E-chief must join up services

The conventional wisdom may be that e-government has failed in its mission to offer "joined-up" government, and has provided a disparate set of web sites and services. However, there has been a more positive reaction to Ian Watmore's appointment as head of e-government.

The role is arguably the most important job in UK IT today and has sent pundits scampering to read the runes of his CV. That résumé is short in employers, but impressive. Since leaving university in 1980 he has worked for one company, Accenture - or two, if its former identity Andersen Consulting is included.

The IT industry welcomes the appointment because Watmore has a stack of hard-won big-project knowledge. His time at the consulting giant has taken him through the UK, Ireland, mainland Europe, the US, South Africa and New Zealand. He has participated in public, private and hybrid projects valued at billions of pounds, including deals with the NHS and Sainsbury's. Watmore's success culminated when he was made UK managing director of Accenture in 2000, with responsibility for 7,000 staff.

He has chaired the E-skills UK IT training agenda and served as president of the Management Consultants Association, and he has worked with other bodies, such as the Council for Industry and Higher Education, and Business in the Community.

The head of e-government role supersedes the role of e-envoy, but the contrast of Watmore's pedigree background and that of outgoing e-envoy Andrew Pinder is striking. Pinder's background was as a civil service careerist, chosen, presumably, because of his knowledge of Whitehall. Watmore, by contrast, offers what Douglas Hayward of Ovum Holway in a research note called "another sign of the close links here [in the UK] between private companies and the state's IT infrastructure".

Watmore also brings a knowledge of public/private partnerships and managing outsourced relationships. As Hayward noted, this should be a boon given the UK's experience of large projects. "We've put great emphasis on improving the planning of projects, the procurement and management of suppliers, the implementation of projects, and the running and enhancement of the completed systems," he said. "We've pioneered the 'intelligent client' approach to service buying, and many public authorities have become relatively sophisticated judges and buyers of IT services."

However, Watmore faces some extremely tough tasks, notably the introduction of the national identity card scheme, the fulfilment of massive NHS and passport projects, and broader issues such as information sharing across departments.

Well before he begins the job in September, the public sector IT management group Socitm is already seeking Watmore's reassurance that local government issues be accorded their full measure of attention.

In an open letter, Socitm president Chris Guest asked that "local government, that vital part of government that actually delivers 80 percent of public services to the citizen, will no longer be overlooked in central government policy-making on e-government". Socitm said that high-profile projects such as the government gateway, UK Online, had not taken into account the needs or budgets of local authorities "thus compromising e-service delivery to a huge section of the public".

Guest notes that deadlines for various projects are adding to e-government project problems. One of the most closely-watched elements of Watmore's reign will be to establish whether the albatross of having all local government services online by the end of 2005 will be killed.