When Stephen Timms was appointed chief secretary to the Treasury in the Cabinet reshuffle in May, the technology sector hailed him as ideally positioned to take IT concerns to the heart of government.
And with the Chancellor increasingly looking to IT-enabled changes to improve value for money and help balance the books, the chief secretary’s background will not go to waste.
With 15 years of IT experience before becoming an MP, and a stint as ecommerce minister at the Department of Trade and Industry, Timms is the first member of the Cabinet with a technology background.
Such experience will be invaluable to the central role of the chief secretary in overseeing the spending review process for setting departmental budgets.
Whitehall is currently engaged in the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) for the period 2008-11. The Treasury watchword is efficiency, and IT will be of critical importance.
‘The public spending envelope will be very tightly constrained in the next few years to conform with the macroeconomic policy framework that has underpinned the stability in the economy over the past few years,’ Timms told Computing.
‘This underlines the importance of IT-enabled transformation in making it possible for us to continue the improvements we have seen in public services over the past few years while maintaining the new stability that is the bedrock of our economic success,’ he said.
As background to the CSR settlements, to be published next summer, the Treasury is leading work on what the government considers to be the five major challenges facing the country over the coming decade: the effects of an ageing population; climate change; globalisation; the quickening pace of technology’s economic impact; and continued global political uncertainty.
The idea is to use the studies to ensure that plans are sufficiently forward -looking and have enough time to be successfully put into practice.
But with departmental budgets expected to be flat or even reduced, back-office processes must be streamlined and administration budgets squeezed to continue to meet spending targets on major policy initiatives.
‘We have a commitment to a proportion of government spending on health, education and transport, but to give us the headroom to continue that, other departments, particularly where there is a big administrative element, are going to need to achieve improvements in efficiency,’ said Timms.
The concept of shared services – where multiple organisations use common administrative systems such as human resources and finance – is a major theme from both the Treasury and the Cabinet Office eGovernment Unit (eGU) in discussions about improving efficiency.
Timms says the traditional silo mentality of Whitehall departments, which has proved such a stumbling block to joined-up government in the past, will be overcome by financial necessity.
‘The incentive in departments will be: how are they going to be able to improve efficiency, particularly in administration, to keep within the financial constraints and also continue to invest in frontline services?’ he said.
Never before have Whitehall’s technology investments attracted such strategic interest.
Sir David Varney, whose review of public service delivery channels was announced in the Budget, has now left his job as chairman of HM Revenue and Customs to become the Chancellor’s full-time adviser.
Varney’s report, which complements the eGU Whitehall-wide IT strategy, will be produced in time to inform the Pre-Budget Report due in the autumn, says Timms.
The chief secretary acknowledges the significant challenge of placing such reliance on public sector IT implementation and the business change that it underpins.
But the government has learned lessons from past debacles, and the length of the CSR period allows enough room to plan effectively, he says.
‘We have a growing number of IT successes around government,’ said Timms.
‘This is not a rushed process. It will be properly planned and we are taking time to make sure we get the plans right.’
As chairman of a Cabinet sub-committee on egovernment, Timms is keen to ensure that ideas and best practice are shared at the highest levels.
‘The committee is a forum to learn the lessons to ensure we maximise the success and impact of the substantial investment we are making in IT,’ he said.
‘Ministers across the government are involved in this. It is the bread and butter of their work,’ Timms added.
Call to change economic stats
* Trade body Intellect and business group the Institute of Directors are campaigning for the government to change the statistical indicators used to measure economic growth.
* New metrics are needed to reflect changes in the economy and ensure that the impact of technology is taken into account.
* When the report was published in May, supporters called for the agenda to be promoted by Stephen Timms, newly appointed chief secretary to the Treasury.
* Timms says the idea of new statistical indicators is good, but may not be practical in the short term.
* ‘Intellect’s report raised some important and helpful issues, but we are bit constrained because our data needs to be compatible with that which is published across the European Union,’ he told Computing.
* ‘If we are looking for additional information it would have to be extra, and at a time of constrained spending there are limitations on what we can do,’ he said.
* Intellect is involved in discussions with Treasury officials.
Related stories
reader comments