Since joining the Isle of Man government as CIO, Allan Paterson has seen the role of IT change dramatically.

‘Three and a half years ago, the business was pulling IT. Now, IT stands up and says we’ll push through business change,’ he says.

One of the major catalysts for this attitude shift has been the Isle of Man’s joined-up government initiative. Paterson’s team, together with suppliers such as Dimension Data, have built a robust technology architecture to meet the government’s needs. But while the technology is there, the trouble is pushing through political and cultural barriers to make organisation-wide changes.

‘Local government has been given incentives to hit targets – it hit the

targets, but missed the point, so IT must now acknowledge this is not working,’ says Paterson.

He hopes IT can remove the stove-pipe mentality that can easily take hold in companies and local government. For example, he estimates that names and addresses are held in 19 systems across the council because of the way the organisation has evolved.

One of Paterson’s main aims is to create a one-stop shop for citizens. This will mean IT driving the business change rather than responding to business requests. This all fits in with Paterson’s aim to transform IT from being a support function to more of an information department.

Paterson is not eliminating technical skills, but they are changing, particularly as more work is carried out by third parties. ‘Our approach is about enterprise application systems, so there’s less need for development as an in-house skill, it’s more about interoperability and integration.

‘IT skills are about meeting business needs more effectively without having to develop each one,’ he says.

Rather than hire new staff, Paterson has encouraged and stimulated

internal people to fit the new-style IT department and is sending a group on a change management course to help with their new demands. ‘You need a higher level than technical skills. It is important to understand the impact of what they are doing, so one necessary skill is change management. Part of governance is about change and managing that change,’ he says.

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