County council ready for digital transformation programme aimed at returning investment in three years
Shropshire County Council has laid plans to move most of its IT infrastructure to a hybrid cloud under a digital transformation programme to go before its cabinet later this week.
It has gone public with the plans highlighting the familiar benefits of such a programme in the form of flexible working for staff, better processes and ultimate savings for local taxpayers.
According to the programme document submitted to councillors, the move is also being made in an effort to get out of some of the well known problems of poor information management, such as poor visibility of data, too much information duplication, disjointed business processes and the lack of single view of council customer.
The key recommendation is for a hybrid cloud platform to take on most IT applications, but integrated with recognised solutions for social care and back office processes. This should make it possible to pull data out of its siloes and free up the IT team to work with departments on more specific solutions.
RoI and benefits
The document predicts a return on investment in three years. Over the first five years cashable benefits are projected at £4.17 million while non-cashable are at £25.4 million, against one-off costs of £21.3 million. Ongoing costs over the same period are forecast to total £24.4. million.
The council has said it expects the benefits to be higher over a seven to 10 year period.
Michael Wood, Shropshire’s cabinet member for corporate and support, said: “As digital technologies continue to transform our daily lives, we need to make sure that we keep pace with this by providing a joined-up solution.
“Shropshire Council will, through implementing the recommended approach for the ICT Digital Transformation programme, reduce overall running costs, reduce the number of systems it uses, manage these centrally and improve its online services to customers, making the website the place of choice when requiring information or services from the council.”
Image (amended) from Shropshire County Council
