The IT industry is calling for £1bn from central government
to invest in sustainable IT systems that will save the public
sector money and reduce carbon emissions.
The Society for IT Management
(
Socitm) environmental charity Global Action Plan and supplier
Logicalis have joined forces to rally support for the request,
which will fund transformational IT projects.
The consortium held a meeting at the House of Commons yesterday
hoping to garner support from local government IT directors and
find out what the challenges might be when implementing
changes.
They say the package will lead to £3bn of savings over three
years and a 12% reduction in carbon emissions.
Steve Palmer, head of IT at the London Borough of Hillingdon and
president of Socitm, said the drive to increase
shared services across government had not worked as well as it
needs to.
"We remain unconvinced that there are sufficiently innovative
and imaginative solutions that capture the imaginations of our
colleagues," he said.
The consortium said shared services have not worked because the
right rewards are not in place to help drive a shared approach.
"Whether that is local politics, budgets, or anything else, the
current system is designed to drive local parochial decision
making," Chris Gabriel, marketing and solutions director at
Logicalis said.
He added that real changes in the economic and environmental
efficiency of public sector IT systems will not materialise unless
there is both a will to change the system and the money to make it
work.
Procurement processes were identified as a potential barrier to
the plan's success, as a lack of flexibility could cause problems.
It was acknowledged that both the public and private sectors will
have to make changes to the way they work - public sector bodies
need to run commercial contracts with a more open minded approach,
Palmer said, while private companies need to adapt to their
clients' working culture more effectively.