This morning I had a meeting with South Yorkshire public sector CIOs - from local authorities, the NHS and Education (represented by the two Universities) - in a forum which has begun to meet regularly.
We talked about lots of areas of mutual interest. The first was around data and information sharing. A big issue for local authorities and other bodies who deal with the public. We (as members of the public), usually want joined up services, rather than having to provide our information multiple times. Not easy though, especially where multiple services are involved.
A Yorkshire and Humber Public Sector network is also under discussion. Currently most organisations procure their own network services from ISPs - at a considerable price. We forget how luckily we are with JANET. Hopefully they'll be able to build on the success and possibly the infrastructure we already have in place.
And of course we had the obligatory discussion of how we might make some savings. Lots of ideas - many of which we've already taken on board - better procurement, careful examination of software and maintenance contracts, virtualisation, self service, managed printing. As well as outsourcing of course. We're lucky in that we have suppliers offering to give us services for free - others aren't so lucky.
We've just announced our move to Google mail and other apps for staff, which will enable us to focus more of our efforts on supporting key University objective of teaching and research.
2 comments:
Hi Christine, apologies for commenting without prior introduction. My name is Kieran Fitzgerald, 22, from Nottingham. I recently graduated, and promptly was fortunate to start working for Centiq Ltd, a supplier of ICT Infrastructure and Support - and have found your blog to be really educational in relation to the Education sector (excuse the irony).
You have mentioned in quite a few of your blogs about working with suppliers - and was wandering if you had any advice, from either experience with salesmen or your knowledge of future challenges, for me to use at this early stage of my career?
I apologise for being cheeky - but have been following your blog for a while (I have a degree in Photography also, so I admit sometimes I look just to see your photos..!) and thought I should pluck up the courage to ask you!
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