Rising to the Challenge - Doing more with less in Public Sector IT

Discover how Public Sector organisations are combating the challenges they face in delivering cost effective and efficient IT Services with reduced head counts and increasing demands.

The last Comprehensive Spending Review imposed the deepest budget cuts that the public sector has experienced since the Second World War. This situation has meant that generating 'efficiency savings' in order to reduce expenditure and protect frontline services has become the order of the day, with the IT function being far from exempt. As a result, the focus is now on doing more with less by reducing expenditure on commodity IT, squeezing more out of existing deals with vendors and generally finding ways of working more efficiently. Some organisation are adopting a more radical approach, however, by outsourcing increasing amounts of their infrastructure or embracing shared services.

To illustrate these issues, this report looks at the tack that IT departments within four public authorities have taken in order to rise to the cost-cutting challenge. It explores the challenges posed by adopting a shared services approach and how they can best be addressed, while also providing invaluable insights from a former private sector worker as to how commercial vendors really operate and what can be done to take them on successfully.

The workshop from which this report resulted was attended by 22 delegates representing 15 local councils, central government departments and other agencies.