With a number of consultancy companies reporting losses and much reduced profits in recent months, it is perhaps surprising how buoyant some parts of the local government are. Here in Socitm Consulting, our pipeline of sales is as healthy as ever, but with an interesting shift in its makeup. Most of the pipeline today is made up of work which will directly contribute to achieving cost reductions for our clients - so work such as business process improvement, shared services, and of course how to achieve channel shift to the web and to encourage customers to serve themselves.

It is clear that some councils are already well down the road to becoming a true council of the future, while others are still stuck with the mindset that savings means cuts in service, random cuts in staffing, and concerted publicity about how difficult it all is for them. Only this morning my local paper carries headlines about the services which the local council plans to cut - yet this is in a council where internal inefficiencies remain untackled, and where the opportunities for achieving the benefits of self-service delivery over the web are ignored.

Well, the festivities are over, and we've had our usual glut of invitations to tender dumped on our desks the day before the Christmas break! At least it makes sure we don't over-indulge over the festive period!

Procurement - don't you just love it?

The report by Bill Roots, "Review of arrangements for efficiencies from smarter procurement in local govvernment" looked at how savings can be made from streamlining procurement in local government - although it rather skipped over the existing degree of duplication and overlap of current so-called streamlining initiatives. There is somehow a deep-seated belief in central government in particular that there are massive savings to be made from better, and more aggregated procurement. But of course one wonders just how real these savings are in practice, and how much truth there is in the belief that "bigger is better" - buying on a larger scale necessarily brings savings. 

Well that's the conference for another year! This year, the Socitm stand in the exhibition area seemed to be busier than ever - maybe because we were cramming so much different content into it, and of course having a generous supply of chocolates on hand always helps. With our Council of the Future feature on the stand, plus the Aspire material for professionalism and SFIA, not to mention Insight and Socitm corporate, there was a lot going on.