With the recent announcement of Spending Review 2013 and release of further cuts in the budget aimed at local government, the pressure on local authorities is mounting. The recent review revealed the cuts will proceed at roughly the same pace into 2015-16, taking a further £2billion out of local authority budgets. Some fear this could inevitably affect the provision of frontline services and the communities that these serve. The economic downturn, coupled with demographic growth in the young and old is causing increased demand for the council services, with estimated budget gaps of 20-30% predicted.
In March 2012, PWC conducted an online survey of local authority chief executives to explore how councils have coped with central government funding cuts. The aim of the survey was to develop an understanding on where councils have generated savings and the actions they have taken as a part of their cost reduction programmes. Surprisingly, the findings of the survey have shown that local authorities have successfully delivered against an ambitious programme of financial savings over the year 2011/12 without any marked reduction in the quality of frontline provision.
PWC’s report identified that the majority of savings came from the changes in internal operations, including improvements in back office operations and transforming processes. The report showed that pragmatic stance paid off, with the 90% of council’s executives reporting that they have met or exceeded their savings targets while managing risks.
Councils increasingly have to work on the assumption that continued austerity will be the new norm, and the fresh approach is needed to match the ambitious financial cuts forced by central government. Interactions between authorities and the public have been identified as an area where there are significant gains to be made. Targets for improved service in these areas are easily attainable with sophisticated IT systems for managing services online, which Zipporah already delivers to a number of authorities in the UK and worldwide.
Back office processes are often fragmented, requiring more highly paid and skilled staff to re-work reports and operate complex procedures where integrated process environments would increase performance and decrease workload. The range of these benefits is often accredited to our solutions which are not only integrating complex processes, but are also delivering significant savings across different departments in local government.
Although the changes have shaken the world of local authorities, there is a belief that local governments can drive more efforts to deploy better services for less, by pursuing the innovative business models including commercialisation of service, shared services approach or more effective use of ICT.
In our opinion, the public sector should adopt more prudent and innovative ways to leverage the gap between the income and expenditure in order to generate better value.
Zipporah is heavily involved in the design and deployment of software solutions aimed specifically at local government and we will be bringing more news and blogs with our opinions across on the world of the public sector. Watch this space!
Anna Mazur
Marketing Executive
Zipporah Ltd is an established and leading supplier of online solutions to both public and private sector organisations. Our products include E-Booking, E-Commerce, Leisure Management, Queuing, Scheduler, All in one and One Stop Shop Applications – working to streamline processes, reduce costs, improve profits and optimise service management, facilitating a faster, more effective and efficient approach to business operations.
