Analysis of 2016 figures also shows that use of shared services, BYOD and cloud is far from universal
Public sector spending on ICT increased in 2016 but is still just 2.4% of authorities’ overall budgets, according to a new estimate by public sector IT association Socitm.
It has published the estimate on the basis of an analysis of 26 local government, public and third sector organisations, taking in various elements such as spending on cloud services and compliance.
It found that the average proportion of spend was up from 2.1% the previous year but still small in overall terms.
Other findings revealed that, despite the trend towards taking IT back in-house, a majority 56% of organisations were using an outsourcing agreement, while just 32% were in a some kind of shared service.
Cloud limit
Meanwhile, the adoption of ‘bring your own device’ policies and cloud services is far from universal, with figures of 56% and 65% respectively.
There was also an indication of little effort going into ICT training, with an average of just 0.59 days per user in 2016, although the users said that 0.8 days would be sufficient.
The figures have been published to coincide with Socitm’s launch of its Improve programme to help local authorities assess and improve their ICT, digital and related services.
Programme manager Corinne Stratton (pictured) said: “In many senses, the 2016 data has confirmed and built on what we know anecdotally. But the crucial part is what it means for councils, and how they can make a difference to their ICT and digital services in the short and long term.”
She added: “Of course analysing and interpreting data into meaningful information is just the first stage. The next stage is using that to make improvements, and sometimes the tiniest tweak can make a difference.”
