Published on the 15/09/2016 | Written by Donovan Jackson
Consultant takes ‘open government’ data, gives back information…
Ever wondered how much government spends on information technology per full time employee? That might be a fairly arcane thought to occupy one’s mind, but in any event, there is a ready answer. A website created by Wellington-based IT consultant Andrew Brice allows anyone to do just that: log on to Bass Analysis and knock yourself out with detailed information which breaks down total running costs, ICT spend, spend per FTE, capex, spend on people, software, hardware, outsourcing and more.
It’s a breathtaking bit of work which provides fascinating insight. We asked Brice, who consults exclusively to government organisations, how he came to produce the analysis. “Well, Treasury decided 6 or 7 years ago to extract more operational data from agencies and make that available and it has stuck to it, very consistently extracting and publishing data,” said Brice. “That’s the good bit.”
The not so good bit is a problem commonly encountered by organisations with lots of data: data doesn’t equate to information. It is this ‘missing link’ that Bass Analysis addresses, taking raw data and turning it into visual representations which can be easily assessed and compared.
“That Treasury makes the data available is to their credit and I applaud them; the quality is very high and consistent, and that makes analysis much easier. The big strength is that the data is reasonably comparable, although it does still rely on the agency correctly classifying what it spends on, which can be a bit hit and miss,” said Brice.
What motivated him to go to the effort of providing analysis, he explained, is that when he viewed the raw data he realised that it was no good to man nor beast. “I looked at it and went ‘that hurts’. One wet day, I thought, hang on, let’s poke at this.”
That poking led to the IT management consultant, who said ‘costs and financials are bread and milk to me’, investing ‘a silly amount of time into it’. “It’s just a personal project, but once you have the tiger by the tail, you don’t want to let go until the tiger is tame,” he quipped.
On to the analysis itself. What do these figures tell us? “The overarching comment is that agencies are incredibly variable [in what they do and how they spend on IT]. Central government likes to paint them as small, medium and large, and consistent in their IT use, but the data says ‘no they are not’.”
Brice said that for example, Statistic NZ is an end-user-oriented agency, “And you can see that spend on IT is relatively more than what it spends on anything else.” That agency spends some $22,996 per year on ICT for each FTE.
And what of the MBIE, where spend tops the list at $48,515? “That number is a little weird; there has been a massive shift in the data so there could be something that went on which hasn’t yet been communicated,” said Brice.
For those keen to compare aggregated government ICT spend per FTE with that of the private sector, Brice advises settling down a wee bit. Such comparisons would be odious. “It isn’t even useful to compare between one agency and another as their activities are so different and they are massively variable. Picking on any one individual agency would put you on shaky ground.”
Be that as it may, we had a quick look around; Techtarget for example, notes that midsized companies spend US$13,100 per employee while large companies spend US$11,580.
While it is free and easy for anyone to check out the analysis – and Brice said around 5 or 600 visitors had done so in the first week it was made available – we asked him who really should be looking at it. “Agencies which are structurally similar can use it for benchmarking. Ministers, really, should be looking at it and the GCIO, absolutely. It raises questions like, if most of your spend is on people and software, why is there so much focus on spend on infrastructure and hardware? I do hope it helps the agencies themselves get a better feel for how they spend their money.”
