The Chancellor’s pre budget statement (and those of the opposition) leaves no doubt that difficult financial times will be experienced by the UK public sector over the next few years. These challenges should be a major spur to all public sector organisations to commit to ICT-enabled transformation of services. In turn this will place the ICT service under an even sharper focus. It will also put even greater pressure on the rest of the organisation to use ICT services much more effectively to achieve such a transformation.

Recognising that the use of ICT has become critical for service managers outside the ICT service to deliver business systems Socitm is now extending its benchmarking services. The new services include:

• Environmental impact of ICT on the organisation
• Information assurance
• Shared services
• Project and programme management
• Flexible working
• Business continuity
• Business transformation

Features of the new services

"Understanding the implications of change, awareness of the risks and how to manage them, utter conviction that the outcome is worth the journey"

The project issues
The ICT Service is performing well within the Council - apart from a few minor areas where effort could be used more effectively. The key issue to emerge, however, was that the Council lacked an overall strategy for e-government and for the role of ICT in its corporate agenda.

The project issues
Torfaen CBC has taken part in Socitm benchmarking of their ICT service for a number of years. They are also in the middle of a council re-organisation and further changes are being made to the ICT service.

The project issues
Barking and Dagenham invests approximately £6.5m per annum in information systems and supporting infrastructure and wanted to ensure that it was receiving value for money and is among the top performing local authorities.