City strokes modest firms, promises to spend a few million on IT
There, there. Your time will come, soon, ish
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Bristol City Council has announced changes to its ICT strategy aimed at ensuring that within the next three years 25 per cent of its annual technology budget will be spent with local SMEs.
The council is planning a "more flexible approach" towards the procurement of ICT goods and services on which it spends about £25m each year.
On 4 September it is holding an event intended to inform small local technology companies about potential opportunities with the council.
In addition, suppliers will be able to hear about how they can make their services accessible to the Cabinet Office's G-Cloud programme without large bidding costs.
Jon Rogers, deputy leader and cabinet member for resources, said: "Bristol has a thriving digital sector with many small and medium sized companies. But traditionally the SME sector has faced too many obstacles to winning work from the public sector.
"The government has recognised the need to change this policy and we support this move wholeheartedly.
"Our aim is that within a few years, more than a quarter of our annual spend on ICT is directed towards SMEs, and I hope Bristol firms will be in a position to gain from this."
This article was originally published at Government Computing.
Government Computing covers the latest news and analysis of public sector technology. For updates on public sector IT, join the Government Computing Network here.
COMMENTS
Here's an idea
While they're spaffing a few million on ICT. Why not go through their offices and take a look at the clunky computers most of their staff are using.
I bet they'll find windows barely running on an inefficient PC making use of word and an email client and that's about it.
They could probably strip out the computers in most of their offices and swap them for something like an atom based PC using a tiny portion of the power. Pop linux on the machine and they're now down to saving another £100 on a windows license per computer, swap to openoffice and something to replace the email client they save even more.
If they don't want to do that, or they have some applications which need more grunt. Buy a server, the applications needing the grunt run on the server via a remote connection. It'd still cost less than giving everyone a windows PC, because it'd be a single license. Setup cost would probably be a bit of a bitch,, but afterwards they're saving year on year in both power costs and license costs.
Re: Here's an idea
Why not try some facts before commentating. Bristol City council actually tried to go open office several years ago, but had to give up because so many other areas of government ran on Microsoft "standards" they ended up having to install loads of odd copies of office anyway.
Re: Here's an idea
That would make too much sense.
Most councils love any excuse to spend money so that's nothing is left in their budget.
Councils in Glasgow last year put up bollards on one street so tightly together you couldn't even walk through
(and no I'm not fat) them ,then the following week after so many complaints they ripped them out.
Plus most councils have to keep on getting backhanders so Windows licences will definitely be chosen.
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