In the Cabinet Office at Admiralty Arch in London, on 2
November, John Hutton, then a Cabinet Office minister, parried
questions from journalists about the publication of the
government's new IT strategy.
One question was whether there would be improved oversight by
parliament of any high-risk IT projects that arise from
implementation of the strategy. The questioner pointed out to
Hutton and his colleague e-government minister Jim Murphy that
public spending watchdog the National Audit Office and the Public
Accounts Committee investigate fewer than 1% of high- and
medium-risk IT-related programmes in the public sector.
Hutton replied, "The more public scrutiny the better." But he
said there were no specific plans for greater openness: that was a
matter for parliament.
So it is against the background of continued secrecy and
infrequent reporting to parliament on the progress of IT projects
that Hutton, Murphy and the government's chief information officer,
Ian Watmore, announced a series of measures to, among other things,
bring together government IT-related activities under the shared
services initiative.
One meeting has already been held with suppliers about possible
future contracts and a further series is planned. Large sums are
expected to be spent on shared services, a new common
infrastructure and other "common good" activities - but paid for
without increasing the total spend of £14bn on major systems.
So that enough money is set aside for new investment, one of the
strategy's main supporting documents recommends that the Treasury
should "consider mechanisms, including a system of mandatory levies
on existing departmental budgets, to fund common good or
infrastructure investments proposed by the CIO Council or the
Service Transformation Board".
The CIO Council comprises 28 chief information officers from
across central and local government, including the police and NHS,
under the chairmanship of Watmore. The Service Transformation
Board, which will be set up as part of the implementation of the
new IT strategy, will comprise officials who run major public
services and have responsibility for business operations.
Ministers and officials at the 2 November announcement may find
the question of whether the strategy should be backed by mechanisms
to ensure there is public disclosure of troubled projects a side
issue, but to MPs it is an important factor in avoiding more
IT-related disasters.
Last year the Work and Pensions Select Committee, after one of
the longest investigations by parliament of IT failures in the
public sector, concluded that openness over how a project is
progressing was often an important factor in avoiding disaster.
"Although there is a vast amount of information on best
practice, there is only patchy compliance. Openness and
accountability are vital tools in ensuring compliance with best
practice," said the committee's 99-page report.
Nothing has happened on the report's recommendations for more
openness, despite being published 18 months ago.
The government's IT strategy promises to "transform the delivery
of public services using technology, and through greater focus upon
the customer's perspective". It adds that, "Government must move to
shared services culture - in the front office, in the back office,
in information and infrastructure - and so release efficiency
potential by eliminating duplication and adopting best
practice."
The government's strategy states that the £14bn spent every year
on major IT systems is "not co-ordinated across the public sector,
nor is there any encouragement to departments or individuals to
co-ordinate". Despite some 50,000 staff working in IT professional
roles there are "well-publicised failures in technologically-driven
services".
It continues "The vision set out in the strategy is about using
technology better to deliver core public services to have an impact
on real people's daily lives."
Few will argue with Watmore's contention that radical reform is
needed. The strategy documents refer to a "massive duplication" of
effort and wasted money. They say that much of the public service
depends on "pen-and-paper Dickensian processes", and antiquated
legacy systems abound.
But some will believe that giving a fresh set of large contracts
to multinational companies for shared services and common
infrastructure systems could, without improved parliamentary
oversight, serve the interests of supplier balance sheets better
than UK taxpayers.
Costly new systems at the Child Support Agency, and those to
support tax credits, were due to save more than they cost. But the
National Audit Office has reported on the hundreds of extra staff
who had to be hired to cope with problems arising from the
introduction of the technology.
With its supporting documents, the government's IT strategy
comprises more than 100 pages of worthy words, aims, visions and
hopes.
Sceptics will see the strategy's documents as comprising many
well-intentioned suggestions and commonplace sayings that commit
nobody in government to delivering anything in particular.
An opening passage in the IT strategy says, "This is a time to
push forward, faster and on all fronts, open up the system, break
down its monoliths, put the parent and pupil and patient and
law-abiding citizen at the centre of it. We have made great
progress. Let us learn the lessons of it so as not to rest on
present achievements."
Optimists, though, will take heart at the nobleness of the
objectives.
The document says that strategic use and understanding of
technology will allow the government to provide world-class public
services, improve social justice, deliver choice and
personalisation in public services, and a modern welfare state.
The strategy's implementation will also increase public sector
productivity by "reducing transactional costs and overheads, and
freeing more resources for the front line".
The core of the document also uses similar wording: it sets out
hopes rather than a specific action plan, though there are 31
"overarching" recommendations, most of which contain the words
"government must", or that a public sector organisation "should".
Many of the actions urged in the recommendations are general and
uncontentious. In many cases it will be difficult to measure
whether the recommendations have been successfully carried out.
One recommendation is that the government "must develop multiple
channels including websites, telephone services and intermediated
services and policies for their use for citizen and business access
to services, and actively manage the shift in channels towards the
most efficient and effective".
How the strategy's objectives, vague or specific, will be
achieved will be decided on next year. An action plan is due to be
agreed by the CIO Council in January 2006.
There are similarities between the new strategy and the one
announced in 2000 by Ian McCartney, then Cabinet Office
minister.
In 2000, McCartney announced a "strategic direction for the way
the public sector will transform itself by implementing business
models which exploit the possibilities of new technology". Five
years later, in 2005, the new strategy promises "transformational
government enabled by new technology".
The latest strategy says, "In order to learn from the front
line, government must systematically engage with public servants on
the front line doing the job every day to help design and refine
transformed services enabled by technology."
McCartney said in 2000, "We have also set up a series of
meetings between ministers and front-line staff to find out about
service problems on the ground."
Many of the key messages in 2000 and 2005 remain largely
unchanged. Both strategies have promised a common infrastructure, a
new approach to developing skills, joined-up government, public
services based on the citizen and businesses, not departments, and
surveys of the public on what they think of public services.
On the other hand, there have been some important achievements
since 2000.
The Office of Government Commerce now conducts Gateway reviews
on medium- and high-risk IT projects - though it refuses to publish
the results.
About 70% of business incorporations and about 40% of annual
returns to Companies House are now electronic; more than one
million people file tax returns online. Also, more than a third of
driving tests are booked online, new vehicles are registered
online, and 60,000 small claims have been issued through Money
Claims Online.
Watmore's appointment is also a step forward. Computer Weekly
had campaigned in early 2004 for the UK to enact the best parts of
the US Clinger-Cohen Act. The legislation was enacted in the US in
1996 after a series of public sector IT disasters. It required the
appointment of a government CIO Council - and the UK
administration did indeed appoint a government CIO (Watmore) and he
set up a CIO Council.
In another step forward, the latest strategy includes a
recommendation for annual spending against the plans to be
disclosed in a report that is published and audited by the National
Audit Office. But Whitehall officials say this annual report is
likely to be generalised: no specific departmental failures are
expected to be mentioned.
With no plans for greater public disclosure on the progress of
IT projects, one has to question whether anything much will
change.
In the US, the Clinton administration enacted the Clinger-Cohen
Act in part to strengthen public reporting of projects in trouble.
Senators believed the mandatory reporting of difficulties to
Congress would be a deterrent to failure. But the UK govern- ment
has failed to enact these parts of the Clinger-Cohen Act.
If projects in the UK continue unnecessarily despite mounting
problems, or they waste large sums of public money, the worst that
can happen is that the latest head of department, an entourage of
civil servants in tow, appears before the House of Commons Public
Accounts Committee a year or more after the event and, in some
cases, promises that the lessons have been learned. Few people will
regard this as a fearsome deterrent to getting it wrong.
A senior Whitehall official said that government projects need
external scrutiny, including media and parliamentary oversight, to
compensate for the lack of accountability built into the
system.
"If you have a bad experience of a commercial service, you can
take your business elsewhere," said the official. "That is the
incentive for the private sector to get it right. It is not so easy
to take your business away from the taxman or Customs."
Officials say the Office of Government Commerce will monitor
projects in the new IT strategy to ensure they are kept on the
right track. But the OGC is not accountable to parliament for any
poor advice on projects because its reports to departments are not
published.
Transparency and accountability aside, the new IT strategy
promises to make a difference, and it makes a compelling case for
change. But so far some of the main support for the strategy has
come from suppliers. Oracle, for example, sees the strategy as a
plan to invest more money into shared services.
"Oracle welcomes the government's move to plough more investment
into sharing services - both front and back office," said the
company in a statement on the IT strategy.
"Local government, central government and the NHS are already
starting to reap the benefits of shared services. On a regional
level, partnerships, such as Staffordshire Connects, have seen 10
local authorities join forces to share services, and ultimately
provide a consistent, high-quality service - irrespective of
location - to all of its citizens. The partnership has also saved
£1.5m in the process."
Sean Shine, the managing director of Accenture's UK and Ireland
government practice, said, "We look forward to working with the
government where we can to help deliver this strategy and make it a
reality."
The strategy aims to benefit more than suppliers, and there is
likely to be evidence of success stories in the annual report of
the CIO Council. But will it tell the whole story? As with many
government IT projects, the whole truth may never be known.
Key recommendations in the government IT
strategy
- Government must engage with citizens and business to
understand and then specify the transformational changes that
service providers need to meet.
- In order to learn from the front line, government must engage
with public servants who use systems every day, to help design and
refine transformed services enabled by technology.
- To lead the transformation and design of services, and to own
the overall service offering to those customers, government must
appoint "customer directors" for customers in each of the
high-level customer groups (citizen and business), reporting to the
minister responsible for that customer group, co-ordinated by the
centre.
- HM Treasury and the Cabinet Office should lead work to
establish overarching standard frameworks for shared services and
information. Each government organisation should set out "sharing
policies" for services and assets that it needs or can provide to
others.
- There should be a clear strategy for sharing in each major
function: customer service centres, human resources, finance, IT
infrastructure and services, information assurance, identity
management, and standards and architecture, overseen by the
Corporate Services Transformation Board, supported by the Service
Transformation Team in the Cabinet Office.
- The CIO Council should create a unified approach to common
infrastructure through a user-led Common Infrastructure Board; a
common infrastructure director, and a specified set of delivery
capabilities, financed entirely through user investment.
- To develop a strategic direction across the public sector for
data sharing, a ministerial group, sponsored by Cabinet Office and
the Department for Constitutional Affairs should be
established.
- To explain data protection and sharing and the interpretation
of relevant legislation, the Department for Constitutional Affairs
should develop a communications strategy for both practitioners and
the public.
- Government should devise an holistic approach towards identity
management converging towards biometric ID cards and passports,
electronic gateways and a rationalisation of citizen and business
record numbers, including an interim step towards ID cards using
the national insurance number more widely.
- The CIO Council should encourage the use of standardised
contracts, services and service boundaries.
- The government CIO should lead work to establish and support
the IT profession in government, building capacity, culture and
identity, within the context of the Professional Skills for
Government programme.
- Annual expenditure and achievement against plans should be
reported on by the Cabinet Office and the Treasury. This annual
report should be audited by the National Audit Office and published
to parliament.
- The CIO Council, working with the Office of Government
Commerce, should monitor supplier intelligence, making periodic
assessments of performance, taking action to ensure capacity and
competition in the market, including the use of models to allow
third-party suppliers to provide services and products.