Public sector IT too complex, says report

Eighty-four percent of IT decision makers (ITDMs) in the public sector say building, managing, and maintaining IT landscapes has become more complex.

The biggest contributor to IT complexity is the increasing range of technology/applications used. However, only 72 percent of IT leaders in the public sector believe that simplifying IT structure is a priority, compared to 89 percent in other sectors.

A study from Daisy Corporate Services surveyed 250 senior IT decision makers at large private and public sector organisations. It found that critically, only four percent of IT leaders in the public sector say their existing infrastructure is “very effective” at dynamically adjusting to workload demands, compared to 30 percent across other sectors.

Additionally, 80 percent of ITDMs in the public sector say a lack of the necessary skills and resources in-house prevents them from meeting the needs of their business, at the speed it requires.

Cloud adds to complexity

More public sector organisations are moving to the cloud to achieve business-wide scalability, as well as greater support for new technology use cases – including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Forty-eight percent of public sector IT leaders in the public sector worry that the growth of AI-related workloads will place a huge burden on their organisation’s IT infrastructure – which is less than other sectors, averaging to 61 percent.

Today, 35 percent of IDTMs in the public sector believe that their organisations IT estate is in the cloud (compared to 38 percent across other sectors), rising to an estimated 69 percent in five years’ time.

Data security concerns is the biggest challenge facing public sector organisations attempting to move more of their IT real estate to the cloud (68 percent); followed by complexity of existing IT infrastructure (60 percent), and a lack of budget (44 percent). This differs to other sectors, where the complexity of their current IT landscape is the biggest challenge facing organisations attempting to move more of their IT estate to the cloud (50 percent); followed by data security concerns (46 percent) and the complexity of a growing multicloud environment (40 percent).

At the same time, 52 percent of IT leaders in the public sector (compared to 62 percent across all sectors) say have ended up with a hybrid cloud environment by accident rather than by design.

“The IT infrastructure of any business is essential to achieving sustained success,” said Andy Bevan, head of propositions and strategy consulting at Daisy Corporate Services.

“Many organisations are embracing cloud to improve speed, flexibility, and agility, but have found it difficult to move wholesale to the cloud. This is typically because of an overly complex IT landscape, combined with the burden of legacy infrastructure and applications that simply cannot be migrated. It is becoming increasingly clear that organisations need platforms that can manage hybrid environments end-to-end, providing IT teams with the visibility to effectively meet business needs.”