Priority policy areas
Efficiency and sustainability
Efficiency
Budget setting in local public service organisations for the foreseeable future will be done against a background of crisis in public sector funding arising from:
- the financial collapse and recession leading to heavy government borrowing requiring repayment and leading to much reduced funding for public sector organisations
- increased demand for council services due to an ageing population, high levels of immigration, etc.
- falling receipts from council tax, business rates and council services because of recession.
Given the likely scale of the gap between demand for services and the funds to pay for them, the expectation is that councils and other providers of local public services will approach the task by slashing jobs and services - with devastating effects on service users, their own workforces, and the wider economy.
But there is another way. In the short term, cuts will, of course, be difficult to avoid. But medium and longer term, public service organisations that invest now in developing radically different approaches to the way they are organized, how they handle information, how they deploy ICT and how they deliver services will be able to meet citizen needs better, at much reduced cost.
These themes are explored further in Socitm Futures policy briefing.
Sustainability and Green ICT
Sustainability is an important and high profile issue for all public service organisations. New and demanding reporting requirements need to be implemented within relatively short timescales. There are also significant financial and reputational implications for failing to comply with the requirements and/or reporting incorrect information. The issue and its implications need to be understood and owned by policy makers, by performance and resources managers, including ICT, and by service managers.
ICT may be part of the problem, but it can also be an important part of the solution. New, more flexible and less carbon-hungry ways of working and living can be enabled by ICT. Meanwhile, ICT managers are focusing on server virtualisation and consolidation, more efficient and sustainable environmental management for data centres, extending the lifecycle of equipment and switching off desktop equipment when not in use.
Socitm Insight has published advice in:
