Information technology at Shropshire County Council

Like most other large organisations in any public or business sector, Shropshire County Council is continuing to invest more in technology to help it operate effectively and efficiently. This investment is far more than the equipment on people’s desks or in the computer room. It reflects the efforts and energies of numerous people across the authority that are involved in ensuring that services have access to the facilities, functions and information needed to help in the delivery of those services.

There is no area of County Council service that does not make use of Information Technology. Each year, more staff make regular use of IT facilities and more people have a dependence on those facilities being available at all times in order to do their job.

There is also an increasing complexity in what is required from IT systems. Access to multiple applications from any desktop, access to systems whilst mobile, communication and information exchange across the organisation and with virtually any other organisation across the world, greater integration of systems and data, simplified use and presentation and all at lower cost than before. Add in the requirement to make better use of the data held in systems, higher performance, greater integrity and security and to provide facilities for the public for “self service”, you will begin to comprehend the scale of IT Services.

All of this places an enormous burden of responsibility on IT Services to plan, design, build and operate the technical infrastructure, application systems and support facilities required by a complex organisation. This is not a new requirement and IT Services has made considerable progress towards meeting these increasingly challenging demands.