Cheat Sheet: Government IT strategy

The government's IT strategy? You mean it's got one?
It has now. Basically, it's a huge overhaul of services inside and outside of the public sector. The government is planning to change the face of public services by "designing around the citizen or business, moving to a shared-services culture and improving the professionalism of IT in public sector".

What does that mean then?
You may ask - it's really aiming at improving service times, communication, customer satisfaction and trying to stop wasting money by cutting the duplication of data. The general goal is to try and catch up with the private sector, which is a bit better at doing all of those things.

So how's it going to do it?
It is looking at slimming down its 130 call centres to give punters one non-emergency number for all enquiries to Her Majesty's government - be that local or central. It will also reduce 2,000-plus websites to a handful, incorporating many into the DirectGov website.

Digital TV and texting have also been earmarked for use. According to the Cabinet Office, people will be able to book doctor's appointments by pushing the "red button" on digital TV. The NHS could then text that person back with confirmation. This is all part of the government's attempt to personalise services for the punter.

Public sector jobs are likely to be cut when the government moves to centralise some services to make them cross-departmental. For example, accounts and human resources could be put into one big melting pot and shared across local authorities or central government departments.

The plan intends to create a number of technology standards throughout government. A council of public sector CIOs has been set up to look at the best way to do this. They will also be trying to move away from legacy systems to cut the £1.4bn per year spent on their upkeep.

It will also try to integrate national ID cards into the infrastructure.

I sense a 'but'...
And you'd be right. It's a massive project that will take an enormous amount of orchestration. One of the biggest obstacles to overcome is that in many cases work cannot yet begin because service contracts are still running. The government may have to wait until they have expired before it can move.

It's still early days too. There have been more than a few major cock-ups in government IT. Although this is planned to iron out all the problems of a disjointed, paper-based government, the cultural change of sharing data with other departments could take a long time. The government itself has admitted that work will continue well beyond 2010.

And...
Analysts are concerned the public sector will get a bit depressed and cynical over the wait. They are advising civil servants to keep their chins up and stay enthusiastic.

To start the process off, the government says it will appoint directors for one citizen group (for example, pensioners), one policy group (such as 'offender management'), and one business group (farmers, for instance). Early candidates will include directors for parents and for small businesses.

Anything else I need to know?
Here's an excerpt from the report:

"The specific opportunities lie in improving transactional services (e.g. tax and benefits), in helping front line public servants to be more effective (eg. doctors, nurses, police and teachers), in supporting effective policy outcomes (e.g. in joined-up, multi-agency approaches to offender management and domestic violence), in reforming the corporate services and infrastructure which government uses behind the scenes, and in taking swifter advantage of the latest technologies developed for the wider market."