With George Osborne set to stick
to his long term economic plan and continue to cut back on public spending,
local councils are faced with enduring austerity measures imposed by the
government.
For the past 5 years, local
governments have had to do more with less money, but how does this relate to
technical IT developments?
The funds for new technology are
few and far between, making it difficult for our councils to keep up with the
innovation currently sweeping the IT industry. But when this has an adverse
effect on their processes, with legacy systems becoming obsolete, our
government bodies have to make a change – right?
In theory yes. The public sector
is not unique, and like all business they must incorporate new IT into their
everyday operation to improve efficiency, communications and processes. So,
they are firmly stuck between the need to ride the tide of change and the need
to deliver up to 40% savings in real terms by 2019-20.
The Solution?
Off the back of these austerity
concerns, a few particular IT trends are rising to the fore in the public
sector. By now you would have heard the phrase ‘as-a-service’ – virtualising
everything from software to full IT infrastructures, the main benefit of which
is the cost savings due to lower infrastructure costs. Gone are the arduous
worries about the maintenance of hardware and networking equipment, or the
concerns about replacing old equipment, replaced with an efficient, usually
outsourced, service.
Now that’s all well and good, but
what if our councils are unsure which service would benefit their organisation?
With the heavy burden of austerity, mingled with the challenging necessity to
keep up technologically, the IT procurement process can be an unclear, daunting
prospect.
Here at Centerprise, we can
identify key potential cost-saving and productivity measures, with the right
people, the right skills and the right technology to help, whether local
authorities are considering adopting digital transformation to optimise how
they interact, a technology refresh following a planned rationalisation of
their real estate, or merely wishing to identify savings associated with the
under-utilisation of their existing ICT estate. An Information Technology Asset
Management (ITAM) audit across a local authority’s entire organisation is the
place to start.
The initial stage of the ITAM
audit is a non-intrusive, tailored questionnaire. Once complete, we identify
any saving opportunities relating to the under-utilisation of software licenses
and/or hardware capacity, and also pin point opportunities for ICT
optimisation.
And the best part? We are
offering our ITAM audits with a risk free guarantee. We’re confident in our
ability to deliver results and support this claim by offering this service to
local authorities absolutely free of charge if we’re unable to produce material
savings.
If you believe your IT
infrastructure is currently underutilised, or you’d like to realise the
potential of new IT trends in your organisation, contact the Centerprise Team:
Written by Kathryn Tilling
Tuesday 22 March 2016
Centerprise International
