The public service should be investing in technology to transform itself, build services with a view to sharing information and design with Digital in mind, according to government CIO Bill McCluggage.
McCluggage was speaking at the ICS Leaders Conference held in the Westin Hotel in Dublin on 11 October. Keynote speeches were delivered by Donal Connell, CEO, An Post and Pat Casey, CIO, Kerry Group who outlined how business intelligence had changed the nature of their operations and how the challenges of systems integration were tackled as their operations grew through acquisitions and the arrival of new technology.
Elaborating on his three-pronged plan for improving the public sector’s ability to deliver services for staff and the public, McCluggage criticised a ‘risk averse’ approach to IT spend in all sectors, where 90% of spend is devoted to meeting basic operational requirements, with only 10% devoted to innovation. He said his long-term goal is to change this to a 60:40 split. McCluggage said his aim as CIO was to "deliver and implement an enterprise-wide ICT strategy that supports, reforms and focuses on improving the overall performance of the public service".
Making the change to a ‘digital first’ approach, McCluggage said, would require a "step change" in service delivery involving the development of common government platforms and a metrics-driven approach using metrics to identify deficiencies and create new competencies.
The tenet part of his plan, ‘invest to transform’, involves the opening up of government information such as records, geospatial data, open data and Big Data. Secondly, the idea of ‘building to share’ involves the use of common platforms with a view to making information easy to transfer and reference through dashboards, cloud and mobile with an awareness of data protection and identity management issues. Thirdly, McCluggage said a ‘design for digital’ approach involvingthe use of social media and mobile was necessary as a point of contact for citizens with government.
Other talks on the day included the masterclasses CIO – The First 100 Days, by Donagh Healy and Gerry Quinn; and Mergers & Acquisitions, by Eleanor O’Neill and Brona Kernan.
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