Council banks on IT savings to boost services

North Lanarkshire Council is spending £5m over four years on an IT services deal which is offering "guaranteed" savings that will be ploughed back into front line services.

From January next year Steria will manage infrastructure including network, telecoms, desktop and servers, and will provide a single point of contact for all council employees with technical queries. It will also be responsible for managing three council data centres.

Steria said that as a result of the "yearly delivery of savings guaranteed by the contract" the council will be able to transfer more resources from back-office administration to front-line services.

The council's head of ICT Mike Gilmour said the deal will help it exceed government targets. "This partnership will provide a platform for internal ICT professional staff to exploit emerging information and telecommunications technologies that will accelerate departmental ICT priorities in line with their service improvement plans," he said in a statement.

In a similar but unrelated move, Winchester City Council has also revealed it is spending £2.5m over the next five years on an outsourcing deal with Digica.

The deal covers desktop, server, infrastructure and applications support for the council throughout the organisation and will support around 600 staff and councillors.

The council serves a population of more than 111,000, one-third of whom live in the Winchester city area, while the remainder are spread across rural areas.

The council's finance director Sheila Boden said the supplier will help set the "strategic direction" for the council's IT services. "We chose Digica because it demonstrated how it will provide a highly cost effective service with low risk for the council," she said in a statement.