In collaboration with Verso Economics, we have been looking at recent benchmark data
that shows that Scotland's public sector spending on ICT compares poorly with our
Nordic and smaller European competitor economies. Over the past 10 years,
public sector spending on ICT facilities has doubled to reach an estimated £1.6
billion by 2008 as the UK governments have sought innovation through technology.
Recently published benchmarking data shows that Scotland is a high spender on ICT
services and the EU Commission has praised Scotland for having developed one of
the most advanced implementations of e-procurement in Europe. But the
Commission also noted that further cost savings in service delivery will only be
realised with an integrated back-office, collaborative working across agencies,
and business process streamlining (not just putting existing administrative
procedures online), service-orientated architectures, standards and interoperability.
Richard Marsh of Verso Economics suggests that, rather than cutting budgets,
more collaboration, shared services and the removal of duplication of services
will be the way to improve our international standing on the provision of public
services using information technology.
Click here for the Executive Summary of the
article
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Making the Most of Word and Excel
Our regular "tricks and tips" features offers practical
advice on using Word more efficiently to create great
documents and creating, formatting and navigating Excel
spreadsheet workbooks.
Click here for the complete article
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FREE - Our new ICT Total Cost of Ownership Calculator
To mark the publication of our survey on public sector spending on ICT, we've produced a small
application called the "ICT TCO Calculator" that helps you to calculate how much per
computer and per person your organisation spends on its ICT facilities. If you would
like to try it out, just
click here to download our free software.
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Recent Successes
Over the winter we've been working with MacLean
Electrical to introduce a new ICT governance
protocol and a new approach to project management. We
completed the facilitation of strategic thinking workshops
for Elmwood College in Fife. Following
this success, our Director for Public Sector Consulting was invited to carry out
a similar exercise for the new Glasgow Metropolitan College
by assisting them in their strategic planning round. It's always great when
we are invited back to a client and Creative Scotland have recently
asked us to help them once more to start to implement the ICT merger
plans as the union of Scottish Arts Council and Scottish
Screen draws closer.
Our Consultancy Team
We are delighted to announce that Michiel Erasmus is
joining our consultancy practice as a new Director and will take up
his post at the end of this month. Michiel has a
strong pedigree in ICT consultancy, particularly in the
public sector, and he has developed an
international reputation with his academic work with
universities in South Africa, Australia, the USA and here
in the UK. Michiel's details can be found on our
website by clicking
here.
We are always interested in developing our pool of
consultants and, if you think you might be interested in
joining us, please give Ralph Leishman a call on 0131 668
2112 or drop him an email at
Ralph.Leishman@4-consulting.com.
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Tell us your view
Last time, in our readership poll, we asked if you believed government's assertion
that the UK would be out of recession by the end of 2009. We had the largest
response ever and just over 75% of you said "NO".
We hope that you will take a moment to answer the
following question:
With the economies of Greece, Portugal and Spain in severe
difficulties, do you believe that the Euro will have to be bailed out in
2010?
Answer our question and let us know – all responses are
confidential.
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