Deep within the confines of Whitehall - surrounded by layers of bureaucracy, virtually guaranteed anonymity for civil servants and confusing accountability mechanisms - rests government IT. In spite of well publicised high profile failures, government IT continues to be insulated from the realities of government. Political priorities change, as do customer demands, but the system governing IT in government has not adapted to this rapidly changing environment, where external pressures and expectations on systems remain uncertain, sometimes until the very last stages of a well-intended plan.
This situation has led to disappointment for front line users, suppliers and those responsible for delivering IT systems - and situations where ministers and permanent secretaries are called upon to defend why a perfectly reasonable policy cannot be translated into systems that work. The result is often to abandon the projects altogether, but even to do that under current set-ups and long-term contracts can cost millions of pounds. Where the average EU regulated procurement takes almost a year and a half, a sense of urgency is non-existent.
The system can no longer remain trapped in this vicious cycle of failure. Not only because customer demands are more complex but because one oversight in developing an IT solution can cost government and the customer. We know that when an IT system fails, it can fail monumentally. £16bn is spent every year on government IT. That is larger than the whole transport budget. It is time we found a solution.
The work by the Institute for Government to understand why government seems locked into long and often unnecessary contracts revealed a culture that goes across the whole public sector, of trying to find big solutions to big problems. Contracts are developed that may take years to deliver because there is a culture where certainty is valued, regardless of the political and external pressures. The good news is that increasingly popular form of IT development yet to be fully exploited by the public sector can produce radically better results.
Agile development focuses on delivering production ready software and systems in incremental steps. Users are involved in setting priorities and monitoring development throughout the process and this helps to ensure that the solutions delivered are truly fit for purpose.
As part of our inquiry into government IT we explored how this approach can work and the results have been dramatic. The team spent around £40k to develop a system to reduce fraud, with the Metropolitan Police, and it was ready to be deployed within a matter of weeks rather than the months or years that had previously been expected.
It then hit a road block. In order to be deployed on the network, it was expected to cost around £100k and take six months. If it had followed the traditional approach, these timelines would have been adhered to and factored into the project from the outset. However, because it followed an agile approach (with a system being released every two weeks and being upgraded in line with user requirements) it had it had the full support and active encouragement from the business which proved critical to its eventual deployment.
The possibilities offered by the early deployment of the system were too good to miss. If it was not being used, it would mean that numerous fraudulent identities that could be in circulation would not be tracked. With fraud costing the economy around £30 billion per year and fraudulent identities being used to support all kinds of other criminal activities ranging from terrorism to child exploitation, even a marginal contribution to the reduction would be welcome.
The business users actively championed its deployment and the technical support team obtained a work around solution to avoid the full cost, long timelines initially envisaged. In other words, the early delivery of a fully working system created a sense of urgency, and helped to force early deployment. As one user reflected, 'with agile, there is nowhere to hide because you are constantly delivering'.
The traditional approach to government IT insulates teams from this sense of urgency by building long time lines into the process to the point that government IT rarely fails to disappoint. Fortunately, there is a proven way that allows government to truly drive through innovation by taking advantage of the opportunities technology has to offer.
Sir Ian Magee is a senior fellow of the Institute for Government and co-author of System Error: Fixing the flaws in Government IT
