Inspiring vision or pipedream? Tash Shifrin
finds that government plans to transform public services with the
aid of IT are in urgent need of more detail and clear lines of
responsibility
Imagine a public sector IT project so big that the £6.2bn NHS IT
programme is just one part of it. A scary idea? Or a brave step
towards a new world of more accessible, more efficient, more
coherent public services? Several months after Tony Blair launched
his Transformational Government strategy, IT professionals and
analysts are still getting to grips with what the scheme might mean
in practice.
Transformational Government aims to improve public service
delivery through technology. The idea is to create services that
are designed around their users, while increasing efficiency. The
strategy covers the entire public sector – from local government
and education, to the NHS and the criminal justice system.
Plans call for greater data sharing between government
departments and a huge increase in shared services for core
functions, such as finance and human resources – with tens, rather
than hundreds, of providers.
Following recent troubled IT initiatives at the Child Support
Agency, the Immigration and Nationality Directorate and HM Revenue
and Customs, the plan also aims for a “broadening and deepening” of
government professionalism in managing IT projects, and a new
“government IT profession” is being created.
But the strategy is short on specifics. Efficiency gains are to
be “substantial”, but it is not clear how large. The £21bn savings
required by the Gershon Report on public sector efficiency cover
only the period up to 2008, but the Transformational Government
strategy has a longer timeframe.
An indication of the scale comes from the Cabinet Office, which
says shared services ought to bring savings “in the order of 20%”
over “a reasonably long period of time”.
There are many more questions about how this aim, and the rest
of the strategy, will be put into practice.
An implementation plan published in March offers little detail
and reveals many gaps. So many elements are yet to be thought
through that there are 32 separate references to November 2006 –
the next big milestone, when work to fill in the gaps is due to be
completed. It all looks a bit sketchy.
“It is not a programme,” says a Cabinet Office spokesman.
Instead, transformational government should be seen as a
“meta-programme” – a series of programmes outlining “a vision of
where government could be going in the next five to 10 years”.
The implementation plan’s first phase covers public sector IT
projects already under way, such as the NHS’s National Programme
for IT (NPfIT) and a new criminal justice system. Phase two is due
to start next year, and the strategy stretches beyond 2011.
But the remainder of the strategy is less clear. Andrea Di Maio,
research vice-president at analyst firm Gartner, says, “There are
question marks all over the place.” He highlights a lack of clarity
over what the transformed services will look like. Despite glimpses
of an enterprise architecture model, most of the focus is on the
technical side.
“Selecting the tools, deciding who is in charge – those elements
seem to be missing. To make a transformation, there should be a
shared view, not just of the technology, but the processes,
people’s roles, and so on,” says Di Maio.
It is the relationship between changes to business practice in
public services and the technology that concerns Peter Ryder,
president of public sector IT mangers association Socitm. “IT is
the enabler. The people in the services need to drive the
transformation. When you have that ethos, then IT will come into
play to enable that change to happen. It is not an IT issue – it is
about the organisation,” he says.
Butler Group senior research analyst Mike Davis stresses the
need for a cultural change among those delivering public services.
There is little point in installing a new customer relationship
management system unless staff are customer-focused, trained and
engaged, he says. “The change management element is much more
important that the technology.”
The Cabinet Office says that although business change and
technical change are inextricably linked, the key point in the lead
on this is the business, strategic element. The strategy is not
starting from the technology.
Under the strategy, customer group directors will look at how
services can be improved for particular groups, such as the
elderly. A Service Transformation Board will oversee their work,
and the CIO Council will supervise the IT agenda. A Pan-Government
Shared Services Board has also been set up.
The implementation plan also promises an enterprise architecture
and a standard technical architecture for data sharing by
November.
Glyn Evans, a member of the CIO Council and director of business
solutions and IT at Birmingham City Council, says even on the CIO
Council there are differing views on whether business change or IT
will be the main driver. “There is a spread of opinion. I am
strongly in the first camp: this is about looking at how we deliver
services, then getting the IT to facilitate it. It is not about a
major IT project,” he says.
“Birmingham Council has a policy that we do not run IT projects
– we run change projects,” says Evans. “I think that is where we
want to go. But I am not sure everyone on the CIO Council is in the
same space at the moment. I do not want transformational government
‘delivered’ by technology – that is what we have tried in recent
years and it has not delivered that change.”
Another area yet to be agreed on is how the IT infrastructure to
deliver transformed services will be introduced. Will existing
systems be ripped out and replaced, or developed more
gradually?
Evans says, “An evolutionary approach – that is what I would
hope to see. But I am not sure everyone agrees. There are people
looking for a big architecture.”
Evans argues for “standards, not standardisation”, allowing data
to be shared by organisations using a range of legacy systems that
can be developed in an evolutionary way.
One factor that may be telling is the lack of extra finance. The
government aims to carry the changes through without increasing the
total spend of £14bn on major systems. Government departments will
fund their plans from their own investment pots, says the Cabinet
Office, although it adds, “There may be specific pieces of work
that money may need to be found for.”
Proposals for the future shape of shared corporate services,
such as finance and human resources – likely to be a major part of
any future procurement – will be drawn up by November in each of
the nine public sector segments of education, health, criminal
justice, local government, the Department for Work and Pensions,
defence, HM Revenue and Customs, multiple agencies and the rest of
central government.
Ryder is cautious about how far shared services should go. “We
should not share services for the sake of it. There must be a good
business case for each move.”
According to Ryder, the e-government initiative to make more
public services accessible on the web is an example of the
government prescribing changes that are of mixed benefit on the
ground. “They started by asking us what we were doing and ended up
judging us by a traffic-light system. You were forced to e-enable
all the services you could to get the ticks. But not every
e-enabled service was appropriate,” he says.
Di Maio also raises concerns about the shared services
proposals. “There is not a clear understanding by everyone of what
shared services actually means. If you talk to different people
across government, you will hear all sorts of answers,” he
says.
If the government cannot provide a clear answer, suppliers will
come up with their own, warns Di Maio. “In the implementation plan,
it looks as if they are asking the market. This is one of the most
dangerous mistakes you can make. It is not up to the market, but up
to the government. They need internal resources devoted to this –
they must own the management of it,” he says.
Nick Kalisperas, director for markets at IT suppliers body
Intellect, also fears a “lack of ownership” and wants to see
managerial responsibility tightened. “In the past, procurements
have run into trouble because they have had the specifications
changed halfway through,” he says.
Now the Cabinet Office says it is looking at the possibility of
putting together an “overarching governance mechanism” to cover the
potentially huge shared services contracts.
How many of the possibilities will be nailed down by November
remains to be seen. But Di Maio points out that the strategy, which
extends beyond the next five years, will have to be secured in the
long term too.
“There will be elections, and what happens then may shift the
emphasis,” he says. “Future-proofing is crucial.”
TIMETABLE FOR TRANSFORMATIONAL GOVERNMENT
Phase 1: November 2005 to July 2007
●
Delivering current programmes including the NHS national IT
programme, new systems for the criminal justice system and
Harnessing Technology in education.
● Key milestone for many developments outlined in the
implementation plan.
Phase 2: August 2007 to 2011 (following 2007
Comprehensive Spending Review)
● Transforming
support, with shared services framework.
● Realising financial and service benefits of investments.
● Embedding key changes and new cultures.
● Transforming delivery, with public services centred around
citizens and businesses.
Phase 3: beyond 2011
● Further radical
change in the delivery of public services.
● Citizens and businesses serving themselves – at home, at work or
on the move.
● Public servants empowered by technology in their roles.
● Boundaries between departments, between central and local
government, and between public, private and voluntary sectors
becoming less important and less visible to citizens and
business.