Governments should cut costs in the face of uncertain economic conditions with the use of public cloud services being hailed as a starting point for CIOs.
Research firm Gartner has compiled a list of cost cutting ideas for government CIOs with vice president and senior analyst Andrea Di Maio saying further cost savings must be made.
“Government organisations in most of the western world have already gone through one or two cost-cutting cycles during the past few years. However, the aftermath of the most recent global financial crisis, the sluggish recovery in some countries and the significant level of debt require continued and increasing cost-containment discipline and are forcing government organisations to explore new avenues of cost reduction,” he said.
Gartner said public cloud services should be adopted by CIOs with an understanding that the current level of risk associated with SaaS will decrease in the future.
Di Maio said the use of cloud with community source was another option for CIOs.
“We recommend that government CIOs consider program areas where joint development with peer agencies would be possible to facilitate service-level and price negotiation,” he said.
Other recommendations from Gartner included the need for government CIOs to assess the public value of large, high-risk programs, as well as evaluate the effectiveness of an open government approach.
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