A report has lambasted government for its tradition of procuring IT from a handful of giant suppliers – but change won't be easy
Reports by parliamentary select committees are invariably described as "damning", but this one really is. After an exhaustive series of hearings earlier this year, the House of Commons public administration select committee has confirmed the popular perception that the government is an incompetent buyer and user of IT.
The central charge is that governments have "wasted an obscene amount of public money" by buying systems on too large a scale from too few suppliers. One headline-grabbing figure: the Cabinet Office spends £3,664 per desktop computer for every employee.
But what's really damning about the report is where it points the finger – at big IT. The MPs refer to "extremely serious allegations" about an "oligopoly" of giant suppliers who handle the vast majority of central government's IT. The allegations, of anti-competitive behaviour and collusion, were apparently made by smaller companies (SMEs) in a closed session of the inquiry held under the Chatham House rule. The committee calls on the government to commission "an independent, external investigation" into the alleged cartel.
The UK government's fondness for procuring IT from a handful of giant suppliers has long been a matter of record. Five years ago, a landmark academic study by Patrick Dunleavy and Helen Margetts (a witness to the committee) suggested this was a uniquely British phenomenon, and one that correlated with poor performance. Under Labour, officials said they had little choice but to deal with the big boys – the size of government organisations demanded systems that worked on an "industrial scale". The NHS in England even designed its national IT procurements with the explicit aim of attracting large companies rather than the derided "cottage industry" of homegrown specialist suppliers.
Under the new government, "cottage industry" is back in fashion, at least for the moment. Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, has spent the past year renegotiating arrangements with big suppliers. More strategically, he is publishing all contracts. (They started appearing on the Businesslink Contracts Finder website in February). In implementing new government computer projects, the watchword is "agile" a software industry term for breaking up systems into small components, testing them quickly and discarding the ones that fail. All this, in theory, should allow new and innovative entrants to break the oligopoly of suppliers.
However, the committee warns ominously: "There is a strong suspicion that the government will be diverted from its stated policy." One problem is the coalition's drive for efficiency through consolidation and bulk purchasing, which may encourage yet bigger deals.
And, while there is a difference in style, the coalition is just as reliant as Labour was on ambitious IT to make its cherished policies work. Hopes for big efficiency savings rest on making transactions with the government "digital by default", and for public bodies to share networks and call centres. We have ambitions to create a market in online authentication (rather than the cancelled national identity register) and for NHS patients to take control of electronic health records.
Most of all, there is the new universal credit, which will require the tweaking of huge (and technically obsolete) systems on a massive scale. Again, much is riding on the use of "agile" methodology, which the committee commends.
We shall see. As the committee points out, there is an inherent conflict between agility and the desire to consolidate contracts. Agility also implies a readiness to admit when you have got something wrong. Up to now, exposing government IT failings has been a painless ride for the coalition, because they've all been the last lot's fault. As Maude cheerfully admits, transparency is harder when it applies to your own mistakes. Let's get that "independent, external investigation" up and running right away.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/29/government-big-it-report
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