British councils are reportedly set to increase their spending on IT as it becomes more integral to their operations.

According to Society of IT Management (Socitm), however, this GBP 3 billion injection may not be enough.

"Our assessment is that local government ICT functions have more resources than they had one year ago," said the Socitm's recent survey of local authority IT directors.

"This might suggest that ICT is beginning to make the transformation away from being regarded as just a support service and therefore a cost that can be cut."

However, it was added "that the amounts being purchased are not sufficient to maintain the asset base at the standard planned".

Nevertheless, the survey of local authority IT directors highlighted that more investment was being made in order to make IT support services cost efficient and secure from data breaches.