Whitehall-wide IT strategy 'hard to implement'

Government plans for a Whitehall-wide IT strategy are a good idea but will be hard to put into practice, says experts.

The Common Systems Strategy, leaked to Computing last week, outlines proposals to 'transform government, following key examples from the commercial sector, into a common systems based organisation.'

Key elements of the plan include re-engineering departmental business processes in line with off-the-shelf software for adminstrative functions and development of common datasets to improve information sharing.

The strategy sounds good, but implementation will be a mammoth task, says Georgina O'Toole, analyst at Ovum Holway.

'Government falls down because it comes up with big IT ideas but rarely talks about how they are going to manage the change involved, not just in IT but in how the people work.

'Re-engineering business processes is not an easy thing to achieve and once again there is very little talk of change management.

'The government certainly won't be able to achieve this on their own and will have to bring in external people to help them so it may end up being very expensive in the short term,' she said.

Greater standardisation would be an important step forward for government, says Mike Davis, senior research analyst at Butler Group.

'We don't want one big system running the whole of government but we need fewer systems, greater standardisation and clearer interchange of information for public good.

'Where it will all come unstuck, as always, is that every department is its own fiefdom and likes to do things its own way,' he said.

Data protection and issues around innovation need to be resolved, says Liberal Democrat IT spokesman Richard Allan.

'Potential lock-in to enormous contracts can cause as many problems as standardisation resolves if it is at the expense of any form of innovation.

'Common datasets is a huge issue and public sensitivity will be enormous. It's a question of who sets the rules, and it must be the public,' he said.