Transforming central and local government IT, and
replacing the "pen-and-paper Dickensian business processes" on
which the bulk of public services are based, is promised by a
Cabinet Office strategy published last week.
The prime minister Tony Blair said the strategy, entitled
"Transformational government enabled by technology", has his full
support. "I am going to do all I can to help make it happen," he
said.
The strategy encompasses the £14bn spent each year on IT systems
in the public sector, and includes registering as a profession the
50,000 public sector employees whose jobs are related to IT.
Blair commissioned the strategy from government chief
information officer Ian Watmore in March. The document was drawn up
by a council of CIOs from central and local government, the NHS,
police and other parts of the public service, and public sector
business leaders.
Based on the strategy, an action plan will be presented to the
CIO Council in January 2006 and a full assessment of the benefits,
costs and risks of implementing it will be made next year.
An initial regulatory impact assessment, which accompanied the
strategy, said spending on IT is not co-ordinated across the public
sector "nor is there any encouragement to departments or
individuals to co-ordinate".
It added, "This is evident in the state of
technologically-enabled services across Whitehall and beyond; in
the take-up statistics for e-government, and in public satisfaction
measures."
It said there had been a "general failure across the public
sector to design customer-friendly services", although "isolated"
examples of excellent services exist.
There is a "massive duplication of effort and expense" because
public sector bodies act alone. "Well-publicised failures in
technologically-enabled services stem in part from this design
failure," it said.
The Cabinet Office also plans to publish an annual report that
will list how much each part of government spends on IT. To keep
performance monitoring to a minimum, the strategy will not require
the monitoring of specific targets. But the National Audit Office
will audit the report.
Key aims of the Cabinet Office IT strategy
- Large investments in shared services to reduce duplication of,
for example, human resources and finance departments. Officials say
there are 1,300 parts of government doing their own thing.
Initially shared services will be set up in-house and over time may
be outsourced to the private sector. To speed up the delivery of a
common IT infrastructure, a "user-led" Common Infrastructure Board
will be set up, financed by departments.
- Polling citizens and businesses regularly on what they think of
government services. If published, these customer satisfaction
surveys may put pressure on departments to improve services.
- Appointing customer group directors. These will represent
businesses and groups of individuals, such as pensioners, to
determine how joined-up government could serve them better.
- Creating a Service Transformation Board comprising business
leaders from the public and voluntary sector, such as the head of
the pension service, the chief operating officer of the NHS and a
representative from the Citizens Advice Bureau. It will oversee
work of the customer group directors and suggest practical ways of
transforming public services.
- Streamlining the way services are delivered, for example, by
rationalising the 130 call centres in central government and the
2,500 government websites. It may also seek to introduce a single
phone number for all government services.