Civica calls for more IT understanding from public sector

The public sector is coming under greater pressure to economise in the face of growing government pressure but needs to recognise the important role that IT will play in aiding that process.

The call for a greater understanding of technology and its ability to transform business processes has come from Civica.

The public sector specialist said that following the pre-budget report there would be even more pressure, as part of the operation efficiency review, to shave costs off public sector budgets.

“In calling for greater efficiencies in the current and future spending cycles, the Government is increasing the pressure for radical service reform," said Civica chief executive Simon Downing.

"Technology has an important role to play, to the extent that it is combined with process improvement in order to achieve streamlined services and fully joined up working,” he added.

“Without this we believe that the potential for improved services and efficiency will remain only partially realised,” he warned.

Those concerns are fully justified with the public sector suffering from a long track record of failing to exploit IT successfully with projects going over budget and time as well as collapsing altogether.

In recent weeks the NHS's National proframme for IT (NPfIT) has come in for criticism of the amount of money it is swallowing and the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Philip Hammond recently revealed the government had wasted £200m on failed IT projects.

The catalogue of failures unearthed by Hammond over the past five yuears included £135m for a benefit processing system for the Department of Work and Pensions.