Ministers have published their strategy to rescue government IT projects from built-in failings and ensure they work in everyone’s interests
The government has published its new IT strategy, which is an easy-to-read and commendably concise document. It focuses on central government, with the aim of creating a common ICT infrastructure and making better use of technology to enable change.
Whitehall’s IT problems have been well documented: too many high-profile and costly failures; long delays; failure to reuse existing investment; lack of involvement of users and customers in design; lack of long-term ownership; and poor project management.
These shortcomings are exacerbated by procurement models that freeze requirements in a way that almost guarantees that projects will provide yesterday’s technology tomorrow. The average procurement takes 77 weeks.
The new strategy appears to draw on the recent Institute for Government Report, System error. This recommended a ‘platform’ approach, coupled with ‘agile development’. ‘Platform’ refers to a shared, government-wide approach to simplifying and standardising IT facilities and services so they can be procured on a commodity basis.
‘Agile development’ is a methodology that allows for more responsiveness to change. It incorporates a modular approach that should include more user involvement and feedback at each stage. This should achieve economies of scale through standardisation, coupled with greater control exercised by breaking projects up into smaller and more manageable modules.
IT also needs to be seen as an enabler of change, the strategy stresses. This is important as one of the reasons often quoted for unsuccessful projects is that business managers view them as solely ‘IT projects’ rather than a means to improve the provision and management of business services. Managers might rely on IT to deliver the business benefits but this does not mean that they can abrogate responsibilities and ownership of the projects to the IT department or to specialist consultants.
There is a ‘presumption’ in the strategy against projects with a lifetime value of more than £100m. There are also plans to make it easier for small to medium-sized businesses to participate in projects. This should help to encourage greater competition and innovation.
There is, however, an inherent conflict in trying to achieve economies of scale and contracting with a much wider range of smaller companies. For example, almost a third of central government contracts, worth about £5bn a year, are with just three companies – HP, BT and Fujitsu.
Surely these ought to be generating economies of scale already? Also, £100m is still a very large project that will be beyond even consortiums of small businesses.
The strategy is good on principles but lacks detail, some of which, it is hoped, will be added through subsidiary documents. For instance, it commits the government to developing an Information Strategy that is supported by an Architecture Framework that will underpin the design of the government’s new information systems.
It also commits to publishing an ICT Capability Strategy within the next six months, which will set out plans for developing and managing IT ‘talent’ and increasing exchange of skills and best practice with the private sector.
Will the strategy improve the success rate of central government IT projects? We all hope so. In 2009, as part of the Operational Efficiency Programme, the Treasury estimated that savings of around £3.2bn – 20% of the £16bn spent annually on government IT – could be achieved without compromising frontline public services.
John Thornton is an independent adviser and writer on business transformation, financial management and innovation
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