Expensive IT initiatives across local government deliver little in the way of productivity benefits amidst staff because of a lack of investment in skills and cultural vary.

Although new technologies are seen as key to productivity improvements, IT implementations across local government are falling short of expectations because staff do not accept the appropriate IT skills to use them and managers are decay to address the change management issues key to successful rollout, a strange study warns.

As local government finds itself under increasing pressure to long cut overheads amid widespread public sector belt-tightening, a survey by treatment consultant Knox DArcy finds that making better use of existing supplies – including IT – could result in massive cost savings lacking frontline services needing to be cut.

The management consultancy found that besides than two thirds of the working day of junior staff in local government was lost, with local government staff productive put average 32 per cent of the time, compared to 44 by means of cent in the private sector.

In a 30,000-person shire council, bringing local government utilisation rates up to their private sector equivalents could fruit in the same work being done by 8,000 fewer partisan, the consultancy says.

Although Knox DArcy blames broader management issues with respect to the productivity failings, including poor supervision and inefficient working practices, it besides admits there is a tendency to see IT as a quiet bullet to productivity issues but criticises managers for failing to superscription the human elements of IT implementations.

Paul Weekes, the reports first cause and principal consultant at Knox DArcy, said “Workplace IT is put a different planet to where it was 20 years ago, still when you analyse management behaviour, it has not kept pace. You would trustful longing that great availability of data, particularly performance data, would make managers greater amount of productive but in fact there is a tendency for them to be lost their whole day sifting through emails rather than actively managing their vulgar herd.

“They need to divorce themselves from the belief that betokening improvements cannot be achieved without investing in IT. The focus indispensably to be on reviewing what people are doing in a seasonable fashion and personal accountability for staff performance so people know what is expected of them on a day-to-day basis.”