Mention the letters ‘IT’ to council chief executives and leaders and they are likely to stare into the middle distance or refer the query to the computer department on the third floor. For most senior executives, IT is definitely the ‘IT crowd’. Glyn Evans, Birmingham’s business change chief and newly-elected president of the local authority IT managers’ society SOCITM, tells Michael Burton why such a view is not only incorrect but damaging to councils’ transformation agendas

There are few computer geeks who can boast a degree in religious studies and an interest in 14th century Scottish history – but then Glyn Evans is anything but a computer geek.

As newly-elected president of the IT managers’ society SOCITM, and director of business change at Birmingham City Council, he is insistent that IT is not about set top boxes and microchips but transformational change.

Indeed, he believes that by bracketing IT as a cost centre rather than a driver of change, councils are missing out on long-term savings. Glyn still believes too many councils see IT as an expense to be trimmed rather than a means of delivering change. ‘I want to raise awareness in the local government family about the value IT can bring to the transformation challenge,’ he adds.

In his own authority, IT-driven change has been termed ‘business change’ to emphasise its priorities, which is now transforming the way services are delivered.

A member of SOCITM since the late 1980s, Glyn believes the profession it represents has ‘tremendous potential’ to affect public service delivery. But, he admits, too many chief executives and leaders still see the IT manager as a ‘teccie’ rather than as an engine of transformation, and that his own job title is unusual within SOCITM.

He adds: ‘We need to move away from the concept of having an IT manager to that of chief information officer supporting business change.’ Glyn was born in Manchester and brought up in Nelson, Lancashire. At A-level, he studied further maths, maths and physics, and opted to study physics at Manchester University. ‘I actually wanted to be an astronomer and hoped to do a doctorate in astronomy, but soon realised there weren’t many career options in that.’

So he decided to abandon physics – and instead take religious studies, an unusual alternative choice. Although his brother is a Methodist preacher and Glyn was brought up a Methodist, he had no aspirations for a life of the cloth himself.

‘I was interested in religion and liked the broad spread of the subject which included Bible studies and theology. In fact, my first thesis was on the Christian socialist movement in the 19th century.’

Indeed, history remains one of his prime interests. ‘My current focus is on the Scottish 14th century independence movement, Robert the Bruce and so on, probably gleaned from being a keen hill walker in Scotland.

‘But if I was to go back to university now, I’d probably study pre-history. I’m fascinated by the 98,000 years between when modern humans began leaving Africa and the first attempts at writing.’

Glyn briefly tried a term teaching, which he soon decided ‘was not for me’, worked temporarily at the-then Manpower Services Commission, then took his first job as trainee systems analyst at Lancashire CC in 1980.

In those early, pre-PC, pre-Internet days, the council used punch cards, and part of his task was helping to install a new online system for its in-house direct labour organisation.

Glyn has spent his entire career to date in local government. He left Lancashire to work for Rochdale MBC, then Burnley BC as IT manager – where there were just eight staff in the entire IT department – followed by Rugby BC, before moving to Knowsley MBC in 1997. At Knowsley, the council moved from a centralised mainframe system to focusing IT on the user, for the first time. ‘It was about taking IT out into the community, for example, at adult day care centres.

‘My interest in IT has always been in what it can do for the business and for the user.’ Next, he worked at Camden LBC, where the-then chief executive, Steve Bundred, was keen on transforming services through IT, such as with one-stop shops.

Glyn joined Birmingham in 2003 as director of business solutions and IT, ‘with a focus on business change sitting alongside technology’.

His current title, director of business change, was acquired in 2006, when the city council set up its huge joint venture with Capita, Service Birmingham. The joint venture, in which the council has a one-third stake, included a core IT contract of £40m over 10 years, and more recently has taken on the contact centre and revenues. ‘Its remit was to deliver IT and support the business change agenda,’ he explains. ‘It was about improving the service in particular, as well as reducing costs.’

While staff were seconded to the joint venture, his job stayed with the council. ‘My brief is to run a small, central team driving forward the business change agenda. Our job is to monitor, facilitate, cajole and on occasions, beat up to deliver the business change agenda.’

Glyn believes the council’s business change agenda has ‘probably done more than most councils for transformation’, adding: ‘We invested some £700m in the transformation programme over a 10-year period but it will deliver £1.5bn in savings over that timescale.

‘Nor was it necessarily just about saving money. It was set up as a service-improvement programme above all else, but which delivered savings as well. And although it’s IT-enabled, it isn’t branded as such. Local government still runs too many “IT projects” when they should be termed “change projects”,’ he says.

Despite his focus on transformation he remains sceptical that local authorities are actually delivering it.

He says: ‘Councils are not responding to the budgetary crisis with a long-term transformational response. They are simply making cuts.

‘The problem is we still structure ourselves around professional disciplines and because we run cost centres rather than profit centres, the traditional response has been to cut costs. The way to make savings is to reconfigure services differently.’

There is also a tendency, in his view, to add on transformation to managers’ workloads while expecting them to focus on the day job.

‘If you’re running an operational service along with a transformation brief, then the operation will take priority. You can’t do transformational change without putting in extra capacity,’ he says.