Local government IT leaders fear that key e-government
projects could be abandoned after the government announced the end
of central support for the £100m National Projects
scheme.
Last week the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, which runs the
National Projects programme, said ownership of the projects - which
include CRM, smartcards and e-procurement - would be handed to
their lead authorities at the end of the year.
"It will then be for each lead authority to decide if it wishes to
share this opportunity with any other members of the National
Project board or with existing or new commercial partners," the
ODPM said. The National Projects were designed to provide the
building blocks to help councils deliver local e-government
services.
To avoid duplication of effort between councils, one local
authority was appointed to lead development for each project.
If a lead authority does not want ongoing responsibility for a
project, it could be offered to other public sector organisations
or the private sector, but if no one takes it on, the project will
be discontinued, the department said.
Kate Mountain, chief executive of public sector IT directors group
Socitm, said some lead councils would not want to develop projects
and valuable work could be lost if no one steps in to support
them.
"It is more simple for the ODPM to focus on new initiatives and not
have any residual responsibility for this one," she said.
It will now be up to Socitm, the Local Government Association and
its Innovation and Development Authority to put together a plan to
support the National Project scheme, Mountain added.
A spokesman for the ODPM said, "A central body was not viable in
the longer term - in effect we would have created a small
consultancy/software house, which would not be well placed in a
competitive marketplace. Neither did we want to outsource products
to the private sector when so much public sector resource has been
invested in them. Offering products to the lead authorities was the
preferred option."
The handover of National Projects will not take place until
December, and for the next year the ODPM will support projects with
£3.5m funding via the National Project roll-out programme .
"Having invested almost £100m in the National Projects programme,
we can hardly be accused of not giving them tangible backing," the
ODPM spokesman said.
What is the National Projects scheme?
The National Projects provide the building blocks to help local
authorities in England deliver local e-government.
The principle "build once, use often" underpins the development
of National Projects products, which are designed to be taken up by
any local authority interested in achieving service improvements
and efficiency savings.
These saving will be required by all authorities as the Gershon
Review comes into effect.
A report by Capgemini on six of the National Projects estimated
that the average annual benefits for English local authorities were
£320m in cost savings and £1.3bn in "service improvement".