Sharing specialist ICT staff - a new way to cut costs

This year's Socitm Spring Conference takes place against a background of continuing austerity for the ICT departments that support local public services. How can you deliver more for less without compromising quality?

We have an interesting proposition we'd like to discuss with you on the Socitm stand. Through our Socitm People service we have a number of highly qualified ICT specialists - DBAs, enterprise architects, ICT strategy developers, security managers and the like - all with public sector experience. Until recently, larger councils may have been able to have full-time staff filling such roles, though often their specialist skills are only needed for some of the time. Meanwhile smaller organisations unable to afford the in-house option have had to pay over the odds for temporary staff of varying quality.

We believe that Socitm People can help ICT departments of all sizes save money by sharing specialist ICT staff. By subscribing to our service you could get, say, a security manager working to an agreed service level agreement for just four days a month. That same resource might be shared across perhaps half a dozen different organisations, all of them saving money but enjoying continuity (you would have the same person allocated to you throughout) and guaranteed quality of service.

These are interesting times (in the Chinese sense) and there is much else to discuss in terms of adapting the ICT service to a fast-changing environment, but sharing specialist staff in this way ticks a number of boxes - it delivers more from less, it gives councils access to the specialist services they need, and it delivers specific outcomes. If you'd like to fix a time for a one to one conversation about this please reply to this email or call me on 0845 241 2770. Otherwise, let's meet at the conference (Royal College of Surgeons, London, Wednesday 11 May).