Today marked the beginning of the normalisation of spending in the UK. George Osbourne and David Laws have outlined in reasonably explicit, top level, fashion where the money will start to be cut from budgets across government departments.
The question that pops up first in my mind is, how can FileMaker Pro be used to help deliver some of these savings. FileMaker’s uniqueness in being super-fast to develop, extend and scale-up gives Developers and FileMaker businesses in the UK a distinct advantage here.
The way that I see it, there is ocean of opportunity that has been created by this morning’s announcements.
How many:
- Public sector jobs will need to be combined (how about the systems those jobs utilise).
- Cost reduction projects specifying, tracking and reporting – at all levels of government
- Proof of delivery of cost savings reports will need to be in place
- Management data solutions could be combined to aggregate savings tracking
- Cascading projects of savings will now need to be brought together for data clarity
- Unfilled roles will need to have their responisbilities passed onto existing roles – think about performance enhancement
- KPI and performance management measures will now be critical in delivering services within smaller budgets
For sure, the need to do more work with less resources is now paramount to the continued provision of all government services. The only way, in my mind, that this can be done effectively is to employ greater use of technology and smaller more efficient systems that have a single or multiple purpose, but, that can be agile and change with the landscape within the affected departments.
FileMaker Pro, and the Developers community itself, is strongly placed to help achieve this goal. No other software and database platform is quite so agile as FileMaker. Its extendibility, speed of deployment and flexibility for change puts it firmly, and rightly, as a front-runner in helping departments achieve this.
I’ve been involved in several fairly high profile business turnaround projects. This current raft of actions is no different in concept to business turnaround, it’s just bigger and more widespread. You could think of it as a business turnaround project of UK PLC. Is it not just that in reality?
As departments swap and change roles, move job responsibilities around from person to person, or department to department, just think how effective it would be to move, aggregate, separate or extend the systems that those people and roles utilise. I can’t think of a better opportunity for our community in the last decade.
Massive I.T. systems have their place, though often, they are not the silver bullet that big government thought that they would be. FileMaker can be a silver bullet, albeit just smaller calibre, but no less effective. Helping departments find that magic formula of where best to reshuffle resources to, in order to find the most productive result, could be the FileMaker community’s own silver bullet to accessing local government in a more ubiquitous fashion.
There are people, managers and departments out there that need what you do. Do they know you exist? Do they know what you are capable of?
This morning I guarantee that there are several hundred, if not several thousand, decision makers and budget holders in a state of semi-despair wondering how on Earth they are going to deliver these savings. Well you should just go and tell them.
Just go and make it happen. This will be a private sector recovery – if you are a FileMaker Developer – aren’t you in the private sector?
Just thinking….
About the Author: Darren Lunn goes around filling half-full glasses and prodding black-clouds to see if loose change falls out.
No related posts.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Darren,
I agree there are lots of opportunities here for the FileMaker community – government is hard to penetrate, but it’s not impossible and now is probably more feasible than it has been for many years – fast turn around and efficiency is the order of the day.
I do like the fact that no matter what ones political persuasion are, we have something to offer that delivers for the tax payer, because of the low cost of entry and the incredible scaleability of FileMaker Pro.
Very eloquently put Tony. I’ve been buzzing since the announcements this morning. We called a meeting and immediately put into action a program of approaches.
Having been a Senior Manager in large corporations for many years, I know just what those managers will be going through today. They’ve probably been in locked meeting rooms all day just brainstorming how they can deliver the same (or more) with less resources. FileMaker, for me, is just a word that says: Here’s how you do more, with less, for less. It’s up to the community in the UK to go and grab it now.
…and thank-you for taking the time to contribute to my post. – Darren.