Minister hints at upcoming IT strategy
The e-government minister has pointed to a greater focus on customer oriented e-government services, shared services and IT professionalism.
Speaking during a Westminster Hall debate last week, Cabinet Office minister Jim Murphy said there were four challenges in the implementation of the Cabinet Office's digital transformation strategy, due in November - ambition, efficiency, delivery and relevancy.
"We are the most ambitious in scale in respect of the IT challenge, be it managing the huge IT estate systems of our recently merged revenue departments, or creating and managing 60 million electronic health records across dozens of organisations," he said.
He added that the public sector spent an £14 billion a year on IT, and called for "vigilance" to ensure the government did not duplicate infrastructure and applications. Relevancy was also vital, he said:
"We live in a world in which the old political contract between a deferential citizen and a paternalistic Government cannot deliver. We want a more grown-up relationship. We recognise the need for citizens to have both choice and voice; choice in how they use public services and a voice in how those services are created around them."
Murphy acknowledged that the government had been "dogged" past IT delivery failures but said the " the vast majority" of government IT systems worked.
He added the strategy aimed to create a "personal service," tailored to an individuals needs, and he again reiterated a commitment to joined up government to deliver shared services.
"The transformation to which we aspire will only occur if we adopt a new approach to joined-up service delivery across the public sector, one that will break down the silo culture of delivery. Departments that share corporate services such as HR and finance could create 20 per cent efficiency savings. Shared services also mean building more effective links between central Government and local government and the wider public sector," he said.
And professionalism, he said, was at the heart of the transformation strategy. "I sense that many IT professionals have had a series of jobs rather than a clear career path. That must change," he said, adding that if the strategy was to be a success "empowered front-line staff" were vital.
He also looked to the "untapped resources" of voluntary organisations, and hinted that they would play a larger role in the new strategy. Informal networks, he said, has access to large groups of people and were trusted as objective. "We should seek ways to enable them - and IT, at least in part, does that," he said.
