Report of the Local Government Efficiency Review Group

8.4.6 Instead of each local authority having its own ICT unit, they could
increasingly buy some (or all) of their ICT products and services from a
consolidated central group. When properly executed, the greater the
amount of consolidation, the greater the savings that are likely to result. It is
worth noting that up to 70% of ICT budget goes to infrastructure and
operational services.
8.4.7 It is no longer necessary to have people located where the infrastructure
resides as today’s technologies allow for infrastructure to be managed from
anywhere with a network connection. Instead the focus should be on
ensuring an appropriate allocation of responsibilities to the party best able to
manage them.
8.4.8 The areas that should be addressed through consolidation, frameworks and
aggregated purchasing include ‘functional’ applications supporting specific
service areas and common ICT services.
8.4.9 Functional applications are those service-specific ICT applications (such as
planning, water, housing etc) as well as corporate services and which are
common across the sector. To support this service would require
development, operation, maintenance and support of ICT applications that
deliver or support core sectoral business.
8.4.10 Common ICT services include other ICT services required by all local
authorities, such as:
• Network services – provision and management of local and wide area
network connectivity and capacity;
• Infrastructure services – identity management/ directory services,
server management, system administration, security, contingency/
business continuity/ disaster recovery, capacity management;
• Desktop services – provision to all users of a workstation with web
browser and access to both common and line of business applications;
• Common application services – provision and management of the
range of common applications available to all users, such as email,
diary/ scheduling, contacts, word processing, spreadsheet,
presentation, document/record management, video conferencing,
instant messaging;
• Common web services – hosting of external websites, access to
Government Gateway, portal management, intranet hosting, content
filtering, content management.
8.4.11 Local authorities should build on the positive work done thus far in these
areas, with a view to maximising economies of scale and return for the
taxpayer. The Group endorses these efforts and believes that progress
should be made in other relevant areas as soon as the relevant
assessments and pilots are carried out to show that the investment required
will yield real cost savings. Consideration should also be given to
examining potential synergies with the wider public service.
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