Security and virtualisation top government IT agenda

Public sector organisations see security and virtualisation as their top IT priorities for the coming year, a new survey of local and central government IT staff has found.

Representing 39 such UK organisations, respondents also cited flexible working as their third most important consideration.

But, despite the fact 95 per cent already had or have plans in place to allow employees to work remotely, only 46 per cent were satisfied that their organisation has strong enough measures for protecting data on mobile devices.

Security claimed the top spot among 59 per cent of the staff questioned at a recent government IT event hosted by Citrix, with virtualisation cited by 51 per cent, followed by mobile device security. By contrast, the least important area of focus this year were compliance and implementing shared services, cited by just 10 per cent of respondents as important.

Chris Mayers, Citrix chief security architect, said that recent, high profile data breaches had pushed security to the top of the public sector IT agenda. "With so many potential threats to information security having been highlighted, it's clear this is an area for special attention," he said.

"At the same time, it's encouraging to see that initiatives to make government IT more efficient and user-friendly also high on the agenda," he added, referencing virtualisation as the other top priority.

"Furthermore, as data remains centralised - and not on discs or laptops - sensitive information is not compromised as employees work flexibly," said Mayers.

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