What are the best examples of local and national government ICT
strategies in the UK. How did they measure the Return on Investment
from their strategies?

According to my professional experience within the local
government(LA), many ICT projects are just begining gain shape!

Due to a lack of co-ordination between departments and an attitude
towards the 'old-ways' of working, most projects take longer than
usual to get of the ground. There is also a form of 'negligence' among
employee's at front-level, which does not help in the future of such
projects.

An example of a local-authority call-centre:

This local authority, has been running a call-centre for just over a
year and according to customer satisfaction surveys -, it is doing
very well.

Performance at this 'CSC', is measured in the level of calls generated
and the percentage of calls that are executed successfully!

The lack of 'local-knowledge' utilised on this project - has been very
low, which has created some mis-understanding among the 'CSC'
employee's.

Training front-level staff, on necessary software programs have been
minimal, which has complicated issues at some-point in time. But,
applying common-sense has made a difference, in term's of service
provision.

First of all, let's put a real example of ICT strategy on local
government. I've got an example per the practice on a City Council on
year 2005.

The challenge:
With its staff working from various buildings around the city, the
City Council was experiencing resilience and performance problems with
its old network. It needed a new and quicker solution that could cope
with existing demands. It also required a network that would support
its future plans for VoIP, increased security and better management.

The solution:
-Upgrade the network;
-Consider security and resilience on every point;
-New technology;

Benefits/Returns:
-Intelligent/resilient solution that enables the council to deliver
current services and new potential services around Voice over IP.
-The City Council now has a highly resilient network that is quicker
and has the ability to underpin planned future developments.
-Throughput to desktops has increased from 10Mb to 100Mb which has
increased staff efficiency.
-In turn, this has improved the service that the Council can provide
for the residents of the city.

Let's take a look on the strategy level from this case, the use of new
technology and hi-tech (VoIP) is a key point here.
The new tech has driven the improvement on several aspects, where
we're able to measure and figure out the ROI.
1. the return on the savings of telephone costs. The traditional
telephone costs can be saved and replaced by the network bandwidth
rent (which is normal fixed and minor than telephone cost);
2. the return from higher working efficiency. The VoIP technology has
enabled more flexible and strong functions which allows the employees
to communicate at higher efficiency;
3. the return from the better satisfaction of users (in this case, the
inhabitants in the city, over 100,000 people). The measurement on this
can derived from some satisfaction survey.

Another point of the strategy is outsourcing. This is a trend in
industry, including the public service sector as well.
Outsourcing is another focus point in the strategy. For ICT part, the
outsourcing to BT (British Telecom) or other telecom giants may be a
good example. Normally, it may generate higher efficiency and lower
cost after outsourcing. The ROI can be measured from the comparison of
Operation Cost before/after outsourcing and the satisfaction
before/after.

From above, we summarize two major strategies of current local government:
-the adoption of new technology for higher efficiency and lower cost;
-outsource to professional company/organization for higher
efficiency/lower cost/better satisfaction;
The ROI can be measured clearly, which focus on efficiency,
satisfaction and cost mainly.

Hope this helps.