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Public sector
Overview
The public sector continues to contract in the major developed economies, primarily in response to economic pressures.
The scale and scope of that contraction is demonstrated by its effects on suppliers and on the citizens who consume public sector services.
In the former camp, the IT sector is one representative casualty.
Looking at the UK as an example, the number of IT staff in the public sector was slashed by the largest amount in 25 years in 2011, with the loss of 5,000 employees. This reflects rapidly falling demand as public sector organisations implement efficiency programmes designed to get more for less from all areas of their IT infrastructure through initiatives such as shared services, remote working, virtualisation, document management systems and self service1.
This last initiative – self service – also indicates some of the ways in which the age of austerity is already filtering through to the citizens who consume public services.
Just as the public sector itself is being asked to do more with less, the citizens it serves are finding that they must make do with less.
In some cases, much less.
According to some reports, for example, the UK Government is on a course that will mean Britain will have a smaller public sector than any other major developed nation within the next five years2.
These are pressured conditions and they are having a discernible effect on the relationships between governments, public sector organisations and the citizens they serve.
UK public sector Unions staged major protests over proposed changes to public sector pensions in late 2011 and there is the possibility of co-ordinated strike action in the winter of 2012-133.
In Ireland, with cuts precipitated by recession and the sovereign debt crisis, trust in government reached a record low of 10 per cent in 2010 and had only recovered to 42 per cent by spring 20114.
Clearly, even when the conditions for economic growth return, the nature and place of the public sector in developed economies is likely to be radically changed.
1 http://bit.ly/xAtXa1
2 http://bit.ly/QJjEKR
3 http://bit.ly/oInanf
4 http://bit.ly/T024AT
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We offer public services organisations the opportunity to remove complexity across a full range of business processes. By unburdening themselves of back office functions which support their operation but are essentially peripheral to their vision and mission, we give these customers time and efficiency to focus on what they do best. The result is more flexibility and greater efficiency in the face of formidable challenges. Customers in this sector already trust us to process workers’ compensation claims. When required, we can also process payroll, learning and development, recruitment, and HR administration as well as offshoring services which can deliver advantages including speed to market, back office transformation, on-demand business, improved customer service and cost optimisation.
Customers include: WorkCover NSW, WorkSafe Victoria
We offer extensive technology capabilities across a variety of industry sectors. In public services specifically, our application development team already supports customers in the international justice system with solutions for finance management. On the wider stage, our infrastructure team supports customers’ growth with cost effective, scalable and rapidly-deployed solutions. We also design, build and run the software that supports a range of business processing solutions. We embed our intellectual property (IP) to create a solution faster and more cost-effectively than our customers can themselves. We can also provide customers with Total IT Outsourcing (ITO) solutions – a single point of supply for an end-to-end managed service.
Customers include: Subordinate Courts of Singapore, University of Reading, University of Exeter
We are experts in supporting procurement professionals with services including sourcing, spend management, procure to pay (P2P), system management and software solutions. We actively engage with the procurement community across industry sectors and look to provide thought leadership and develop strategies for creating added value procurement.
