17 March 2016

$36.8 million target for savings on council ICT

Today the Finance and Performance Committee received a report outlining proposed savings of $36.8 million on Information and Communications Technology (ICT) costs with ongoing annual savings of $10.8 million thereafter.

A review of the council’s ICT services has highlighted a number of savings could be achieved by prioritising the number of projects currently underway and stopping under-performing or non-essential projects.

Group Chief Financial Officer Sue Tindal says, “We continue to focus on value for money and, by rationalising and prioritising our ICT projects, we can focus on the work that is critical to the performance of the council.”

“The time is right for us to review services and we have found we can make significant savings. The newly-formed Auckland Council inherited over 5,000 systems from the former councils and work to date has focused on integrating these. This work will add to the savings achieved by the renegotiation of the SAP contract which will deliver savings of $33 million over the period of the Long-term Plan.”

In November 2015 the Finance and Performance Committee passed a resolution that requested further work was undertaken to identify savings in ICT.

Councillor Penny Webster, Chair of the Finance and Performance Committee, says “We are always very conscious of delivering rate payers value for money which is why the committee requested this piece of work. Our goal is that services are delivered in the most cost effective way possible.”

Auckland Council commissioned EY to provide an assessment of Council’s IS function as part of the work undertaken in the Alternative Sources of Financing review and their role in providing Independent Quality Assurance to the NewCore Project.

Other recommendations from the review include:
· Recruiting a Director of Information and Communication Technology on a 12 month contract to implement the savings.

· Exploring which Information Services functions could be better performed by third parties.

· An initial estimate indicates that savings of $2.1 million could be achieved through increased efficiencies and reductions of staff numbers if some functions were outsourced.

· Dis-establishing non-critical internal staff functions could deliver an estimated $1 million savings.

Ends

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