Whitehall needs more central control of IT, says report

Tom Young, Computing, Tuesday 19 January 2010 at 17:49:00

Cross-department schemes could be implemented more efficiently with greater
control

Better central co-ordination of government IT could greatly improve
efficiency and cut costs, according to a study by the Institute for Government.

The
study
was put together with the help of Michael Bichard, executive director of the
think tank and a highly regarded thinker in Whitehall circles.

The report argues that cross-department schemes such as the Operational
Efficiency Programme, which aims to cut IT costs, and the Transformational
Government scheme, which aims to improve information sharing between
departments, could benefit from greater central control.

"The centre is often best placed to tackle issues where the current use of IT
inhibits government effectiveness. For example, by standardising the patchwork
of systems that have grown up across central government. [these systems]
currently operate to different standards and are frequently unable to talk to
each other," the report says.

Public sector spending on IT was estimated at �16bn in 2007/08, which
represents 4.6 per cent of total Whitehall spending.

Attempts by the centre to promote cross-government IT-based transformation
have tended to founder on a combination of line departments? competing
priorities and the centre?s lack of influence, the report says.

One senior Cabinet Office employee explained: ?The department always has more
troops on the ground? If the department wants to argue, you are lost.?

The problem is that the governance of IT is currently ?collegial?. With power
dispersed between departments, the centre can coordinate only through persuasion
and consensus rather than formal mandates.

With a number of other cross public sector schemes already underway or
upcoming, including shared services, a green IT scheme, and the government cloud
initiative, the report argues better central control could be increasingly
beneficial.

There is some degree of co-ordination currently. The Chief Information
Officers? Council, the main central decision-making body, has succeeded in
sharing best practices across government and developing strategy, but the
difficulties arise with implementation.

"The Council has little capacity or authority to enforce its decisions ? even
if they could significantly improve the efficiency or effectiveness of
government," the report says.

While the CIO Council leads on IT strategy, the Treasury also has a say in
how major IT-led business change projects are handled, through the Gateway
Reviews carried out by the Office for Government Commerce (OGC).

These reviews are designed to assess the progress of major IT projects and
highlight potential problems before they escalate.

But since they are not made public, the report says their impact is difficult
to assess, and there are examples of "red" warnings from Gateway reviews being
ignored as project managers plough ahead with plans.

The reviews "do not represent a strong enough mechanism for the centre to
influence a department?s management of a contracted IT project," according to
the Institute for Government.

The report does acknowledge the danger of over-centralising control and says
any body should intervene only when necessary.

"Intervention needs to be selective, allowing departments freedom to innovate
to achieve benefits in their policy areas, while insisting on savings where the
evidence is compelling," it says.

Full story at http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/news/2256401/whitehall-needs-central-control