting (RAB) in the next year has the potential to focus managers on the true cost of activities and steps will be taken to actively embrace the benefits of this change.

Performance measures

Our strategy for delivering quality customer service and providing improved value for money includes identifying measurements and as part of this we are developing service level agreements. These cover activities, which span the directorates and which we provide to Members. As service level agreements are developed, there will be a need to review performance measures.


(a)	Number of visitors to the Galleries: there has been a steady increase in the number of visitors in the last five years, 38,000 (26%) from 1994 to 1998. The drop in visitors in 1997 was because of the general election. The proximity of the Eurostar terminal at Waterloo has contributed to this trend, as Parliament is now more accessible to visitors from abroad.

(b)	PDVN accounts: the number of PDVN accounts has increased by over 1000 (49%) since December 1997. This reflects the increasing importance of the network to the delivery of information across the Parliamentary Estate and the progress made with providing cabling, wireless and dial in links to users.
(c)	PDVN users: the numbers of Members of both Houses and their staff with PDVN accounts have increased by 115% since December 1997.

(d)	Help Desk statistics: the introduction of the three help desks was phased during the year. All were finally up and running in the summer of 1998. The number of cases logged during the year was 39,795, 122 staff were trained to use the system and 96 machines now have access. During the six months up to March 1999 the Department responded to 79% of cases within the target time specified. This target is being increased to 85% during the coming reporting year. This will provide a strong initiative for improvement and scrutinisation of service delivery procedures to achieve this.

Peter Jennings
Serjeant at Arms



© Parliamentary copyright 1999	Prepared 26 July 1999