Nobody wants to look back; everyone wants to look forward and present their take on solving the state of the UK Public Sector. There are a myriad of amiable solutions, all underpinned by technology, available in the UK Plc. But the problem is that the public sector and the market place do not always conjoin in the what, how, and who of solutions, nor the wider social responsibility aspects of a public sector solution.

The current government is pressured to scrap IT projects that are politically unviable and could save money instantly (regardless of long-term benefits and practical viability), departments are pressured by the CSR07 and now the Operational Efficiency Programme targets to deliver against (may end up meaning less spend on new innovating business change programmes and just continued spend on legacy systems). Local Authorities are likewise going to be pressured with increased demand on services concomitantly with reduced budget.

A potential solution that has a long tradition (of both good and bad experience) is to outsource whatever is suited to outsource. According to publicservice.co.uk, “the UK leads the way in the outsourcing of public sector services and is set to take a further step forward through the Operational Efficiency Programme.”

The problem is that there are a number of agendas that the government is simultaneously pursuing that will have to be considered alongside a major move towards outsourcing, and government will have to clarify a lot better for the suppliers in our industry what is expected and required from them.
The Transformational Government – enabled by technology & the Public Service Reform agendas (as the two main overarching agendas ) are underpinned by:

• Data handling and information assurance & security (how will new cyber strategy launched today fit in, and what about the new investment in improving information sharing?)
• Sustainability & green ICT throughout the lifecycle (need further selling of benefits and greater standardisation and measurement abilities)
• Shared Services between departments and other agencies
• Open Source Software and Open Standards
• Innovators Council to help drive public service reform
• Public Sector Network
• Data Centre Strategy and G-Cloud

And we cannot forget the recently published Digital Britain report and the changes it will bring.

In some respects all of these agendas will affect anything outsourced as well and to realise all the benefits, value for money potentials, and efficiencies that the public sector desperately want, an overall strategy is needed. A silo approach to each project is counter-productive if government want all of their agendas to be achieved.

On top of this, suppliers are going to be faced with an, in political terms, ‘unstable future’ where political priorities may swing faster than before and risk elements may increase. Just take the different (but both low-carbon oriented) economic and budget recovery plans laid out by both main parties; each will have different significant impacts for suppliers. The Conservatives for example have their (not set in stone) ICT policy developed and a green inspired economy that is a bottom up rather than top down mandated, and market rather than government led. This will most likely change the outlook for suppliers compared to the current plan.

Yes, I am sure suppliers would like some clarification and stability before committing to solving the state of the public sector.

Technorati Tags: #ukgovOSS, government strategy, Outsourcing, Public Sector reform

Tags: #ukgovOSS, government strategy, Outsourcing, Public Sector reform

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2009 at 4:07 pm and is filed under Public Sectors, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.