Farrago, debacle or fiasco?

Hardly a month goes by without a major report by the Audit Commission or a Parliamentary committee on some major foul-up in an important public sector IT system.

If it's not on the civil side of the public sector, such as the passport system, it's on the military side with the digital radio farrago.

This is not some triviality. It involves more than £9bn of public expenditure, the amount government spends on IT in the UK a year. It affects the hundreds of thousands of people inside government, and suppliers of IT products and services to the government.

The fate of public sector IT affects us all as consumers of services and as voters. We all consume public sector services.

The fate of UK public IT systems could even determine the success or failure of this government.

Tony Blair's administration has nailed its colours to the mast to improve public services; education, health, transport and police are juggled daily as the priorities for government action.

Increased productivity

Fail to deliver improvements and the Blair Project implodes. At the heart of many improvements will be IT. The only way to improve the services without everyone being employed in the public sector, and without every penny going into them, will be increased productivity of public service workers. This can only be achieved by more flexible and more appropriate IT support.

Further public sector IT failures will equate to poorer or static public services, which in turn will mean the eventual end of Blair. We tend to punish governments in this country, rather than believe the promises of the opposition.

Part of the reason that there seem to be so many public sector IT screw-ups is that there are lots of them. IT is increasingly complex, and large projects can and do get fouled up.

In the private sector they often remain just that: private. But they cannot be so easily buried in the public sector. It is public. It is our cash. It is under the nominal control of our elected representatives.

There are other, very specific reasons why public sector IT can be a nightmare. It has to do with the attitude of public sector employees and the structure of the sector itself.

First, the employees. Front-line public sector workers quite rightly focus on the problems facing them. If a battered mother stands in front of you with two children, your first concern as a public sector employee should be their welfare. There is a duty of care.

Roll up to a garage with a dodgy off-side front tyre in urgent need of repair, and there is no public duty of care. There is, instead, a commercial transaction.

Commercial sense, or the lack of it

Try to inject a strong commercial sense into the public sector and watch how the service implodes. But such a commercial attitude is essential when dealing with IT vendors. Very often the public sector wants its IT suppliers to accept a large part of the risk without compensating up side.

In short, public sector employees can be poor negotiators and managers of contracts, especially in middle management.

Second, each government department looks after its own neck of the woods. It probably has one big specialised service it delivers which it must focus on. So government always tends to fragment its IT.

Third, while central government may propose and hold the purse strings, it is often local government which delivers the service on tight budgets.

All the e-government envoys in the world will not square these circles. If you know the answer, tell me. If you don't, then we're in for a rocky ride.