There is a hollow ring about the Government's vigorous defence,
this week, of the role of the e-envoy. The defence has come in
response to recent warnings from the Trade & Industry Select
Committee that Andrew Pinder's office is in danger of becoming so
embroiled in bureaucracy that it is reduced to an arm of the civil
service.
These protestations would be more plausible were it not for the
fact that the ongoing roll-call of public sector project
compromises shows no sign of getting any smaller.
This week, Computer Weekly has learnt of continuing problems
surrounding attempts by the National Land Information Service
(NLIS) to establish a comprehensive national database of land and
property.
The hope is that, by providing a single, definitive record of
addresses across the UK, accessible online, this latter-day
Domesday-book will help to underpin the effective delivery of
online government services to UK citizens, and will take us another
step closer to the goal of joined-up government.
But, with only 42 of the UK's 409 local authorities having finished
their portion of this complex jigsaw of information and connected
it to the national database, the deadline of July 2001 is clearly
going to pass with the project a long way from delivery.
When the Office of E-envoy was established, it was meant to be an
independent facilitator of UK e-business best practice - someone to
knock a few heads together. But as long as it remains bogged down
in the mire of bureaucracy that surrounds Whitehall, projects will
continue to founder and money will continue to go to waste. The
problems at the NLIS suggest that such guidance is still lacking.