This week, the public sector heard the news they’ve been anxiously waiting for - where the £6bn spending cuts will fall, and who will be affected the most. It is one area where cuts, as expected, were ruthless, with a £95m axe taken to IT spending, leaving many government IT departments wondering what the future holds.

The cuts hold significant importance to Scotland given that over 20% of workers are currently employed in the public sector. To date ICT services employ more than 48,000 people in country; of which approximately 25,000 are employed directly in the supply side of industry, compared with the whisky industry (11,200), textiles (27,000) and the electronics sector (41,000). The value of the ICT sector to the Scottish economy therefore cannot be underestimated.

As the cuts take effect, Scotland’s public sector personnel will fear losing their jobs, as it becomes more apparent that IT departments will have to seriously streamline their structure, to become more efficient on a much tighter budget.

It’s clear one trend we will see is a large increase in outsourcing  by government bodies as they can no longer afford to manage IT in-house. As Seymour Pierce analyst Caroline de La Soujeole explained this week, approximately £80bn of public sector services are currently outsourced, but she predicts this could exceed £140bn by 2015.

It seems inevitable that internal IT staff are likely to be the main victims of the spending cuts, as the government turns to the private sector to get a better return on investment for less, in what de La Soujeole calls the anticipated ‘golden age of outsourcing’.

Although this presents a massive opportunity to SME suppliers, who will provide the outsourced IT management, it doesn’t necessarily mean job losses for public sector workers. There is a way in which outsourcing IT can actually avoid redundancies.

Essentially, this involves taking a slightly different outsourcing approach, that provides a more comprehensive outsourcing package to businesses and organisations who can no longer manage their IT. This model allows businesses to outsource IT management, maintenance and the day to day running of their technology but, crucially, also includes internal employees within this too.

As well as the physical IT, in-house staff become employed by the outsourcing company, and continue their job as normal. This means the chosen SME outsource partner will be accountable for an organisation’s entire IT system, including its employees.

Such a model, which we champion at Onyx, and have been gearing our public sector customers towards in recent months, becomes increasingly relevant to the IT departments across the public sector, in whatever field as it means job losses can, and should, be avoided.

It’s imperative that, right now, all Scottish public sector bodies prioritise this, focusing on implementing the appropriate strategies to deal with the looming cuts and ensure organisations’ most important asset - its staff - is protected as much as possible.