CRN's Public Sector Spending Report
FOI requests reveal local councils' spending over the last two fiscal years, and their IT bosses reveal their biggest supplier bugbears
Hello and welcome to the Public Sector Spending Report.
In recent years, government at all levels has faced huge change, with few organisations escaping budget cuts as austerity bites. Despite the challenging times, the space has remained a crucial to many suppliers in the channel, with government framework awards and contract wins highly prized.
One of the biggest opportunities for the channel in the public sector is within local government. There are more than 400 local councils across the UK, all of which are looking to become more efficient, meaning the opportunity for IT providers can be massive.
With that in mind, last summer, CRN sent Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to all 435 local councils in the UK, requesting information about their IT expenditure in FY13/14 and FY14/15. Of that number, 110 councils (25 per cent) responded in full within the four-week period they are obliged to do so. A number of those councils also provided CRN with details of their spending on cloud technology vs on-premise. The numbers have been crunched and form the basis of this online report.
The Public Sector Report is not a definitive guide to IT spending in all UK local councils, as results are dependent on which councils were able to respond to us. Further, although the same questions were sent to all councils, individual FOI officers will interpret the requests in different ways, which could impact results. With that in mind, this report acts as an insightful snapshot into the industry based on our chunk of data.
To supplement our figures, we've spoken to a number of IT providers which specialise in selling into local councils, as well as analysts who are experts in the space.
You can read the full report below.