The prime minister Tony Blair is to receive briefings on
the top 20 IT-related projects in government so that he and his
team have a detailed understanding of how well they are
progressing.
The move comes after high-profile problems with IT-related projects
at the Child Support Agency, Criminal Records Bureau, Passport
Service, Department for Work and Pensions and HM Revenue and
Customs.
The briefings will offer the prime minister a regular insight into
the IT implementation of national identity cards, should the
programme be resumed by the new administration, and the national
programme for IT in the NHS, which has run into delays and
criticism from some clinicians.
Blair's briefings will be given by John Oughton, chief executive of
the Office of Government Commerce, supported by government chief
information officer Ian Watmore and the CIO Council he
created.
Watmore said last week that Oughton was talking to the prime
minister about ways of focusing on about 20 top schemes so that
Blair and his team "have got a real insight into those
projects".
Watmore said, "There are typically hundreds of projects going on in
government at any one time, and probably over 100 are quite
sizeable, so we are really focusing in on the very biggest
projects."
The briefings are likely to increase accountability on major
projects by making the prime minister at least partly responsible
for, involved in, or aware of any decisions on reviewing, aborting,
or reducing the risks and scope of any of the government's biggest
projects.
Among the top 20 will be the Defence Information Infrastructure
contract, worth at least £2.3bn, which was run by a consortium led
by US services supplier EDS. The scheme will replace numerous
individual information systems throughout the MoD with a single,
more efficient information infrastructure.
The Department for Constitutional Affairs is also preparing to
award large contracts. Watmore cited criminal justice IT as an
example of successful work in progress. The scheme involves
providing a hub which allows authorised users of systems in courts,
police, the Probation Service and the Crown Prosecution Service to
exchange case files.
Watmore also gave details of what happened at the April meeting of
the CIO Council, which comprises IT executives in government and
the wider public sector. He said the council discussed the idea of
the government setting up an IT academy which would provide
recruits with a unified standard of training. It would also help
boost the image and importance of the profession within the public
sector.
The academy would be a virtual or physical centre. "We are
exploring all the options on that. It is important we have some
form of unified training and community programme so we allow new
competencies and know-how to be promulgated," he said.
The CIO Council also discussed separating functions of human
resources and finance departments across more than 1,000
organisations within government to help deliver efficiency savings.
The transactional systems could be brought together but the
organisations would retain their leading executives in finance and
human resources, in part to provide accountability to
Parliament.
In addition, the council discussed ways of avoiding customising
packaged software to fit a department's processes. Instead council
members want to adapt their practices to use the business processes
that come embedded in off-the-shelf software such as that supplied
by SAP and Oracle.
Among those at April's meeting were Andrew Turnbull, head of the
Home Civil Service, John Birt of the Prime Minister's Office, Steve
Lamey, CIO at HM Revenue and Customs, Richard Granger, director
general of NHS IT, and John Suffolk, head of criminal justice
IT.
