A charitable ethos brings true value for the UK’s public sector

The public sector supplies some of the most critical services a person can experience throughout their life. Childhood immunizations, kindergarten, school, hospital care, public transport, even street lighting and waste disposal: government-funded organizations allow society to function. The key phrase here is “government-funded”, which, in fact, means taxpayer-funded. Providing the absolute best value to the citizen ensures that as small a gap as possible exists between what tax is paid and what value is received by the citizen who needs it. The less waste and the lower the overheads, the better, therefore. But of course, services provided by any governmental or para-governmental entity have to be useful, effective and life-improving, and that’s often not cheap.

It is no surprise then, that allocation of public funds comes under such scrutiny, and public organizations have to prove that they provide the best value possible. In almost every area of public sector operations, this means technology, either as a significant provider of a service or at least as an integral part of a larger service offering. With years of central government funding cuts arguably offset by leaps forward in the abilities of technology, smart solutions are providing some compelling answers.

To ensure costs are low and efficiency metrics are high, many public sector organizations, like their private sector counterparts, expect cloud services to provide desired results. The cloud is where the latest and greatest tech is found right now and, thanks to mass adoption, it’s production-hardened and competitively priced.

As on-premise legacy solutions reach end-of-life, public sector IT decision-makers have some difficult decisions to make. While a stalwart mainframe on-premise might continue to run critical services, even the most powerful devices can’t offer the scale-on-demand and agility that their cloud counterparts can. The same is true for significant parts of on-premise data center systems: overheads like power; cooling; building lease and maintenance skills for various networking/hosting/security services; upgrades and updates; security patching; and maintenance begin to produce less value on legacy investments per tax pound, year on year.

Photo by Jason Goodman on Unsplash

With millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money needing to be carefully allocated to long-term services and projects that support whole communities, choosing the right mixture of hyperscalers, local providers, and as-a-service provisions is tough. There are multiple options in the type of cloud provisions that might bring high value to the organization (Software-, Platform-, Infrastructure-as-a-Service, etc.), and with each comes different weighting between fully outsourced and in-sourced but hosted in the cloud. Each purchasing decision requires consideration to find the best price vs. operational advantages. Plus there’s usually the need to expedite matters: the mean time-to-value has to be as short as possible without compromising the quality of outcomes.

Thanks to the Tender process, procurement officials can at least see the track record of those organizations that could be possible providers. Relevant experience, track record in CSR and budgetary responsibility, and evidence of a long-term commitment to the ethos of the public sector are all “boxes that need to be ticked.”

Tenders provide a degree of first-line vetting. But the real work begins after suppliers are chosen. Bringing projects home on time and on budget aren’t the needs solely of the private sector, and public sector officials, like shareholders, can be harsh judges of performance. In either sector, a company’s ethos and ideology, experience, history and reputation all need to be considered in the context of similar projects.

From its very beginnings, Wipro is a company that has committed to philanthropy in society at large: to this day, it contributes a significant proportion of its profits to good causes.

That ideology, combined with extensive private and public sector experience in delivering large-scale cloud migration projects, means it’s an ideal fit for public sector organizations in the UK. Our Tech Means Business podcast currently features Wipro in a detailed discussion of issues pertaining to the UK public sector – we suggest you give it a listen. Alternatively, read more about the digital transformation specialist here, and learn about its FullStride Cloud services for both the public and private sectors here.