Making Government IT Savings Deliver
An interesting new report – ‘Better for Less: How to make Government IT deliver savings’ - has just been released by The Network for the Post-Bureaucratic Age (a research group supported by activists and volunteers in the public and private sectors).
The report seeks to investigate the quagmire of government IT. Better for Less
Concentration of Power
UK Government IT has failed to meet political and public aspirations and has followed a policy of demand aggregation, an approach that has concentrated the IT marketplace in the hands of a small group of overly influential “System Integrator” companies who themselves find the profligate waste and lack of capability deeply troubling.
Effective checks and controls over IT contracts have been dismantled with a move instead to selectively placed, very large, high value and long-term contracts going to ‘the big 9’. Transparency is routinely refused, often for ‘Commercial Confidentiality’ reasons.
More fundamentally, by turning away from the IT mainstream (based on open platforms, open competition and rapid innovation) and instead pursuing a closed, centralised IT model, government has effectively backed the wrong model - it has chosen Betamax over VHS.
Trapped in an evolutionary cul-de-sac and with little competitive leverage, it has paid ever larger amounts to persuade suppliers to prop up its suite of disconnected, unsustainable platforms.
Potential solutions
The report suggests 5 principles that should form the basis of all IT in government:
1) Openness
- Open Data – government data must be transparent
- Open Source works – its concepts should be applied to processes as much as to IT
- Open Standards will drive interoperability, save money and prevent vendor lock-in
- Open Markets – competition creates efficient market-based solutions
2) Localism – the centre may set the standards, but local deployment is best
3) Ownership and Privacy
- It’s our data, government can have access but not control over personal data
- Government should be accountable for data protection and proper use
4) Outcomes matter more than targets
5) Government must be in control of its programmes, not led by them.
The report goes on to suggest 4 workstreams to embed these principles. These workstreams include
1: Audit – Get and understand the numbers
2: Identity – the pre-requisite for online delivery
3: Capability – build in the skills we will need for the long term
4 - Delivering change through open markets
For more analysis on the report check:
