The business of Government is a very complex affair. Although there are some similarities with a commercial enterprise there are also a great many differences. A commercial company sets out to deliver a given service or manufacture a product. A bank keeps, invests and moves money around. A Car manufacturer produces cars. A supermarket sells foodstuffs. A government on the other had has all sorts of different areas of business that are often as specialised as any of the above mentioned businesses. For example, a local authority has to provide a range of services ranging from rubbish collection to providing social care packages for extremely vulnerable residents. Also, as this work is funded through tax payer money there has to be a very complicated system of democratic oversight. Perhaps unsurprisingly, IT has come to be central to keeping this very diverse business functioning.
In many ways, the needs of commercial organisations and the IT systems they have make a poor fit for the more diverse requirements of government. Enterprise software is very complex and, by definition, specialised. Banks have well established systems for moving money around. By contrast, a government is going to need many very large and specialised software systems. However, there will be a relatively small market for them. This has contributed to a number of the very high profile IT procurement and implementation disasters that make the national news on an all too regular basis.
Thus, public sector IT professionals are left with an almost impossible set of circumstances where they need to deliver highly complex and frequently very bespoke solutions to a relatively small market.
The most common attitude is to view IT as purely a business cost and so outsource it. There are even elements where the company to which the IT provision is outsourced further outsources the actual delivery of the software so they can concentrate on their “core business” of providing consultancy. The practical upshot of this is a very complex set of contractual relationships where clear responsibility for service delivery is so far removed from the front line users that everyone experiences a poor service and the cost to the taxpayer is very high as well. The NHS National Program for IT was a particularly egregious example of this sort of problem.
Another big problem is that the major decision makers both amongst the elected members and the civil service frequently have an incomplete understanding of how IT systems can best be harnessed to serve the needs of government. This frequently leads to focussing on technology rather than business need which then leads to the wrong and frequently poor value technology decisions.
An example of this was the last government's ID card scheme. They awarded a huge contract to a supplier who would then collate vast amounts of personal data on a single database along with an untested “Smart card” ID to be carried by everyone. This proposal would have proven totally unworkable as well as providing a huge security risk in that the central database would be very vulnerable to abuse. Once again, the security concerns focussed on preventing unauthorized third parties from having access to the database while evidence is that most security breaches are the result of poor practise amongst those who have legitimate access to the data.
More recently, the roll out of passports with RFID chips in them has encouraged the Borders Agency to seek to make savings by deploying automated readers. This is highly inefficient and has been a major factor in the problems experienced by people at points of entry to the country.
There have been some success stories which, by virtue of their success do not get wide media coverage. In the wake of a major loss of data at the Inland Revenue as it was then, a method to allow accredited agencies to exchange data securely called the Government Connects Secure Extranet was developed.. Any organisation can, assuming they meet the necessary criteria, get a connection to this network which is independent of the Internet as a whole and so can be considered trusted to exchange data electronically. This has had a huge impact on easing the sharing of data between agencies and departments.
Clearly, there are major problems with IT provision in government. These have their roots in the issues outlined above. The solution will require a lot of rethinking of how IT systems are used and what influence they have on the business of government. The points below provide a basis looking at better ways of delivering IT.
1. IT is central to delivery of government and so technology decisions need to be at the core of any legislation that changes the way government works.
2. Government needs to retain full strategic control of all aspects of it's IT provision
3. Officers and Members need to be acutely aware of the principle of “Best Value” when procuring IT systems and not be overly wedded to one model of delivery without a sound basis for holding that decision.
4. Initial specification and procurement of systems are the most critical parts of any IT project.
5. Cooperation and collaboration can provide many advantages but they need to be managed very carefully.
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