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RA business objective 7
To maintain and enhance fully integrated modern information
systems that meet the Agency's business requirements and the demands
of e-business
7.1
Information systems
2002-03 saw no reduction in the number or importance of the business
drivers requiring us to develop new systems and modify existing ones.
However, the imminent creation of Ofcom means that the long-term requirement
for system developments is uncertain. Consequently, strategic projects
such as the Customer Information System (see Section
4.1) and the Electronic Records Management System were 'mothballed',and
the scope of others such as e-licensing was reduced.
The major system launch in 2002 was Spectrum Quality Management – see Section 4.6. After some teething problems involving the new technology, user understanding of and confidence in the system grew steadily, and benefits are now being delivered. The year also saw the live introduction of further elements of the Agency's e-Business Programme, including IR2008 (see Section 4.4) and the Common Licence Product Dialogue.
Maintaining the Agency's IT infrastructure, which includes the Oracle databases supporting all major systems, is as important as introducing new systems. During the year, the Agency successfully completed a major migration to Oracle 9i; this was necessary ahead of Ofcom to avoid the business risk of running on versions no longer supported by the supplier.
Work is under way to ensure that the Agency's functions and responsibilities are transferred smoothly to Ofcom – which will have its headquarters at Riverside House on London's South Bank – once the Communications Bill has been enacted
7.2
RSI contribution to Agency projects and other major work
Like the Agency, Radio
Spectrum International (RSI) is affected by the 'Ofcom factor'
and the need to reduce its expectation of work from the Agency
while retaining enough skilled staff to maintain existing services
to contracted levels. A further complication for RSI was the
merger between its parent company (CMG) and Logica, which resulted
in a small number of redundancies in RSI; these were handled
without any obvious adverse impact on the quality of the services
delivered.
Non-project work involving RSI included the Business Continuity (Disaster Recovery) exercise, and negotiating the annual Service Improvement Plan; some worthwhile financial benefits to the Agency were identified during these negotiations, and were later implemented.
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