Replicate, replicate

Citation

(2003), "Replicate, replicate", Work Study, Vol. 52 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/ws.2003.07952fad.005

Replicate, replicate

Oracle Corporation has struck a strategic partnership with the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) that will allow UK public sector organisations to replace legacy software systems with Oracle technology. This should allow government bodies to improve their levels of service to citizens, while also reducing the costs associated with older systems and the duplication of effort that now occurs across multiple public sector organisations.

Previously, public sector organisations made individual arrangements with Oracle for their software requirements and have applied and customised the software in line with their individual needs. The new arrangements commit Oracle and the UK Government to working together on ways of developing standardised systems based on common requirements.

However, though delivering e-government is mainly about better services, it's also about reducing costs and whilst central government has made extra funding available for capital investment, the pressure is on to achieve a return on that investment (ROI).

A recent ROI study looking at HR and payroll in a medium sized unitary local authority indicates potential savings of around £3million per annum and that sort of figures will not be untypical.

Imagine such savings can be achieved across 450 authorities – and replicated for other internal functions, such as finance and procurement – the sums involved for local authorities alone would be huge. Local authorities are only one part of the public sector.