Government IT costs – the bloggers’ view

Once again, the quality commentary on the latest reports into government IT spending is coming from blogs.

Simon Dickson:

The real story, such as it is, is the Committee’s apparent recognition that the current process – reliant on a small number of large suppliers being given over-spec’ed, over-detailed, over-sized and over-priced projects – is the ‘root cause’ of the problem. And it’s quite nice to see them challenging the Cabinet Office, about whether its initiatives are tackling that root cause, or just the symptoms (paras 10-11).

Paul Clarke:

Can it really be that a single office computer can cost £3,500? Read that again. £3,500.

No. Of course not. And it almost certainly doesn’t.

Charges made for desktop computing in the public sector are invariably composed of an element for the hardware, plus a rather greater element to cover installation, support… in fact quite a bit more. IT managers (disclosure: I used to be one in the public sector) can play quite a few tunes on this figure; using it to cover centralised development work, packages of software and all manner of other “hidden” costs.

Dan Harrison:

According to the BBC’s article on the report issued by the public administration committee, departments sometimes pay up to £3,500 for a single desktop. What this figure includes, who knows? Undoubtedly there are some howlers out there—some costs that need to be called out and reigned in. Big time. But comparing desktop costs both within government and with those that you or I would pay on Amazon is bananas.

Storycamp

After being suitably inspired at June’s LocalGovCamp, the effervescent Nicky Getgood has been working away to get StoryCamp up and running.

She describes it thus:

StoryCamp is a time and picturesque space for storytellers (digital or otherwise), independent publishers, those in local government, hyperlocal-land and beyond to meet, share stories and ways and means of telling them.

If you can see the importance of telling a powerful story to communicate and would like to think, discuss and learn more about how to do this effectively, or share examples of storytelling that has had a real impact, then StoryCamp is for you!

It’s taking place on October 1st, in Ludlow in Shropshire.

There’s a blog, and an organising group, and you can sign up for the event here. I think it’s going to be great.

Webchatting: barriers and evaluation

Yesterday’s live Kind of Digital web chat about overcoming barriers to implementing social media went really well.

You can relive the whole thing over on the KoD website, or download a rather basic PDF of the transcript.

Our next chat has been scheduled in for Tuesday, August 16th at 11am BST. It’s going to be on the thorny subject of evaluation of digital engagement activity – great!

You can sign up for a reminder over here – hope you see you there!