Whitehall needs more central control of IT, says report

Cross-department schemes could be implemented more efficiently with greater control

Whitehall must centralise control over IT

Better central co-ordination of government IT could greatly improve efficiency and cut costs, according to a study by the Institute for Government.

The study was put together with the help of Michael Bichard, executive director of the think tank and a highly regarded thinker in Whitehall circles.

The report argues that cross-department schemes such as the Operational Efficiency Programme, which aims to cut IT costs, and the Transformational Government scheme, which aims to improve information sharing between departments, could benefit from greater central control.

"The centre is often best placed to tackle issues where the current use of IT inhibits government effectiveness. For example, by standardising the patchwork of systems that have grown up across central government. [these systems] currently operate to different standards and are frequently unable to talk to each other," the report says.

Public sector spending on IT was estimated at £16bn in 2007/08, which represents 4.6 per cent of total Whitehall spending.

Attempts by the centre to promote cross-government IT-based transformation have tended to founder on a combination of line departments’ competing priorities and the centre’s lack of influence, the report says.

One senior Cabinet Office employee explained: “The department always has more troops on the ground… If the department wants to argue, you are lost.”

The problem is that the governance of IT is currently ‘collegial’. With power dispersed between departments, the centre can coordinate only through persuasion and consensus rather than formal mandates.

With a number of other cross public sector schemes already underway or upcoming, including shared services, a green IT scheme, and the government cloud initiative, the report argues better central control could be increasingly beneficial.

There is some degree of co-ordination currently. The Chief Information Officers’ Council, the main central decision-making body, has succeeded in sharing best practices across government and developing strategy, but the difficulties arise with implementation.

"The Council has little capacity or authority to enforce its decisions – even if they could significantly improve the efficiency or effectiveness of government," the report says.

While the CIO Council leads on IT strategy, the Treasury also has a say in how major IT-led business change projects are handled, through the Gateway Reviews carried out by the Office for Government Commerce (OGC).

These reviews are designed to assess the progress of major IT projects and highlight potential problems before they escalate.

But since they are not made public, the report says their impact is difficult to assess, and there are examples of "red" warnings from Gateway reviews being ignored as project managers plough ahead with plans.

The reviews "do not represent a strong enough mechanism for the centre to influence a department’s management of a contracted IT project," according to the Institute for Government.

The report does acknowledge the danger of over-centralising control and says any body should intervene only when necessary.

"Intervention needs to be selective, allowing departments freedom to innovate to achieve benefits in their policy areas, while insisting on savings where the evidence is compelling," it says.