Peter Fellows left his role as head of IT at UK Sport on 6 July 2005, the day London won the bid for the 2012 Olympics Games.

The timing of his decision, given UK Sport’s focus on elite sport, appeared somewhat curious.

It might have been expected that London’s successful bid for the Olympics would enthuse him to continue in his technology leadership role at UK Sport, where he had already established how IT could be used to help drive incremental improvements in the performance of top athletes.

But the jovial Brummie had other ideas, taking the head of IT position at the community-focused organisation Sport England.

‘UK Sport, with its focus on the elite side of things, is a totally different type of establishment. It is very fixed on delivering gold medals,’ says Fellows.

‘I wanted to get more involved in the community side of sport. I also wanted to move to an organisation with a more diversified IT infrastructure.’

Rather than worrying about cutting-end technology research, he now has to manage the technological relationship between Sport England’s nine regions and support centres.

He says each regional organisation has a specific priority, but practical IT takes precedence. ‘If you peel away those layers – and ask the people in those organisations – they just want the technology to work first time every time,’ he says.

During his first two years in charge, he has implemented a range of network and technology systems to help ensure regional workers are satisfied.

Multi-protocol label switching, for example, helps manage the organisation’s regional network. Fellows has also refreshed Sport England’s ageing PC hardware. ‘Now when people turn their machines on, they work first time out,’ he says.

Proof is in the statistics. When he joined Sport England he dealt with an average of 400 calls to the internal helpdesk a month; now the IT team deal with about 70. ‘Once you have the infrastructure right and people can use the technology, then we can start thinking about how we can use the IT to help deliver our key objectives,’ he says.

The organisation also recently implemented a centralised procurement system from Touchstone Group, halving the time taken to process transactions from 20 to 10 days and producing estimated cost savings of £1m over the next two years.

Technology projects are delivered through a two-tier IT budget. Part of Fellows’ spending is used to keep the nuts and bolts in order, such as licensing and telecoms. Additional expenditure is discretionary and he has to create a business case.

‘I do not think selling an initiative is hard if you understand what the drivers of the business are and how important the technology project is to the organisation,’ he says.

‘Basically, you cannot just put in technology for technology’s sake, because that just does not fly. There has to be an outcome at the end of it that will positively affect the business, such as improved efficiency or cost savings.’

One project he will be analysing in closer detail next year is an integrated IP network, the aim of which is to bring together Sport England’s data and voice communications. Through this he aims to reduce the number of suppliers, and increase the range of services offered to users.

‘Then if we want to make use of video conferencing, we will be able to do that – and at relatively little cost,’ he says.

Two years in, then, and he is already transforming services and thinking about future innovation. He says two factors have been crucial in helping the department get where it is today.

First, being able to manage the team effectively and being able to get the IT organisation properly engaged with the business.

‘To deliver good service you have to have good technology and good people,’ says Fellows. ‘Those people have to be focused on delivering what the business wants.’

Second, using the right technologies and the right partners: ‘Ultimately, I get measured on what I deliver and if we are outsourcing, then I rely on the service providers to give me good service,’ he says.

One such link-up includes Sport England’s decision to select Netstore as its strategic partner for web site hosting.

Internally, eight IT staff are used to support some 260 to 280 employees, a large number of whom are mobile.

‘As a ratio, it is probably a little bit lean,’ he says. ‘We carry a risk with that – but the people I have are great and they know the system.’

Fellows says Sport England adopts a best-of-breed approach, picking external companies it knows will help internal staff. ‘We have a mixed estate, in terms of the things we try to manage,’ he says.

Hardware maintenance is outsourced to Imerja and Fellows says he is also planning to outsource data backup. An external redevelopment of the Sport England web site, meanwhile, will give him an additional opportunity to refresh the organisation’s approach to web technology.

‘It is about looking at what the site really means to us in terms of the Sport England brand and how we can change it so it better suits our customers, such as governing bodies and local government organisations,’ he says.

Beyond web development and looking to the next five years or so, he says the single IP network will remain a key area. The organisation will use the infrastructure to introduce new services and make potential cost savings.

Mobile networking will also become a significant area. Sport England recently began a project to analyse what type of mobile systems will be appropriate for workers across the regions.

‘It will probably be a mixture of technologies,’ he says. ‘But the kind of things we are thinking about are whether workers need broadband at home, should we use 3G cards and should we put wireless on the laptops.’