Whitehall urged to rethink IT

Conservatives want government to harness open source

The government is facing growing calls to rethink the way it approaches its large, complex IT projects.

The Conservatives last week suggested decentralising public sector IT procurement and putting a £100m cap on central government IT projects.

Mark Thompson of Cambridge University, who authored a report on the subject for the Tories, said the government could save £600m a year by allowing councils to adopt open-source software.

“Governments and companies around the world are making use of open-source software, and we could achieve much more here in the UK,” he said.

Labour’s time in government since 1997 has been marked by a series of often controversial, major centralised IT programmes, including the £12.7bn National Programme for IT and the £1.1bn Child Support Agency IT scheme.

Many have suffered cost overruns and delays, largely due to overly prescriptive central control and lack of adaptability, according to the report.

“The benefits of deconstructing major complex systems into much smaller simpler components cannot be over-emphasised. It de-risks development and also allows for a more agile approach to change,” says the report.

Local authority IT managers tend to agree.

“With the arrival of web-based applications and open standards there is more interoperability, meaning not all councils have to be on the same systems to communicate,” said Steve Palmer of public sector user group Socitm.

Moving IT projects away from binding contracts with larger IT suppliers and opening them up to smaller firms would be welcomed by industry.

“If their aim is to open up the public sector to smaller and more innovative companies, this is certainly the way to do it,” said Sureyya Cansoy
of IT trade association Intellect.

Graham Taylor, chief executive of OpenForum Europe, said a new approach is long overdue. “If government is to support more effective, more innovative, and more cost-effective IT solutions, it has to wise up to the opportunity offered by open standards and open-source software,” he said.

But a source at one vendor involved with large-scale government IT projects warned that such a move may not be so easy.

“By decentralising procurement you may drive down costs but you still need project oversight. If you do not have a vendor doing that, government has to, and that could lead to disaster,” she said.