When George Osborne presented the government's spending review in October 2010, fears were raised that the spending cuts were too severe and could undermine vital public services. However, almost two years on, we've seen some real improvements made to frontline services in the UK as public sector organisations make innovative use of IT to cut costs and improve services.
Perhaps the most celebrated of all the government's IT projects is its ground-breaking G-Cloud programme. By creating an 'app store' of approved cloud suppliers, the government has made it much easier for public sector organisations to move computing services to the cloud. Public sector CIOs can visit the CloudStore and look through an online catalogue of services, assured that all of the suppliers are fully approved to provide services.
Another high-profile attempt by the government to cut costs, whilst improving services, is the experimental GOV.UK website, which was unveiled for beta testing earlier this year. It's hoped that the site will one day become the online hub for all e-government services, saving more than £60 million in online publishing costs each year.
But while G-Cloud and GOV.UK are the latest showcases of innovation, they're not the only examples. Innovation has been at the heart of the public sector for some time. Whether it be implementing remote diagnosis systems to provide patient care remotely in rural areas or interactive learning facilities in local schools, there is a clear hunger amongst public sector officials to think outside the box in a bid to improve frontline services.
This innovation needs to be underpinned with better communications infrastructure and the government is clearly making progress there as well. Public sector organisations are all starting to reap the benefits of the Public Services Network (PSN) initiative. By coming together to invest in high-speed secure networks that can be accessed by hundreds of different services, the public sector is flexing its buying power muscles and giving those at the frontline the foundation do be innovative.
It's clear that its time for some of these projects to be highlighted and celebrated. The UK is at the very pinnacle of public sector innovation, and the Innovation Nation awards are here to recognise and reward these recent achievements.
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