Government Employs
According to information obtained by Computer Weekly under the Freedom of Information Act, the Government employs 8,000 IT staff. This compares with Facebook‘s 3,200 for its worldwide operation.
To make it worse, the Government has outsourced 70% of its IT roles and the 8,000 figure is just for inhouse IT roles.
The Ministry of Defence, with 2,746 IT staff alone has almost as many as Facebook‘s worldwide operation.
Cost Per IT Employee
Computer Weekly reckon that the cost per IT employee is 60 grand making a possible £6bn spend in the Public sector on IT salaries.
Perhaps they outsource too much.
Think of the huge gravy train that the big consultancy companies are on.
No Confidence in Their Own Staff
Very often organisations outsource because they don‘t have much confidence in their own staff.
However, you lose a lot when you outsource so much. Usually costs, which are lower in the beginning, ratchet up gradually when the outsourcing companies sell you more IT facilities and systems changes which you may not be sure if you need or not.
You also have no one else to go to, to do those changes They can basically charge what they want.
It might be better to take more of their roles back inhouse.
Centralised IT Department
It might be better, also, to have a centralised IT department for all Government.
It would also be better to keep their better staff, pay them more and get rid of the weaker ones. However, this is difficult in a Government department.
As anyone who has worked for Government department as a contractor knows, life can be quite leisurely there compared to working for the private sector.
Major Consultancies
They would be easy meat for the rapacious major consultancies.
It‘s like taking candy from kids.
As taxpayers, though, it would be good to see the government increase its own capability with better quality, higher paid staff, who took on most of the work currently outsourced.
A centralised department, prioritising projects would be good too which would mean that Government departments were not spending their it budget just for the sake of it.
They could start with hiring IT bosses from the private sector who can knock the various departments into shape.
The Government employs all those IT workers.
