With Ian Watmore elevated to the Prime Minister's
Delivery Unit, the hunt is on for a new CIO for government. But how
will his successor assemble the business processes to ensure the
government gets best value on the shared services environment at
the centre of Watmore's vision?
In his last major act as CIO, Watmore called time on
e-government in favour of "t", for transformation, government, with
a three-pronged strategy centred on developing IT around the
citizen, fostering a culture of shared services across departments,
and enriching the professionalism of IT workers within the
sector.
As we make the shift from "e" to "t", there are some key lessons
that Watmore's successor must learn. First, targets for targets'
sake do not work. The last set of targets, simply aimed at ensuring
web presence, distorted the market because the easiest way to meet
them was to merely replicate existing processes online, taking no
account of process re-engineering opportunities.
This led to curious "online" services that required members of
the public to print out and post forms via Royal Mail!
Unsurprisingly, these failed to boost Britain's standing
internationally.
Second, targets in particular distort research and development,
favouring the "tick box" attitude over steady and sustainable
change.
Targets for targets' sake
Dealing with my point on targets for targets' sake, the
fundamental brake on e-government is not the technology, but the
business processes that fail to disseminate best practice between
departments, resulting in innovation silos in one department or
office. Pushing the services for all 1,300 public sector
organisations online by the end of 2005 precluded the chance for
successful online service models to evolve and be replicated by
other departments. It was simply a stampede for the finish line
with little thought for the future.
Regarding research and development, a smarter model of
procurement needs to be developed. From a supplier perspective, the
public sector supplies a quarter of the UK's total IT spend and
represents a £14bn market in the UK. When asked to pitch,
suppliers all too often abandon a proper constructive challenge in
favour of complying with the brief. Sadly, the procurement function
is best executed when bringing all supplier solutions to a common
denominator to make selection easier. This means questions of
efficiency and integration with other departments are seldom asked
until after the contract has been secured.
Early Treasury involvement in the transformation agenda would go
a long way in addressing this. Instead of a restrictive brief for
delivering, for example, integrated messaging functioning on a set
platform for the Department of Work and Pensions, the Treasury
could take one example of best practice from across government and
set a price per unit of output measurement based upon this.
Suppliers would be free to innovate within this framework, but
would be steered toward established systems as a method of keeping
the cost down to a defined annual output unit price.
Facilitating shared services
Of course, I am not arguing that activity should be prioritised
by short-term predicted cost savings rather than achievability.
Rather, the Office of Government Commerce should modify its gateway
processes to better facilitate shared services. If the IT
infrastructure, rather than human resources and back office
applications, were within the first tier of shared services, then a
natural convergence of systems and processes would begin to
evolve.
Like the Toyota Prius where the ultimate goal is to move away
from fuel-inefficient cars toward clean, green electric cars, there
needs to be a hybrid technology or platform that will support
current needs and be compatible with legacy technology, while
providing a clear migration path to next generation technology.
Shared services at the communications and infrastructure layer
provide just such a path for public-sector IT.
In his short reign as government CIO, Watmore has made
significant strides toward the government services we would all
wish to see implemented. It is important, however, that his
successor does not stick rigidly to the prescribed road map, but
instead continues to consult with the private sector and adapt.
Martin Goodman is director of government at Cable &
Wireless