Public sector told to include suppliers
IT firms want to be involved and engaged in all aspects of public sector projects, according to a speaker at yesterday's Modernising Justice conference.


Suppliers want to be brought into the fold when it comes to major public sector IT projects, an industry leader has said.
Mike Grundy, public sector managing consultant for Steria, told attendees at yesterday's Modernising Justice Through IT conference that better integrating suppliers into every aspect of public IT projects will improve results.
"We plea not to be held at arms length, but to be really involved and engaged," he said.
While he said balancing suppliers' risk avoidance and public bodies' risk shedding is no easy feat, he maintained that properly handing out responsibility is important to ensuring success.
Otherwise, organisations will over-rely on suppliers to run and control programmes, despite lacking the knowledge of in-house or front-line public sector staff.
Because of this, he said IT firms must in turn ensure that everybody - especially users - is involved in the deployment process.
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Freelance journalist Nicole Kobie first started writing for ITPro in 2007, with bylines in New Scientist, Wired, PC Pro and many more.
Nicole the author of a book about the history of technology, The Long History of the Future.
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