Focus on the success stories in public sector IT projects

Public sector IT is growing 30 times faster than the private sector, according to Ovum Holway.

With nine per cent annual growth and an estimated £7bn up for grabs, spending on so-called egovernment has been a Godsend in a desperately reduced market.

The wider business community may have other reasons to thank the drive for egovernment; reasons that are given precious little recognition outside county halls and government departments.

Some of today's projects will act as working pilots of innovative ideas, which will be exploited for future business use.

Today's Computing feature looks at areas like broadband services and smartcards, where the public sector is engaged in cutting-edge projects.

In the best councils, organisations and government departments, we are seeing excellent and challenging ideas, pursued with enthusiasm and keeping to tight budgets.

IT in eprocurement, for example, are making provable savings for the taxpayer and promise much more to come.

It's not just the technology where the advances are being made.

The business models and management practices have dramatically improved over recent years.

Read today's pages and it is clear that many in the public sector have grasped the idea of real partnership with the IT industry for huge mutual gains.

What we bring you today is, of course, just a snapshot of projects that are working.

We could of course have taken the opposite line and brought you a ream of disasters.

There are plenty of failed projects to chose from and lots of organisations that have paid lip service to the 2005 egovernment deadlines or have found it impossible to adapt bureaucratic thinking to new ideas.

We believe that learning from mistakes is important - but emulating success seems so much more positive.

Public sector IT registers at all in the minds of citizens - and certainly much of the media - it is for failure and mismanagement.

That's neither fair nor realistic. If we want public sector reform, there is no alternative to working together to harness the transforming potential of technology.