Earlier this month CIO UK was involved in a study of local government CIOs and how they viewed joint procurement, shared services, the cloud, vendor relationships and the government’s austerity measures. Some 27 CIOs in local government were interviewed as part of the research process by RPC Consulting, who gave us access to the full study so we can report on the more anecdotal opinions of the CIO community: Shared services “The future direction is through shared services.” “Shared services is probably the best way we can all reduce costs.” “I think that shared services will grow and austerity will drive that growth.” Procurement “Everyone is running around in circles on joint procurement ideas.” Outsourcing “I do not believe third parties are reliable for protection of data so I wouldn’t outsource.” Vendors “Vendors now pricing better and are more affordable, but we want surety of support costs.” “Vendors are over-promising and under-delivering.” “They are all much of a ‘muchness’.” Maintenance “In no other environment do you have to pay to use something you’ve bought.” “We will continue to purchase the basic level of vendor support for all our applications.” Cloud “Cloud will become a bigger thing, but there are fears around its flexibility and security.” “Security will grow in importance but flexibility issues and security need to be resolved.” “Moving to the cloud will be needed to reduce costs.” “Frameworks and G-Cloud will feature heavily in future procurement.” “SaaS is going to be the flavour of the day.” Austerity “Market conditions will soon force some radical changes to local government service delivery.” “We have not hit the worst yet. There will be further pressure on frontline budgets.” “Things will get worse, we will do less and more cheaply and look to voluntary sector to take on some services.” Transformation “There’s a lack of IT maturity; it’s just seen as another cost.” “There’s a lack of direction here with no goals for automation or transformation.” “In the future it’s all about collaboration, Sharepoint and the desktop.” Related content feature Expedia poised to take flight with generative AI CTO Rathi Murthy sees the online travel service’s vast troves of data and AI expertise fueling a two-pronged transformation strategy aimed at growing the company by bringing more of the travel industry online. By Paula Rooney Jun 02, 2023 7 mins Travel and Hospitality Industry Digital Transformation Artificial Intelligence case study Deoleo doubles down on sustainability through digital transformation The Spanish multinational olive oil processing company is immersed in a digital transformation journey to achieve operational efficiency and contribute to the company's sustainability strategy. By Nuria Cordon Jun 02, 2023 6 mins CIO Supply Chain Digital Transformation brandpost Resilient data backup and recovery is critical to enterprise success As global data volumes rise, business must prioritize their resiliency strategies. By Neal Weinberg Jun 01, 2023 4 mins Security brandpost Democratizing HPC with multicloud to accelerate engineering innovations Cloud for HPC is facilitating broader access to high performance computing and accelerating innovations and opportunities for all types of organizations. By Tanya O'Hara Jun 01, 2023 6 mins Multi Cloud Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe