The Government is pinning the success of its landmark £93bn cash
injection into public services firmly on the successful adoption of
IT and e-commerce platforms across central and local
government.
The prime minister's ambition to deliver local and central
government services online by 2005 underpins much of the thinking
behind the largest sustained injection of public funds in 30 years.
To this end, chancellor of the exchequer Gordon Brown announced
that huge sums of public money will be made available to develop
new IT systems for government departments.
The immediate beneficiaries include local government, which will
receive £511m over three years to develop online services. The Home
Office will be given £1bn to integrate a case management system
across the criminal justice system. And the Inland Revenue will be
given "additional resources" to roll out online services, including
filing payroll data electronically.
But this is only part of the picture. The success of all the
Government's policies will depend heavily on its ability to use IT
to share information between departments and to harness the
Internet to provide services electronically. In the words of
government IT supplier CSC, "IT will prove to be the opportunity or
Achilles heel of this entire government strategy."
The Government's investment in IT has been welcomed by IT leaders.
However, many of the experts contacted by Computer Weekly point out
that if the Government is to be successful it will need to learn
the lessons of previous IT failures. It is no exaggeration to say
that the Government is pinning its political success over the next
three years on technology.
The Inland Revenue has had more than its fair share of problems,
including recent embarrassing security glitches in the Self
Assessment Online programme. Chas Roy Chowdury, head of taxation at
the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, said the
Revenue should carry out a systematic examination of these failures
before going further.
"You have to question whether they are making the best use of
resources at present," he said. "There needs to be systemic reform
of the way the Revenue spends money on IT systems."
The Government's injection of cash into local authorities received
a similarly mixed reaction.
"This is good news," said Jim Haslem, president of the Society of
Information Management. "The Government is expanding the period for
funding local e-government, which is really positive, and it is
increasing the level of funding for next year slightly."
Yet, like Chowdury, Haslem is concerned that throwing money at IT
without taking a wider look at the way local government works will
be self-defeating. What is needed is "a more thorough
transformation of local government", he said.
Haslem doubts whether the extra cash alone will be enough to drive
through e-services. "There is a need to be joined up at local
level, but that has to be mirrored at central government level," he
said.
Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the National
Association of Probation Officers, said the Government's £1bn
investment in a case management system to link the Crown
Prosecution Service, crown courts, magistrates courts and the
Probation Service is a positive step.
But Fletcher also urged the Government to learn from the mistakes
made in the past. "It is highly desirable that we get a fully
integrated IT system linking all the various departments," he said.
"However, the separate systems have been beset with problems mainly
because users were not consulted in the early stages and the
projects were not managed by IT specialists."
There are a number of steps the Government should take to ensure
these problems are not repeated, Fletcher said. "The project has to
be managed by experts; the police have to be consulted; the
software needs to be ergonomically tested; and disability access
issues need to be taken into account," he explained.
As part of the planned improvements to the criminal justice system,
the Government has proposed that victims of crime should be able to
track the progress of their cases online by 2005 - a "bizarre"
idea, according to Fletcher.
"There are one million crimes a year that lead to arrest, committed
by around 350,000 people," he said. "To put all this data online
would need hundreds of extra civilian staff. And the majority of
crime victims are not even online anyway."
It would be much cheaper to provide a point of contact at each
police station, suggested Fletcher. "This is all part of the
Government's obsession with being an 'e-leader'," he said. "The
money would be better spent elsewhere."
The chancellor's spending review at a glance
New cash for government IT- Local government will get £511m over three years to support the
development of online services. This includes £10m a year for
e-voting
- The Home Office will get nearly £1bn over three years to
develop a case management IT system across the criminal justice
system. It is intended to streamline the case management
process
- The Inland Revenue will receive "additional resources" to roll
out online services. The Government will encourage employers to
file payroll data electronically
- Customs and Excise will receive £200m over three years to
implement electronic service delivery, including online VAT
returns.
Government IT targets- Investments in IT will help the Foreign Office to deliver 2.5%
annual efficiency savings
- The Department of Work and Pensions will begin moves to pay
benefits electronically from 2003. It will invest in 10,000
job-points to give citizens electronic access to job vacancies
- The Government is developing a legal framework to allow online
property conveyancing. The system will allow the electronic
transfer of funds and will show house buyers how each part of the
chain is progressing
- The Office of National Statistics will use IT to re-engineer
its statistical systems.
Skills and employment- The modern apprenticeship scheme is to be extended to 300,000
more people
- The work permit system for overseas workers with key technology
skills is to be expanded to 175,000 by next year.