Digital transformation: The divide between public and private sector is widening, say CIOs

Much of the public sector remains stuck in the 1980s when it comes to IT - in more ways than one, say some CIOs

The surge in cloud computing combined with the drive towards digital transformation has revealed a growing gulf between public and private sectors, with the public sector getting left behind despite various initiatives led by central government.

That is just one of the key messages from last week's Computing IT Leaders' Club, held at the Duck & Waffle at 110 Bishopsgate, the highest restaurant in London,in an event sponsored by IT services giant Fujitsu. Because IT Leaders' Club events are held under Chatham House rules, the attendees cannot identified.

While CIOs in financial services and industry talked about digital transformation projects of various sophistication, counterparts in the public sector revealed a growing frustration with IT that, in many respects, remains stuck in the 1980s.

In many cases, long-serving IT specialists in the public sector, still running hundreds of physical servers that aren't even virtualised, are increasingly digging their heels in to try and stop the shift towards cloud computing and, ultimately, digitalisation.

Furthermore, they added, shared services initiatives in the public sector are also often little more than a thinly veiled attempt to protect jobs and positions, but don't provide much operational or cost advantage to the organisations they have been established to attract.

"My biggest problem is my people," admitted one CIO in a public sector organisation. "When I joined, we had 150 servers and no virtualisation at all. The staff are scared witless," they said, because any change from their point of view will be a change for the worse.

The management, they continued, had "huge aspirations" for the organisation, "but don't know how to get from where it is to where it needs to be".

The vogue for shared services in some parts of the public sector didn't really solve the underlying problem, they added. "Shared services in the public sector seem to be interpreted more as a means of protecting jobs. But CIOs in the public sector often want to use public cloud, not their neighbouring organisation's ‘shared service'."

A number of public sector organisations have shifted to a shared services model, including Essex County Council and West Midlands Police.

The emphasis in corporate IT from delivery of computers and software to delivering services, they continued, was a "big challenge in the public sector, which is very 'jobs for life' and 'what they have always done'".

Ben O'Reilly, head of managed infrastructure management at Fujitsu UK & Ireland, suggested that current trends in will administer a big shock to "IT guys" in both public and private sectors, as organisations have little choice but to make the most of the flexibility offered by cloud computing.

He said: "Cloud has enabled experimentation that wouldn't have been possible just five years ago. You don't even need a business case before doing something; you can experiment cheaply and see what might work.

"[But] it's hard to get pure hardware guys to understand the cost savings and business case that cloud can make. Computing is generally become more and more like a utility."

The next Computing IT Leaders' Club will be next on Tuesday 31 January at City Social at Tower 42, with similar events planned in February and March. Membership is free to all qualifying IT leaders (CIOs, IT managers, IT directors and equivalent).