Computer Weekly Editor's Blog

Identity cards - remember them? They already seem like a quaint Labour-era political relic.

Remember how we all scoffed and said they were unnecessary and the government didn't know how to sell them to the public? How the critics were ultimately proved right?

Don't tell the Germans.

I just received a press release from NXP, a semiconductor company selected to support the impending rollout of Germany's new contactless National Identity Card.

According to the release, "The contactless ID card will enable secure e-government and e-commerce services while protecting against identity theft and identity tracking," and "can also be used as a travel document within the EU - and to some other countries such as Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt - instead of a passport." More than 60 million cards are due to be rolled out over 10 years.

Now that all sounds rather like what the UK ID card was meant to do, but the policy and politics surrounding it were so poorly conceived and communicated that the concept was never likely to be a success.

Of course Germans are already used to carrying a paper-based identification document - as are many other European countries - so the cultural resistance is less than experienced in the UK.

But the need for some form of electronic identity verification system in the UK has not gone away, and even if ID cards now represent a political death sentence, we can be sure that the broader issue of identity will need to be revisited.

There's a thought-provoking article on Computerweekly.com today, written by David Chan from the Centre for Information Leadership at City University London, all about government purchasing from small IT suppliers.

David hosted a private meeting between IT firms and Whitehall purchasing experts to discuss what practical measures need to be taken to achieve the coalition government's aim of placing 25% of IT contracts with SME suppliers.

But this topic has been something of an industry hot potato for some time, and certainly long before the new government came into being.

Large vendors dominate government IT spending. Small suppliers have historically been put off from bidding for government contracts by a whole range of factors, such as: the large scale of projects; government expectations on suppliers owning project risk; the cost and timescales of bidding for contracts; and a perceived reluctance from Whitehall departments to consider anything but the highest-profile firms.

The typical response from government has been to point to big prime contractors such as IBM, Accenture or EDS (now part of HP) and say they can sub-contract SMEs, or to encourage smaller firms to bid for a place on purchasing catalogues run by Buying Solutions, the Whitehall procurement body.

Critics say that SMEs offer innovations that large, low-risk vendors or consortia often cannot deliver.

And small firms point out an obvious disincentive to bid for framework agreements or catalogues - it can cost as much as £100,000 to be selected as part of such a deal, but that brings no guarantee of any sale at the end of it; each subsequent contract brings a further bidding cost that can make the whole process unprofitable or simply too much work for a resource-limited SME.

Another bone of contention is EU procurement rules - or at least the UK public sector's interpretation of them.

All EU tenders worth more than £100,000 have to be advertised in the Official Journal of the European Union to ensure a level playing field for potential bidders from any EU nation. But the process is seen as hugely onerous and bureaucratic, preventing buyers from taking quick decisions, and leading to endless procurement processes. However, many EU countries manage to complete that buying cycle in significantly shorter timescales than the UK government seems to.

I've been involved in several events and discussions in recent months that lead me to believe that the government - and the civil service machine - has accepted that SME suppliers need more help and that the process has to be improved.

If you read David Chan's article you can see the sensible recommendations that his working group has proposed - I won't steal his thunder by repeating them here.

In theory, G-cloud - the government cloud computing strategy - and its related "app store" is designed to make it easier for SMEs to bid on a level-playing field; by conforming to a standard architecture, it should be easier for a public sector buyer to choose a smaller supplier to run software in the cloud, and for smaller managed services providers to host aspects of that cloud. That's the theory, at least.

With all the impending public sector spending cuts there's a widespread expectation that even more government IT work will be outsourced, and it's difficult to see how that won't mean more of those contracts going to the usual big outsourcers, and a growing proportion going offshore too.

Given that SMEs are meant to be the engine of the UK economy, it would be a wasted opportunity if smaller IT suppliers are unable to pick up their share of that work - whether that is an artificial 25% target or not.

If the government wants to be seen to be improving its track record on IT, resolving the issues raised by SME suppliers would be a positive start.

Computer Weekly is the main media partner for a big new IT show that takes place next month, called 360°IT - The IT infrastructure Event.

To celebrate the opening of the event, Computer Weekly and 360°IT are launching a series of competitions over the coming weeks. This week, we're giving away a brand new top-of-the-range Apple iPad 64GB 3G.

To be in with a chance of winning the device, all you need to do is register to attend the event using this link. Registration is free and it takes 20 seconds - so good luck! 

The winner will be announced on Twitter by show director, Natalie Booth via @360IT and at @ComputerWeekly on Thursday 19 August at 12:00pm.

The winner will be picked at random from the pool of registrations received, so for a chance to win, register now.

360°IT takes place on 22 - 23 September at Earls Court 1. It's a new, ground-breaking event that demonstrates how IT infrastructure solutions can help to achieve key business objectives such as improving service, reducing cost, managing risk and gaining competitive advantage and growth.

Good luck - and don't forget to take your iPad to the show if you win!

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison might think that HP's board are "idiots" for forcing his counterpart Mark Hurd to resign from the IT giant, but I wonder how the news was received by HP employees.

In my previous job, two of the stories I wrote that received the most reader comments were about HP staff unrest over plans for a global pay cut, just as it was revealed that Hurd received a multimillion-dollar bonus payment.

You can see the depth of bad feeling in the comments on the stories here and here.

For a lot of HP employees - and in particular those of the former EDS where thousands of job cuts were implemented when HP acquired the outsourcing firm - Hurd was the perfect example of the CEO who was loved by shareholders and hated by many staff.

You can't deny that Hurd produced a dramatic financial improvement after the controversy of the Carly Fiorina years that preceded him, and his quiet, publicity-shy managerial style has turned HP into the world's biggest IT supplier, overtaking even IBM.

But I wonder if there won't have been a few cheers in HP offices around the world from employees who for some time have felt they were little more than a disposable item.

Do you work for HP? What do you think about Hurd's departure? Post your comments below... 

One of the many achievements you can attribute to Apple is the ability to make outdated or bog-standard technology functionality newsworthy.

Only Steve Jobs could create headlines the world over when rumours started to spread last week that the next version of the iPad might include - wait for it - a camera!

Imagine the scorn poured on Nokia or Microsoft if they failed to include a feature that most people take for granted in a mobile phone you could get for nothing.

But increasingly Apple exists in a world with different rules to the rest. And that is a reason why IT managers can't ignore the change in expectations that Apple products create among corporate technology users.

In 2001, Bill Gates - a man who knows a thing or two about computers - predicted that within five years the tablet computer would be the best-selling form of PC. "The tablet takes cutting-edge PC technology and makes it available whenever you want it. It's a PC that is virtually without limits," he said.

And did tablets change the world? Well, not yet. But the iPad is generating demand from business IT users for what they suddenly see as an exciting and potentially useful form of device (even if it doesn't have a camera).

Apple's latest product is making people think about how such a portable, easy-to-use computer could help or improve the way they work, in a way that Gates completely failed to do. Perhaps Bill should have worn black polo-neck sweaters more often.

There are a growing number of firms evaluating iPads for corporate use, but many will find the limitations of using a device designed for a closed Apple ecosystem - hence the expected rush of Windows and Android-based alternatives likely to be released over the coming months.

Of course, IT departments would be seriously chastised were they to deliver systems that omitted basic functionality on the promise of future improvements. But the buzz being created by the likes of Apple creates an opportunity to discuss new ways of working with users to meet their changing expectations.

If you have read Cliff Saran's analysis of the prospects for Windows Phone 7, Microsoft's new mobile operating system, you may have seen a short but significant quote: "The world has changed through the consumerisation of IT," said the marketing man from the software giant.

It may seem a statement of the blatantly obvious now, but Microsoft realised that, despite all the benefits to business of mobile phone software designed for integration with corporate applications, nobody buys business phones any more. If you want to crack the enterprise mobile market, you need a sexy consumer-focused device.

Whether Phone 7 is such a product remains to be seen, but there is a wider significance of such a move. Most observers have been predicting this for some time, but the balance of power in IT development has now shifted from business to consumer, and it isn't coming back.

Historically technology was produced first for the corporate world, and later adapted to home use. Now, consumer expectations are driving a rapidly-growing proportion of technology research and development spending, and those same expectations carried by employees are increasingly influencing what happens in the IT department.

What is the model for future corporate collaboration and information sharing systems? It's Facebook. What is the biggest potential security headache? All those users saying, "Why can't I use my iPhone?" How will you access business applications? The same way you access Google, eBay or Amazon.

The consumerisation of IT is a challenge for the locked-down, controlled, process-oriented nature of traditional IT departments. The new watchwords are transparency, openness and flexibility. "We have to make this happen - whether we like it or not," one CIO told Computer Weekly recently.

As IT managers you can tighten the screws and be the person who says no, or you can embrace the change - and the risks that come with it - and transform the perception of IT throughout the organisation.

The government is certainly baring its teeth towards IT suppliers.

In the past few days, two companies - Cable & Wireless and Capita - have warned about a profit hit as a result of Cabinet Office demands to reduce the value of existing IT contracts.

And today, the Trusted Borders consortium led by Raytheon Systems has been sacked from the £750m e-Borders project after repeated delays and the government losing confidence in the supplier's ability to deliver.

With a widespread review of IT contracts underway at the Cabinet Office, there's every chance Raytheon won't be the last contractor to get its knuckles officially rapped or to be sent packing.

It's an obvious thing to say - but it is about time the government kicked back on the IT industry.

Computer Weekly may have been full of stories about government IT disasters over the years, but frankly we're all pretty fed up that they keep happening - it's our tax money they are wasting after all.

Repeated National Audit Office criticisms and continuous advice and consultancy on how to improve large-scale IT projects has failed to stop the tide.

Of course, it's not entirely the suppliers fault - government must take its equal share of the blame as well. It is rare that a major project failure is entirely down to bad suppliers - bad customers exist too.

But the message being sent out by the government is that it will take a hard line on problem projects - and you can bet it will be reviewing a few where public servants are culpable too.

Sometimes it really is the best decision to accept that there is a problem and call a project or a contract to a halt, even if it means red faces and close scrutiny of wasted spending. After all, there would be a lot more wasted spending if the project is still struggling along in a few years' time.

The government's hard line on IT suppliers is a welcome move.

Not unlike politics, IT management has long been an ideological affair.

There are those who believe firmly in the mantra of outsourcing, for example, and equally those who just as strongly oppose it.

And like political ideology, IT trends go in cycles. When centralised becomes unpopular, so we go distributed; .from mainframe, to client-server, and these days back to the consolidated datacentre.

But when you put together the ideologies of both politics and IT, you get what in technical parlance can be known as a complete bugger's muddle. Or in more topical terms, the NHS IT programme.

For many months now, the Tory party have promised to review the troubled £12bn NHS National Programme for IT (which, as an aside, would at least have the side benefit of getting rid of the awful acronym NPfIT) and now they are in power it looks like it is happening.

NHS CEO David Nicholson confirmed yesterday that an announcement on the future of NPfIT is due within the next four weeks. He was talking at a press conference announcing the government's major overhaul of the way the health service is run and structured. The reorganisation will see the abolition of primary care trusts and strategic health authorities, with consortia of GP practices driving patient care and treatment options.

The move is a clear shift from Labour to Conservative ideology. Labour went for a centrally-controlled, state-funded, target-driven NHS. The Tories want local autonomy, private sector involvement, and results-driven measurements of success. Apply those comparisons to pretty much every area of the public sector and you can make some fairly firm assumptions about what the next few years holds for central and local government.

Of course, such a radical ideological shift in management priorities needs an equally radical shift in IT priorities to make it work.

NPfIT was centrally controlled, state funded, and target driven. The same IT strategy will simply not support the NHS the Tory and LibDem government want to build. So how much of the existing investment can be salvaged?

The Choose and Book appointment booking system is to be beefed up - ironic, considering how unpopular it was with GPs when first rolled out. Communication systems such as the Pacs electronic imaging application for sharing X-rays and scans have been a success. And the N3 broadband network will come into its own as the IT connecting to it becomes increasingly decentralised.

The two likeliest fallguys from the new plan will be BT and CSC, the last suppliers standing in the Summary Care Records (SCR) project to roll out national electronic patient records.

The government whitepaper on NHS reform, called Equity and excellence: liberating the NHS, makes it clear that electronic records are here to stay.

"We will enable patients to have control of their health records," says the document. "This will start with access to the records held by their GP and over time this will extend to health records held by all providers."

The key phrase in that sentence is "health records held by all providers". Clearly there will be more suppliers than just BT and CSC, whose SCR and patient administration systems have been the most problematic and delayed aspects of the whole IT programme.

We heard last year of David Cameron's slightly wild idea that patient records could be stored online by Microsoft or Google, who both provide online health record software in the US where the health system is very different from the UK.

But even if we're not going to all sign up to Google Health just yet, the principle that Cameron was promoting is likely to happen, with more private sector providers of SCR-like applications competing for business from the new GP consortia.

In IT terms that's a whole new challenge - linking up many disparate systems to provide a coherent whole that allows patients to "share their records with third parties" as promised in the whitepaper, and "enabling patients to communicate with their clinicians about their health status online" as part of an "NHS information revolution."

Clinicians will welcome having greater local control over their IT choices, and hospitals that have been forced to stick with out-of-date systems that were meant to be replaced by the central projects run by BT and CSC will have the autonomy to press ahead on their own.

But that won't end the IT challenges for the NHS. From centralisation and control, we will move to standards and integration. And as any IT professional will know, standards are a whole other form of technical ideology.

Good luck with that.

The IT director of a top City law firm told me recently that if he receives a sales call from an IT supplier and they mention the words "cloud computing", he says no and puts the phone down.

It is fair to say that phrase has achieved notoriety in taking the shortest time from buzzword-creation to CIO-cynicism.

There is no shortage of opportunities for IT leaders to listen to suppliers telling them why they should be going into the cloud. Cloudwash has replaced greenwash as the focus for marketing brochure hype.

It is time, instead, to look at what IT managers are actually doing and listen less to conflicting and confusing advice from suppliers. Government CIO John Suffolk told a meeting of our CW500 IT leadership group that his research had come up with 22 different definitions of "cloud computing" - and none of them was right for his requirements, so he came up with a 23rd. He also said the G-cloud project to move public sector IT infrastructure to what we would call a cloud-based environment was so named because that was the "nomenclature of the day".

So can we get rid of the cloud and look at the reality through a clear sky?

This thing we call the cloud is really nothing more than an emerging set of technologies that offer new options and innovations as part of the IT leader's toolkit. The hype has caused a backlash that leads to undue concerns about "going into the cloud" because it is presented as such a major strategic shift for IT delivery. It doesn't have to be that way.

For example, look at Imagination, a multinational firm whose experience has shown that a move to Google Apps has saved money, boosted productivity, and improved information security  - a real-life demonstration that some of the most frequently raised cloud concerns are unfounded. The lesson here is to start small, and look at what works for your organisation.

Undoubtedly there are tools and technologies represented by the cloud buzzword that offer potentially significant benefits and will be valuable elements in making companies more competitive and the public sector more efficienct - but it is down to CIOs to understand and apply those tools.

More than anything else, what "the cloud" really offers IT leaders is the opportunity to innovate.

The only newspaper I buy on a regular basis is The Sunday Times. If I'm going to buy a daily paper, it will usually be a copy of The Times. I like the presentation, the tone, the journalism, the opinion and in particular the sports coverage. It's clear that if I had to pick a "favourite" national newspaper, it would be the Times stable.

But I have no intention of paying to subscribe to the new paywall-protected web sites of the two Murdoch papers.

I get very frustrated by the "pay vs free" debate for online journalism. The issue is presented too often in binary terms - the pro-pay lobby say that quality journalism will die unless it's paid for. The free advocates say that professional journalism will die unless it is competing for free hits alongside the millions of "citizen journalists" and small-scale news sites who would never charge but do little more than rewrite press releases.

Like most things that change, the debate is far more nuanced than it is often presented between its most vocal protagonists.

In yesterday's Sunday Times there was a blatantly pro-paywall article that was scathing in its criticism of The Guardian for insisting its web site will stay free. The article drew parallels with the music industry and its attempts to ensure that copyrighted creativity is paid for and not downloaded illegally. I would suggest you read the article, despite its wholly one-sided nature, but of course I can't link to the article to help you find it, because it's behind a paywall.

As a professional journalist, of course I understand and support the argument that quality journalism deserves to be paid for; that there are certain types of coverage that simply would not exist without content being paid for - war reporting, investigative journalism, and so on.

But I don't see that the argument has to be the same as saying that readers should be the ones who fund all that journalism.

Journalism - and the publications that provide it - exist for only one reason: that people want to read them. Yes, journalism has a role to play in holding those in power to account - but that has only ever been because our readers want to hold the powerful to account. Readers are our everything - or should be.

Equally I accept that, dear reader, you might not always know what you want. As the saying goes, if Henry Ford had asked people what they want, they would have said, "faster horses".

But Ford would not have created the mass-market car industry without knowing that what people did want was to get from one place to another more quickly.

And that's where the nuance is missing from the debate over funding journalism.

If, for example, people want costly journalism such as war reporting, they will probably pay for it - but that is all they will want to pay for. They won't pay for an online national newspaper that might, on some days but not others, deliver that high-value content.

We all know that journalism is fragmenting online - and the funding of that journalism will inevitably fragment with it. The idea of paying for everything or having nothing doesn't stack up. There will be multiple business models, multiple ways of accessing content, and multiple ways of funding that content. If that sounds confusing to a media mogul, they need to realise that it doesn't sound confusing to their increasingly tech-savvy readers.

Let's look at Computer Weekly as an example - an example that holds for all the "free" tech publications, in print and online.

We have never sold content to readers. Our historic print business model - known as controlled circulation - uses reader data as the means of barter. You provide us with information about you and your job, and in return we will provide you with quality journalism and content. To make money, we will sell that data to advertisers who want to engage with you.

Online, the model is broadly the same. We provide great content (I hope...) and in return place valuable reader eyeballs onto the same web page as a series of adverts. But online we can add extra nuance: for higher-value content, such as whitepapers or web seminars, we ask you to barter with your data. There's no need for us to charge you in cash for our content. We make money, readers get great content, advertisers stay happy.

Technology is not about rip and replace, it's not an "either...or" argument. Television did not replace radio. Video did not replace cinema. I don't see e-books eliminating paperbacks.  

For me, the message about the way that technology is changing the creative industries is not that it is destroying old business models or that it will only benefit those who embrace a brand-new existence. The reality is that technology fragments industries, it breaks down barriers to entry that have protected big companies for years and allows for small, fast-moving new entrants to bring greater choice, diversity, and, sometimes, complexity. It makes our job as journalists and content producers a lot harder, But the reason that happens is because that is what customers - our readers - want.  

Another day, another Budget. Tomorrow sees the announcement of the government's emergency Budget- it feels like we've been having these a lot lately.

But there are a lot of IT projects and IT strategies that are going to be affected by George Osborne's first experience of opening that red box.

Everyone in the public sector will be particularly focused on the outcome. The new government has already announced reviews of major IT projects and just last week transferred Whitehall buying agency, the Office of Government Commerce, from the Treasury to the Cabinet Office, where it comes under the auspices of minister Francis Maude.

Remember that Maude was responsible for the Tory IT strategy, and wrote in these pages ahead of the election that, "much of the Conservative ICT agenda is centred in improving the management of the existing ICT estate, not buying more of it".

Already two senior Whitehall CIOs have announced their departure to the private sector - one of whom told Computer Weekly privately that it is "a good time to be getting out".

The publication of the University College London review of NHS Summary Care Records last week may be a precursor to a root-to-branch overhaul of that troubled project - and it won't be the only one.

The public sector IT landscape in 12 months' time will be very different from today.

But it's not only government IT professionals that will be anxious about the Budget. Financial services reform will have a knock-on effect; a possible increase in VAT will hit the retail sector; and technology entrepreneurs, investors and start-ups will be looking closely at likely increases in capital gains tax.

So, there is a lot riding on Osborne's announcements, but at least it will start to bring some clarity to the new environment in which everyone in business and government will have to exist. This is very much the start of the 'more for less' era for IT.

Ministers in our new government are worrying about rather more prosaic technology issues than the big Whitehall IT contracts that attract all the headlines.

According to one government CTO, some new ministers who are being offered a standard-issue Blackberry for ministerial communications are complaining and asking why they cannot use an iPhone instead.

This is typical of a problem that many IT leaders increasingly have to face. Tech-savvy users - especially but not exclusively the younger generation of workers - are frustrated by a perceived functionality gap between their corporate IT and their personal technology. More and more often they are asking why they can't just use their Macbook, or their iPhone, or their home laptop, instead of the locked-down, strictly controlled environment usually beloved of IT departments.

It's a question that is being raised ever-more frequently - at almost every gathering of IT leaders I have attended lately, the topic comes up in one form or another.

Last week, Computer Weekly co-hosted a roundtable debate in association with 360IT - The IT infrastructure event, and gathered a group of senior private and public sector CIOs to share their experiences of this topic - one of whom slipped in the revelation about ministers.

The debate was conducted under the Chatham House rule which forbids me from identifying any of the participants, but there were a number of important points that came out of the discussion that are worth highlighting here.

"It's our problem to solve"

There is a cultural issue for IT departments to overcome in dealing with the demands of users to be able to use or choose their own portable IT such as laptops and mobile devices. Some delegates at our event were eager to list the reasons why it cannot be done - in particular security and data protection. But others - in particular those who have started to tackle the issue in their organisations - were more pragmatic and realised they have to find a solution, and not simply highlight the problems.

"We have kidded ourselves that the perimeter is a defence mechanism - it isn't," said one IT leader from a major multinational manufacturer.

Smart CIOs are realising they need a different approach, and that the use of users' own devices inside and outside the corporate firewall is inevitable.

For example, another of the Whitehall IT managers present said that the CIO at the government department he works for ultimately wants all its civil servants to use their own mobile phones and to eliminate desktop phones completely.

As applications become web-enabled, there is less need to store data locally on mobile devices, so the use of smartphones as user access devices starts to become feasible.

The multinational manufacturer's IT leader quoted above talked about a project in his firm to equip staff in Eastern Europe with their own equipment, offering them £300 towards the purchase of whatever they want to use. He said it is easier to prove the concept with a workforce less indoctrinated to the status quo. "Nearer to the centre of big corporations, the harder it becomes and the resistance [to change] is greater," he said.

But he pointed out that the data protection issues can be overcome by a different approach to the problem: "You need to segment users between those who need the data security of, for example, a Blackberry, and those who need less security with an iPhone."

Flexible working

As part of the massive public sector cost cuts that are already underway and are likely to increase, Whitehall IT staff are being asked to look at ways of increasing flexible working - and so reduce the amount of office space required.

Again protection of sensitive data is an issue, but the government is pursuing a policy of greater openness, and information once considered secret is being made publicly available.

"What are the Crown Jewels in our data? What do we actually need to protect? Is it really all sacrosanct?" asked the government CTO.

In The Netherlands, workers are eligible for tax breaks if they purchase their own mobile phones for business use - an offer that has been taken up enthusiastically, and led IT departments to give serious consideration to how best to respond.

"The business case needs to be made - but it is likely to be impressive," said one delegate.

"HR will be the minefield we have to walk through"

Once that business case has been made, finance directors are likely to want to pursue the cost benefits - but delegates agreed that the key to success in introducing "bring your own (BYO)" IT policies will be the HR issues.

If companies offer to subsidise the purchase of kit, there is an administrative overhead - as well as checks needed to ensure that people are buying what they say they are buying, and not over-claiming for less functional devices.

There are also force majeure issues such as dealing with broadband performance problems - if everyone worked from home on a Friday afternoon, watch how quickly bandwidth would degrade.

But those who have already explored these issues said a similar approach to that adopted for company cars should work, supported by suitable employment contracts.

Staff who receive a car allowance instead of a company car are expected to ensure the vehicle they buy is fit for purpose. If they work from home and drive to the office, traffic jams are not an excuse for not working - they have to make up the time.

It's the same for BYO technology. Equipment has to meet minimum standards and staff have to accept the use of approved security tools, such as remote wipe software if a device containing corporate data is lost. And if they have connectivity problems from home, they have to make up the time out-of-hours or make their way to the office.

"We will eventually have to give employees responsibility for their own ability to use and access IT, otherwise they will have to be in the office," said one of the IT leaders.

But ultimately, it is not the technology that is the real problem.

"The most flexible device of all is also the biggest risk," said one CIO. "It's your mouth."

But the rise of consumer technology in the workplace is not going away, and it is a challenge every IT leader will have to face - and soon.

Are you part of a killjoy IT department? How many football-supporting employees across the UK will have received emails in the past week from their IT team discouraging bandwidth-hungry online viewing of the World Cup?

At the Computer Weekly newsdesk, we also received one of those emails from our IT department. And even we, who like to consider ourselves a champion for IT, looked at each other and said, "Spoilsports" (or something to that effect...)

What a great opportunity this could be for IT department looking to boost relations with users. Imagine all the goodwill generated by an email instead saying, "Don't worry. We'll look after all the technical stuff. You just enjoy keeping an eye on the football."

We hope our IT team is reading this too.

It has finally happened. After years of anticipation, the IT guy has made it to the top.

If you collected £1 for every time there has been a prediction that IT leadership is the emerging route to becoming chief executive, it would probably be enough to pay the salary of Tesco's CEO-elect and current group IT director Philip Clarke.

There has hardly been a rush of CIOs taking the big seat at the boardroom table. We have heard for years that the growing importance of technology means that the profession is an obvious training ground for business leaders. How many have made it? Not many.

So there can be no doubt that Clarke's promotion at one of the highest-profile UK companies can only be a good thing for everyone working in IT.

But it is an important lesson too. Clarke has a dual role; he is also head of Tesco's international operations. He has made it to the top by combining IT and business experience. He can bring a genuine grasp of the transformative potential of IT, but with shop-floor knowledge of the business it seeks to transform.

His success is a role model for any ambitious CIO - but an important reminder every IT professional of the importance of combining technology and business in your skills profile and your CV.

There is far too much hype in the technology sector these days, but for once some of the latest hype is right: Apple's iPad does represent a significant milestone for IT.

However, the hype is for all the wrong reasons.

The tablet device is not important because of what it looks like - it is not the first and will not be the last sexy and aesthetically pleasing piece of kit.

It is not important because of what it does or how it does it - most people have no idea what the iPad is actually for, even after they have spent £500 to buy one.

And it is not important just because it is made by Apple, despite what Steve Jobs might like us to think.

The iPad is important for the simple reason that everyone is talking about it. Even national newspapers ran reviews of the device; some put the UK launch last week on the front page. It was the moment that, finally, it became cool to be an IT expert.

For how many years have IT professionals been derided as geeks? Even that word - hated for so long by so many in corporate IT - has now attracted a degree of cachet in some circles.

Tell someone you meet at a social occasion that you work in IT, and now, instead of trying to make a rapid exit from the conversation, chances are they will be interested and want to know more.

Despite what many people might think, IT professionals are not always gadget and gizmo freaks - it is too much of a busman's holiday. I would expect there were plenty of cynical comments in a lot of IT departments towards the people who camped out overnight to be the first in the queue at the Apple Store in London.

But those people are increasingly the users of the business systems you support. The consumer tech revolution presents a huge challenge for IT managers, but it is also an opportunity to be seized with enthusiasm. IT - your time is now.

Public sector IT professionals are no doubt gearing up for difficult times ahead. Already, government CIOs are warning of the risk of losing talented staff as the impending budget cuts to be imposed by the new administration start to bite.

We are seeing evidence that public sector outsourcing is growing, and experts predict the trend will only increase because it is perceived as a way to reduce spending.

Plans by the Tory/LibDem coalition to mandate Treasury approval for any roles with a salary greater than that of the prime minister also mean that senior IT leadership jobs will be intensely scrutinised. Government CIOs often appear in media lists of the best-paid public servants.

A tentative recovery in the private sector will offer an escape route for some, but corporate employers will remain cautious about recruiting for a while yet.

While IT will be a growth area for employment in the long term, there is a risk of a short-term skills crisis that could have lasting repercussions.

Companies which make use of offshore outsourcing are already reacting to the news that non-EU immigration will be capped. Their attitude is that if they cannot bring in low-cost overseas resources from countries such as India, they will simply move their development centres out of the EU.

In a global and highly mobile workforce such as IT, it is not as simple as saying you must employ people who are sourced locally.

The government has many decisions to make in its early days, but at some point it will have to address the issue of what sort of IT workforce it wants the UK to maintain.

If we want to be a high-tech economy, we need those high-tech skills. If the public sector is about to offload suitable skilled professionals, potentially in their thousands, we need a plan for retaining, employing  and developing their careers, or we risk alienating a generation of IT talent we  cannot afford to lose.

As expected, the new government has scrapped the controversial and unwieldy identity cards project created as a flagship of Labour policy.

Labour's problem was that it never properly explained why ID cards were necessary, or a good thing - perhaps they never really had a good reason other than the control it would give the government from universal biometric identities.

But there is a growing recognition that an increasingly internet-enabled society will need some form of electronic identity verification system to tackle identity fraud and provide the confidence needed to transact securely online, especially as more public services are provided over the web.

So now perhaps it is time to go back to a proposal that was largely ignored by Labour, despite it coming from a report commissioned by the Treasury when Gordon Brown was still chancellor.

In 2008, former HBOS chief executive Sir James Crosby recommended a private sector-led approach to identity management. "The potential of any mass ID system such as ID cards lies in the extent to which it is created by consumers for consumers," he wrote in his report.

Crosby's plan was essentially for banks and other trusted institutions to act as an identity vault - we would store our essential identity details in the bank in much the same way as we do our money. The bank is responsible for the initial verification that you are who you say you are, and that the information you provide is correct.

When you later attempt to prove your identity - perhaps to make an online purchase or to apply for a government service - you give the service provider permission to securely access the relevant information in your ID bank to allow them to verify the transaction. This could also include credit card information - removing the need to enter card details over the web and minimising the chances of that data being stolen or intercepted.

Not only did this seem to me to be a sensible and workable solution, it is one that could easily be "sold" to the public - with no central government command and control infrastructure, the likelihood of establishing trust between customer and identity bank is increased. Furthermore, it is a solution in which the UK could lead the world - our banks and financial institutions are already ahead of most of their global rivals in their capability to verify electronic financial transactions.

Sadly Crosby's report was largely ignored when Labour put its ID card plans in place, and he was subsequently vilified for allegedly ignoring the advice of a key HBOS adviser that the bank was growing too fast - it was eventually forced into a merger with Lloyds TSB in the height of the credit crunch.

But even if Crosby himself was pilloried, his proposals for an alternative to ID cards merit serious consideration by our new coalition government.

Following the Conservatives and Liberal Democrat coalition's rise to power, the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) has taken rapid action over the two parties' manifesto promises to scrap ID cards.

A message on the IPS web site warns "anyone thinking of applying" for an ID card to "wait for further announcements."

Can't you just hear the collective groan from the hoards of prospective identity card holders that had been flooding to get their applications in? There must be, ooh, as many as a handful of disappointed people.

We will all, meanwhile, await the announcement "in due course" as to how scrapping the multimillion-pound ID cards and National Identity Register contracts with IT suppliers "will be achieved"...

So we finally know who our new government is. The buzz on Twitter has claimed that the UK is now the ConDem Nation, but already there are glimpses of the new administration's plans for IT - not least of which will be the inevitable scrapping of the hugely unpopular ID cards project.

Technology featured more heavily in this election campaign than ever before - take a look back at the exclusive articles penned for Computer Weekly by Gordon Brown, Nick Clegg and the Tories' Francis Maude to see how much thought had gone into IT issues.

There are plenty of questions that the new government has to answer across every sector of public life, but there are some big issues in IT that will need to be tackled as a priority if we are to achieve the goal that every party agreed on - making the UK a world-leading high-tech economy.

These are the top 10 IT questions that our new political leaders must address with urgency:

What happens to all the contracts signed for now-scrapped projects such as ID cards and ContactPoint?

IDcards and the ContactPoint children's database are dead - both the Tories and LibDems wanted them scrapped. But costly contracts remain in place with IT suppliers who will not simply walk away without compensation. What happens to those contracts, and how will they be amicably - and inexpensively - wound up?

Who will fund next-generation broadband roll-out?

Labour's plans for a 50p per month "broadband tax" foundered when the controversial Digital Economy Bill was rushed through parliament before the election. But the issue of high-speed broadband roll-out has not gone away. The Tories believe that the market will ensure that our digital telecommunications infrastructure is upgraded - but the likelihood of the market reaching out to rural areas is as remote as their broadband exchanges. A high-speed broadband network is critical to our economic future and we cannot be left behind - so how will roll-out be funded, and how will we ensure that rural areas do not miss out?

What are the plans for IT skills development and the IT curriculum in schools?

It is widely recognised that the IT curriculum in schools is not fit for purpose. Indeed, it seems to actively turn children off the prospect of a career in IT. A radical overhaul is needed. But lifelong IT skills development needs support too. The Labour government launched various initiatives that never really addressed the growing skills gap and many experts predict there will be a significant shortfall in IT skills available to meet demand in the next five years.

If the Tory plan to cap non-EU immigration affects firms' ability to source low-cost IT skills from India, then companies will simply set up captive operations in countries that have no such qualms - and the IT brain drain will increase.

David Cameron has also promised a big reduction in quangos - so what is the future for the IT sector skills council e-Skills UK that has done much to promote IT skills development? The UK needs a coherent plan to deliver the IT skills that the economy increasingly needs.

What happens to public sector IT spending and the government IT strategy?

Government CIO John Suffolk published his government IT strategy earlier this year, and he recently told me that he knew exactly what would happen to the plan with the advent of a new government - but wouldn't tell me what it was. Civil servants have been briefing the former Opposition parties for some time, as is the protocol in an election year, but those briefings would not have envisaged a coalition government.

The Tories will press ahead with their plans for £6bn of public sector spending cuts and IT will not escape the knife. IT professionals in Whitehall, in local government, in education and health will be waiting to see what their future holds, and key projects will be in limbo. Cameron has promised a £100m cap on IT contracts.

Clarity will be urgently needed on the future of IT projects, both those underway and planned, to avoid drift and over-spending.

Does the NHS IT Programme have a future?

What to do with the biggest, most controversial, and most troubled public sector IT project of them all, the NHS National Programme for IT? Labour had tried, not entirely successfully, to rush through re-negotiated contracts with key suppliers BT and CSC to tie the hands of the new government, but it is clear that radical surgery is required to get the programme back on track - if it is to survive at all. The health service needs new, modernised IT, and however it is delivered, it is needed soon.

How to tackle illegal downloading?

Labour's Digital Britain plan - a welcome if not overly ambitious initiative - somehow turned into a Digital Economy Bill that seemed to have been written by the entertainment industry lobby and targeted illegal downloaders as if they had lost their legal rights online. A more realistic and reasoned approach is needed that recognises the illegality of copyright theft but encourages the entertainment industry to develop new business models that equally recognise the way that more and more people consumer their digital entertainment products.

Do we still have a digital inclusion strategy?

Martha Lane Fox has been a high profile digital inclusion champion, targeted at finding ways to get the 20 per cent of the population that are not online connected to the internet and able to make the most of the economic opportunities the web offers. Does she still have a role in the new government? And what is the future of initiatives such as the Home Access programme to provide low-cost PCs and broadband connections to low income families?

What next for open data?

Gordon Brown enthusiastically embraced the concept of open data, launching the data.gov.uk web site and appointing web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee to advise on making public sector data publicly available on the internet. The Tories and LibDems have indicated their backing for the plan, but it needs high-level support to be sure that Whitehall departments and other public sector bodies do what is required to open up their data.

Will IT projects be made more transparent?

The Tories have promised to make the Gateway IT project monitoring reviews public, to show which projects are in trouble and the actions being taken to prevent more of the major IT disasters that we have seen all to often in the past decade. Contracts with suppliers have been kept secret under the grounds of commercial confidentiality, but here too the Conservatives have previously promised reform. Is it going to happen?

What will be done to support UK innovation?

The Tories, as the traditional party of business, would be expected to support small businesses and startups, but those firms need to know what support will be available. We don't need grand plans to rival Silicon Valley, but we do need to know that innovations and inventions in the UK can make money for the UK, instead of being snapped up by foreign rivals, as has been the case so often. Innovation is the future of UK IT as a global player, and we need is a government that helps and allows it to happen.

To upgrade or not to upgrade, that is the question for most of Microsoft's customers.

There were times when the latest release of a new version of a major Microsoft product was a huge catalyst for IT spending. Many IT managers will remember planning their strategy around the anticipated timings of future releases and the new functionality they promised. Microsoft's corporate licensing and pricing policy has traditionally been predicated on the expectation that users will upgrade at least once every three years.

But the reality of technology strategy today is very different - and since the disappointment that was Windows Vista, so are the attitudes of IT managers.

So what are the prospects for Office 2010? After Windows, this is the most used and most financially important product range in Microsoft's portfolio. While lower-cost alternatives such as Google Apps and Openoffice have made occasional inroads into the market, Office remains the de facto standard productivity suite for most organisations.

But let's face it, how often do your users come to you and say, "I really need Microsoft Word/Excel/Powerpoint/Outlook to have more functionality." Most people use only a fraction of the features in Office, so apart from the withdrawal of support for older versions, why go through the pain of upgrading?

Inevitably that will be a question asked by many IT leaders, and it is down to each individual situation to look at the new features and judge whether the business case stacks up.

For Microsoft however, it is a question that goes right to the heart of the product development strategy that has kept the company leading the market for 30 years.

Corporate IT is fed up with the endless version release cycle. In a world of cloud computing, nobody knows or cares - Google can roll out new features overnight; how many Salesforce.com users are bothered what version they are on?

By the time Office 2010's successor arrives, the three-yearly upgrade concept will seem antiquated. This change in customer behaviour and expectation threatens Microsoft's dominance more than any new functionality improvements from its rivals.