1. David Houghton
CURRICULUM VITAE
PERSONAL DETAILS
Nationality: British
Mobile: 07593 503893 Home Tel: 01992 551843
E-mail: davidw.houghton@yahoo.co.uk
EDUCATION & QUALIFICATIONS
MDP - University of Stellenbosch
ITIL V2 Managers - Solution Delivery, Service Delivery
ITIL V3 Foundation
Project Management – Prince II Practitioner and X-Pert
Financial Accounting - University of South Africa
Employee Relations
Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) Trainer – Microsoft specific ITIL equivalent
Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) Assessment
Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF)
Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF)
National Diploma – Telecommunications (3 year tertiary education)
Matriculated Pretoria Central High (equivalent to 6 A levels)
EMPLOYMENT HISTORY
2015/04 to Present – Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council
ICT Client Manager
To manage the ICT service delivery of the Council’s ICT shared service provider. Provide
technical knowledge, experience and lead, in developing the ICT strategy and direction of the
Council. Lead on infrastructure projects that deliver business benefits. Responsible for defining
and planning how best to apply infrastructure technologies that underpin and support the
Councils’ major business functions and activities. To raise awareness of the capability to use all
the potential ICT facilities to enhance service delivery.
Ensure that Major Incidents are identified fully investigated establishing root causes, setting up
of operational improvement plans to continuously improve service to lower calls to the ICT
Contact Centre and deliver a reliable service to the customer.
Areas of responsibility:
Pro-Active
• Manage and monitor progress with the Council’s ICT shared service provider. Setting
targets and standards for all ICT services and facilities.
• Negotiate, monitor and control new contracts with the contract supplier.
• Evaluate ICT service provision and identify any efficiency improvements and savings.
• Ensure appropriate support and maintenance contracts are in place.
• Develop, maintain and project manage ICT 5 year strategy.
• Ensure the ICT functions deliver statutory, contractual and managerial Information.
• Accountable for all ICT budgets.
• Manage geographic information system (GIS) and develop the GIS Strategy.
• To provide ICT guidance and advice to Cabinet, Members, Executive Board, Directors,
Heads of Service and Managers.
• Act as council’s Cabinet Office Public Service Network liaison and Information Security
Manager.
• Ensure measures are in place for securing and retaining all data and a consistent
approach is used for handling personal and sensitive data across the Council.
2. • Represent the Council’s ICT interests at internal and external groups, forums and
meetings.
• Provide Data Protection support and advice as required.
• Act as council’s ICT FOI liaison.
• Ensure disaster recovery, impact assessments and ICT business and continuity plans
are in place and tested.
• Deliver the Council’s commitment to equality and diversity both in the provision of
services and as an employer. Ensure Equality Impact Assessments are undertaken in
line with the Council’s Equality and Diversity policy.
Re-Active
• Assume ownership and take responsibility for all incident, Major Incident and Problem
management issues.
• Conduct root cause analysis and develop continuous improvement plans, to improve
service levels and efficiency of the day to day ICT services, delivering both improved
services and lowering of calls to the ICT Contact Centre.
• Point of escalation for all major incidents across the enterprise, and the management
thereof.
Staff Responsibilities
• Two direct reports
o One manager responsible for corporate GIS.
o One external contracts officer.
• 3rd
party contractors.
• Development, performance management, training plans, mentoring and coaching of
staff.
2014/02 to 2015/03 – Updata Infrastructure (Hertfordshire County Council)
Contracted to Hertfordshire County Council as Network Services Manager
Areas of responsibility:
Contract Management
• To managing all aspects of the contracts with Hertfordshire County Council's network
suppliers.
• Managing the performance of suppliers against service level agreements.
• Provide Project Management for network connections to new sites.
• Act as escalation point between HCC and network suppliers.
• Provide a dashboard of performance against KPI’s and initiate any necessary actions to
rectify deviations.
• Manage improvements with the contracted performance of 3rd party suppliers.
Support
• Direct the overall service delivery process.
• Act as a escalation/co-ordination point for all major incidents.
Security
• Providing strategic and technical development and support to Network security.
Documentation
• Responsible for the continued growth, improvement and above all the accuracy of
Hertfordshire County Council's electronic documentation system.
Business Continuity Planning
• Development of the Hertfordshire County Council's network, Business Continuity
Planning.
3. 2013/07 to 2014/02 – London Borough of Hackney
ICT Service Delivery Manager:
- Service Management
- Business Continuity Planning
- Policy and Procedure
- IT Contact Centre
- 3rd
Party Management
To manage the overall ICT Service Delivery to LBH, ensuring that Major Incidents are identified
fully investigated establishing root causes, setting up of operational improvement plans to
continuously improve service to lower calls to the ICT Contact Centre and deliver a reliable
service to the customer.
Areas of responsibility:
Pro-Active
• Provide a dashboard of performance against KPI’s and initiate any necessary actions to
rectify deviations.
• Develop and implement the change control procedure, ensuring that all changes are
properly assessed and documented with appropriate back-out and recovery
procedures, with the authority to reject any changes which do not comply with risk
assessment standards.
• Develop and maintain ICT 5 year strategy.
• Develop, implement and manage process and procedures that ensure that all new
systems / applications (both procured and developed) have appropriate support
arrangements in place, prior to new system, applications going live.
• Develop and ensure compliance to applicable policies.
• Provide leadership and guidance for the team identifying areas of development
necessary for each team member ensuring that corporate (ITIL based) standards are
applied and adopted across each functional area.
• Ensure ICT Contact Centre is appropriately manned and staff are trained to required
level.
• Budgetary management (£2.6 million).
Re-Active
• Assume ownership and take responsibility for all incident, Major Incident and Problem
management issues.
• Conduct root cause analysis and develop continuous improvement plans, to improve
service levels and efficiency of the day to day ICT services, delivering both improved
services and lowering of calls to the ICT Contact Centre.
• Point of escalation for all major incidents across the enterprise, and the management
thereof.
Staff Responsibilities
• Five direct reports
o Four high level specialists
o One manager with 15 ICT Contact Centre staff
• 3rd
party contractors.
• Development, performance management, training plans, mentoring and coaching of
staff.
4. 2008/09 to 20013/05 - Hertfordshire County Council (Serco partnership)
ICT Service Delivery Manager, lead on Transition to Serco partnership
- Application Support and Development (Social Care 24X7 Life and Limb systems)
- Application Support and Development (SAP)
- Application Support IT Service Desk
- Service Management
- Telephony
- 3rd
Party Vendor Management
To manage the overall operational Service Delivery of Hertfordshire County Council’s
Information, Communications and Technology Infrastructure. Ensuring that support contracts
deliver consistent and reliable services and the development thereof to meet changing business
needs and technology developments, continuously improving service. Provide technical
knowledge and experience, in developing the ICT strategy for the Council.
Areas of responsibility:
Pro-Active
• Contribute towards the overall management and development of Corporate ICT,
maximising the benefits delivered to the Authority from the use of Information
Technology.
• To develop and lead on establishing corporate service levels for the support of all
business applications. Manage and co-ordinate both the highly technical (servers,
networking operating systems, Unix etc) and Applications Support staff to deliver to
agreed service levels.
• Conduct root cause analysis and develop continuous improvement plans, to improve
service levels and efficiency of the day to day ICT services, delivering both improved
services and cost savings to the Authority.
• Manage the second and third line technical support function, ensuring that internal staff
resources and the contracted ICT Contact Centre function work to ITIL procedures to
achieve a client focused unit, with the objective of quickly resolving system and
application issues / outages thus providing an improved service to the business.
• Develop and implement the change control procedure, ensuring that all changes are
properly assessed and documented with appropriate back-out and recovery
procedures, with the authority to reject any changes which do not comply with risk
assessment standards.
• Develop, implement and manage process and procedures that ensure that all new
systems / applications (both procured and developed) have appropriate support
arrangements in place, prior to new system, applications going live.
• Manage the overall programme of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery.
• Responsible for security and audit across the account.
• Develop and ensure compliance to applicable policies.
Re-Active
• Assume ownership and take responsibility for all incident management issues.
• Conduct Root-cause analysis of outages and implement remedial actions and track
improvement plans.
• Last point of escalation for all major outages across the enterprise, both desktop (7000
end users) and server (800 servers) infrastructure in the distributed environment.
Staff Responsibilities
• Manage multi-disciplined technical, applications support / development staff and
externally contracted services to ensure that ICT services and facilities are available to
the councils user base (7000 staff), meeting corporate key performance indicators.
• Nine direct reports
o Six high level specialists
o Three Senior managers with approximately sixty staff
• 3rd
party contractors.
• Provide leadership and guidance for the team identifying areas of development
necessary for each team member ensuring that corporate standards are applied and
adopted across each functional area.
5. • Development, performance management, mentoring and coaching of staff.
1984/12 to 2008/05 -Telkom SA (Pty) Ltd (South Africa’s BT)
2002/06 to 2008/05
Service Delivery Manager:
- Operational Efficiency
- Production Management (Service Management)
Responsible for maintaining, monitoring, reporting and improving performance of IT Production
systems within Telkom SA Service Delivery environment. Consisting of 30 000 end users in
various business units, 800 servers.
The role consists of three aspects:
Production Management - Re-active
• Last point of escalation for all major outages across the enterprise, both desktop (30000
end users) and server (800 Windows servers) infrastructure in the distributed
environment 24/7/365.
• Control acceptance of all new solutions into production.
• Stringent SLA, performance management, monitor and report on performance against
SLA’s on large, complex IT managed systems.
• Assume ownership and take responsibility for all incident management issues.
• Conduct root-cause analysis of outages and implement remedial actions and
alternatives.
Operational Efficiency - Pro-active
• Monitor the live environment and take pro-active action to prevent service failure /
degradation – implemented MOM and SCOM as monitoring tools.
• Develop and implement preventative maintenance plan.
• Identify and drive service, efficiency and technical improvements.
• Responsible for maintaining Service Delivery standards, custodian for best practice /
legal compliance adoption for Telkom SA.
• Communicate and document maintenance procedures and system status.
Staff responsibilities:
• 6 high level support direct reports, 3rd
level.
• Up to 300 reports via a virtual team matrix.
• Development, mentoring and coaching of staff.
• Evaluate the adequacy of resources for IT staff and system support and implement
solutions.
2000/06 to 2002/05
Manager Windows 2000 Migration
• Take high-level business plans, ideas and requirements; translate them into high-level
specifications and scoping documents, for the migration to Windows 2000.
• Project Manage Windows 2000 implementation
• Develop communications, documentation and guides to sensitise the end user to
changes and enhancements implemented during the Windows 2000 migration.
• Manage Desktop high level support and automated software distribution teams.
1996/03 to 2000/05
Information Technology Consultant Enterprise Systems Management (ESM)
Project Manage ESM
High-level Architecture
Strategic planning to implement Systems Management across the Enterprise (ESM).
Business Case Management Evaluation and selection of ESM solutions
Liaise with Vendor and various and sub-projects to finalise the implementation
