Hazel WardLocal authorities will be hard pressed to meet IT goals laid
down by the Government in its Information Age targets.
The Society of Information Technology Management (Socitm), which
represents local authority IT directors, has issued a formal
response to the government consultation paper Information Age
Government - Targets for Local Government.
It warned that councils faced, "major resourcing problems - both
in terms of internal management expertise and capital and revenue
funding."
Ministers have put up an extra £350m over three years to help
local authorities fund e-government. However, Socitm said councils
required long-term funding to meet the government's targets. One
medium-sized authority put the figure at between £15 and £20m.
Tim Dawes, consultant to Socitm, said £350m of seed money would
not be enough to cover the costs of meeting Information Age
deadlines. "Most local authorities are going to have to develop
e-government in parallel with traditional services, and that is
inevitably going to mean extra cost."
Management expertise, he added, would also be at a premium with
individual authorities having to foot the costs of bringing in
external help.
Socitm said the responsibility for setting detailed timetables
for implementing the changes should be in the hands of individual
local authorities, rather being centrally directed.
"When you're measuring performance, you can't expect all
authorities to perform at the same rate - it's going to be
different from authority to authority," said Dawes. "In a poor area
the roll-out of public access to IT might contribute to economic
regeneration, but in a more wealthy area, it wouldn't have the same
effect."