Eisco 2005 - european information society conference

Rosi Somerville

Programme Manager, IDeA (Improvement and Development Agency), United Kingdom.

Rosi Somerville’s primary role is to manage the development, implementation and roll out of esd-toolkit, a unique initiative, which has evolved through the collaborative effort of local authority officers over the last five years. Initially supported solely through subscription the programme currently has LGOL (Local Government On-line) funding to ensure fast track roll out to authorities involved in the implementing e-government (IEG) agenda and to provide national and local statistics for benchmarking and improvement.

The primary objective for the current year is to secure the long-term future of this shared learning community under the ownership and direction of local government:

  • Managing relationships with the local authority steering group, ODPM (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister), national projects, public and private sector organisations
  • Direction of LGOL funded work – carried out by a local authority programme board and working groups
  • Establishing a sustainable future for esd-toolkit under direction of local government 
  • Encouraging continued collaborative working and shared best practice 
  • Identifying complementary work and involving authorities in further development
  • Forging links with national projects and others to maximise take-up and usability
  • Building and supporting the community of currently over 8,000 local authority officers and initiating esd-toolkit local communities, to offer peer support, training and collaborative development.

Rosi has a wide range of experience in developing practical help for local government, through the National Land and Property Gazetteer, BS7666 (British Standards for geographical information), and other national infrastructure initiatives. She managed ELADIS, (European Local Authority Data Integration Study), a European funded project proposing a Europe wide land information service and also Go with the Flow, a project, which identified the flows of information within local authorities and links to all other organisations involved, which provided a starting point for development of esd-toolkit.

Before joining IDeA Rosi was a partner in an architectural firm having worked for many years in both public and private practice.