Local authority chief executives are hampering Tony Blair's
e-government plans, and almost half of councils have no IT security
policy and more than a quarter do not have an agreed data
protection policy.
These are some of the stark findings in the latest
IT Trends in
Local Government survey from the Society of IT Management
(Socitm), the local authority IT managers' organisation.
The annual survey - one of the most authoritative overviews of the
state of UK IT - reveals sharp differences between local
authorities, and points to problems in meeting Tony Blair's target
of having all services online by 2005. The survey also questions
the value of some of the centrally imposed targets.
Brian Westcott, editor of the report, told CW360.com: "Local
authorities are progressing towards e-government, but all is not
sweetness and light. The major problem to come out of the survey is
the lack of knowledge and commitment to modernising e-government by
senior decision-makers in local authorities."
Heads of information and communications technology (ICT) believe
that fewer than half of council chief executives have a good
understanding of e-government (42%), and the figure is just 14% for
councillors.
Support for the 2005 targets has fallen during the past year. "They
are increasingly seen as a blunt instrument, forcing councils to
introduce e-services regardless of public benefit," said the Socitm
report.
"Targets were seen as good value initially, but are now seen as
unfocused," said Westcott. "I think targets should be linked to
public take-up. It would be far better to select targets for
services that the public wants."
The key obstacles to delivering e-government, according to council
IT directors, are a lack of finance and "just too many initiatives
to cope with". This may cause raised eyebrows in Whitehall, with
total ICT spending by all councils topping £1.8bn in 2001.
The overall figure disguises "considerable variations between
individual authorities", according to Socitm, with IT departments
in some councils facing budget cuts of 30%, even as the demands
made of them increase.
A significant minority (17%) of councils have had trouble
recruiting ICT managers during the past year, while the number of
ICT staff in local authorities in England, Wales and Scotland rose
by 10% last year, to 20,100, with a further 2,000 working four
councils within outsourced companies.
However, 90% of ICT heads believe their departments lack the skills
to meet the e-government agenda. Socitm estimates that local
authorities need a further 2,000 staff nationally, particularly web
development, business analysis, project management and security
specialists.
The outsourcing of ICT services have grown significantly in the
past year, as has the use of consultants, although there has been a
switch away from technical assignments towards more strategy
reviews, business analysis and outsourcing studies.
The technology profile of local authorities continues to change. IT
directors consider the most important technologies needed to
modernise are the Internet, contact centres and document management
technology.
Almost every local authority now has a Web site; more than 30% have
a contact centre; 60% of authorities use document management
technology, mostly to capture paper documents in electronic form;
and 14% of authorities now have smartcard applications.
The use of video for conferencing, or for providing communications
between public and the council, is still growing. The technology is
used by nearly 30% of authorities,
The predicted demise of the mainframe in local authorities has not
occurred, "with 22% predicting the same level of use over the next
two years", said Socitm.
Windows NT was the most popular operating system (94%), followed by
Windows 98 and earlier versions of the Microsoft operating system
(88%). Windows 2000 (63%) was pushed into fourth place by Sun
Solaris (75%).
Use of Sun's Solaris is expected to increase and many expect Linux
to grow in popularity - at present it is used in only 18% of
authorities. Novell systems are used by more than half of local
authorities, but half of Novell users expect it to continue its
decline next year.
The Socitm survey was based on detailed responses from IT directors
at more than 200 of the UK's 441 councils.
Further information
Socitm:
www.socitm.gov.uk