CIO interview: Victoria Higgin, Highways England

The manager digital and knowledge officer for digital services at Highways England discusses a roadmap for discontinue-to-discontinue recordsdata sharing and asset management

Cliff Saran

Cliff Saran,
Managing Editor

Revealed: 17 Aug 2021 15: 26

In Would possibly maybe maybe maybe this year, Highways England printed a Digital supply paper outlining how the company that takes care of England’s motorways will utilize digital technologies.

Within the paper, Victoria Higgin, Highways England’s chief digital and knowledge officer (CDIO), outlines a most recent and flexible skills architecture that she says will allow the organisation to salvage original services or toughen existing ones rapid thru the reuse of existing services.

“We are able to also focal level on decreasing complexity and extending standardisation all over our infrastructure and platforms, which is ready to allow higher automation, orchestration and suppleness all over our skills stacks, leading to faster provision of infrastructure services,” she notes in the paper.

Higgin joined Highways England two years in the past. Before this she worked for the Nationwide Grid, the put she held varied roles over her 22-year tenure, including working in the keep an eye on room, IT, venture supply, industry relationship management and IT transformation.

While the original organisation shares similarities with the Nationwide Grid when it comes to being a community that requires management, she says: “After I left Nationwide Grid, I didn’t know powerful about Highways [England], however it has moderately a colossal digital agenda.”

As effectively as each and every organisations being centered on nationwide infrastructure, she says Highways England and the Nationwide Grid every have a sense of responsibility to the public and are security orientated.

Making connections

Higgin describes Highways England as an organisation that connects the nation. “We’re not streak planners; we join the consumers thru the journeys they salvage and thru the skills we implement.”

Along with avenue users, customers consist of freight companies, the emergency services and the communities working or building the avenue community. Highways England also needs to be connected to native authorities, as Higgin explains: “Nobody’s avenue streak starts or ends on the motorway. All of us are residing in native authorities and so we talk with them.”

She leads the 277-solid digital services crew at Highways England, which, amongst assorted things, is having a examine the nation’s “digital roads” agenda. Via its strategic industry conception, the organisation is investing £27.4bn in the strategic avenue community (SRN) between 2020 and 2025.

Here’s supported by digital technologies and knowledge to allow Highways England to bring safer, smoother and more reliable journeys for its customers. “It’s about adopting more agile systems, transforming our services and offering our folks with the records they have to make higher selections,” says Higgin.

The digital motorway

There are three parts to Highways England’s digital roads conception. Broadly talking, these duvet asset management and security – operational technologies to toughen web voice online web voice online visitors management and digital services for purchasers. “We are able to effectively space up the sort we scramble the community the utilize of digital channels, exact-time recordsdata and roadside skills,” says Higgin.

“We are able to effectively space up the sort we scramble the community the utilize of digital channels, exact-time recordsdata and roadside skills”

Victoria Higgin, Highways England

Highways England is launching two original IT frameworks for delicate – the Info and Abilities Industrial Framework (ITCF), charge £1.5bn, and the Operational Abilities Industrial Framework (OTCF), charge £500m. Contracts might be awarded to create the operational roadside skills, operational programs and industry IT that drives the strategic avenue community in England. “It’s a massive piece of labor,” says Higgin, “and we’re having a examine how we accomplice to allow it.”

On the different hand, being “massive” does not necessarily mean contracts might be awarded most intelligent to primarily the most basic IT and operational skills services. “Extra niche companies are especially correct at recordsdata and are speedy in increasing recordsdata initiatives,” says Higgin. Nonetheless she concedes that there will always be a necessity for the colossal suppliers to encourage Highways England’s mission-extreme programs.

Team effort

Alongside these most predominant initiatives, Higgin says Highways England is also building out its maintain inner IT, recordsdata and cyber security capabilities. “We’re increasing our maintain folks,” she says. “We’re also having a examine apprentice and graduate schemes.”

Inner vogue is principally predominant in roles the put there might be mountainous query available in the market, reminiscent of venture architecture, recordsdata science and cyber security. “There is rarely a discontinue of opportunities to form.”

Indulge in so much of higher organisations, Highways England has legacy IT and technical debt, however Higgin says it is on a streak to decommission about a of this older IT. “There might be about a stuff we obtained’t have to change, however we’re going to have to accomplish some things more digitally and salvage earnings of recordsdata.”

She says her role at Highways England puts her in a correct put to facilitate the breaking down of silos and connecting parts of the organisations collectively to allow discontinue-to-discontinue recordsdata flows and services. “I’m able to peek correct all over the organisation, discontinue-to-discontinue. The executives hear to every assorted to make adjustments, and look to me [for recommendations].

“We’re recordsdata services,” she says. “The work around recordsdata is spectacular. We have a crew to blame for turning in recordsdata as a carrier and connecting the dots all over the organisation.”

The role of recordsdata

Some of the opportunities Highways England is having a examine is the flexibility to make utilize of roadside signage to bring recordsdata on to autos, offering in-automobile signage. It is working with automobile producers to entry recordsdata from autos. “We’re having a examine what we’re going to present, security, how autos seek recommendation from our infrastructure and what we’re going to accomplish with the records,” says Higgin.

Highways England is also exploring how recordsdata will also be ragged to optimise journeys, reminiscent of monitoring web voice online web voice online visitors toddle with the stir and going thru roadworks and accidents. “We have recordsdata that’s outlandish to us to optimise avenue journeys,” says Higgin. Externally, recordsdata is principally shared with native authorities, however she feels that more needs to be performed to piece recordsdata with assorted transport organisations reminiscent of Network Rail and HS2.

Optimisation is also a key a part of any most predominant avenue venture. Fundamental work on motorways is planned and rehearsed the utilize of digital twin simulations.

Discussions on recordsdata inevitably lead on to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine finding out (ML). When asked in regards to the put Highways England sees AI being deployed, Higgin says: “There is doubtless to make utilize of AI to relieve our keep an eye on room operators.” To illustrate, AI might be deployed to create predictive analytics for affirming roadside assets. “There would be no have to schedule in visits to assets when it isn’t very wished,” says Higgin. No longer most intelligent does this toughen effectivity, however it also helps to toughen security, since predictive upkeep reduces the sequence of visits engineers have to make to the roadside to envision signage.

Nonetheless while the company is exploring application areas, Higgin says she needs to “salvage the moral part correct sooner than we dive in”. This means assessing what Highways England needs to salvage out of AI, guaranteeing it isn’t very biased, and working out how it might maybe maybe well impact customers and workers.