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Councils turning to technology to bridge cuts - Socitm

Posted by admin on Mon, 23/01/2012 - 09:45
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Public sector IT managers are exerting even more influence as local public services turn to technology to bring service delivery costs down and cope with dramatically reduced budgets.
 
A new report from public sector ICT leadership group Socitm highlights growing emphasis on strategic, rather than utility use of IT, amid the largest reduction in IT staff numbers across the public sector in 25 years - a headcount drop of over 5,000.
 
Its IT Trends 2011/12 report, published at the end of last week, finds that councils expect social media to play an increasingly important role in communicating with customers, alongside growth in the use of websites, email and e-forms. This reiterates the findings reported in Better Connected 2011, which showed 73% of councils using Twitter and 67% using Facebook.
 
A whitepaper written by John Shewell, head of communications at Brighton & Hove City Council, at the end of last year warned that although social media was fast becoming an essential component in an organisation’s business strategy, it is little more than a tactic designed to help build reputation.
 
The study also finds that mobile computing, home working and virtualization have joined GIS, content management and e-forms as the top five technologies seen as delivering efficiency in participating organisations, while business process re-engineering (BPR), channel switching, and joint procurement remain the top three strategies for efficiency. 

Commenting on the findings, Socitm President Glyn Evans said: “The influence of ICT continues to rise as more services are directly delivered through lower cost ICT-assisted channels. Technology is also helping reduce accommodation costs as the workforce becomes more mobile.

"However, with greater dependence on ICT, organisations must ensure processes and procedures are kept up to date, and greater attention is paid to accuracy, provenance and security of information.”