Management Toolkit
Story: Councillors told: Sharpen up IT skills
Whose Responsibility?
Typical bleating from SOCITM and all too typical of IT/Computing representative groups. Just whose responsibility is it to bring awareness of IT benefits (generally) and IT projects (specifically) to the elected members?
Local Government officers are in many situations (with a few shining exceptions) involved in a battle of self preservation, constantly seeking to shore up internal systems on limited budgets rather than looking at strategic benefits from developing IT resources in alternative ways.
From experience the message seems to be "more of the same" from Local Authority IT departments, working solely on developing skills in areas they are comfortable with and shutting out innovative solutions.
Thus we see the very limited numbers of councils deploying significant levels of Open Source (no gets sacked for deploying M$, Novell etc.).
SocITM needs to be challenging its own membership rather than sitting back waiting for Councillors to become IT friendly. In all other walks of Local Authority business it is down to the services to make the case, increasingly hard decisions involving redeployment/reductions in staff numbers. IT departments can no longer play the silo mentality game or external contractors will make the case for change and leave them behind (despite much evidence that contracting out is not good in an LA situation). If internal departments do not offer alternatives thay will be left behind.
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