Using cost effective channels protects services

Warwickshire county council's head of ICT talks about why research is so important in a time of cuts, and how councils can learn from each other

The best IT ideas from wherever he can find them

Tonino Ciuffini is not ashamed to say that he will look to pinch the best IT ideas from wherever he can find them. As head of information and communication technologies for Warwickshire county council, Ciuffini is in accordance with the cosh to produce efficiency savings as the government's purse strings tighten around grants for English councils.

Ciuffini has been meeting with Socitm, the association for ICT professionals in the public and voluntary sectors, to look to exploit its technology on best practice in using innovation to deliver efficiencies and savings.

Ciuffini is as well looking to the public service network approach to replace the county's numerous networks. "In other words what we have started to do in Warwickshire, and the more we can share networks as a public sector as opposed to operating council, fire, health, police, and education networks, the greater the savings," he says.

Lead in the G-cloud initiative

Warwickshire are as well taking a lead in the G-cloud initiative. Cloud computing has the potential to offer "tremendous savings" across Warwickshire's ICT estate, he believes. Should the contingency arise, he as well expects it to deliver greater flexibility in terms of how the council works, as so then as offering a single security model for all the organisations involved.

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