John Gladman takes over as interim CIO at Hounslow Council

Hounslow Council to continue CRM strategy based on Salesforce.com

John Gladman has taken over as interim CIO at Hounslow Council, replacing former director of corporate resources, Anthony Kemp, who left at the end of October, while a wider review is undertaken following cuts in local authority funding from central government.

Kemp had pioneered the use of Salesforce.com as a customer relationship management (CRM) platform and the council says that this strategy will continue.

Gladman was previously IT head at Croydon Council for five years, and spent six years as IT head at Surrey County Council, three years as IT head at the National Housing Agency and three years as UK IT head of a multinational construction company.

At Croydon, Gladman says that he led the re-procurement of the council's two main IT contracts - a public finance initiative contract with Capgemini and a managed services contract with Northgate - as part of the council's broader multi-sourcing strategy. Capita, Sungard and Williams Lea were also involved.

Gladman claims that the re-procurement has helped to save Croydon some £3m per year.

"The new contracts improve flexibility, agility, innovation, managed risk and new ways of working for staff in support of the council's future business strategy," he claims.

Other achievements, he says, include restructuring internal IT services to create a shared IT service, which achieved savings of 15 full-time equivalents and £650,000 per year, and the creation of a corporate IT Steering Governance Group to oversee the delivery of an IT capital investment programme.

This included the delivery of flexible working, including mobility, a customer access strategy, and a council-wide technology refresh with IP telephony, new PCs, LAN and WAN upgrades, smartphones and mobile computers, and server virtualisation.