Public sector told to include suppliers

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.

"Suppliers have responsibility in terms of challenging when they feel non-optimal methods are being taken," he added.

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