Calls for more transparency in ICT procurement

Some 43 per cent of CIOs say current ICT strategy is not ambitious enough

Most attendees agreed that central government ICT projects would have to be reduced in size

A new government looking to procure ICT needs to “start small, scale fast and have regular proof-of-delivery checks”, according to the head of the IT industry association's government group Intellect, Janet Grossman.

Grossman, who was talking at a SAP hosted roundtable on Redesigning the Public Sector, has also worked as chief operating officer for the Department of Work and Pensions.

Much of the roundtable debate was around how government should procure IT services going forward and most attendees agreed that central government ICT projects would have to be reduced in size and made available to small and medium-sized IT suppliers.

However, Grossman argued that the procurement process was biased in favour of the few giants that currently deliver ICT to government departments.

“Applying for a contract can cost as much as £12m and the contract is sometimes pulled 18 months into delivery. This is too risky and job threatening for smaller companies – they simply can’t accommodate this,” she said.

“Large incumbents [tend to] win because they have established relationships.”

She continued: “Then there is the problem of there being a preferred suppliers list. But to make government IT innovative and successful, entrants of all sizes need to be able to apply.”

“Open transparency would smarten and tidy up procurement,” she added.

Key themes within public sector IT debate

There are a number of key themes being debated within public sector IT in the run-up to the general election, many of which were discussed at the roundtable.

• The Tories are putting a great deal of emphasis on the wisdom of the crowd, with an explicit reference to the use of “crowd sourcing” – a form of distributed outsourcing – in their manifesto released yesterday.

However, Simon Godfrey, director of government relations at SAP UK, said that according to a survey of 100 public sector chief information officers (CIOs), this is not something people are interested in just yet – with only five per cent seeing value in it.

• Gordon Brown said at the launch of Labour's manifesto that technology must be used to join up policy and delivery and both main parties agree on the need for shared services across government.

• Smaller government is being promoted by the Tories – who say they will have a “presumption against” any IT contracts of more than £100m. This runs alongside the “smarter government” approach of the Labour party, which argues for shared services and greater collaboration between departments.

• There are also debates around free and paid-for ICT services. SAP’s Godfrey said: “Open source applications should sit on a layer above a deeply integrated and paid-for system. This is the way free and paid-for services should sit together.”

Report says public ICT strategy in not ambitious enough

The roundtable coincided with the release of a SAP poll of 100 public sector IT directors and CIOs.

Some 43 per cent said they felt current ICT strategy was not ambitious enough, with a least 71 per cent saying that it needs to be more ambitious to achieve its goals.

Half of respondents believe that the key focus areas in the short term need to be on simplifying and sharing ICT business processes and on reducing complexity between different networks and departments.

Some 45 per cent of respondents say a lack of key human and technology resources are their biggest obstacle to achieving ICT progress. However, Grossman said that in light of the fact that two thirds of the government’s costs are labour, it should make “considerable cuts” to headcounts across departments.