The Cabinet Office’s IT plans

The possibilities of better use of technology to improve government have often come up on this site, so readers may find of interest what the Cabinet Office’s Draft Structural Reform Plan (a set of priorities for each department) says on the matter:

3.1 Increase powers of CIO to drive the integration and improve value for money of ICT infrastructure
i. Set up infrastructure for new CIO office and increase central CIO powers
ii. Start the roll out cross-departmental asset register on a common ICT infrastructure
iii. Publish performance details on all ICT projects above £1m

3.2 Conduct negotiations with suppliers to reduce annual ICT spend immediately

3.3 Create new procurement process with Treasury
i. Identify cross-department pipeline of upcoming /ongoing tenders/negotiations through the moratorium and project review
ii. Agree with Treasury conditions under which a project is “released” from moratorium
iii. Work with OGC to develop a new approach to ICT procurement enabling greater use of SMEs, a much shorter timescale and lower costs to all parties

3.4 Identify ICT projects/programmes to terminate and organise/assure decommissioning
i. Support Department for Education and Home Office in decommissioning / reshaping Contact Point and ID Cards
ii. Identify computer systems for decommissioning, then conduct decommissioning with departments

3.5 Create new processes for commissioning and running IT projects and services

i. Create level playing field for open source software and consider government cloud computing
ii. Establish government wide open standards (including those relating to security)
iii. Establish IT skunk works team to assess and develop faster ways of developing ICT
iv. Publish guidance on the £100m maximum contract size and the aspiration to reduce the scale of large ICT projects

3.6 Devise a government-wide strategy on digital engagement and enablement

The £100m cap on individual IT contracts along with open standards and a level playing fields for open source software could bring huge changes in the way government ITis procured and works (or, more to the point, doesn’t work). Writing good plans is easy of course; changing reality is rather tougher. Early signs, such as the open government licence, have been promising though.