Government seeks huge savings from IT overhaul

Government plans for IT staretgy leaked

The government’s IT strategy for the next 10 years includes plans for cloud computing, a public sector app store, unified communications, open source and new desktop services.

According to the plan, which was leaked by the Conservative Party on a web site called Make IT Better, a government cloud – or G-Cloud – would deliver significant savings by making it quicker and cheaper for public sector bodies to switch suppliers if they face service or delivery issues.

A proposed Government Application Store (G-AS) would act as an online portal, allowing different public sector departments to share and reuse business applications, services and components. The government believes the app sstore could save it up to £500m a year in software costs by 2020.

The government said the app store would complement its Open Source, Open Standards, Reuse strategy announced earlier in the year.

“The ICT strategy will build capability within the public sector to increase the amount of open source code and software in use and to make it available for reuse elsewhere,” said the report.

The strategy also envisages a single telecoms infrastructure to deliver converged voice and communications. The government claims such an infrastructure would deliver £500m in savings per year by 2010.

The government also proposes reducing the number of its datacentres from hundreds to 10 or 12, which should cut infrastructure costs by up to £300m a year by 2020.

Finally, according the strategy, all public sector bodies will be encouraged to use a common desktop design with common services. The designs and services will be procured at the lowest price available and the government suggested this should create £100 a year in savings per desktop, or £400m per year in total.

The strategy describes the need for the proposals to be implemented locally, through individual public sector organisations working towards their own targets, rather than centrally though the CIO Council or the Cabinet Office.