IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Document Management is obviously one of the main supports for the Government's eGovernment initiative. However, the complexity of the Public Sector Tendering Process is a concern. The time cost alone to just enter the bidding process is, in some cases, becoming prohibitive.

In addition, nearly three quarters (72) of the 100 public sector IT directors surveyed by IT services organisation Compuware admitted that they were not able to assess the risk of a new application failing before they go live with it.

Supplier trade body Intellect is working with the government to establish a code of conduct for IT vendors undertaking public sector contracts

Constant legislative changes are creating a big headache for public sector IT executives who are having to constantly update their systems.

According to a survey of 100 public sector IT decision makers, the public sector struggles to keep up with the pace of regulatory and legislative change, with three-quarters of respondents stating that their operational systems are tied to such changes.

The demand for IT workers in the public sector has soared, according to figures released on Wednesday by an employment trends research company.

Statistics from the CWJobs quarterly IT skills index showed the number of permanent IT jobs in the public sector had increased by 20 percent in the last quarter of 2004. Contract vacancies rose by 49 percent over the same period.

Plans for reforming public services over the next few years depend on a large number of gigantic new information technology systems. Every four months, Tony Blair receives a progress report on current IT projects judged to be "mission critical." The mission critical list is secret, but is believed to contain more than 20 projects, covering everything from council tax reform to the 2012 Olympics. The government already spends £14bn a year on computer systems and services, the highest figure in Europe and double the sum spent in 1999. The public sector accounts for 55 per cent of the whole UK market for IT.

Ambitious e-government, shared services, outsourcing and transformation programmes have sought to revolutionise the efficiency and service levels of public sector organisations. And securing the skills to ensure such programmes succeed is having a huge impact on public sector IT recruitment.

Public sector organisations often use the same sorts of IT systems as their private counterparts: enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to manage back-end functions, for example, and content management systems as platforms for providing web-based access to organisational documents.

Despite efforts to attract more IT professionals into government, industry is still widely seen a more attractive place to work than the UK public sector, according to the findings of new market research.

While those in public IT are strong advocates for the benefits of working in the sector, the prospect of better pay would make the majority consider switching to the private sector, a survey claims.

Leeds City Council’s 345-strong IT department is at the vanguard of plans to establish a fully-fledged technology profession within the public sector.

The local authority is the first such body to implement a skills competency framework developed by the Cabinet Office’s eGovernment Unit (eGU) as part of its IT professionalism agenda.

IT vacancies in the public sector have seen incredible growth between January and March 2004 according to the latest statistics from the CWJobs/SSL quarterly IT skills survey. With IT vacancies dramatically increasing across the UK, the public sector alone has seen a 37% increase in permanent IT vacancies with contract vacancies growing by 25% during Q1 2004.

A report from market researcher Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC) says the public sector is the country's largest vertical of the software and IT services market, worth £7.4bn in 2004.

The sector has historically been immune to downturns, and has benefited from large government spending on IT projects of late, such as the £6bn NHS IT programme.

Demand for temporary expertise in the sector has climbed steadily between December and April 2005, with the latest market reading showing contract personnel increased by 25 per cent in the first quarter this year.

Many IT professionals in the public sector are starting to look at cloud computing technologies for their organisations, but there aren't too many who have already taken the plunge.

New research from Insight EMEA has shown 57 per cent were considering the likes of cloud hosted applications and services. However, only 22 per cent had installed the solutions.

The Insight EMEA survey said that 57 per cent of respondents in the public sector were now evaluating cloud-hosted applications, but that only 22 per cent had deployed cloud technologies.

67 per cent had deployed server virtualization solutions to drive down IT costs and consolidate IT hardware, and others were found to be deploying or evaluating other virtualization technologies like application or desktop virtualization.