• silicon.com
• Management
• CIO Insights

By Tim Ferguson, 22 April 2009 16:56

INTERVIEW

...the limited resources of the public sector and "the pressure to do considerably more for less whilst constantly anticipating changing needs".

However, he feels such tensions can actually have a positive impact: "At times I feel envious of the IT resources available to, say, the financial services sector - but actually I believe that tight budgets and limited resources spawns creativity. I see some of the very innovative work that's going on in local government and indeed in my own council, a good deal of which is borne out of quite limited resources forcing you to be imaginative and creative."

There are currently around 150 projects with a strong IT element at Hampshire County Council, including the Hampshire 'Work Style' flexible working initiative.

The initiative includes projects promoting hotdesking and mobile working and reducing travel through more intelligent use of communications - such as rolling out handheld devices where appropriate.

Another programme taking up much of Creese and his team's time is moving staff back into the refurbished council headquarters in Winchester. The new building will allow twice as many staff to access the wireless network and has a significantly reduced printer farm.

The refurbished office also includes a new datacentre that uses heat exchange technology to warm the building in the winter.

Looking to the future, Creese believes the role of the CIO will increasingly be about catering for a rising demand from employees for IT to make their lives easier through faster, cheaper and more flexible technology.

"Simply delivering projects to time, quality and budget is no longer enough. The CIO has to deliver business process improvement, separating out the strategic contribution of IT from the 'utility' part of IT. For the public sector CIO, a key role is also to enable partnership working and shared services. Standard infrastructure and the effective exploitation of information lie at the heart of that."

However, the need for low-cost and flexible technology doesn't necessarily mean greater use of outsourcing, according to Creese, with a whole range of technologies playing a role.

"I think these days the CIO has to be much more outward looking than inward looking on IT," he said.

As a result, Creese is a firm believer that cloud computing will figure higher up CIOs' agendas in the future.

"In terms of future strategic themes to watch, I'd say cloud computing is going to be more important than either offshoring or open source. Both of those have a part to play but I do think this idea of using a 'cloud' model is going to be much, much more important in technological terms to the CIO than it has been to date," he told silicon.com.