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Planting the Flag: pocket guide 4 - strategic sourcing, the latest of Socitm's six planned guides to the strategic capabilities required for local public service reform, sets out the case for strategic sourcing and outlines the critical steps needed to make it happen.

The guide is published at a time when a catalogue of failed outsourcing deals, and instances of major services being brought back in-house, show how much the public sector still has to learn about procuring and managing wholesale outsourcing.

The guide will be launched by Jos Creese, CIO, Hampshire County Council, Chair of the Local CIO Council, and Past President of Socitm, in his session Getting ICT: a fundamental re-think, on day one of the Socitm annual conference in Birmingham on 28 November.

Strategic sourcing aims to find the best mix of local public, voluntary and private sector organisations to deliver the services required through a range of devices, from informal service level agreements to formal contracts.

"We all need a fundamental re-think about how the public and private sectors engage in IT matters" says Jos Creese. "There needs to be a move away from complex and detailed SLAs where the main emphasis is on getting the contract in place, towards simple statements of outcomes where the main purpose is to get value out of the contract for all parties involved - especially the tax payer."

Planting the Flag: pocket guide 4 - strategic sourcing is downloadable from the Socitm website (free of charge for Socitm members and Socitm Insight subscribers, £65 each for all others)

Go to the Socitm 2012 programme for further information on the event.