Gartner analysts will further discuss how to prioritise IT initiatives, while balancing the use of resources at Gartner PPM & IT Governance Summit 2011, 14-15 June in London. For more information please visit europe.gartner.com/ppm
1. 1
Radical Cost Cutting
Like below, but challenging the common wisdom
A Framework for Cost Optimization
IT Procurement
Get the best pricing and terms for your IT purchases
Cost Savings within IT
Identify opportunities to reduce IT costs
Joint Business and IT Cost Savings
Implement cost-saving technologies in conjunction with
the business
Enable Innovation & Business Restructuring
Implement process improvement, business restructuring and
innovation
Difficulty
Value
Editor's Notes
Reducing IT costs might be intended as simply laying-off some IT staff, or outsourcing to ESPs, or getting a piece of software for lower license fees. In fact the impact of IT on government ability to deliver public services is so far and wide, that there are multiple areas where IT can make an impact on slashing costs. Some of those areas can be considered low-hanging fruits, other are definitely more difficult to implement, but potentially they also generate much higher return..
At the bottom there is probably procurement, which is a process matter in government with compliance complexities, but also some obvious savings to be made through consolidation and renegotiation
Next come tactical actions that can be implemented within the IT department to streamline IT operations: IT process improvement, open source software, automated software distribution
Joint business and IT cost savings are those where IT is tightly linked to process improvements and require involving business stakeholders: tele-working, employee self-service, video-conferencing
The hardest to get are IT-enabled business cost cutting actionsr. They equire full commitment by line-of-business executives and might require some policy changes: sharing processes across jurisdictions
There are also some radical options that can be implemented in the short-to-medium term but require different approaches to sourcing and problem solving.