Egovernment yet to initiate fundamental change

Socitm report says local authorities' IT spend still lags behind other sectors

Local egovernment initiatives are improving services to citizens but are still not driving organisational change, according to research published by the Society of IT Management (Socitm).

Over the past five years £13bn has been spent on egovernment targets, says the organisation’s IT Trends in Local Government 2005/06 report, which surveyed 467 IT heads at local authorities across the UK.

There has been a significant growth in IT spending by local authorities, but it is still much lower than in the private sector, according to Socitm IT trends editor John Serle.

‘When you look at areas such as the telecoms sector or the finance industry, they have invested about eight to 10 per cent [of revenue], whereas local government has put in about two to four per cent,’ he said.

Serle says that when targets were established in 1999, there was an expectation among senior ministers that egovernment would transform society.

‘The idea was that it would transform public service provision, but essentially the pace at which things have changed has been a lot slower than people had expected,’ he said.

‘There has been a lot of work on business process improvement, enhancement of what people are doing already. But when you start to look at the use of completely new service delivery models, local authorities are at the bottom end of the scale.’

The report says part of the reason for this lack of fundamental change is that few local authorities have a chief information officer who can effectively push the business case for real change.

‘Essentially, they are told: “these are the decisions that have been taken, what technology can we bring in to do these things?”. We think it should be a dialogue where IT managers sit at the top table and help to deliver new services,’ said Serle.