Liam Maxwell: 'We need to reset our relationship with technology'

Government CTO signals the end of big outsourcing contracts to the likes of CSC and Capgemini, and bemoans the situation he was left in by his predecessor

Liam Maxwell, the UK government CTO, has used his keynote at IP Expo today to describe the philosophy behind his digital transformation of public services, whilst also criticising the situation he inherited in 2012.

Maxwell said that when he came into the position "every department was in its own silo, with different brands, different ways of approaching the same things, and a general confusion about what was happening".

He gave the example of government publishing, with over 300 websites being operated across the organisation, which was "confusing for citizens".

"The only thing they had in common was that they had nothing in common," he argued.

He was similarly critical of the amount the government used to spend on IT, and of its procurement process.

"In 2009 we spent £16bn on IT, that's one per cent of the UK economy. That's a lot of money, I've never even seen a billion pounds," he quipped.

Describing the way IT contracts used to be awarded, he said: "In 2010 the [IT] supply chain consisted of a large amount of work done by a very small number of companies," before presenting a graphic that showed that all those firms are based around London.

"This was largely because of the tortuous procurement process. Today the supply chain is over 300 businesses across the UK, and we don't have contracts in excess of £100m in value."

And in an announcement which will be concerning to the large, traditional suppliers of huge outsourced IT programmes to the UK government, such as CSC and Capgemini, Maxwell stated that he wanted to see an end of "big IT".

"No more big IT. There is no more space for large outsourced IT programmes. We want to give people the right tools for government. We want departments to choose the devices they want, with services delivered through the cloud using a browser. Give them the tools they want to work with rather than providing these monolithic tools they have to use. That's government as a platform.

"We want to deliver things that aren't just cheaper, but better."

He added that these policies have resulted in savings of £1.3bn in the past year.

Maxwell repeated his mantra of "government as a platform", which he described as shared services working from a centre.

"So there's one platform for publishing, one platform for identification, and these are common services delivered from a centre, allowing departments to get on with their own mission."

Computing asked if Maxwell intended to encourage a greater use of open source tools in central government, as this is a policy that Minister for the Cabinet Office Francis Maude has backed in the past.

But Maxwell was unwilling to give it his full approval, instead saying he wanted to see the most appropriate tools used, rather than worrying over its origin or licensing model.

"We want a level playing field for open source," he said. "It's about competition, not about prescription. We want departments to use software that's right for the job, and open standards that are right for the job. Sometimes people say they want to go down an open source route, but actually it's better to choose what's right for the situation."