Memorandum from Richard Allan, Head of
Government Affairs for Cisco Systems, UK and Ireland (October
2006)
1. Author Background: Richard Allan
was MP for Sheffield Hallam and member of Information Select Committee
1998 to 2005 and worked as an information technology professional
in the National Health Service prior to that.
2. Since September 2005, he has worked for
Cisco Systems, a major manufacturer of networking equipment, providing
him with further recent experience of the way in which a large
distributed organisation uses technology.
Relevant Facts: Cisco Systems supplies
equipment that is used for many of the applications described
in this submission. However, a number of other manufacturers also
make similar technology. This submission will inevitably refer
to Cisco's own solutions as it covers best practice within this
company but it does not aim to promote any particular company's
products.
3. Scope of Submission: This submission
is largely addressed to questions a) and c) but also covers issues
raised in questions d) and g) of the inquiry. It aims to respond
concisely and in non-technical language avoiding detailed discussions
of the technology. If more detailed information would be valuable
to the Committee then we can follow up on technical points either
with Committee members or with the House's technical staff.
4. Additional Context: The submission
describes a number of solutions that I believe would be of benefit
to Members that are not all currently deployed by the House authorities.
In doing so, I make no explicit or implicit criticism of Parliament's
technical team. Having observed the work of PCD at close hand
over 8 years I believe them to be a team that does remarkably
well in servicing the demands of such a complex and challenging
organisation as Parliament.
5. The suggestions in this submission will
be ones which I am confident that PCD will have considered and
may already be implementing in some cases. Their advancement here
is intended to be an encouragement towards the provision of better
services and for the organisation to develop further its capabilities
and offer to Members and staff.
6. I also understand that there have been
organisational changes since I left Parliament of which I do not
have first-hand knowledge. I am however familiar with the background
to them and believe them to be a sensible response to today's
challenges.
RESPONSE TO
QUESTIONS
(a) Best practice in the world at large: How
are ICT services provided in other organisations, both commercial
and public sector? How are such services provided in organisations
with distributed systems and multiple locations?
7. Cisco Systems was founded in 1984 by
a small group of computer scientists from Stanford University.
Since the company's inception, Cisco engineers have been leaders
in the development of Internet Protocol (IP)-based networking
technologies. Today, it has more than 47,000 employees worldwide
who are supplied with computer equipment by the company and connected
to a corporate network.
8. Cisco is also a supplier of technology
to public and private sector organisations globally, including
many in the UK, and so has a great deal of expertise in best practice
deployments of IT. If the Committee would like to explore best
practice examples in more detail then this could most effectively
be done in a presentation session. Cisco is able to offer such
a presentation and/or technology demonstration on request.
9. The following sections describe corporate
uses of technology within Cisco that may be of relevance to the
way in which the House of Commons could work.
A. Intranet Usage
10. The redesign of the Intranet is also
touched on in question g) of the inquiry.
11. Within Cisco, the intranet is very extensively
used for transactions as well as the provision of information.
This means that activities such as the booking of travel, entering
of financial claims, logging of technical support queries and
so on are all carried out via websites as the primary means of
communication.
12. The key to this strategy has been the
deployment in most cases of best-of-breed external systems that
are customised to varying degrees for Cisco's use, rather the
creation of entirely new systems internally. The intranet is used
to provide controlled access and a Cisco-branded interface to
systems such as those of the external pension provider and the
car fleet manager.
13. The financial system is especially important
allowing all claims to be logged electronically and then approved
online according to the authorisation rules established. All purchasing
is also done electronically using an interface to online catalogues.
And travel booking is handled by a web interface to the Amex-run
travel office freeing up their staff to deal only with urgent
issues on the phone or in person.
14. Similar systems would, I believe, be
of benefit to Members and staff and could be implemented cost-effectively
if the customised-off-the-shelf approach is followed.
B. Personal Communications Services
15. The most significant difference I have
found between Parliament's use of its network and Cisco's has
been in the provision of personal communications services. The
Parliamentary network supports email as an inter-personal communications
tool for Members and staff. Cisco also offers email but additionally
uses its network to deliver instant messenger, advanced voice
services and video communications.
(i) Voice Services
16. One of the major differences between
practice in the commercial sector and Parliament is in the use
of voice services. Cisco Systems employees carry out a large part
of their business using voice services. Audio-conferencing and
voicemail in particular are in daily use as internal and external
communications tools.
17. Voicemail usage is far more advanced
than simple answerphone functionality. For example, senior managers
will use distribution lists to send messages to dozens of people
in their teams as a preferred method for certain types of communication.
This is an attractive alternative to email where voice is the
more effective medium.
18. Properly used this could be of great
benefit to Parliament. For example, the leadership of a political
party might use voicemail to communicate urgent information to
a large number of Members and staff quickly and efficiently.
19. It is likely that list distribution
functionality is already present in Parliament's voicemail system.
The challenge may be one of developing new working methods rather
than one of the tools not being available. If there is to be more
take-up of voicemail then consideration may have to be given to
ease-of-use issues as well as those of training and work culture.
20. Audio-conferencing is now in widespread
use across the technology sector as a core business application.
It offers significant efficiency and cost benefits over traditional
meetings as well as permitting groups to work together that would
simply be unable to do so without this technology.
21. The costs of using it have reduced as
it has become a feature of the voice systems over IP that most
businesses are now deploying. These new systems also make it easy
to use so that the overheads in setting up and running a meeting
are very low.
22. In the Parliamentary context, it could
be used for regular meetings between a Member and their Westminster
and constituency staff, sitting on speaker phones at each end,
as well as applications such as a Member bringing together a group
of policy advisors from across the country to discuss an issue
before the House.
23. Another key feature of IP-based telephony
systems that may be of interest to Parliament is that of extension
mobility. Wherever I go in a Cisco office anywhere in the world
I can log in to a telephone and have my own normal telephone number
and local functionality. This allows a much more flexible use
of workspaces between staff.
24. A common telephony system could be implemented
between the Parliamentary estate and other points of use such
as Members' homes and constituency offices that would allow a
person to simply login wherever they find themselves and be accessible
on a single number. This approach of linking an HQ and multiple
branches into a single IP-based phone system is very common now
and can deliver a very rapid return on investment as well as offering
these enhanced services.
(ii) Instant Messenger
25. Cisco uses an Instant Messenger tool
which is essentially a corporate version of popular products such
as the MSN/Yahoo/AOL messengers in common use by anyone under
the age of 25. This is a very important part of the set of communications
products.
26. Most email users feel overwhelmed by
the quantity of mail they receive. This can often be for the most
trivial purposes. For example, arranging a meeting can generate
a dozen emails as different dates and times are proposed and rejected
or agreed. The same meeting can be fixed with a few instant messages
in real-time relieving the email inbox of those messages.
27. There are also occasions when a user
sends an email with a time-critical query but has no idea how
long a response will take. Instant Messengers have the great virtue
of showing "presence" information, ie whether a person
is online or not. This means that you can look at your list of
contacts and see if someone is there for whom you have an urgent
query.
28. The service is also very typically used
for setting up phone calls—you see if someone is online
and send a message to ask if it is OK to call. They can then respond
instantly to say when they are free for the call and what the
best number is for you to use. This is a great time-saving measure.
(iii) Video Services
29. Increasingly, video is being used as
a business communications tool. In Cisco this operates at a number
of levels. There are portable video-conferencing units in many
meeting rooms that can be setup and connected to another such
unit anywhere on the network in a few minutes. There are also
at-desk facilities with small webcam-type devices. And at the
top end a facility called Telepresence has been developed that
allows groups in two locations to meet around a virtual conference
table.
30. Key to their successful use is the choice
of the appropriate solution for a particular meeting. Their ease-of-use
is also essential if they are to be accepted by users. The solutions
landscape has certainly changed significantly since the early
attempts to introduce video-conferencing into Parliament which
involved units that could only be used in certain locations with
advance booking and no certainty that they would work.
31. Given the nature of Parliamentary business,
video should play a large part in this and it would be worth how
considering recent developments could be exploited. For example,
a video-conferencing link would allow a Minister to "join"
a number of local MPs on visits to schools in geographically distant
constituencies on a single day when this would not be possible
in person. And MPs could hold more short meetings with experts
from across this country and abroad, not as a substitute for travel
that is necessary for interpersonal contact, but as a supplement
to it.
32. A further element in the use of video
that may be of interest is the deployment of internal IPTV—that
is internal video content delivered over the network. This is
used within Cisco to communicate important internal messages as
well as for training purposes and to allow people who are not
in the office on a particular day to participate in meetings.
33. Parliament is already using a form of
IPTV externally with the webcasting of committee meetings and
this could be developed further as the technology is increasingly
effective for these purposes. But it may also want to consider
investigating other ways to use video to generate and distribute
additional content for both internal and public consumption.
C. Network Capabilities
(i) Virtual Private Network (VPN)
34. This is also relevant to question d).
35. Cisco employees are issued with laptops
and use a VPN connection when working remotely. This connectivity
is very robust with a number of points of connection provided
around the globe. The security is generally provided by a software
token on the PC which generates a unique key when a password is
entered that is used to authenticate the connection.
36. The Cisco VPN system is designed to
support a large community of users who mostly spend much of their
time offsite. It has to be reliable and offer equivalent functionality
to that available onsite to meet the business requirements.
37. Parliament is right to specify equivalent
functionality offsite and onsite as its VPN objective. If this
is not being achieved then the design and specification of the
VPN solution being deployed should be revisited as there is no
inherent technical reason why most users with standard UK ADSL
broadband connections, now typically at 2MB or 8MB, should not
be able to enjoy a good VPN service.
(ii) Wireless Networking
38. This is also relevant to question g)
on the House's plans for wireless.
39. Cisco Systems has rolled out wireless
networking as standard in its offices. This includes two networks—one
for Cisco corporate users only, and a public network for guests.
This project has been very successful with wireless now the default
method of connectivity for most users.
40. Cisco Systems believes firmly that the
technology is sufficiently mature for wireless networks to be
deployed securely, including for the transport of sensitive information.
It is used within Cisco Systems to carry exactly the same level
of confidential data as the wired networks. Secure deployments
require careful consideration to be given to the network design
and configuration but are now common across many enterprises.
(iii) Backup Facilities
41. Users within Cisco store most of their
documents locally on their PCs, as do Parliamentary users. There
are common network-based data storage facilities that are used
for holding structured data for group use but the default for
document creation is to use local rather than network drives.
42. Software is deployed across the network
however to ensure that all this locally-held material is backed
up centrally so that it can be restored to a PC in a timely fashion
if necessary. This takes the form of an incremental backup that
runs in the background on the laptop computers.
43. Such a system of automatic backup to
secure storage facilities is preferable to leaving users responsible
for their own backups to devices like CD-R disks. My experience
of Parliamentary users was that hardly any of them ever carried
out any form of backup, with all the consequent risks of permanent
data loss. A centralised backup server also presents a lower risk
of data security breach if managed correctly than the presence
of backed up files on CDs.
(c) IT stability v flexibility: Has the right
balance been struck between (1) stability/quality of service and
(2) flexibility for Members to arrange their ICT provision to
suit their individual working patterns?
44. Before 2001 there was no common computing
platform for Members and their staff. The change to central provision
has created much greater coverage and consistency in the use of
IT by Members. It is likely that major problems in terms of support
and security would have resulted from a continuation of the previous
regime of individual purchase of computers by Members.
45. However, it is also the case that any
large group of users of a corporate network will have diverse
specific requirements. There will therefore be an inherent demand
for the installation of multiple software packages in addition
to the basic supplied package.
46. As I understand it, the current situation
with Parliamentary computers is that users are not allowed administrator
access and therefore cannot install their own applications. This
has the effect of limiting the usefulness of the devices as well
as being a source of frustration amongst the client group for
the service. Security and stability are typically cited as the
rationale for such restrictive usage policies.
47. An alternative strategy would be to
allow users to install their own applications in addition to the
supplied set. This would make the devices much more useful to
their owners. It would also allow the community to innovate in
the ways in which they work.
48. Stability concerns about the operating
system can be overstated and on balance should not be a reason
on their own to obstruct user choice. If a clear policy of user
responsibility is adopted, i.e. if there is a major problem with
user-installed software then the House of Commons only undertakes
to restore the standard configuration plus any user data (see
also backup proposals above), then this need not necessarily open
the door to excessive and problematic support requests.
49. Security concerns can be dealt with
by the use of security products both on client PCs and at network
level that detect and deal with any rogue applications. Again
the chances of this happening should not be overstated as most
users will only use any additional freedom to install popular
applications that do not present any particular security challenges.
50. PCD could model the pros and cons of
allowing more flexibility in the use of PCs in the light of experience
to date. Tools such as Windows automatic updates and modern security
packages should be factored in with a view to allowing increased
flexibility in line with user demand.
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