Only half of public sector staff think ICT can help cut costs in 2009, says survey

Civica, a provider of software-based solutions that help organisations to improve service delivery and efficiency, surveyed local authority and housing executives attending its annual conference in Manchester, finding more than half (51%) believed Information and Communications Technology (ICT) can help local authorities drive down costs further in 2009.

While the Efficiency Agenda remains a key priority for many to help reduce internal costs in the light of increased pressure and targets (33%), a greater proportion of interviewees (37%) put delivering the best possible service for their customers as a key priority. 33 per cent felt ICT is an important factor in efficiency but that a shift in organisational attitude is more critical. Only 1 per cent thought that IT will not make a significant impact on efficiency this year. Over half (53%) believed introducing standardised systems and processes across the organisation was important for improved efficiency while 40 per cent felt sharing services important for efficiency gains. Over one third, 37 per cent, claim to be using or planning to use, shared services over the next one to three years. Nearly one third (30 per cent) of the 100 survey respondents thought that the Government will cut funding and support in 2009, over the 4% of those surveyed who believed government will invest more in public services. 53% believe their local authorities are cutting jobs or will cut jobs this year. Val Earle, head of consulting for Enterprise Service Transformation at Civica, said: "In 2009 the challenges facing local authorities and housing organisations are being compounded by the economic climate as executives will be forced to do more with even fewer resources. "The survey highlights that many issues facing public sector organisations in terms of transformation are the same but the current climate is highlighting existing problems and now is an opportune time for a detailed reassessment of spending programmes and analysis of where technology can help make additional efficiency savings. "Job cuts to address the lack of funding is not necessarily the answer as authorities could then lose employees they have been spent considerable time and money training. Using existing technology systems more effectively often has more effect in terms of enhancing services and making cost savings."

BACKGROUND

The survey was conducted with both local authority (62) and housing organisation (38) employees at Civica's annual customer conference in Manchester which attracted visitors from across the public sector and its partners.

Research reveals public sector leading the way in eLearning

Public sector organisations are leading their private sector counterparts in the uptake of eLearning tools and instruments, according to a new study commissioned by IMC (UK) Learning.

The study, ‘Staff training during an economic downturn – opportunities and threats’, was designed to establish the views of HR professionals, in both the public (35%) and private (63%) sectors, regarding the importance of training and learning in uncertain economic times. It also sought to discover what eLearning tools and instruments organisations are already using and what they are planning to use in the future.

The research found that four in five (80%) respondents from the public sector state their organisation is using bespoke eLearning content, with 67% using eLearning authoring tools and 65% using learning management systems. These results are significantly higher than those from respondents in the private sector, which were 58%, 44% and 46% respectively.

When asked which training instruments respondents’ organisations already use, again the public sector leads the way. Whereas there was little significant difference between the public and private sectors for the use of online communities (28%; 26%) and virtual classrooms (24%; 20%), the same cannot be said for audio/visual content (59%; 44%), web based training (59%; 43%) and podcasts (20%; 8%).

Dr Dirk Thissen, managing director at IMC (UK) Learning Ltd comments: “Training in the public sector seems to be bounding ahead of the private sector when it comes to eLearning. The use of bespoke eLearning content and rapid authoring tools within the public sector is encouraging. It allows organisations in the sector to develop and adapt content quickly and efficiently to meet its changing needs. Perhaps most importantly in the current economic climate, these tools provide a cost effective way to train staff, despite budget cuts.”

* - Article from PublicTechnology.net

Northgate completes its acquisition of Anite Public Sector

Northgate Information Solutions, a provider of services to the public sector and utilities markets, yesterday completed its £54.3m purchase of Anite Public Sector Holdings Ltd as part of its long term strategic expansion programme in supporting public service transformation.

The deal comes seven months after the acquisition of Northgate Information Solutions plc by private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (KKR).

The acquisition is part of a long term strategy to broaden and strengthen Northgate’s capacity to meet its clients’ changing needs for citizen-centred services. It builds on the Northgate Public Service strong track record of successfully integrating seven acquisitions in the last five years. The acquisition strategy has generated profitable growth through promoting a performance culture, driving through innovation and putting quality at the heart of everything the company does.

The new organisation will have an expanded capability to deliver business-focused change programmes and integrated services to the local government, social housing and police and criminal justice public services markets. Northgate will add to its position in revenues and benefits and housing by providing a comprehensive range of services including social care and enhanced document management services.

David Meaden, Chief Executive of Northgate Public Services, said: “I am delighted that we have completed the deal which will bring real benefits to our clients, our employees and to our company as a whole. It marks an exciting new stage in our development and we look forward to the opportunities that will come as a result.

“Our ambition for our company is matched by our ambition for public services. We are fully committed to supporting public service transformation through innovation and the development of new forms of performance partnerships.

“This acquisition broadens and strengthens our capacity and our capability to successfully respond to large scale, strategic and complex procurements and deliver realisable outcomes. Successful transformation requires services which place citizens’ needs at their heart. This deal enhances and extends our ability to support our clients in achieving this crucial change.”

The deal was completed for a total cash consideration of £54.3 million, subject to the settlement of a £3.8 million receivable owed by Anite to Anite Public Sector and a working capital adjustment following completion. The Board of Anite announced that the resolution to approve the disposal of Anite Public Sector Holdings Limited, as detailed in the circular sent to shareholders dated 1 August 2008, was passed at a General Meeting on 29 August 2008. The OFT cleared the acquisition on 27th October 2008.

* - Article from Publictechnology.net

Cambridgeshire County Council has UK's top public sector call centre

Cambridgeshire County Council is the UK’s best performing public sector call centre in new research from the Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service.

Cambridgeshire County Council achieved 87%, placing it in the Top Ten Call Centres for Customer Services, in the UK’s biggest ever call centre benchmarking exercise, conducted by independent market research company GfK NOP. The study was commissioned by the UK’s Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service, a programme organised by Call Centre Focus magazine, to raise customer service standards in the call centre industry. The research consisted of 20,000 mystery shopper calls to 50 of the UK’s leading call centres, across five sectors – retail, financial services & insurance, telecoms & utilities, public sector and entertainment, leisure & travel. Each call centre was rated using over 50 criteria across five key areas of service - timeliness, ease of use, reliability, staff knowledge and personalised service – and awarded a Customer Service rating in percentage terms. Cambridgeshire County Council demonstrated that public sector call centres can deliver a world-class customer service, scoring an impressive 87%, nine points above the average score for the public sector. The council joins some of the UK’s leading financial institutions in the Top Ten Call Centres for Customer Service, including First Direct, Specsavers and ING Direct. Public sector organisations who took part in the Top 50 Call Centre initiative include: Cambridgeshire County Council, Driving Standards Agency, DVLA, HMRC, Kent County Council, Liverpool Direct Limited, London Borough of Lambeth, Slough Borough Council and Surrey County Council.

THE UK’S TOP TEN CALL CENTRES FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE

1 First Direct 91.73%
2 Denplan 91.32%
3 F&C investments 91.26%
4 Lloyds TSB Insurance 91.02%
5 Laithwaites 90.36%
6 Prudential 89.33%
7 Charles Tyrwhitt 89.29%
8 ING Direct 87.89%
9 Specsavers 87.57%
10 Cambridgeshire County Council 87.13%

Call centres in the public sector performed particularly well for ease of use and reliability, achieving scores of 91% and 86% in these areas. The public sector also demonstrated a strong performance in first-time resolution of calls with 93% of enquiries were resolved on the initial call.

OVERALL TOP 50 CALL CENTRE SCORES BY SECTOR

Overall 83%
1. Retail 87%
2. Financial services & insurance 86%
3. Entertainment, leisure & travel 82%
4. Telecoms & utilities 82%
5. Public sector 78%

Overall, retail and financial services & insurance were the best performing sectors. The public sector achieved a score of 78%, compared to the overall average score of 83% (see Table 1).

Claudia Hathway, Editor of Call Centre Focus, commented:

“This benchmarking survey represents a landmark for the call centre industry, with 50 of the UK’s top call centres prepared to put their reputations on the line in order to raise service standards for their customers. We would like to congratulate Cambridgeshire County Council for their excellent performance, and indeed all of the Top 50, for such high achievements. We hope this initiative will inspire other call centres to improve their levels of customer service to reach the standards set by our Top 50 members and we are grateful to Siemens for their enthusiastic sponsorship and support of the programme and its aims.”

“The results show that many organisations are already delivering a world-class service to their customers. However, there is still room for improvement, particularly in the area of personalised service. By investing in the frontline employees who provide call centre service, organisations have an opportunity to differentiate their performance and increase customer long-term loyalty.”

* - Article from Publictechnology.net

Is temporary recruitment the latest government scandal?

According to trade union GMB, between 2006 and 2007, UK councils spent just shy of £2 billion on temporary and agency staff. That’s a sizeable chunk of annual budget by anyone’s standards. That local authorities are major employers of temporary staff is not news. But the amount of money spent, and the extent to which councils are dependent on non-permanent staff is but one of a number of challenges that councils face when recruiting temp workers.

Temporary recruitment has always been a thorn in the side of embattled HR departments across the country. They need staff quickly, if not immediately. They need staff to be reliable and to turn up when they are supposed to. And they need to get staff at the right price. Unfortunately, most HR departments do not have the necessary internal processes or resources to deliver a consistent supply of quality, cost-effective temporary staff.

There is no shortage of advice about aligning the recruitment function to the overall business strategy and demonstrating the value that HR can bring. But while talent management, succession planning, and diversity strategies have jumped to the top of the agenda, temporary recruitment and the management of preferred recruitment suppliers lingers neglected at the bottom of the pile. And because HR departments are not necessarily equipped to respond to immediate tactical problems, the hiring of temporary staff has become fragmented. Rather than going through the established channels, middle managers at social services, education or buildings management take matters into their own hands and establish relationships with a small number of recruitment agencies. This is a dangerous situation to be in. Immediately the economies of scale that centralised recruitment offers are gone. But more importantly, recruitment agencies with a local fiefdom of specialisation and a captive audience can get away with charging a premium for their services. The incentive to keep delivering reliable, effective workers has gone; and with a limited choice of recruits on offer, standards are not necessarily maintained.

This is where it becomes critical. Quite aside from the money spent on temporary recruitment, there is a real concern about quality of service. Local authorities have become much closer to commercial organisations in terms of transparency around service delivery, value for money and accountability. They are endlessly measured and monitored. They are required to produce reams of data. Strict standards for performance must be met. But constituents don’t need annual reports to tell them when their local authority is delivering quality and when it’s not.

People don’t notice the productivity levels of a head of department, the transformational skills of a change manager, or the impact of a new geographical information system. They notice when their hospitals and schools are clean. They notice the catering dropping at elderly relatives’ care homes. They notice when their bins have not been emptied, and streets not swept. Yet these day to day interactions with the public are where the vast majority of the temporary workforce is to be found. So if someone does not turn up as promised, has a bad attitude, or is simply not qualified to do the job properly, it inhibits the council’s ability to fulfil its remit. It wastes money. And it damages the council’s relationship with its major stakeholders – the local citizens and taxpayers.

The problems associated with temporary recruitment have long been recognised and have given rise to the provision of recruitment process outsourcing. Handing over the problem to a qualified third party and putting a series of SLAs in place is certainly an attractive proposition. But while it may eradicate some of the more pressing issues, it doesn’t miraculously solve all the problems associated with temporary recruitment. Where RPO is deployed, fragmentation invariably disappears. But the master vendor relationship that replaces it brings its own particular perils – not least cost, complacency and favouritism. Instead, what local authorities need is a solution that ensures that recruitment agencies’ incentives are in line with those of the final recruiter. A system that provides a competitive environment in which recruitment agencies continuously strive for preferred supplier status and the contracts that come with it, has proved to be the answer.

Automation is the key here, and although it may run counter to the prevailing orthodoxy in many HR departments, it can help select the right employee, with the right skills at the right price. This form of recruitment process management cuts out the master vendor and replaces it with a network of approved and audited suppliers managed through an automated software platform. Because it offers access to thousands of recruitment consultancies across the country, users can select from both specialist and non-specialist suppliers whenever they need to – without extensive red tape and bureaucracy. They also benefit from significant economies of scale and the improved commission rates that have been negotiated. But what really distinguishes this model is that it is a dynamic and truly interactive operation. Rather than simply accessing a static database of potential recruits, the system is able to measure agencies’ performance against a balanced scorecard, a series of pre-established benchmarks that take into account both quality and cost of staff, and tier them accordingly. It will always go to agencies that have proved themselves to be reliable and effective first. If the top tier agencies do not have someone on their books with the requisite skill-set and attributes, or if their costs are too high, the system moves on to agencies on the next rung down and so on. However, if an agency fails to deliver, or if the worker they send doesn’t meet expectations, then it swiftly loses its tier one supplier status and with it first shout at the most lucrative contracts. In an over-saturated market, that’s a risk that an agency can ill-afford to take. For local authorities it’s a win-win situation. Agencies are immediately motivated to provide quality, cost-effective staffing options. The middle man is cut out completely. And HR departments can continue to focus on adding value in more strategic areas of their operations.

* - Article from publictechnology.net and written by Mike Trevor CEO of Comensura

I have written on RPO and more particularly Master Vendor agreements before, so agree with Mike regarding the Master Vendor failings. But to basically say that middle managers cannot handle recruitment unless they have an automated system does not wash with me. A network of approved and audited suppliers is not a bad idea but generally, in my experience, works against small agencies. These same small agencies often offer the customer service and personalised processes that really benefit recruiting managers. They are more willing to offer reduced fees and go that extra mile to satisfy the client requirements. The main point of this article started on the cost of temporary recruitment for Local Authorities - £2 billion. My suggestion would be: -

a. Find out what of this cost are actually recruitment / agency fees
b. Work out what is a reasonable market rate to pay for recruitment in different sectors
c. Get HR or Procurement, or even a central Government body to send a guideline to all recruiting managers on cost and what level local authorities are allowed to pay

This would mean managers can still select agencies that work well with them but all agencies are working to the same costs. This would inevitable cut down on costs and keep competition and service quality alive and well. Its also a lot simpler than using an automated approach. My experience of this automated software is that it slows the whole process down as it adds an extra person / system into the process. You also have to pay for the use and maintenance of the software.

The lure of the public sector

Often when sourcing staff for our clients we encounter some resistance from candidates who have only worked in the Private Sector. They usually point to the unorganised, unstructured approach of the Public Sector, the length of time it takes to get anything done and the bureaucracy involved. While this may be true in some organisations within the Public and Not-for-Profit sector, I am sure that it is true within some Private organisations as well.

The article below (from http://www.whatpc.co.uk/) explains nicely why working in the Public Sector can be better than working in the Private sector: -


It is a common misconception that work in the public sector lacks the dynamism, innovation and pace of its private sector counterpart ­ – and in the area of IT, nothing could be further from the truth.

The challenges of moving from private to public sector, particularly where education is concerned, are much greater than people think.

But if you are ambitious, keen to innovate and eager to work on some of the largest IT projects in the country, then the education sector could be right up your street.
The detailed procurement processes that schools and universities go through when reviewing an IT implementation can help to fuel innovation, by opening the door to new firms that might be seen as too bleeding-edge for private business. As a result, IT managers and directors are often ahead of their private sector colleagues when it comes to the latest technological advances.

With the drive into electronic government, for example, public sector organisations of all shapes and sizes have developed some of the most proactive and responsive web sites in the UK.

The response mechanisms to online information provide citizens with a channel of communication that many private sector companies struggle to achieve. Such processes are mirrored in the education sector, with even the smallest village schools having their own web sites for prospective parents to access information.

The Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme is providing many opportunities for innovation in the education sector. The project is receiving major investment, which will have a considerable effect on the technology available in secondary schools across the country.
While innovation is not a word commonly associated with the public sector, the government can lead the way in IT skills and standards.

Some of the world-class standards, such as Prince2 for project management and the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) ­ – see Key skills for public sector IT workers, below ­ – have become core to not-for-profit working.

Prince2 was developed in 1989 by the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency as a government standard for IT project management. Undertaking large-scale projects enabled the public sector to spot a gap in the market, and to propose standards of project management that could help implementations run smoothly and to budget.

As personnel transferred out of government into business, they took these skills with them into the private sector.

Prince2 is now used in more than 50 countries worldwide for all types of projects, not just those in the IT sector. The approach will prove invaluable to schools going through BSF projects to ensure they are properly managed and cause as little disruption to pupils as possible.
But if you are looking for a smooth and an unchallenging role, do not assume the education sector is for you. Just because there are no financial shareholders reviewing performance on a daily basis does not mean there is a lack of accountability.

In fact, you could argue that the education sector has a much tougher audience ­ – the general public. When mistakes happen they will reach the public domain ­ – something that may not always happen in the private sector. But if you want to get involved in some of the largest IT implementations in the UK, then the public sector offers a wealth of opportunities. The scale of projects in the major government departments such as the Department for Children, Schools and Families, or the Department for Work and Pensions, provides an ideal career opportunity for IT professionals looking to build their skills set.

There are few such opportunities in the private sector where you can expect to be involved with so many users or as many customer records. Add the joined-up government initiative and you can see why any IT professional should be getting excited about public sector projects that will look to push the boundaries of technology in the future.

The public sector offers an innovative environment, without the financial pressures of shareholders, and the added incentive to educate children and young adults to help make a difference.

Robert Chapman is chief executive of IT training specialist Firebrand Training

Key skills for public sector IT workers

Prince2

Prince2 – Projects in Controlled Environments – is a project management method covering the organisation, management and control of projects. Since its introduction, Prince2 has become widely used in both the public and private sectors and is now the UK’s de facto standard for project management. Although Prince2 was originally developed for the needs of IT projects, the method has also been used on many non-IT projects. The latest version is designed to incorporate the requirements of existing users and to enhance the method towards a generic, best-practice approach for the management of all types of projects.

ITIL

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a set of concepts and techniques for managing IT infrastructure, development and operations. ITIL is the only consistent and comprehensive documentation of best practice for IT service management. Used by many organisations around the world, an entire ITIL philosophy has grown up around the guidance.

IT Recruitment - whats the market like?

We thought we would give you all a quick update on how the current IT and Information Management recruitment market is looking within the Public and Not-For-Profit sector.

Well. So far this year, as mentioned in a previous post all has looked fine, not much change to mention. However, we did notice a drop in July. Maybe it was because everyone was on Summer Holiday or maybe it was the current economic climate taking hold. The good news is that it appears to have been a one off. August has been very busy on both the permanent and temporary side. We have received positions from within the NHS, Education, Charity and Housing sector.

In terms of the number of applications we are seeing we believe the number has generally been consistent, however, we have noticed a slight rise in the number of people looking for permanent work. Perhaps this is because they wish to ensure stability and financial security during these uncertain financial times.

If you would like to chat to us about IT and Information recruitment please do give us a call on 0844 800 4984 or e-mail us at info@ggrecruitment.co.uk

Jobs market

Unemployment will “substantially rise”, according to a new report.

The Ernst & Young Item Club summer forecast predicts gross domestic product will grow by just 1% in 2009, while unemployment will “substantially increase”.
The Item Club's chief economist, Peter Spencer, told Forbes financial news that high street and housing market conditions would worsen before things improved. Spencer said: “We have already seen a housing crisis that has morphed from a credit crunch to a general collapse in confidence, as prices have tumbled.”

* - the above article was taken from the recruiter.

G & G Recruitment still believe that the Public and Not-For-Profit sector will not be affected as much as the financial sector but, we have seen a drop in Permanent vacancies in July.

Outsourcing: Westminster Council IT infrastructure free by 2015

Please see the below article from Computer Weekly concerning Westminster City Council's aim to outsource all of its IT Infrastructure by 2015. Hopefully this can be successful and deliver value for money. I am doubtful as it seems to me London Boroughs go through cycles. We have seen outsourcing tried before and we have seen it fail before. In fact we don't have to go too far back on Tony Collins's blog on Computer Weekly to find a story confirming that there have been many failures with outsourcing within the Public Sector. Fingers crossed for Westminster City Council and their new approach to outsourcing.

Westminster City Council will be infrastructure-free by 2015, after completing the outsourcing of all its IT services.

CIO David Wilde said the council plans to transfer all its IT services to suppliers, who will also be responsible for day-to-day IT management. The council IT department will be left with a need for more project management skills and a "strong strategic arm".

Wilde said that cost cutting is not the main reason for the strategy. "It's not just about reducing costs, it's about getting more value for the same money," he said. "It's very easy to run an aggressive procurement exercise and go for the lowest cost - it doesn't mean that you then get the best service."

He said infrastructure-free environments are the future for many of the public sector organisations.

"A lot of local authorities have gone part-way down this road, but I'm not aware of any that have gone completely infrastructure-free. Even those with big 10-year deals are still hybrid, and manage some IT internally."

The move means different, "broader" skills will be required in the council IT department, according to Wilde. He said it is too early to know if there will be job losses. Staff will need to retain some technical expertise, and have commissioning and project management skills as well.

"It means quite a big skills change for IT staff. They'll need to know how contracts work and how supplier management works. We need to retain some technical expertise so we can be an intelligent customer. Staff will need to be extremely well-informed."

The aim of the Westminister project is to increase efficiency, transfer risk, get better quality of service and increase flexibility.

Wilde said, "Major legislative changes are having a massive impact on the technology we use to deliver services. Moving to an infrastructure free environment should mean the supply side should be much more agile and can deal with these changes more quickly."

One example, he said, is the Integrated Children's Service, which required local authorities to overhaul the way social services manage individual cases.

Employers 'cut back recruitment'

Demand for permanent staff in the UK fell last month for the first time in five years, a survey suggests.
The survey by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation and KPMG said the UK job market continued to weaken as employers cut back on recruitment.
Demand for temporary workers also eased to the weakest pace since May 2003, the survey based on data from recruitment agencies and employers found.
But wage inflation accelerated despite the overall fall in job vacancies.
The survey said shrinking job opportunities meant there was a bigger pool of candidates chasing permanent and temporary work.
Alan Nolan, a director at KPMG, said the report proved the credit crunch had taken its toll and had weakened the UK jobs market.
"Many employers now seem to be accepting the inevitable - they will have to cut costs by laying off people because their businesses won't be growing as much as they could have expected a couple of months ago," he said.
KPMG said financial firms in the City and housebuilders had already shed jobs, but there was more bad news to come.
"Even the usually robust temporary jobs market is coming under pressure, adding to the likelihood of a stagnant jobs market and rising unemployment for the foreseeable future," Mr Nolan added.

* - Article from www.bbc.co.uk

G & G Recruitment have not noticed any change in demand for staff within the Public and Not-For-Profit sector. We believe that the problems within the Financial services could well mean increased applications and competition for jobs within the Public and Not-For-Profit sector.

Council staff vote to strike over pay

Council workers are to mount the most serious challenge to the government’s pleas for pay restraint after voting on Monday to stage a series of summer strikes.
The decision by local government workers in England and Wales to back the call for action comes less than a week after Alistair Darling, the chancellor, appealed to workers to curb demands to help combat rising inflation.
More than 600,000 members of Unison, the largest public sector union, were balloted after rejecting a 2.45 per cent pay offer. The union is demanding rises of 6 per cent or 50p an hour, whichever is greater.
Its members include care workers, housing benefit officers, teaching assistants, dinner ladies, cooks, cleaners and refuse collectors. Local government employers warned that “some of the most vulnerable people in society” would suffer if the council workers went on strike.
Unison said that members had voted by 55 per cent to 45 per cent in favour of “sustained industrial action” on a 27 per cent turn-out. Brian Baldwin, chair of the employers’ negotiating body, said this meant that only 13 per cent of the membership had voted in favour of striking.
He warned that councils would “be forced into making unpalatable choices between cutting frontline services and laying off staff” if they approved a bigger increase.
The union’s negotiating team will decide today what action to recommend to its national strike committee, which meets on Friday. The most likely outcome, say officials, is a series of short strikes starting with a two-day stoppage next month.
Dave Prentis, Unison general secretary, said: “This is a . . . clear message to the local government employers that our members are willing to fight for a decent pay rise. They are fed up and angry that they are expected to accept pay cut after pay cut, while bread and butter prices go through the roof.
“Most of them are low-paid workers, who are hit hardest by food and fuel price hikes, and they see the unfairness of boardroom bonanzas and big City bonuses.”
Civil servants and teachers have already staged a series of one and two-day strikes this year over the government’s insistence that public sector pay rises must be kept in line with its 2 per cent inflation target as measured by the consumer price index.
David Cameron, the Conservative leader, sought to add to Labour’s discomfort yesterday by claiming that the cash-strapped party was reliant on union funds and would find it difficult to take a tough line against council and other public sector workers. “I certainly hope there won’t be a series of strikes. Strikes very rarely achieve their goals . . . the Government is going to have to be extremely tough about this . . . to make sure we don’t have a wave of public strikes,” Mr Cameron said at his monthly press conference.
A Downing Street spokesman said Gordon Brown, the prime minister, was “disappointed’’ Unison had decided “to take this action” but insisted the pay negotiations were “really something for local government and the trade unions”.

Article from the Financial Times website.

Optimistic growth predicted by software and IT services sector, despite credit crunch

SMEs in the software and IT services sector are challenging gloomy economic projections according to a survey from Intellect, the UK technology trade body.

With 53% of respondents forecasting double-digit growth for 2008 compared to 49% that predicted double-digit growth last year, the mood amongst SMEs remains bullish, despite the global financial squeeze. The Intellect survey, now in its second year asks software and IT services companies operating in the UK about their current and future performance. The SME software sector, in particular is an important contributor to the UK economy, and the survey aims to understand better the key challenges and opportunities of companies developing and selling software in the UK. The overwhelming majority of respondents (83%) were SMEs and it was these who were most bullish about the year ahead. Businesses expecting 15% or greater organic growth were largely in the smaller end of a £0-£20m turnover range, and there were no companies larger than this expecting such high growth rates. Some of the sectors most likely to generate this growth, according to the respondents are Services, Telecoms, Public Sector and Banking. These predictions are, however, tempered by the amount of activity companies are reporting in the Public Sector and the Financial Services sector. Growth estimations have not matched up with the reality of market activity. From 2006-2007 the percentage of respondents servicing the two sectors dropped from 28% to 27%, and 35% to 27% respectively. It is possible that SME software companies are adding value through becoming more specialised in certain sectors, or that their size enables them to be more agile in operations, providing quality of service and flexibility that larger companies may have trouble matching. Commenting, Nigel Hartnell, Chairman of Intellect’s Software Group and Executive Director of software as a service company FFastFill Plc said: “The results from this survey show that in today’s current economic climate, some SME software companies are finding their size an advantage, not a hindrance. Agile SMEs have the ability to respond to market changes and customer needs more quickly than large companies. Through innovation and intensive customer focus, many respondents believe they will generate impressive levels of organic growth.”The survey, which contains case studies, as well as a variety of questions on performance, activity, pricing and development strategies, also shows that SMEs are embracing globalisation. In last year’s survey, 59% of respondents identified globalisation as having a neutral or negative impact on their business. In 2007 respondents showed a marked turnaround in attitude, with 57% of respondents seeing globalisation as having a positive or very positive impact on their business. SMEs are today working on a global stage, identifying opportunities in the global market rather than focusing on home markets. Outsourcing and offshoring is also on the rise, but it appears that Asia is becoming less popular as a destination. The percentage of respondents outsourcing to Asia dropped to 44% from 55% in 2007. In contrast, both Western and Eastern Europe have seen an increase in R&D outsourcing. As Chris Barling, Chief Executive Officer of Actinic, a company profiled in the report said, “We are currently saving about 40% in costs by developing overseas – mostly in Eastern Europe. We decided on Hungary because of the cost and quality benefit.”The Intellect Software and Services survey will be conducted annually to establish whether these findings are trends or blips, helping establish the most comprehensive overview of the SME software sector currently available.

* - Article from www.publictechnology.net

Candidate Ideas

G & G Recruitment Solutions are continually looking at ways to improve our services, not just to clients but, to candidates as well. In todays ultra competitive market, it is just as important to ensure that candidates feel all their needs are being met, that the agency they are using knows what they are looking for and that should they require any job hunting advice that they can get an honest and helpful answer.

G & G Recruitment Solutions knows that are consultants are always willing to help out and offer advice. However, we are currently looking at ways to improve the communication lines and see if we can't improve our service.

We are currently looking at implementing an instant messaging system that would enable all candidates to ask a question to a consultant and receive an almost instant response. Any comments regarding this idea, or any other ideas you may have, please do contact us on 0844 800 4984 or info@ggrecruitment.co.uk. We really do want to improve our service, make sure we stand out from the crowd and ensure we rise above the traditional view of a recruitment agency.

G & G Recruitment Solutions specialises in sourcing IT and Information Management staff for the Public and Not-For-Profit sector. So should you be looking for work in these areas, please do forward your CV through to us.

New Financial Year finally taking effect???

After a slow start to April it finally looks like the New Financial Year budgets have been sorted as several ICT vacancies have begun to filter through. Despite the credit crunch and all financial doom and gloom we are hopeful that in the Public and Not-For-Profit sector there should not be too much of a down turn in recruitment for IT and Information Management professionals.

Should you be looking for any kind of work in the IT and Information Management sector, please do have a look at our website, www.ggrecruitment.co.uk, or send us your details on info@ggrecruitment.co.uk.