Lee Shorten
As a clearer picture emerges of what the political landscape will look like over the next couple of years, one certainty is that it's going to be a tough climate for the UK public sector with Conservatives and Liberal Democrats seeing it as a route to slash the countries deficit and demonstrate their commitment to getting the UK's economy back on track.
With everyone promising to deliver more efficient services, and all heralding the benefits of online citizen access as a way to standardise availability of services, the one other certainty in these still uncertain times is that the strain of this 'more for less' approach will fall on IT departments to turn this efficiency utopia into something more than political hot air.
The big question of course is how?
Many public sector organisations are already doing more with less. The thoughtful use of technology can make the difference between a complete IT overhaul and evolutionary approach to achieving the cost savings and efficiency goals by which citizens will judge the new government's success or otherwise to deliver on its manifesto objectives.
'Always on', access communications
One such example is Cambridgeshire county council. In a bid to take advantage of the technologies available today that improve business agility, speed up service delivery and change the way employees work to make services more cost effective and more accessible, Cambridgeshire county council is transforming its working environment by providing its employees with fast, simple, 'always on', access communications to improve the delivery of services to a population of more than 560,000.
Through Unified Communications the council has built a converged Internet Protocol (IP) network in a three year phased project that started in 2007. The solution has allowed the council to achieve a true business transformation, helping meet its objective to develop an empowered and responsive workforce, while delivering more than £1.2m savings over a two year period.
The project has enabled the council to execute their 'WorkWise' programme, an initiative specifically designed to reduce operating costs, improve council efficiency and attract employees from a wider, rural area. Since completion, the project now provides 5,000 government employees with a platform to effectively communicate, share and interact together from anywhere at any time. The county's employees can now also partake in new forms of flexible working and significantly improve the quality of public services offered.
Avoiding duplication
This technology allows employees to 'hotdesk', and work from different locations, saving the council money by reducing unproductive office space and avoiding duplication of effort by allowing employees to save time and effort in simple yet effective ways such as answering voice messages and email from one inbox, which makes response times shorter overall.
Delivering more with less is always a challenge, but the technology to help extend functionality and improve efficiency so pounds go further is already here.
Many councils such as Cambridgeshire, are already taking advantage of this, with great effect and others are sure to follow suit as the pressure for efficiency mounts. Turning political hot air into genuine efficiency gains in this way may not be the political hot potato it might initially seem. The big question now of course, is whether the current cabinet will be around long enough to reap the rewards!
Lee Shorten, managing director UK and Ireland, Avaya
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