Government IT won’t be top of the public agenda at the next election. But to say it isn’t important underestimates just how much Government spending is tied up in IT, and how reliant public services already are on it.
I’ve been impressed with the approach the Conservatives have taken to IT, which has been to speak to those in the industry who aren’t the usual suspects, as well as academics, and slowly formulate a comprehensive policy.
So I must admit I was a little surprised when I woke up to see a tweet about Louise Bagshawe writing about Govt IT on the ‘blue blog’ as she isn’t someone I’d normally associate with the nitty-gritty tech of Government.
As it turned out, Louise’s post was an excellent run-down of the benefits of improving transparency and public services online, with some very relevant examples. Credit is due here to Liam Maxwell, who has spoken a great deal about the practical measures here and his work in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead has led the way in this area. Equally, the achievement of Boris Johnson in launching London’s ‘Data Store’ is not to be understated and offers a fantastic blueprint for what a Conservative Government could do.
Unfortunately, the title of the post, ‘Putting an end to costly, snail paced IT projects’ didn’t really represent the content, and although the usual IT failures were rolled out, little was actually said about the root cause of the problem or how the Conservatives are going to make projects succeed or deliver better value.
Indeed, I struggle to think of any project where the web-interface has been either the point of failure or where the substantial cost has been absorbed. Equally, the best web-interface in the world cannot save the significant amounts of money needed or address the fundamental weaknesses in Govt IT projects.
So - two points. Firstly, the internet is not the solution to project failure. Secondly, the internet will not save the amount of money needed until some very significant transition steps have been made.
Too many people forget that Google, E-Bay and Amazon were ‘green field’ businesses - they were built for the web 2.0 environment they operate in. Government has IT systems which in some cases are still running 30 or 40 years after they were first deployed. The journey from ‘legacy’ to ‘cloud’ - if that is to be seen as the panacea of web computing - is a long, arduous and very challenging one.
Want to fix Government IT? Then you need to understand where Government current is, in technological terms, and the challenges of moving forward to a brave new, web-enabled world.
The Labour Government’s track record on IT is utterly lamentable and one which has undermined public servants, the economy and the UK technology industry. The recent IT Strategy document lacked ambition and embodied all that is wrong with the current Government’s approach.
But why do projects fail? And why have so many cost so much in failing over the past decade? Well, that’s a huge question. But one thing leaps to mind - what do successful projects have in common? As there aren’t many, it’s quite easy to identify - they are usually small, fully understand the user’s requirements, aren’t over-ambitious in terms of what can be delivered by existing technology and crucially address how they integrate with existing systems at the outset.
Want to fix Government IT? Then talk about how projects are scoped, procured and operated. Talk about why the civil service is culturally wary of innovation and whether it’s healthy that 80% of the Governments IT budget is spent with a dozen suppliers.
It is entirely counter-productive to talk of scrapping everything - very few projects get off the ground unless there is a real need of a particular service. It’s just that the current approach to trust consultants and incumbent suppliers to deliver small, simple solutions that are easy to change completely misses the point that it’s in their best financial interest to deliver hugely complex, gargantuan projects over which the Government cannot hope to have real control.
I could go on (and I will!) but I hope this gives you an idea of why if we want to be taken seriously on Government IT, we need to fully understand the problem and the solutions.
IT and technology can play a huge role in resolving our nation’s finances and genuinely transforming public services and reviving our democratic process. But there’s a great deal more involved than just putting data online - so let’s be honest and not try to claim Google-Government is the answer to all our ills.
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