09 April 2018

Eduserv CTO Andy Powell says councils have a “real hunger” to use the new applications and infrastructure that cloud offers.

The demands of running legacy IT are holding back councils from putting in place new technology which can improve services and increase operational efficiency.

That’s according to research conducted among local government IT teams by Eduserv, the not-for-profit technology partner for public and third sector organisations, and Socitm, the society for public sector IT leaders.

In their recently published joint report, Local Government Cloud Adoption 2018, the two organisations found that despite the majority of councils now using cloud, just 40 per cent have a cloud policy or strategy in place, while 72 per cent said they can use G-Cloud to procure IT.

Although 62 per cent now use cloud infrastructure, the study revealed that the rate of adoption is slow, increasing by just 10 per cent in the two years since Eduserv conducted its last study into cloud adoption.

At the same time, 81 per cent of councils said they are maintaining on-premise infrastructure, and a hybrid IT model which combines cloud and on-premise technology is most common in the sector with 64 per cent saying their organisation deploys IT in this way.

Eduserv CTO Andy Powell says: “Unfortunately, a legacy IT hangover caused by outstanding contractual obligations and the demands of maintaining or upgrading old systems so they remain fit for purpose, is slowing the rate at which councils can move forward.

“To better equip their organisations for a digital future it is clear that councils need to move quickly to formalise their approach to cloud IT, educate their organisations about the business outcomes that cloud can deliver, and shift focus from maintaining IT to partnering the business through that change.”