Councils call for IT choice

Local authorities are to lobby the government to try to ensure that plans to harmonise service procurement do not lead to inflexibility and project delivery problems.

Kate Mountain, newly appointed chief executive of public sector body Socitm, which represents IT professionals in local authorities, said the government's current plans for local government could lead to severe difficulties.

"As far as national projects are concerned we want to make sure that while we get the benefits of implementing systems and procedures in similar ways, we do not end up with the large contracts typical of central government - where there are very few players and not much choice," she said.

Mountain argued that local authorities have largely managed to avoid the kind of IT disasters that have hit central government in recent years, because they work with a larger number of contractors and can mitigate risk.

Fears were raised following the publication of the government's draft National Strategy for local e-government in June. In the past, local authorities have had complete autonomy to decide which contractors to use on large-scale projects, such as building council tax systems. But there are signs that this situation may change. A recent project to redesign systems for the Land and Property Gazetteer, which records ownership of land and buildings, assigned a single contractor to a number of local authorities, according to Mountain.

"While the government's aims are quite right, it would appear that (it is) going down the route of implementing mega-contracts," Mountain said.

"(The resulting) lack of choice means that prices will rise and will lead to problems if the contract is not working well."

She said she agreed that consistent standards were needed, but that limiting the choice of suppliers would create more problems than advantages. "Of course it is crucial that we have the same standards that will comply with our data sets and recognise them, but we should implement locally the right contractual arrangements," she said. "When you get into these very large contracts, they tend to take on a life of their own."

The government has promoted national projects by giving grants to local authorities that are involved in partnerships with neighbouring authorities.

"That's part of the reason why local authorities are more successful than central government in IT delivery," Mountain said

Mountain also predicted that more IT vendors and service providers would try to win business in the public sector, due to the depressed state of IT budgets in the commercial sector, but that a lack of experience in this field would lead to poor performance. This happened a decade ago, when many suppliers failed to deliver on their promises, she said.

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