Government warned of pitfalls that could derail its ICT strategy

Leading IT pundit tells ministers what to look out for

The government appears to have learned from some of the mistakes of the previous administration judging by its recent ICT strategy. This was the consensus of the panellists at today's Westminster eforum event on efficiency in the public sector.

However, the government should be aware of a number of potential pitfalls that could send its programme off course, according to Michael Cross, a well-known IT journalist who was speaking at the event. He argued:

• One spectacular failure would shred the government's reputation. It must be careful to manage its ongoing big projects carefully.
• The government should watch out for "bureaucratic function creep" that could result in duplication and inefficiency. A current example is the development of the Alpha.gov.uk government web site. This is a site that aims to bring together all the government's citizen-facing activities but it will run alongside the Directgov site, which provides an almost identical function.
• Risk of loss of political nerve. Cross explained that the public may be less positive as the programme progresses: "The IT agenda is exciting currently because it's new and so people want to be associated with it, but things might change when the government starts cutting jobs. Will Martha Lane Fox want her picture next to reports on government IT initiatives then?"
• It might run out of of money
• It should be aware of the potential for data re-use - this could be a political minefield. An example of the sort of damaging story the government will want to avoid was that experienced by the Deutch police, which received speeding and route information from gps company Tom Tom.