Council ICT staff should be given a key role in teams attempting to save money by reducing demand, according to a new briefing.
The call comes from Socitm, the representative body for public sector ICT workers.
It said that the ICT function has a fundamental role in implementing an approach to delivering services focused on managing demand, rather than reducing supply.
Socitm principal associate Chris Head, who wrote the briefing, said: ‘Systems thinking and service design methods are part of the new solutions and skills sets local government needs to apply, with ICT being used in systems analysis and/or design and delivery. This will necessarily involve Socitm members as part of teams approaching cost reduction from a demand management perspective.”
Three years ago, consultancy iMPOWER estimated that demand management could be worth £5bn in savings to local government.
The briefing says that the concept is fundamental to the Government Digital Service design model and that the ICT function can influence demand management strategies in three ways, the briefing said:
- Collecting and analyzing key metrics and demand patterns to understand customer behaviour;
- Reconfiguring service delivery processes with more objectivity than service providers;
- Applying demand management to its own services, eliminating unnecessary calls.
