Hard-hitting IT columnist Simon Moores gives his personal take on
the hot issue of the day.Much of the real government business
doesn't take place in Parliament at all. In fact, it all happens in
the Red Lion pub, just round the corner from the MPs' offices in
Portcullis House. If it's opinions you want, then you'll find a
noisy, smoke-filled bar full of them any evening after six.
I can't say that it's been a great month for the Government - the
electronic government that is.
First, the NHS e-mail and Private Finance Initiative (PFI) story I
have been telling you about has been picked up by many different
kinds of publications and agencies, encouraging well-informed
people to ask some very awkward questions about public sector IT
projects.
In response to my column on Monday, "Clear and present danger", the
British Computer Society (BCS) sent me a document entitled
Radical Steps in Health Informatics, which states: "Unless
concerted action is taken, the widely welcomed new strategies for
healthcare IT are at risk."
We have also seen the National Audit Office (NAO) document how "a
catalogue of management failures exposed the Government's
Individual Learning Accounts (ILA) scheme to massive defrauding of
taxpayers money on a multimillion-pound scale."
This in turn prompted the DfES to issue a statement to the effect
that it had ended its joint venture with Capita to develop a
successor to the failed ILA scheme.
Then there's the question of whether the Government's 2005 targets
for joined-up e-government are achievable. According to one
high-profile Government individual, they are not.
One comment that I did take away from the pub was that the
Government means well but manages badly. There are, I'm told, too
many big "blue sky" projects taking place both here and in Europe
and we really need to ask whether introducing expensive technology
is really an exercise in concealing poor management and bad public
sector business processes.
I really don't know what the answer is. But I do believe that we
need to find a more effective way of involving groups of smaller,
highly specialised companies in the public sector procurement
process and cease relying almost exclusively on an unholy trinity
of giants for the delivery and, very often, failure of the
taxpayers' IT solutions.
Ask the blokes in the pub and they'll tell you the same.
What is your view?
How can the Government avoid
expensive IT catastrophies?
Tell us in an e-mail >>CW360.com reserves
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ZentelligenceSetting the world to rights with the collected thoughts and
opinions of the futurist writer, broadcaster and Computer Weekly
columnist Simon Moores.