Chancellor Gordon Brown stood up in the House of Commons yesterday
and announced a significant increase in public spending.
Some of the money will go on a series of ambitious public sector IT
projects to deliver the prime minister's much-publicised aim of
getting all local government services online by 2005.
But if the spending is to lead to real service improvements the
Government must listen to public sector IT leaders.
Jim Haslem, president of the Society of Information Management
(SOCITM), the local authority IT directors' organisation called for
extra cash to sustain many of the trailblazing e-government
projects launched under the government's Pathfinder
initiative.
"There needs to be some ongoing funding to drive through some of
the initial developments that have been sponsored to date. Many of
these projects have not developed sufficient critical mass to be
free-standing and sustainable," he said.
Haslem also suggested that money should be devoted to integrating
IT across central government itself.
Bernard Diamant, director of corporate services at the London
Borough of Brent, said basic funding for e-government was the
issue.
"The funding so far announced is falling far short of requirements
to meet the targets that the Government is setting."
The Government has committed itself to a major boost in health
service IT funding, but NHS IT professionals fear they may not see
the money.
A handful of national projects and day-to-day running costs of
hard-pressed NHS trusts could swallow up extra cash
One NHS IT manager in a trust said, "There appears to be the
commitment to deliver billions of pounds to support NHS IT, but we
haven't seen any of that money yet."
An IT systems design expert in a specialist NHS Trust urged the
Government to get a clearer idea of the state of NHS IT.
"I would also like to see some benchmarking of where NHS IT is
now," he explained.