I think the answer is obvious (but would welcome other ideas as well). It must be that industry demonstrates on the one hand, that ICT costs need to be managed effectively and provide value, and on the other that strategic investment in ICT has the potential to cut operational costs and generate wider efficiency savings at the same time as improving services.

This is our view on the Operational Efficiency Programme announced by HM Treasury almost six months ago. The OEP aims to make efficiency savings of £3.2 billion in IT, with £1.6 billion of this resulting from collaborative procurement. As taxpayers we all agree that savings must be made and that efficiency in government be improved. However, as the technology industry we also believe that government will not achieve this by just cutting IT spend by 20% as we have first-hand insight of the integral role technology plays in both making government operations efficient and delivering world-class public services.

Now, it is not industry’s job to deliver on these savings nor to implement programmes. That is up to government. What industry can do is to:
• demonstrate by real case studies what technology can achieve, especially the business change programme aspects. But there is also the more “straight forward” examples where industry is providing resources to help government evaluate and plan the implementation of a common network, data centre consolidation and development of a government cloud and apps store.
• help identify how government is to collect and manage data of its assets and costs and understand the purpose of the assets. Again, industry is helping OGC classify categorized spending on ICT and how that data can be used to identify potential collaborative procurements and the sharing of services which is integral to delivering savings.

But, as the existing engagements carry on, industry and government need to communicate on a high level on the OEP itself as well. First of all we need to understand each other better if savings are to be made. Secondly, we must develop a wider channel to communicate to government what this industry does best – implement ICT to enable transformative change in operations and outcomes.

Intellect is starting by hosting an OEP themed dinner with industry and government in October. In January we are again running our joint Intellect-OGC Conference with a theme on OEP. In between these we continue to push our message that ICT is the enabler of change and efficiency. If you think otherwise, or have other ideas how we should bring about change and savings in government, do let me know.

Technorati Tags: Operational Efficiency, role of technology in public sector

Tags: Operational Efficiency, role of technology in public sector

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 12:23 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.