The Situation
This local authority had become heavily indebted, and had issued a section 114 notice to the UK government stating that it was unable to complete its statutory obligations – it urgently needed to understand where and how it could achieve cost savings.
Mastek was invited to review the council’s application portfolio, and make recommendations to streamline the IT application management process, along with saving costs. The authority had a portfolio of more than 130 applications, the ownership of and support of which is distributed, leading to a somewhat fragmented set of applications and, in some cases, lack of clarity on who the actual owner was.
What we did
Mastek deployed its tried-and-tested, repeatable process to evaluate the application portfolio.
We interviewed stakeholders across the council to determine what applications were used, and how well they were regarded by council officers.
We recommended a revised governance process based around IT principles to prevent the situation from recurring in the future.
We created a capability model to determine what an ideal application portfolio would look like. We drafted an end-to-end target architecture, and we recommended four key initiatives to transform the council.
Outcome
Mastek was able to determine that three spending lines were responsible for 30% of the council’s IT expenditure. Mastek suggested a programme of activity to save 10 to 20% of this annually over 5 years, with additional business savings and efficiencies, as well as creating a more citizen-focused culture.
The client was delighted, and Mastek was invited to present its findings at board level.