back to article Somerset council looks for cuts in Southwest One

Southwest One, a joint venture between IBM, Somerset, Taunton Deane BC and Avon and Somerset Constabulary, will be reviewed along with all of the county council's contracts in an effort to cut costs. A spokeswoman for Somerset said: "Somerset county council needs to make huge savings to its budget over the next three years. " …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Neil Porter
    Flame

    Chief Exec wants another payrise

    Somerset needs to save money considering what they're already paying their chief exec and what they paid to get rid of the last one.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Outsourcing rarely works

    Outsourcing like this rarely works.. usually the contractor ends up gouging the authority through some mechanism hidden in the legalese.

    Some years ago, I was an opposition councillor in a local authority that did a similar outsourcing deal. It was obvious to everyone except the administration that it was likely to be a disaster.. and it was. To cover our own arses, we put every vote to a "recorded vote" to express out opposition and have it recorded by name. Why? Because we didn't want to end up with the personal surcharge when it went wrong.

    It was more expensive, less efficient and when the agreement was finally terminated several years only, it was the taxpayer who ended up paying even more money in compensation. Bear in mind that this is exactly the sort of arrangement that the coalition seems to be keen on..

  3. Mark York 3 Silver badge
    Big Brother

    South West Con

    As it was known internally & anyone who vocalised that was swiftly shown the door .

    Hi to all the guys in The IT Service centre (Wooden hut in the car park at the rear of County Hall).

This topic is closed for new posts.