The Government has found, to its cost, that
you cannot simply outsource big IT contracts to save money. These
large projects have not only cost more, but in many cases they have
systematically failed to deliver the service being paid for. Like
the front-end services being delivered by the public sector, we
must address the cost of ICT delivery – and find savings. This will
mean changing the way we think about ICT delivery: how it is
delivered, who delivers it, and what is delivered.
ICT must embrace every measure it can to drive
efficiency. That will mean some painful decisions about what it
does, what it owns, and what it delivers. Mass virtualisation of
infrastructure, consolidation of applications, implementation of
open source software, and using external providers to deliver a
greater number of ICT services will all make a difference to the
underlying cost of ICT delivery.
Chief Information Officers (CIO) will have to
do the right thing, unobstructed by past views on what ICT does and
how it is run. They will also need to be open to not always doing
everything themselves. That does not mean outsourcing but rather
sharing and collaborating with other ICT departments across other
public services and with their suppliers.
This approach requires reviewing the ‘risk
profile’ of how ICT uses services. Paying a premium for no risk has
always been the mandated approach, but taking a slightly higher
risk for a lower cost is a judgement that CIOs will now have to
make. And taking a shared risk by building shared services is
clearly the next big step.
Download the Logicalis Public Sector
Manifesto brochure