Yesterday, I spoke with a chief information officer (CIO) of one of central government’s key departments. This was in regard to a client engagement where we’re exploring the perceptions that public appointees have about their role. This is extremely important because it helps my client gain a better understanding of customer need.
During the conversation it became clear this CIO sees the notion of ‘transformational government’ as a key issue in shifting cost from administrative services and back onto the front line. One of the key planks in this is shared services. You can view this as a variation of the SaaS theme in the sense that both SaaS and shared services have the common goal of reduced operational cost while (usually) being delivered on a multi-tenancy basis.
This latest conversation together with an earlier discussions I’d had with a local government CIO suggest the notion of a series of clustered shared service centres that reflect the needs of departmental types like local government, fire service, ambulance, police and so on. What’s more, government believes it will allow them to streamline and standardise processes across different public services. The only thing holding that process up are the political wranglings that accompany change.
Regardless of the fact this is an ambitious project, it makes a huge amount of sense. Anyone who has for example read Comprehensive Performance Assessments (BTW – there’s no reason why smaller firms cannot compete for the associated audits) will quickly realise there is a lot of inconsistency one to another and across time periods. Part of this is because until recently there was no real ‘standard’ in view. That’s changing. Assuming government succeeds in its plans, citizens will all be better off in terms of the quality of information they have about their local service providers and those around them. This information already exists but frequently it is of questionable value to information users as it is so dense.
More important, yesterdays’ discussion veered in the direction of open frameworks. According to this senior official, the notion of ‘open’ in the sense of not being restricted by the technology and the need to re-use technology components is not lost on these folk. They are a ways off from realising that vision but they recognise this is the only way to go that will provide the degree of flexibility and agility needed to deliver dynamic services.
It’s a tough ask. And one that needs to be managed like a global contract. That’s the missing element at the moment.
Technorati Tags: compliance, government IT, SaaS
