Helping Find the Way to Better Public Sector IT

1 Introduction

"Glidepath" - a term used in aviation to describe the path taken by an aircraft to its correct landing point as part of its flight plan when guided by air traffic control and external reference points in difficult conditions even though the destination isn't clearly visible.

The government has stated its aim of transforming the business of government through technology1 and for many years has been undertaking big IT projects in order to bring about change. However, the similarities between government IT projects and an aircraft trying to land safely are all too obvious: the customer doesn't know exactly what this destination point "transformation" looks like, the suppliers have to find a path through a maze of legacy systems whilst trying to meet the needs of different departments, agencies and user groups within any given project. The IT industry - the aviation industry of this analogy - needs to find an effective way to get the customer to his or her destination through this murk. However, using a glidepath also requires discipline and professionalism on the part of the pilot - the government customer - who must not ignore solid information from safe beacons, even though the destination is not yet in sight, and must adhere to the flight-plan.

Data and systems need to be right in order to deliver services and monitor performance against target. The National Audit Office (NAO) has recently found that two thirds of data systems used to measure performance against Public Service Agreements had problems and 12% of systems were not fit for purpose. (Figure 1).

This kind of independent finding emphasises the pressing need for vendors and system integrators to better work with the public sector to ensure that their offerings meet the needs of the public sector.

This paper describes some of the challenges faced by government IT both from business and technology perspectives. It aims to promote debate and point the way to changes which will ensure more government IT projects have cost-effective and safe landings.

2 The public sector delivery challenge

Government spends ?14 billion per year on Information Technology - over half of the total UK IT spend. Effectively and efficiently spending this money poses a number of challenges and we discuss below the general characteristics of government IT projects and the particular challenge of bringing together legacy IT systems.

Characteristics of government projects

Public sector IT projects have a number of things in common which make them hard to manage and difficult for suppliers to address:

? projects can be huge: Connecting for Health (the recently announced new name for the National Programme for IT

(NPfIT) in England) is a ?6 billion project; the overall budget to update the Criminal Justice system is ?2 billion; both stretch over a number of years. Even before projects begin, the procurement cycle is lengthy: 18 months is not untypical.

? much government IT has been in place for many years; hence there are many legacy systems which are now required to be brought together to provide a ?joined-up' experience for citizens, and to deliver the performance reporting required by different layers of government.

? the length and complexity of projects mean that they are frequently subject to change: as well as legislative changes and government reorganisations, unforeseen events such as terrorist outrages, outbreaks of disease or minor political scandals can cause changes to requirements which in turn require changes to the IT system under development.

? the nature of public sector IT is changing: away from the old, bespoke "green screen" systems that required armies of specifically trained staff inputting data from forms supplied by the public, towards interactive web-based services enabling citizens to enter data directly and receive services or information back from government departments.

? the size of government IT projects means that relatively few suppliers are able to bid for them; in 2005 the Public Accounts Committee found that 11 suppliers account for 80% of the government IT market. As a consequence, there is a risk of a lack of innovation due to the inability of small and medium sized firms to bid directly for government business.