The credibility of the Office of Government Commerce
(OGC) has taken a beating, after a ruling this month that two
earlygateway reviews on the ID Cards should be made
public.
The OGC is the government's adviser on IT. Its chief executive
briefs the Prime Minister on the progress of the public sector's
most important IT and other projects. Helping departments and
agencies to deliver projects and programmes successfully is, in
part, one of the reasons the OGC exists. Respect is its chief
asset.
But in its determination to
stop gateway reviews being published the OGC has been made to
look foolish. Gateway reviews are assessments of medium and
high-risk IT and other schemes at various stages in their
lifecycle. Reviewers will comment on a project's feasibility,
readiness to go live and whether benefits have been achieved.
The OGC has spent £140,000 on legal costs - so far - in trying
to keep the review reports confidential. The Information
Commissioner has
ordered
that the reviews should be made public, as has the Information
Tribunal - twice.
Confidentiality claim
rejected
In its latest ruling on gateway reviews, the Information
Tribunal has rejected nearly every point made by the OGC. Its
ruling makes a mockery not only of the OGC's arguments, but of the
OGC, which is depicted as anachronistic and almost monomaniac in
its anxiety to keep gateway review reports confidential.
The OGC lost the case although it fielded several high-powered
government witnesses. Its opponent, the Information Commissioner,
won on the strength of its arguments, fielding no witnesses at
all.
The Tribunal spotted that passages in the OGC's witness
statements were worded almost identically. The Tribunal politely
rebuked the OGC, urging it to adopt the "simple principle" that
"witnesses should express themselves in their own words". The
Tribunal added: "It is certainly not as if the resources are
lacking to ensure that such a course is complied with."
The Tribunal went on to disparage the OGC's claim that the
gateway reviews in question would, if published, add nothing to the
debate on the merits of ID Cards: "In the Tribunal's view this
misses the point. The debate was and is not purely about the
merits. Public interest is served by knowing how a project has been
implemented and is being implemented."
Important
contribution
The Tribunal said that the reviews, if published, would
"undoubtedly make an important contribution to the debate".
The OGC's point that gateway reviews need not be released
because the National Audit Office scrutinises IT and other projects
on behalf of parliament and the public was also rejected by the
Tribunal.
"The Tribunal is not impressed by any form of similarity between
the Gateway Review and an NAO report." It said they are "entirely
different" - an NAO report being retrospective and "totally removed
from the content and purpose of a gateway review".
To the OGC's point that the early gateway reviews on ID Cards
were or might be hard to understand, the Tribunal said it had "no
difficulty understanding the vast bulk of the information they
contained".
And rejecting the OGC's claim that the release of reviews would
inhibit the candour of reviewers, the Tribunal said they would have
"a great incentive to be candid in the knowledge that their actions
might at some stage be subject to public scrutiny".
The OGC had further argued that the gateway reviews may be
misunderstood if they were published. The Tribunal said that a
"risk of misunderstanding is not a valid public interest to be
taken into account".
Anyone reading the Tribunal's ruling could easily form the view
that the OGC as an organisation is either set apart from reality,
or, for reasons nobody is sure of, obsessive to the point of
irrationality about keeping gateway reviews confidential.
A question of
credibility
But from the sound work it is doing in many areas, it would
appear the OGC employs committed and experienced people who show no
signs of being irrational.
But their credibility, and the credibility of the organisation,
continues to be undermined by the OGC's arguing of the unarguable.
The two gateway reviews on ID Cards in question should be
published, if for no reason than to stop the OGC being a continued
object of derision.