Treasury: Gov IT projects' overspend must end

The Treasury has called for IT projects to be run more efficiently, as it makes more money available for central government-run technology programmes.

The government has recently come under fire after the Liberal Democrats claimed it had overspent on IT projects by more than £1bn.

Stephen Timms, chief secretary to the Treasury and the former minister for ecommerce, said: "It's absolutely essential we manage public spending. We've been able to put right the legacy of underfunding [in IT projects]. There will be an increase in public spending, which will put a new premium on efficiency. It's essential that we improve public services, and manage that to tightly constrained budgets."

In the upcoming Comprehensive Spending Review - which aims to identify which investments and reforms the government will make over the next three years - the government will pledge a three per cent efficiency saving in public spending.

But one central government chief information officer had a different view to Timms, saying he thought project management was the key to managing budgets. Mark O'Neill, head of IS at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, said: "We want to be smarter at project organisation. Instead of having a number of high-risk projects running at the same time, let's balance high-risk and low-risk projects."

He added that high-risk projects were those which deployed new technologies, and low-risk projects were those which used or reused established technologies and practices.

O'Neill also called for greater interaction between government departments. "In the past we tended to work in silos - I've thought about [my projects]; the Department for Work and Pensions [for example] have thought about theirs. That doesn't work - we need to look across the piece to see what we're doing."

It is when complex IT projects with large budgets overrun that overspend becomes an issue, according to O'Neill. "Government IT projects are very complex and, by nature, very expensive. A small cost overrun in a big project costs a lot of money."

Tom Espiner writes for ZDNet UK