In January 2007 the Government CIO introduced reporting of the Pan-Government Portfolio of ICT-enabled Business Change programmes to the PSX (e) ministerial committee with the aim of presenting ministers with a simple “dashboard” view of the major programmes which showed the state of health of the IT Portfolio as a whole. Since March 2007, the Portfolio has been reported quarterly and evolved into the single central Major Programme and Project (MPP) Portfolio – facilitated jointly by OGC and Cabinet Office. MPP includes major asset acquisitions programmes as well as ICT-enabled and other major change programmes.
Over the first two years, the information reported improved. In March 2007 departments were unable to provide full cost, quantifiable benefits and Gateway Review RAG (Red, Amber, Green) status information for 24 of the 30 projects being reported on. By April 2008 this had reduced to 4 and since April 2009 these issues have been resolved. However the quality of reporting still needs to improve. Although benefits information is now provided, there is not enough evidence of hard delivery or the impact on departmental efficiency or citizen outcomes. The assessments of “delivery confidence” reported are the departments’ own and are overly optimistic. There are known skills and experience deficiencies in the SRO and Programme and Project management functions and in governance and control which are not reflected in departmental assessments.
The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) have developed an intervention process for MPP programmes and projects needing support and the role and influence of the CIO with regard to IT-enabled business change programmes and projects has been strengthened. The CIO now has the right to intervene on programme/project or departmental specific issues surfaced via the portfolio relating to the agenda governed by the CIO Council. The Government CIO can do this across the portfolio as approved by the Government CIO Council in 2007.
This is a technologist’s view of the problem. At the end of the day IT is merely tool for the better execution of a business process. The issue that has never been addressed in 10 years is that government Departments have little accountability for the success or failure of It projects. Where accountability has notionally existed, there has been no consequence for failure.
To continue to treat IT as a technical specialism managed by some form of elite priesthood makes the current culture of failure inevitable. This is particularly true when the CIOs and their suppliers collude to hide behind a veil of secrecy labelled as commercial confidentiality. No one is currently able to judge whether IT delivers value for money as we have no idea what it costs or what it achieves.
CIOs are currently technologists who had a period of wage and grade inflation. Government has always been about information and CIOs only address a narrow aspect of all government information activities.
Here’s a plan:
Publish all the cost information of public sector IT contracts
Publish the result of OGC gateway reviews
Use the insights gained by citizens’ examination of the published facts to drive the investigations of NAO and PAC
Ensure that the Perm Sec and his CIO (not his technologist) sit in front of the PAC every six months together and explain what happened
All in all IT has to stop being somehow special and become part of the way that government delivers outcomes to citizens. After all, the government doesn’t have a chief postal officer, chief paper officer or a chief biro officer so why does it need chief technology officers who call themselves CIOs?
This isn’t a technologist’s view of the problem: it’s a bureaucrat’s. Tough talk of barriers and hurdles is just about conspiring to avoid blame. Technologists get no look in here at all.
Everything’s done in secret, only a tiny number of massive companies are allowed to tender and the requirements are written by clueless consultants from the same small group of companies.
These information systems are orders of magnitudes more complex than the technology that sent man to the moons. Yet, politicians and civil servants think they can architect these systems. It’s easy for well connected snake oil salesmen to talk them into believing any old rubbish.
I think the public would be harder to fool. Let’s open up everything including the technical architecture to public scrutiny.
This begs the prior question of the permanence of the role and allows the “now we’ve spent the money so we’d better use it” defence – leading to throwing good money after bad – we screwed it up yesterday but we’ll get it right tomorrow