By John Lipsey
Gartner recently published a new report on government IT -- Predicts 2012: Government CIOs on a Tightrope. The report’s authors came to some interesting, if not unsurprising findings:
- Cost optimization remains top of mind for most government agencies, but there is a growing realization that what is at stake is their ability to continue operating and delivering services at the same or better levels while being asked to deliver unprecedented levels of efficiency.
- The key challenge for governments will no longer be to transform to improve their services, but to be able to fulfill their statutory obligations. While technology investments could favorably impact productivity and help with sustainability, cost containment remains a top concern, forcing IT executives and their organizations to embrace more agile and evolutionary development approaches, as well as more radical sourcing options.
- Government organizations will continue to adopt technology innovation, but mostly in areas where technology is inexpensive or can contribute to sustainable transformation of services and operations, supporting more radical approaches to cost containment.
The message is clear that cost containment will be a continuing dominant theme in government IT – but even more important will be cost containment strategies that deliver more capability and productivity to end users. That is, delivering more value for less spend.
This is actually one of the primary themes around software asset management and license optimization. How can you give more productivity to users through software, while spending less money by optimizing software procurement, reducing software audit cost and risk, and improving IT operational efficiency? The government seems to be getting the message, as reported on in an earlier blog post, when it was announced that Congressman Joe Walsh introduced an amendment to eliminate wasteful software license spend in the house version of the Department of Homeland Security authorization bill.
The bottom line that Gartner understands, and that government agencies are beginning to realize, is that there is a tremendous amount of waste currently institutionalized in the federal government’s current system (or lack thereof) in procuring and using software. Adopting best practices from the private sector around software asset management and license optimization is a painless and efficient way to eliminate this wasteful spend – while increasing the value being delivered to government employees.
