Soctim concerns over direction of Government ICT strategy

Socitm, the association for ICT and related professionals in the public sector, has released a policy briefing document in response to the Government’s ICT strategy.

The overall findings of the socitm report were that whilst they agreed with much of what was proposed and recognised a need for financial considerations they were “disappointed” that the Government appears to be promoting a programme geared towards cutting the costs of ICT, rather than focusing on cost savings and efficiencies that could be made through improved application of technology.

"...reducing spending is critical in the current financial climate – but it is disappointing that the Strategy fails to discuss or demonstrate the wider opportunity for reducing cost and
improving all public services through the application of ICT. We believe that a much greater emphasis should be placed on savings that would come from better technology deployment in order to achieve the Strategy’s stated aim of “improving the lives of the citizens and businesses it is here to serve”.

Areas to be "addressed"
The report also expresses concern "that a number of areas, currently missing from the strategy, will need to be addressed in order to achieve its successful local implementation." These include:

• a vision for (local) public services delivery and accountability;
• greater focus on data and information handling (personal and public) and information assurance for local public services;
• integration of the third sector in the Strategy given its prospective growing role in service delivery;
• a more sophisticated approach to IT infrastructures (Public Sector Network - PSN, G-cloud, Shared Data Centres, Government Applications Store – G-AS);
• greater emphasis on opportunities from new, potentially disruptive technologies; and
• the possibility of incentives for early adopters.

Lords to debate "cost saving" decision
The socitm report is delivered when the debate over the role IT plays in achieving current cost saving objectives, is high on the agenda at both a local and national level. At the recent Civica Annual Conference 60% of Managers stated that IT was "critical" to improved performance in 2010, and the recent announcement of new unitary authorities in Norwich and Exeter, has now been passed to the House of Lords following reports of a split within the Government and opposition by the Conservative party.

Links: To read any of the supporting documents - please click on the links in the copy above.

socitm Policy Briefing Report
socitm website
Government ICT Strategy outline