National Lottery Charities Board Corporate Office

IT Development and Support

Our IT department provides the systems and technology which enable all members of staff to do their jobs more effectively and efficiently. It services the infrastructure and network which links together all 15 Charities Board offices.

IT provides a grant-making system that makes grant management and monitoring practicable and reliable.

The other services IT offers include the Helpdesk and support for the PCs, printers and software. This includes support for the personnel and accounting systems together with a nightly backup regime. For more serious computer failures a disaster recovery service is available.

The Charities Board has identified the need to replace the current grant-making system with a new more sophisticated one, called MERLIN, which will go live in May 2000.

MERLIN has been designed by an in-house team of grants officers who advise IT on what the business requires from the new system in terms of non-technical specifications. The technical development has been outsourced to Admiral Computers Ltd.

Peter Woodward, Director of IT Development and Support, said: �Our role is two-fold: first, to provide the systems the business requires to function efficiently and effectively; and, secondly, the infrastructure and support services to ensure the systems are available to all Charities Board staff and Board members wherever they are located.�