Adraft government-wide IT strategyidentifies £5.7bn worth of annual savings to be made across
the public sector by 2020.
The
draft strategy document includes 14 separate strands of
activity which are designed to achieve goals set by
Digital Britain and the Operational Efficiency Programme.
The plan is to create a common IT infrastructure, which the
government hopes will reduce waste and save money.
Included in its plans is the Public Sector Network Strategy,
which aims to develop a single holistic telecoms infrastructure for
the whole of the public sector.
At the moment, each public sector body has designed its own
which has, the government says, led to "fragmented, unreliable and
expensive service delivery". It says the network will save £500m a
year by 2014.
There are also plans for a Government Cloud Infrastructure
(G-Cloud), on which public bodies can host their IT systems.
Different suppliers will provide a range of services, and the
report says it will be a "key enabler" of £3.2bn worth of savings
identified in the Operational Efficiency Programme.
The number of data centres being used by the public sector will
drop significantly, from the many hundreds to 10 to 12. This should
save £300m a year by 2020 and reduce power consumption by 75%.
A new Government Applications Store will provide an online
portal enabling sharing and reuse of application. The report says
it is hoped that reuse of applications will "become the norm" -
meaning they can be shared and reused each time a new solution is
needed, instead of new systems being developed.
Suppliers will now need to provide the whole public sector with
common desktop estates, which will conform to sustainability
standards. It is hope the move will deliver economies of scale that
will add up to £400m a year savings.
Work to provide shared services will also continue, building on
what has already been done. By 2020 the report predicts shared
services will be provided via the G-Cloud and the App Store, saving
£4bn a year.