Government's ICT plan details how it will save £1.4bn by 2015

The Strategic Implementation Plan puts meat on the bones of the government's March ICT strategy

The government has announced a Strategic Implementation Plan (SIP) for its ICT strategy, which Francis Maude, the minister for the Cabinet Office, argues will deliver about £1.4bn in savings within the next four years.

The strategy was created by government CIO Joe Harley, deputy CIO Bill McCluggage and the CIO delivery board on which they sit.

The report should be read in conjunction with the previous ICT strategy, released in March, and may satisfy some of the critics of that report who argued that although its vision was sound it was thin on detail.

This 70-page document gives a detailed breakdown of how the reforms are going to be delivered and follows an announcement in August that the government's ICT strategy had already delivered £300m between August 2010 and August 2011.

Successful implementation of this strategy is projected to see increased savings year on year, with more than £460m in savings forecast for 2014/15.

This SIP report aims to provide a path for delivery of the following core objectives of the March strategy: it will create a common ICT infrastructure; use ICT to enable and deliver change; and strengthen governance.

The report also looks at the challenges, objectives and provides milestones for a number of key deliverables, including increased standardisation, use of open source, cloud computing, datacentres, end-user devices and the Public Services Network (PSN).

It also gives a breakdown of the savings expected to come from several of these. When compared with datacentres, end-user devices, the cloud and the App Store, the PSN is consistently expected to deliver most savings - at £30m, £130m and £130m in 2012-13, 2013-14 and 2014-15, respectively. The cloud and the App Store only deliver marginal savings initially - nothing in 2012, £20m in 2013-14, rising to £120m in 2014-15.

The report claims several key strategy actions have already been undertaken, including:

• The Development of the Assets and Services Knowledgebase, due for release in October.
• The restructuring of the Government Procurement Service, which expects to see cost reductions of more than 25 per cent by the end of March 2013.
• A number of bodies have been created, including the Open Source Implementation Group, System Integrator Forum and an online Government Open Solutions Forum (referred to in the Strategy as the Open Source Advisory Panel), the aim of which is to break down the technical and cultural barriers that prevent the use of open source solutions across government.
• Guidance on the presumption against government ICT projects valued at more than £100m has been drafted and is due to be published shortly.
• Baseline standards for the PSN have been delivered and the first PSN services are operational in Kent and Hampshire County Councils.
• An informal consultation to crowd source feedback on open standards has taken place.
• A director of ICT Futures, Liam Maxwell, has been appointed and has begun work to horizon scan and improve capability to identify risks and exploit new technologies.

The Cabinet Office will also release four more detailed reports by the end of October. The reports will look at end-user devices, cloud, ICT capability and greening government ICT strategies.

Commenting on the report, Sureyya Cansoy, director of public sector for the trade association for the UK's technology sector, Intellect, was positive: "This plan sets out how the government intends to deliver on its ambitions to harness the power of ICT to deliver modern public services.

"The ICT industry particularly welcomes the commitment to creating a competitive market for government ICT, which will enable companies of all size to bring exciting and innovative solutions to the table.

"The industry has promoted the need for government to move away from demanding bespoke systems to a more standardised approach to buying and we welcome the commitment in the plan to make this change.

"The big opportunities for government lie in using ICT to enable new ways of delivering public services. This is where the real savings and improvements are to be found, and government needs to work in partnership with the industry to take full advantage of these opportunities."