A cloud hovering over ICT?

Given a rare day pass from LGC Towers, I enjoyed the media launch of Socitm’s annual (and, commendably. 23rd) report on IT trends in local public services.

The report was titled Stretched to Breaking Point so it wasn’t surprising that some of the headlines made tough reading:

• an unprecedented 10% cut in staff number expected in the current year
• financial resources for ICT in local authorities down 11%
• departmental spending down 16%

As the report editor John Serle said: “It’s no longer possible to meet the challenge by just doing what we were doing, better. We now have to re-think what we do.”

Without in any way detracting from the interesting presentation by Mr Serle and the City of London IS boss Roger Marshall, the most intriguing part of the event was the contribution from the Government Chief Information Officer John Suffolk.

He spoke at some length about cloud computing and the Government’s G-Cloud - the proposed home for many government IT applications as recommended in The Digital Britain report in 2009.

Mr Suffolk said they’d made contact with 100 organisations around the world - from all sectors - and work was continuing on its design. He the cloud wasn’t a generic system: “You have to craft something that’s right for your environment”.

He was also adamant that local government had to move away (and quickly) from having “hundreds and hundreds” of data centres.

“This is not a sustainable model over the next 10 years. Whether we like it or not, the government will be saying: ‘the world has shifted’.”

Mr Suffolk also challenged local government - or any organisation - to ask itself if it was ready for change because it meant giving up “sovereignty” to some services - and “We’re not good at it”.

He also spoke to me about the suggestions that the structure of local government itself hindered change:

 

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