Majority of financial decision makers within public-sector IT departments in the UK are not sufficiently prepared to deal with substantial budget reductions expected to be included in the government's Comprehensive Spending Review, due to be unveiled next week.
This was one of the conclusions of a survey conducted by the UK polling organization ComRes. The survey was the basis for virtualization-technology vendor VMware's recent Smart Savings Report, part of the company's wider campaign to help the public sector meet savings targets the CSR is likely to require.
ComRes surveyed 101 senior financial decision makers across UK's public-sector organizations about impact the cuts may have on their services and their plans for minimizing that impact, according to the VMware report. The survey ÔÇô conducted over the first half of September ÔÇô focused specifically on budget cuts for public-sector IT.
The report quoted Alan Davies, infrastructure manager at Stockport College, as saying the CSR would force public sector IT departments to seriously re-examine the way they spend their IT budgets: "The imperative is likely to be that budgets will be reduced while service levels are to be maintained or even improved."
While many agencies have been expecting budget cuts for about one year, only 20 percent of respondents said they were ready to address the cuts should they finally come and six percent were already implementing a strategy. About 30 percent were in the process of developing cost-cutting plans and about another 30 still had to decide where the cuts would be made.
The average annual cut respondents expected for 2010-2011 was about 6.7 percent, increased again by about 7.7 percent of the current budget in the following year. Government finance executives expected another cut in 2012-2013 by about 8.1 percent of the current budget.
These cuts will translate in about £3.6bn in savings by 2013, or a 22.5-percent reduction from current public-sector IT spending levels (about £16bn per year). According to the report, these cuts also need to be scalable in the following years, which means technology purchasing decisions must enable management of further changes and potential cuts in the future.
The report estimates that IT budget cuts will amount to about £1.08bn less in 2010-2011, £1.24bn less in 2011-2012 and £1.3bn less in 2012-2013.
While more than 60 percent of respondents thought the cuts would affect front-line services their departments provide, 75 percent agreed that IT should be viewed as a means to drive overall savings. The report views this response as a majority agreement that the challenge is finding ways to invest in technology for wider benefits rather than in spending less on IT. However, 17 percent of respondents did disagree with this opinion.
This was one of the conclusions of a survey conducted by the UK polling organization ComRes. The survey was the basis for virtualization-technology vendor VMware's recent Smart Savings Report, part of the company's wider campaign to help the public sector meet savings targets the CSR is likely to require.
ComRes surveyed 101 senior financial decision makers across UK's public-sector organizations about impact the cuts may have on their services and their plans for minimizing that impact, according to the VMware report. The survey ÔÇô conducted over the first half of September ÔÇô focused specifically on budget cuts for public-sector IT.
The report quoted Alan Davies, infrastructure manager at Stockport College, as saying the CSR would force public sector IT departments to seriously re-examine the way they spend their IT budgets: "The imperative is likely to be that budgets will be reduced while service levels are to be maintained or even improved."
While many agencies have been expecting budget cuts for about one year, only 20 percent of respondents said they were ready to address the cuts should they finally come and six percent were already implementing a strategy. About 30 percent were in the process of developing cost-cutting plans and about another 30 still had to decide where the cuts would be made.
The average annual cut respondents expected for 2010-2011 was about 6.7 percent, increased again by about 7.7 percent of the current budget in the following year. Government finance executives expected another cut in 2012-2013 by about 8.1 percent of the current budget.
These cuts will translate in about £3.6bn in savings by 2013, or a 22.5-percent reduction from current public-sector IT spending levels (about £16bn per year). According to the report, these cuts also need to be scalable in the following years, which means technology purchasing decisions must enable management of further changes and potential cuts in the future.
The report estimates that IT budget cuts will amount to about £1.08bn less in 2010-2011, £1.24bn less in 2011-2012 and £1.3bn less in 2012-2013.
While more than 60 percent of respondents thought the cuts would affect front-line services their departments provide, 75 percent agreed that IT should be viewed as a means to drive overall savings. The report views this response as a majority agreement that the challenge is finding ways to invest in technology for wider benefits rather than in spending less on IT. However, 17 percent of respondents did disagree with this opinion.