New research shows contracts not headcount key to government savings

UK civil servants indicate that headcount reduction is not the answer as they look to shared services and contract renegotiations to reduce IT overheads

Over half (56 per cent) of UK civil servants believe that the renegotiation of existing IT contracts is crucial to Government IT savings, according to a recent Dods survey conducted for global IT security and data protection firm Sophos. In addition, 58 per cent of respondents also recognised that sharing services, for example by merging IT departments across different divisions, should be a top priority cost saving measure.

In association with Sophos, Dods surveyed 858 senior civil servants from across the UK Government about information security and IT spending. Respondents indicated that reducing the number of personnel was not the way forward in order to obtain the biggest IT savings, with almost half of those surveyed (46 per cent) saying that it was the lowest priority.

Only 15 per cent of civil servants thought that embracing new technologies, such as cloud computing, was the most important priority and only 5 per cent thought that the Government should focus on making cuts to existing IT programmes.

“These responses, for the most part, reflect the focus of the Central Government’s cost-cutting strategy that was announced earlier this year – especially when it comes to sharing and reusing solutions,” said Ollie Hart, Sophos’s head of public sector business. “The key to success for Government departments will be realising efficiency gains through careful streamlining and consolidation of suppliers, and not by simply replacing existing suppliers with a cheaper and potentially less effective solution.”

“However, while there are clear messages being sent out about how to save on IT expenditure, there is still uncertainty across the respondents about the £650million budget for cyber security – 54 per cent of those surveyed stated that it’s unclear what this money is to be spent on, ” continued Hart.

“Although the recent speech by Francis Maude does shed slightly more light on this, it’s essential that if other areas across the Government are facing cost-cutting measures, the newly appointed head of the Government's Defence Cyber Operations Group is clear with his intentions for this budget, and ensures that it is distributed across the entire Government network, to ensure a maximum positive impact across the Government.”