Steve Palmer, president of
Socitm,
the society of information technology management, has called on
local government CIOs to focus on business leadership in order to
help transform council services.
Addressing the Socitm president's dinner, he said, "He said that
the outlook for public sector IT would remain challenging.
particulary given the financial pressure to reduce costs, and
competition coming in from the developing world.
Palmer said the role of the public sector CIO needed to focus on
strategy of transformation. "ICT has been siloed as a support
function rather than a business enabler. We need to be business
leaders and champion business partnerships."
One of the major areas of change is in council websites, which
increasingly need to offer online access to local government
services. Socitm Insight, the organisation's research and
consulting arm, has
proposed a rating system for council websites to take into
account usabiity, usefulness and support for different ways of
accessing services.
"The UK government sector is unprepared for the internet. We
need a culture of innovation," he said.
According to Socitm Insight, the rapid growth in the use of
mobile devices for accessing websites (the 'mobile web') makes it
essential that websites be designed to be used by all such devices.
Second, to support online servcies, council websites need to be
fully integrated into the back office and not involve the
information becoming an e-mail, or even worse a piece of paper that
has to be processed in the traditional way. Third, Socitm Insight,
believes social media has the potential for much greater citizen
engagement which may lead to a new generation of websites.