We report this week on two ground-breaking local government
outsourcing developments: Somerset's "South West
One", behind which stands IBM, and Westminster City Council's
declaration that it will be free of IT infrastructure
by 2015.
Westminster's CIO David Wilde tells a lucid story about how his
council will go further down a road many councils are part
travelling: outsourcing the IT infrastructure.
Meanwhile, in Somerset, IBM has sought to stop the county
council from divulging key details of a £400m outsourcing deal in
the teeth of the fact that the council is obliged under the Audit
Commission Act to disclose this information to local electors or
anyone paying business rates in the area.
The contract looks innovative. It is the first of its type and
brings together two public authorities and a police force into a
"strategic partnership" organisation, which delivers IT, finance,
HR, property procurement and customer contract centres. The South
West One venture has taken over the jobs of 1,400 staff, and
promises to save about half the £400m being invested in it over the
next decade. Its objectives are bold. The plan is to reinvest
monies saved into an SAP customer relationship management
implementation across Somerset County Council, Taunton Deane
Borough Council and Avon and Somerset Constabulary.
Yet, as ITV West's "West Eye View" reported last week, local
critics have found it difficult to judge how good the deal is. The
fine detail of the business plan and contract has been opaque.
However justified that critique may be, companies that receive
taxpayers' money ought to do their best to be transparent.
The IT strategy itself - to outsource as much as possible to
focus creatively on the business of your business - is sound. Robin
Dargue, CIO of the Royal Mail group, tells us this week how a
robust and reliable IT and logistics infrastructure would allow the
company to deliver new IT products and services. The infrastructure
itself will be taken care of by CSC, Fujitsu, Lockheed Martin and
Siemens.
South West One may not be wrong, but it is hard to assess the
reasonableness of the scale of its ambitions.