NHS IT is mothballed as Brown launches efficiency plan

Brown says services moved online will deliver over £600m in savings, while chancellor calls time on NPfIT

Brown wants to put more services online

Gordon Brown has said a huge swathe of public services will be moved online in an initiative that will save £600m.

These services will include student loans, Jobseeker's Allowance, child tax credits and child benefit services.

The move is part of a wider plan announced today that aims to deliver an £3bn in government savings, and will see a shake-up of the £12.7bn NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT).

The efficiency savings, which will mean some spending cuts in practice, are in addition to the £35bn savings to come from the current spending round and the £9bn identified in the last budget, £3bn of which are due to be made in IT.

Gordon Brown said today: “Our task now is to develop government that will work in partnership with individuals and communities to deliver the services people want in the way they want them and to preserve them in the face of all the challenges this new era presents.”

The plan also includes rollout of the "Tell Us Once" scheme. This will reduce the number of agencies citizens have to contact in the case of a birth from two to one, and in the case of a death from seven to one.

These measures will mean reductions in the number of frontline civil service staff. Pay at more senior levels of the civil service will also be capped.

In addition, performance data for all departments will be published online by 2011 to help citizens assess the quality of public services.

The government also plans to invest £30m over three years to get a further one million people online to access these services. This money will be particularly targeted at mothers, older people, the unemployed and those without the skills to use the internet.

The public sector will also see a reduction in consultancy spending of 50 per cent and marketing and communications spend of 25 per cent, saving £650m.

Some of the proposals have been cherry picked from Conservative policies, in cluding the consultancy caps and the cuts in the National Programme for IT.

The Conservatives are targeting IT as a symbol of government waste and last week they launched a consultation on a leaked version of the government IT strategy.

This weekend, shadow cabinet minister Francis Maude sent a formal letter to civil service chief and cabinet secretary Sir Gus O'Donnel demanding a moratorium on "preemptive" IT contract signings ahead of the General Election expected next May.

The Conservatives also released a statement criticising waste in the the National Programme for IT - after chancellor Alistair Darling signalled yesterday that the scheme would be scaled back as part of the government's new efficency drive.

He said: "[The scheme] was something that I think we don't need to go ahead with just now".

The National Programme for IT has already been subject to numerous revisions but mothballing it completely would necessitate large compensation payments to suppliers.

The Department of Health was unable to provide further details this morning.

"The Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Health have examined options for savings on the NHS IT system and more details will be set out in due course, " said a spokeswoman.