Philip Hammond, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, introduces the first consultation by an Opposition on a draft Government document.
We built this website to share with you a leaked copy of Labour’s report on public sector IT. The Government hopes that this report will prove that they can make efficiency savings to deal with the spiraling debt crisis, and can finally get to grips with the systemic failures in public sector IT procurement over the past decade.
As you will see, the report achieves none of these things.
Since 1997, Labour ministers have spent approximately £100 billion on IT projects, more than any other European country. A recent study concluded that 70% of recent IT projects have failed – meaning tens of billions of pounds wasted on systems ranging from the calamitous £20 billion NHS supercomputer to the poorly managed Home Office probation service IT system.
We think there’s a better way. Not only is it possible to develop a more ambitious, cost-effective and transformative vision for government IT, but we believe that it’s also possible to pursue a completely different approach to making policy. Rather than the traditional closed approach to policy making that this report typifies, we want to throw open the process and allow people to contribute their ideas on how policy should be designed. In the post-bureaucratic age, we believe that crowdsourcing and collaborative design can help us to make better policies – and we think this approach should begin now.
Earlier this month, we published the leaked Government IT paper online on this website to encourage comments and suggestions and now we are taking it further. In addition to this, we are now laying out a draft version of our proposed approach to government ICT, which has been informed by the hundreds of responses we have received on this website site, for open collaboration. We have published our new document here and we invite everyone to come forward with further responses, ideas and thoughts.
This website allows you to post your comments on both the leaked Government report and our proposed approach to government ICT. We want to hear your ideas – and we will be responding to your thoughts in the weeks ahead. We’ve split each document into sections and at the end of each section of the report there is a comment box. Many thanks for taking part.
View the leaked report in full
View our proposed approach to government ICT
The Conservative Party is committed to throwing open the policy making process and allowing people to contribute their ideas on how policy should be designed. In the post-bureaucratic age, we believe that crowdsourcing and collaborative design can help us to make better policies – and we think this approach should begin now. This month we published the leaked government IT paper online on our ‘Make IT Better’ website to encourage comments and suggestions and now we are taking it further. Today we are laying out a draft version of our proposed approach to government ICT, which has been informed by the hundreds of responses we have received on the ‘Make IT Better’ site, for open collaboration.
We will publish our new document online on our ‘Make IT Better’ website and we invite everyone to come forward with further responses, ideas and thoughts.
