1 Government and IT
- "A recipe for rip-offs": Further report
1. We reported to the House on Government and
IT - "A recipe for rip-offs": time for a new approach
in our Twelfth Report of Session 2010-12, published on 28 July
2011 as HC 715. We received the Government response to that report
in late October 2011.[1]
2. In our report, we expressed concern about the
Government's over-reliance on an "oligopoly" of large
suppliers; the costs and risks arising from skills gaps within
Whitehall; the problems arising from legacy information technology
(IT) systems; and weaknesses in the Government's capacity to plan
and drive through wholesale change in the way it uses and exploits
IT in delivering public services.
3. We also explored some possible ways in which the
delivery of public services online could be reformed—and
transformed—through a combination of data release, giving
individuals control of their own personal records, engaging users
(both within and outside Government) in the design of services,
and opening up the online delivery of services to a wider range
of organisations.
4. We have deferred publication of the Government's
response until now in order to take advice on the Government's
progress. In December 2011, the National Audit Office published
its first review of the Government's progress in implementing
its Information and Communications Technology (ICT) strategy (the
NAO report).[2] We have
found the NAO report very helpful in considering the Government's
response to our report. We also sought the views of Professor
Helen Margetts at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of
Oxford, a witness to our initial inquiry and of Professor Patrick
Dunleavy and Jane Tinkler of the Public Policy Group, London School
of Economics; and of Dr Mark Thompson of the Judge Business School,
University of Cambridge. We are grateful to all of them for their
assistance. Their advice to us is appended to this report.
5. We commend
the Government for its generally constructive and proactive response
to our report.
6. In its response, the Government outlines substantial
positive activity to address the well-known and historic problems
associated with government IT projects, and we are encouraged
by the NAO's finding that "the leadership, governance and
compliance mechanisms for delivery are different to those from
the past and have the potential to deliver benefits".[3]
This is a promising start to a programme described by the Public
Accounts Committee as 'very ambitious'.[4]
7. The Government appears to have maintained this
initial momentum in implementing its IT strategy. The NAO report
found that the majority of actions due for completion by September
2011 had been delivered on time, with only two out of 17 delayed.[5]
The Government's response suggests that the Government is also
taking concrete action to address almost all the points and concerns
identified in our Report.
8. In its response, the Government explicitly agrees
with almost two thirds of our report's recommendations. However,
this also serves to highlight those areas where the Government's
response fails to engage with some of our recommendations, particularly
around benchmarking, legacy systems and capacity/capability gaps.
We urge the Government to produce further detail, and a more coherent
demonstration of how the various initiatives discussed in the
report will work together to progress the wider strategic issues
identified in our report. Effective leadership, and clear and
specific implementation plans, will be crucial in ensuring that
officials across Whitehall understand why they are being asked
to do things differently, as well as how, if new ways of working
are to be embraced and understood for the long term. The Cabinet
Office is not itself a large IT-using department, and historically
it had struggled to drive change within those departments with
long-standing and deeply embedded relationships with large suppliers.[6]
We understand from the NAO report that awareness of the aims and
benefits of the Strategy amongst senior civil servants outside
the IT profession also remains low.[7]
In line with our recommendation for a stronger centre of government,
we look to the Cabinet Office to be more proactive and engaged
with departmental IT programmes.
9. We will continue to follow the Government's implementation
of its IT Strategy with keen interest, as it touches on our other
areas of interest in the Big Society, civil service skills in
procurement and commissioning, and the growing links between the
public, private and voluntary sectors.
Oligopoly of large suppliers and
benchmarking
10. We reported on allegations about anti-competitive
and collusive behaviour by some large suppliers, and we recommended
that the Government establish an independent external investigation
to determine whether there is substance to these claims. We are
disappointed that the Government does not address this recommendation
in its response, and we expect to return to this point in a future
inquiry.
11. We also concluded that a lack of up-to-date and
accurate information about government IT made it impossible for
the Government to identify potential overcharging, leading to
the waste of an obscene amount of public money. In addition to
an independent investigation into allegations of cartel-like behaviour,
we recommended that the Government work with "independent
and specialist advisers and the NAO" to "seek to identify
reliable and comparable cost benchmarks, and collect accurate
information from departments in order to compare with those benchmarks."[8]
The Cabinet Office's commitment
to benchmarking through transparent data, as outlined in the Government's
response, will help to quantify the gap between high and low cost
products and services, but without the independent external advice
which we recommended to identify reliable cost comparisons, the
overall outcome will not change, and the Government will not achieve
its cost reduction agenda.
Legacy systems
12. The Government's proposal to put 'wrappers' around
legacy systems so that they can continue to be used within a new
common ICT infrastructure avoids the core of our recommendation
that it develop a strategy to deal with issues arising from legacy
systems. Many existing legacy systems are large, and business-critical
to the work of departments: changes to them are complex, expensive
and risky. We understand that most such systems are already patchworks
of overlapping 'wrappers', reflecting previous efforts to deal
with the issue in a similar way.[9]
Such 'wrappers' are not a long-term solution: maintaining and
integrating these systems is extremely costly for the departments
involved, and reduces, rather than increases, the scope for flexible
service provision. Although dealing with legacy issues has up-front
costs and risks, these risks can be mitigated by dual running
of old and new systems, and staged migration to the new systems.
Risks associated with maintaining ageing systems indefinitely
are hard to quantify or to mitigate. There are also likely to
be cost-savings to be made from decommissioning and replacing
old systems with newer, more modern and streamlined systems.[10]
We are
not convinced that the Government's approach to legacy systems
properly addresses the underlying issues. At the very least,
the Government should produce a long term risk-register identifying
where and when investment will be needed to migrate and replace
existing legacy systems. We expect to return to this issue in
a later inquiry.
Capability within Government
13. Our report found a number of gaps in the Government's
IT skills and capacity. Government must integrate procurement
and management of IT contracts. It must also integrate IT considerations
into the policy-making process, to reflect the aim of making public
services 'digital by default'.
14. Much Government IT expertise was outsourced in
the 1990s. The Government now lacks a cadre of high-quality in-house
IT professionals. In our report, we commended the Government's
developing Technology in Business Fast Stream, which aims to build
this capability. We are grateful for the Government's update on
the progress of this scheme. We note the new ICT Capability Strategy
published in October 2011 offers a 'blueprint' for career development
within the wider Government IT profession.[11]
15. These are long-term measures, which will not
address current needs. The recent NAO report found that the Government
had not yet established a baseline for the ICT professional resources
required in order to implement its ICT Strategy, and key immediate
skills gaps remained.[12]
It also lacked a resource plan for delivering the Strategy: the
NAO concluded that Government will need to more than double the
existing number of staff working on the IT Strategy if it is to
deliver the projects in the implementation plan.[13]
16. We welcome
and endorse the Government's acknowledgement of the need to grow
its capacity in commercial skills of procuring and managing contracts,
not just technical IT skills, in order to become an 'intelligent
customer'.[14]
Specific training for
the Senior Civil Service in technology policy will also be welcome,
as will the growth of a network of 'champions' of agile development.
However, it is not clear from the Government's response to our
report that its actions will be adequate to cope with the scale
of behavioural and process change required across the whole of
Government, nor that the agile 'champions' will have sufficient
seniority, expertise or support.
Innovative service provision
17. Our report highlighted four areas in which the
Government could use IT to transform and improve public services:
- release of public data;
- adoption of open standards;
- changes to personal data ownership; and
- engaging users in service design.
18. We are pleased that the Government agrees with
many of our recommendations in this area, and is taking concrete
action to increase access to public data, as set out in its Making
Open Data Real consultation published in August 2011.[15]
19. There are obvious areas in which
the Government could go further and move faster to implement 'digital
by default'. For example, officials should be rewarded for using
social media and digital channels to disseminate information and
provide services (especially where this reduces reliance on other,
more expensive channels).[16]
User feedback submitted via
the Directgov site provides the Government with a great deal of
free data on the strengths and weaknesses of its service provision.
The Government must make good use of it, alongside other information
from social media produced outside Directgov itself, to understand
better how its services are used and perceived and, in turn, to
design better services.[17]
1 The Government's response is printed as Appendix
1 to this Report. Back
2
National Audit Office, Implementing the Government ICT Strategy:
six-month review of progress, HC (2010-12) 1594 Back
3
Ibid. para 7 Back
4
Public Accounts Committee, Fortieth Report of Session 2010-12,
Information and Communications Technology in Government
(HC 1050) Back
5
National Audit Office, Implementing the Government ICT Strategy:
six-month review of progress, HC (2010-12) 1594, para 4.3 Back
6
Dr Mark Thompson, University of Oxford, Appendix 3 para 3 Back
7
National Audit Office, Implementing the Government ICT Strategy:
six-month review of progress, HC (2010-12) 1594, para 2.16 Back
8
Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) Twelfth Report of
Session 2010-12, Government and IT - "A recipe for rip-offs":
time for a new approach, (HC 715-I) para 20 Back
9
Professor Helen Margetts, Oxford Internet Institute, University
of Oxford et al, Appendix 2 Back
10
Dr Mark Thompson, University of Cambridge, Appendix 3 paragraph
5(d); and Professor Helen Margetts et al. Appendix 2 Back
11
Cabinet Office, ICT Capability Strategy (October 2011)
Back
12
National Audit Office, Implementing the Government ICT Strategy:
six-month review of progress, HC (2010-12) 1594, para 8 Back
13
Ibid. paras 3.5-3.11 Back
14
Government Response, Appendix 1, para 47 Back
15
Cabinet Office, Making Open Data Real: a public consultation
(4 August 2011) Back
16
Professor Helen Margetts et al, Appendix 2 Back
17
Professor Helen Margetts et al, Appendix 2 Back
| 
