Former LogicachairmanMartin
Readis to head the government's
latesteffort to streamline its information
technology.
The Operational Efficiency Programme aims to
improve efficiency in back-office operations.
Announcing this follow-up to the
Gershon initiative, chief secretary to the Treasury
Yvette Cooper said the Operational Efficiency Programme (OEP)
would
save taxpayers billions.
"The Gershon Review saved the government £23bn and we are on
course for £30bn more savings over the next three years. But we
need to go further.
The taxpayer has a right to expect value for money, and that
means the public sector has a duty to
seek ever greater efficiencies too," he said.
The government said the Ministry of Defence was saving £45
million a year by using
a single personnel management system for all three armed
services. The government aims to match private sector savings
of 10-50% in such areas as its estimated £7 billon spend on public
sector finance and human resources, and to
get better value out of large IT projects.
However, the
Public Accounts Committee has expressed scepticism over
government claims on savings. In a
different report on "improving corporate functions using shared
services", it noted that government departments often failed to
establish a reliable cost base for their claims, and sometimes
claimed deferred or cancelled expenditure as savings.
IT operations is one strand of the OEP. Others are procurement,
asset management and sales, property, and local incentives and
empowerment.
Martin Read's biography
Martin Read is a non-executive director of British Airways and a
senior adviser to private equity investor Candover Partners. He was
chief executive of IT services company Logica from 1993 to 2007 and
was a non-executive director of pharmacy firm Boots and supermarket
Asda.
He said, "I am pleased to be leading the work on back-office and
IT services, which form a vital part of any modern organisation.
The private sector has made significant strides forward in this
area in recent years and my work will examine the scope for the
public sector to benefit from this experience to deliver further
efficiencies."