Arguing for investment in systems that will produce savings by increasing efficiency, McKibbin said NICS “will adopt a spend to save approach. I think, quite clearly, there can be upfront costs in terms of the infrastructure: the hardware and software support that’s required. But the savings downstream are potentially significant.”
In England, civil servants are instead being told to ‘save to spend’: to cut costs from programme budgets to release funds for investment. Asked about this point, McKibbin replied: “I am a fan of spend to save. Whether it’s carved out of an existing departmental budget, or whether the executive recognises the corporate benefit of dealing with an initiative that will have an upfront capital cost and benefit the Northern Ireland Executive in the longer term, I don’t see any intellectual difficulty with that. There are practical difficulties in squeezing out the necessary finance, but if the benefit is worth it, I think [a project] will be given serious consideration.”