With taxpayers' money at stake, public sector project
failures and problems are likely to attract the kind of adverse
publicity that private ventures often find easier to
avoid.
Cost and accountability are major issues. A failure is very
public and is regarded as a failure of government services, whether
it relates to central government, such as the Child Support Agency
farrago, or is a local authority project.
It is a shame if such problems overshadow public sector IT
successes, which can benefit entire communities. An IT-based
project can support social change and allow citizens to cut through
the bureaucracy when dealing with government departments.
For example, the time-consuming procedure for buying a tax disc
in person at the Post Office can now be bypassed through an online
application which allows web-based checking for MOTs and insurance
with minimum inconvenience to the vehicle owner.
The system depends on the ability of every MOT garage and every
motor insurer to share information with the DVLA. No mean feat.
Political disagreements and public unease may have marred the
image of two major IT-based undertakings in the capital: the
congestion charge and the Oyster scheme card for paying for tube
and bus travel.
Whether or not you believe that their introduction has been
achieved with heavy-handed methods, there is no denying the
significant achievement in the development and effective daily
operation of an immensely complex IT infrastructure.
Among public concerns when it comes to the "joined-up"
government much trumpeted by prime minister Tony Blair is whether
central and local administrations can be trusted with individuals'
private data.
There is often an uproar in the press if social workers have
been unable, for example, to protect a vulnerable child, with
columnists expressing shock at the lack of communication between
various agencies.
However, when it comes to the notion of every citizen being
fingerprinted for a proposed national ID card scheme, with the
police permitted to trawl through related databases, it is not
paranoia to feel we may be moving into an Orwellian society.
Quis custodiet custodes? Who guards the guards? as the Roman
writer Juvenal asked nearly 2,000 years ago. For many of us the
question seems even more pertinent today as governments seek to pry
ever deeper into citizens' lives.
In his article on page 34, David Bicknell explores the benefits,
limitations, and political considerations around data sharing, and
looks at what is practical technologically and what appear to be
political pipe-dreams.
The nub of the issue has been stated concisely by the
Information Commissioner's Office.
"It is important to strike a balance between the need to share
information as part of delivering efficient public services and the
need to ensure privacy and the integrity of personal information,"
it said.
Easier said than done. But when that balance can be achieved,
the pay-offs for everyone - from public sector staff and officials,
through private sector services companies to the ultimate end-user,
the private citizen - can be spectacular.
What happened to our £25bn?
U-turn cuts risk of ID card scheme
Is e-voting a threat to democracy?
Tony Collins' IT projects blog
Comment on this article:
computer.weekly@rbi.co.uk