By Dan Ilett, 17 November 2005 07:00
NEWS
The government spends £14bn per year on technology, with various amounts going on maintenance, staffing, legacy and new technology.
This month, the Cabinet Office unveiled new plans to transform all IT in the public sector. It aims to scale down the UK's 130 government-owned call centres (creating a single phone number for non-emergency calls) and squeeze 2,500 government websites into a handful of portals - all to make life easier for the taxpayer.
Digital television and text messaging are to play a large part in replacing these. For example, under the proposals, people would be able to book a doctor's appointment using their digital TV's red-button function and receive confirmation by text message.
The overhaul will see a number of public sector websites redirected to the central government website DirectGov. People will also be able to access their own records to cut the cost of handling simple enquiries.
This is all part of chief government CIO Ian Watmore's plan, in which work will continue well into next decade to modernise the public sector.
Earlier this month, Watmore said: "I want to ensure every IT professional in government has the right skills and support to make this happen. This is about designing systems around the public's needs, using technology to deliver policy at the front line and breaking down barriers to enable us to share case information."
But despite the gung-ho rhetoric the reality might be more complex - analyst Gartner has advised the public sector and companies working around it to not lose sight of planned changes, as many existing contracts in the public sector still have some years to run.
The analyst said: "Gartner believes the strategic goals set for the first 18 months can be achieved but that they must be detailed and quantified to instil confidence in the rest of the strategy. Because many government IT projects are currently underway, much of the effort will be deferred until 2007. We fear that this delay may cause a loss of interest and the project may be undermined by a lack of visible results."
Watmore is also looking to share some of the internal services to cut costs. As well as one massive IT infrastructure, areas such as human resources and customer services will be shared.
Andy Vernon, PA Consulting Group's public sector specialist, said: "One key cause of government IT delivery failures is the scale and complexity of the initiatives undertaken. One role of the CIO forum must be to engage with ministers and policy makers to temper the ambition for individual projects to ensure that delivery can be truly incremental and achievable. In many ways this education and engagement process will be key to the strategy's eventual realisation."
Most companies appear to have welcomed the announcement. But Jeremy Ward, services development director at Symantec, thinks there could be problems.
He said: "If we're brutally honest, transformational government contains a lot of well-intentioned information but is essentially the same plan that has been repackaged over the course of the past six years, since the original conception of the Office of the e-Envoy.
"The report makes reference to data sharing as a key objective. This sounds like a good idea but can citizens be sure their privacy is safe-guarded with this approach? Will the right data be used by the right departments and how will this be controlled? How does this fit in with the increasing pressures around compliance, particularly where data protection is concerned? All these questions will need answers before too long."
Ward added: "The government should be applauded for persevering with its plans but it should most certainly listen to the private sector to understand the risks and the pitfalls associated with change."
Comments
There are 9 comments. Join the discussion
1. Darren Mills
"people would be able to book a doctor's appointment using their digital TV's red-button function and receive confirmation by text message."
What chance has this got when, currently I cant ring up my doctors and book an appointment the next day or sometime in the future. I have to call at 8.30am and book an appointment for that morning, which is too short notice for my work. Its a long long way off if you ask me.
2. Simon
>>> to temper the ambition for individual projects to ensure that delivery can be truly incremental and achievable.
Oh well, that's the whole idea scuppered then ! ID Cards, temper ambition, and achievable - they don't really fit well together do they.
>>> people would be able to book a doctor's appointment using their digital TV's red-button
Err, for the vast majority of people, the red button doesn't do anything capable of feeding information upstream. Of course, for even more people, the red button makes the TV switch off ;-)
3. Richard
Sky subscribers will get first place in NHS queues!
That "Red Button" myth again:
Freeview boxes are RECEIVERS not transmitters!
The red button on my Freeview remote control is the OFF switch: Very few Freeview boxes are linked to phone lines and able to transmit information.
Does the government still not understand this, or are they forcing everyone to subscribe to Sky?
4. Terry Carlin
Book anything via the red button. Has anybody calculated the number of button presses this would take?
I can't image much change out of a half hour of frustrated effort with a sky stick to acheive the same as a two minute phone call.
This is just the usuall salesmans castles in the air bought by the yard by what seems to be an increasingly niave government.
5. Sarah
I like the nice short term points made in some of the comments above here although, looking at the long term view, I like the vision of how it should be.
However, and I refer back to the silicon survey on IT skills v Business skills, I have no confidence in this long term, unless the management, IT organisations and individuals involved, fully understand the importance of meeting what the "customer" (in this case us) need and want.
Quite frankly, it scares me the thought of this grand plan being implemented without solving a few basic requirements (like understanding the need), first.
6. anonymous
It's about time the myths surrounding the over hyped red button & digital TV in general. I will not subscribe to Sky, because I do like many of their business practices. Telewest digital TV has at last reached our area. (Previously a Eurobell) area. The picture & sound often stagger & get out of sync. As for the RED button. Next to useless, very slow. We are in fact, according to the Freeview website, just fractionally outside the area. Our local Freeview enabled TV transmitter is about 3 miles away across the valley & is so close that an aerial rigger can actually see it from the roof & aim preceisely at it. We have a very powerful aerial & in fact we were given a Freeview box & were able to tune in to about 36 TV & radio channels, until a few months ago, when we lost most of them. Then finally we lost the lot, so if we cannot receive it at less than 3 miles. What hope is there for viewers in more isolated areas. On Digital failed, ITV bought it & failed. A consortium led by the BBC bought it.
The only reason that the government want us to go 'digital' is to sell of the bandwidth. Experts will tell you that top quality analogue TV is vastly superior to digital. As usual 'they' are attempting to con the public & appear most surprised that the general public are resisting the change to digital with all the attendant, potential & real additional expense involved. It all has the same feel about it as the seriously multiple scrapped & failed, or about to fail, government IT projects...........!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
7. J. Stuart Walmsley
The UK Government's record on IT projects is abysmal and always will be. The main problem is there are always political and indvidual self agrandising scenarios in the background that suppliers are never made aware of.
I supplied a primary Healthcare bespoke package to the Prison Service many years ago, based entirely upon the requirement of the SMO (Senior Medical Officer) in a particular High security prison. It worked so well within 18 months I had another 26 Prison SMOs wanting to buy it. BUT because we had specifically excluded the PSITG (Prison Service IT group) from all discussions they flatly refused to allow any other prison to purchase it. The comments from most of the SMOs when told of this decision was "Of course they wont approve it, it works!"
8. anonymous
Given the Governments (All parties) track record in IT, there can be little doubt that something needs to change. However the writing has been on the wall for a long time with the McCartney Report, the NAO Report, the Royal Academy of Engineering report, all clearly identifying where change is needed. To date even lip service has not been paid.
There is a massive cultural change required, coupled with some hard hitting education..... staff who are good at there jobs do not necessarily make good Project Managers, it is simply not good enough to send someone on a PRINCE course then appoint them as PM for a multi million pound project. Courses alone are not enough, they must be backed up by the right experience, in other words IT staff need to be recruited, nurtured and retained in a structured environment. Regretably, until this is clearly understood at all levels, and implemented, Government IT will continue to live down to its poor track record.
9. Ruth
In a word - NO