Transformational Government

Enabled by Technology

Annual Report 2006 © Crown Copyright 2007< he text in this document (excluding the Royal Arms and departmental logos) may be reproduced free of charge in any format or medium providing that it is reproduced accurately and not used in a misleading context. The material must be acknowledged as Crown copyright and the title of the document specified.g

Foreword

Transformational Government strategy sets out a six-year improvement journey for public services. In the first 18 months, we said we would deliver improvements already in the pipeline and build capacity for future transformation.

This is the first annual report showing progress towards delivering that strategy. We recognise within this report three things. Firstly, the progress we have made against each of our published work strands; secondly, the work we are doing to improve business change programmes that have an information and communication technology (ICT) element; and finally, the substantial benefit ICT provides to millions of people every day.

What has struck me in my short time as the Government Chief Information Officer is the sheer scale and complexity of the public sector and the ubiquitous uses to which ICT is put. It is amazing to think that we operate in over 140 countries, run some of Europe's and indeed the world's largest computer systems, and process tens of millions of transactions every single day of the year.

We are at the beginning of the Transformational Government strategy and we recognise that we have more to do — more to do on using ICT to improve public services; more to do on improving the value we create from the investment we make; and more to do on improving the success rate of our business change programmes.

We will provide a further update in our next annual report in 12 months' time.

The IT profession within the public sector has an estimated 50,000 dedicated people. Every day their dedication and hard work support those who keep the traffic flowing, who ensure that benefits are being paid, who save lives, who educate our children and who prevent crime. As Head of Profession, I would like to take this opportunity to thank them and also thank the tens of thousands of IT professionals in the private sector who support us in these endeavours.

John Suffolk, Government Chief Information Officer

January 2007

Executive summary

This is the first Transformational Government annual report, covering progress across the three main themes of the strategy:

• customer-centric services;

• shared services; and

• professionalism.

The report itself is divided into two parts. The first part, 'Driving the strategy forward', shows the overall progress made against the three themes outlined above The second part of the report, 'Contributions from public service providers', highlights the evidence of transformational change already apparent across the public sector.

Accompanying this report, there are a number of online publications and deliverables, including many case studies of successful technology-enabled projects. Information on the individual programmes for the devolved administrations in Northern Ireland Wales and Scotland is not contained within this report, but can be found on their own websites.

Customer-centric services

Working to the Delivery Council, the Service Design Authority has completed a number of tasks that will help to provide government with the knowledge, tools and techniques for establishing the wants, needs and preferences of both citizens and businesses. It has also provided input to the service transformation review undertaken by Sir David Varney as part of the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review. The Service Design Authority is now working on a service transformation delivery plan under the leadership of Sir Gus O'Donnell.

The website rationalisation policy, endorsed by ministers in April 2006, requested pan-government guidance for plans to both rationalise content and migrate it to either the Directgov website (for citizens) or the Business Link website (for businesses). Thus far, 951 websites have been considered and, of these, 90 have already closed and a further 461 are planned to be closed. 374 of the remaining sites will be reviewed by June 2007, with a view to encouraging further rationalisation.

Shared services

Sharing services represents a major change for government; already there are examples of significant progress. Transport for London has saved 30 per cent on human resources, the NHS has saved 34 per cent on processing financial transactions, the Ministry of Defence has achieved a cost reduction through the People, Pay and Pensions Agency, and the Department for Work and Pensions has released resources for front-line work. The shared service sector plans are available online.

The Chief Information Officer (CIO) Council has been working to identify barriers that prevent the sharing of services, and a report has been produced on breaking down these barriers. This has included a toolkit for practitioners. Both the report and the toolkit are available online.

The development of the Government Gateway acts as an exemplar of the common infrastructure model, providing a means for accessing over 100 government services online for 9 million plus citizens.

The Government has a dedicated committee for developing an information sharing strategy across the public sector. A vision for data sharing has already been published (September 2006) making it clear that Government is committed to greater information sharing in instances where it is in the public interest, including fighting crime, providing opportunities for the most disadvantaged and delivering better public services. A full information sharing strategy is planned for summer 2007. Information sharing is being used to explore new and better methods of supporting the most disadvantaged, who need help across a number of public bodies.

The Identity and Passport Service leads on identity management, with the aim of improving government services by the more effective shared use of data. In 2006, the Government created both a Ministerial Committee and the Public Private Forum on Identity Management. Sir David Varney reported and presented a case for making the most of existing identity management assets and wider data sharing to improve front-line services.

The Chief Technical Officer Council has agreed and published the first release of a cross-government Enterprise Architecture that addresses the issues of reusing services and removing the technical barriers affecting data sharing.

Achieving a step change in professionalism

Government needs the skills to deliver the technology-enabled programmes that will transform public services. The Government IT Profession has been launched with the aim of putting such advisers on a par with other policy, legal, statistical or economic advisers.

Since July 2005, over 7,000 people have registered with the Government IT Profession and, during 2005, a competency and skills framework was introduced that will raise the quality and consistency of assessment across the Civil Service. The broader capabilities required to deliver these technology enabled programmes are being addressed via close working with the programme and project management and procurement professions (both headed by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC)).

Two workshops were held in 2006, jointly with the National School of Government and the Said Business School, with more planned in January and February 2007. Following on from these workshops, a strategy for the creation of a Government IT Academy is due to be finalised early in 2007.

Support has also been given to departments to ensure that the right people with the right skills are in the key roles. This has seen the role of the CIO established as a board-level position. In August 2006, the Technology in Business Fast Stream recruitment route to the Civil Service was created for those who have the potential to be the CIOs of the future.

Reliable project delivery

Building on a report from the National Audit Office (NAO), CIOs are working with the OGC to create the conditions for more reliable project delivery and to learn the lessons from those projects that have been delivered successfully. Working

with OGC, the CIO Council has also approved new measures that ensure the public sector both launches the right programmes (portfolio management) and then manages and implements them in the right way (programme roles and control mechanisms).

It is intended that the introduction of portfolio management will provide oversight of each department's individual portfolio, as well as a view across the whole central government portfolio. This will ensure that, among other things, opportunities for sharing are recognised, and the right resources are allocated based on priorities. The programme roles and control mechanisms will bring robustness to the appointments made to key roles (eg senior responsible owners and programme directors) as well as hard-edged decision making relating to stopping or restarting a programme.

CIO expenditure

The data presented on page 23 shows the IT expenditure in 2005/06 of those parts of the public sector represented on the CIO Council (with the exception of the Government Communications Headquarters).

Working better with IT suppliers

The aim of the CIO Council's supplier management initiative is to make the Government a world-class IT purchaser, obtaining best value for taxpayers. Deliverables already include the first forward look at demand and supply of IT

services (ICT Capacity Project Report); a framework that presents performance data on suppliers (Common Assessment Framework); a series of cross-government reviews of the most strategically important suppliers; and the establishment of a joint CIO Council/suppliers board that ensures consistent standards from suppliers, and aims to reduce supplier costs to the

Government by up to 20 per cent while driving up IT delivery (the Strategic Supply Board).

Contributions from public sector providers

Information is presented by the following departments and local government CIOs:

Department for Education and Skills;

Department of Health;

Department for Work and Pensions;

HM Revenue & Customs;

Department for Transport;

Home Office and the wider criminal justice system;

Ministry of Defence;

Foreign & Commonwealth Office; and

Communities and Local Government.

There are many examples of delivery against a backdrop of great scale and complexity:

For pupils, investment in technology is making a real difference to educational attainment, with ICT Test Bed schools demonstrating twice the national rate of improvement in key stage 2 English.

Picture and Communications Systems are now benefiting over 250,000 hospital patients per week. Using digital x-rays eliminates problems of lost x-rays and the need to reschedule 5,000 patient procedures a year or x-ray some patients twice. Emerging findings indicate that hospitals implementing these systems can free up about 100,000 staff hours a year to focus better on patients.

The Pension Service is in the process of implementing a major transformation programme. It has replaced and simplified processes and, as a result, each transformed pension centre is now dealing with its customers' state pension claims in one 20-minute telephone call — rather than talking to customers for at least two hours and on several different occasions. This has resulted in high levels of satisfaction for both customers and staff. By 2011/12, The Pension Service will be saving £170 million annually in operating costs.

There are also further case studies available online, each of which has been endorsed by the department concerned.

Part 1

Driving the strategy forward

Part 1 of this report provides an overview of progress made in the last year across the three main themes of the Transformational Government strategy: customer-centric services, shared services and professionalism (including reliable project delivery, strategic supplier management and CIO Council IT expenditure). A detailed analysis of progress against the Transformational Government implementation plan is available online.

Transformation on a huge scale

Government departments help vast numbers of people, process massive amounts of information and manage millions of financial transactions every day of every week.

The National Insurance Recording System manages over £300 billion and is one of Europe's largest IT systems.

The Police National Computer handles around 10 million information requests each month.

The Foreign & Commonwealth Office's network links 16,000 users in 240 posts across 144 countries, making it one of world's largest and most geographically dispersed IT networks.

The Department for Work and Pensions manages a larger annual turnover than the national income of the Republic of Ireland.

The Department for Work and Pensions delivers 13 million benefit payments each week — more than £100 billion each year — and helps 4,000 people into jobs each day.

The Defence Information Infrastructure will reach 300,000 users on 150,000 terminals at almost 2,000 Ministry of Defence sites around the world

In 2005/06, HM Revenue & Customs handled £395 billion in receipts and administered £17 billion in payments.

Transforming public service delivery

Government is delivering high-quality, accessible services to millions of citizens, businesses and front-line workers every day.

Customers can now apply for both State Pension and Pension Credit in one 20-minute telephone call, and the information collected is also used to assess eligibility for Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit.

Almost 2 million people filed their self-assessment tax returns online during the filing period ending 31 January 2006.

Around 100,000 families will get IT equipment and a safe internet connection for learning as part of the Computers for Pupils initiative.

Each day, almost 1million primary school children use e-learning in their classrooms.

More than 1.9 million hospital appointments have been booked electronically, and over 9 million electronic prescriptions have now been issued.

3.7 million motorists had renewed their car tax online by September 2006

New electronic border-control systems have generated 4,456 alerts to border agencies and have resulted in 315 arrests.

Strategic context

The origins of Transformational Government

Technology has altered the expectations and aspirations of citizens, businesses and front-line workers.

Private sector transformation now provides people with a range of convenient, high-quality and often personalised services.

In part, the drive for improvement has come from forces outside government. However, pressure to change has also come from within government itself. In the 2002 Spending Review, more than £6 billion of new money was committed to public sector technology.

This enabled a wave of modernisation in health, education and criminal justice — some of the world's most challenging operational environments which create the most demanding transformation projects.

Access to technology was an important early goal of this investment. The most disadvantaged people can and do benefit from technology in public services. For example, homeless people have the opportunity to learn new skills, to keep in touch with family and to learn about accommodation or work through mobile telephones or an internet terminal in a hostel.

To invest these new resources, public services had to tackle structural problems that had lain dormant for many years while funds had been scarce: a lack of customer focus, large-scale duplication and a shortage of technology skills both in the public sector and among its suppliers.

"We cannot leave public services as they were, we must build them around the personal aspirations of the individual - renewal must and will be built upon these essential truths: a flexible economy, reformed and personalised public services

Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP, speech to Labour Party Conference 2006

"Two-thirds of the country has access to the internet. Millions of people are ordering flights or books or other goods online, they are talking to their friends online, downloading music, all of it when they want to, not when the shop or office is open.

The Google generation has moved beyond the idea of 9 to 5, closed on weekends and Bank Holidays. Today's technology is profoundly empowering.

Of course public services are different. Their values are different. But today people won't accept a service handed down from on high. They want to shape it to their needs, and the reality of their lives"
Rt Hon Tony Blair MP, speech to Labour Party Conference 2006

A strategy for change

The 2005 Transformational Government strategy set out how government will tackle these problems and enable transformation.

In 2005/06 the Transformational Government agenda has moved to the heart of public service reform.

The principles of Transformational Government are at the core of Sir David Varney's review of service transformation, which the Chancellor has published as part of the analysis informing the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review: Service transformation: A better service for citizens and businesses, a better deal for the taxpayer. The Government has commissioned a delivery plan to implement the report's findings, to be published in 2007.

The departmental Capability Reviews also embody the principles of Transformational Government.

A hard path to transformation

As with any ambitious transformation agenda, we have had to learn lessons and acknowledge shortcomings. Sometimes things have gone wrong and we regret that. However, independent studies such as those carried out byThe Standish Group in March 2003 confirm that the public sector success rate for technology-enabled change projects is very similar to that of the private sector, but we must do much more to improve our performance.

"In schools we were way behind other countries in computers and IT €¦ in the CJS [criminal justice system] there was no common IT system at all €¦ there was a sense that the service was there, delivered to the consumer without much regard to their needs and preferences €¦ the lack of investment masked what was in reality a much more profound problem than funding alone. It was a failure to modernise.€

Rt Hon Tony Blair MP, speech to the Labour Party National Policy Forum, 9 July 2005

"Public spending will be very tightly constrained in the next few years to conform with the macro-economic policy framework. This underlines the importance of IT-enabled transformation in enabling us to continue the improvements we have seen in public services while maintaining €¦stability.€

Rt Hon Stephen Timms MP, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Interview, Computing, 20 July 2006

Customer-centric services

Putting people's needs at the heart of the system

"We must be relentlessly customer-focused. Many people want a single point of contact for a range of services. The public are not interested in whether their needs are met by department X or agency Y, they just want a good, joined-up service where X and Y talk to each other and share the information the public have provided. We should strive to meet this demand.€

Sir Gus O'Donnell, Cabinet Secretary

Understanding the customer

Under the direction of the Delivery Council, the Service Design Authority has:

designed tools and techniques to allow government to use what it knows and discovers about what really matters to citizens and businesses to shape the services that affect them. The tools, techniques and exemplars are available online

established the Customer Insight Forum as a network to help government gather, analyse and use information about the needs and preferences of citizens and businesses more effectively. Its work directly supports both the Transformational Government strategy and the Government Communications Group's Engage programme;

supported the Customer Group Directors for Older People and for Farmers;

in partnership with departments, agencies and local government developed an approach to using different service delivery channels, for example face to face, telephone and online, to their best advantage. This approach will be piloted with Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council;

developed a model for the greater use of online channels to enable citizens to access services more effectively. This model will be piloted with the collaboration of Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council;

provided input on customer insight and service delivery channels strategy to the work of the Service Transformation Review undertaken by Sir David Varney on behalf of the Chancellor of the Exchequer as part of the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review. A delivery plan is now in development for this review; and

designed and is seeking agreement for a pilot to test the effect of putting decision making about how best to meet customers' needs into the hands of front-line staff.

Website rationalisation

The Government's objective is to have strong, strategically effective communications and service delivery via the internet, designed around the needs and lifestyles of citizens.

Ministers commissioned the main central government departments to review their websites and develop plans for their rationalisation and the migration of content to the Directgov website for citizens and the Business Link website for businesses.

In the first phase of departmental reviews, 951 websites were considered across 16 central government departments. Decisions have already been taken to close 551 (58 per cent) of these websites; 90 sites have already closed. Decisions have also been taken to continue with 26 websites — although some of their current content will move to Directgov and Business Link — and decisions on the remaining 374 sites will be taken in the next six months.

Further discussions will take place over the next few months in order to produce detailed implementation plans, confirm the role of departmental corporate sites, extend the review to executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies, and encourage further collaboration between departments. This will be completed by June 2007.

Directgov

is an award-winning cross-government transformation programme with citizens as its focus. Since 2004, it has grown from 800,000 customer visits a month to over 5 million. It now involves 18 government departments and has links to services in nearly all 388 local authorities in England. It can be accessed via the internet, via digital television through Sky, ntl: and Telewest, and via mobile telephones. Independent research has shown high levels of customer satisfaction: 83 per cent of people who visit Directgov agree that it is a 'good place to start' and 80 per cent that it offers 'useful information'. Importantly, 70 per cent of people feel that it is 'a site I trust'. It is consistently rated in the top three government websites by usage as monitored by the independent service Hitwise and is now within the top 100 websites by usage in the UK.

Shared services

The future of shared corporate services

Government corporate services (human resources, finance, IT, procurement, etc) could be delivered through a handful of professional organisations — serving a minimum of 20,000 but preferably 50,000 or more customers.

Staff will be experts in their field and will operate standard business processes on a minimum number of different systems platforms.

Users will take control of the information, enjoying the highest levels of control, assurance, transparency and self-service.

Shared service organisations will be characterised by continuous improvement, contestability of supply and transparency of performance.

Sharing services, knowledge, infrastructure and technology represents a major change for government. By working more closely together, both across and within departments, government can save money, reduce waste and move closer to delivering services in the way that citizens want and expect.

Significant progress has already been made

Transport for London has saved 30 per cent on its human resources spend in the first year of operating its shared service centre.

The NHS Shared Business Service has saved 108 health trusts an average of 34 per cent of the cost of processing finance transactions through shared finance services. It is on track to deliver savings of more than £220 million over 10 years.

The Ministry of Defence's People, Pay and Pensions Agency is reducing costs at the same time as improving quality. Through sharing and related reforms, the Department is expecting a net benefit of over £300 million during the next 10 years.

The Department for Work and Pensions Shared Services organisation was launched on 1 September 2006, bringing together a wide range of functions, from customer payments and debts to employee services for the Department's 110,000 staff, releasing resources for front-line work.

Case studies detailing progress on shared services are available online.

Shared service plans

Shared service sector plans covering the UK public sector are available online. Highlights from the plans include the following:

The education and skills sector is promoting sharing across schools, further education colleges and universities. Work is focusing on finance, human resources and, potentially, learner administration, as well as exploring other ways of collaborating across organisations.

The health sector will soon begin sharing services in human resources as well as finance. With 1.2 million employees throughout the sector, this is potentially the largest shared services implementation in the world.

Shared services are integral to the Home Office's current action plans and several departments' Capability Review implementation plans.

The Department for Transport and the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs are each implementing plans to share corporate services with their respective agencies with the aim of delivering benefits to the front line.

Most departments have expressed an interest in buying corporate services from another organisation. A number have a preference for buying from another central government organisation. This creates the possibility of convergence within the central government sector.

Local government has already explored shared services in the front office. One-stop shops and the subsequent joining up of back-office functions are a key example of this. Local authorities are also exploiting shared business functions (eg refuse collection).

Support from the centre

The CIO Council's Shared Services Team has been working closely with the market to ensure suppliers can support the shared service agenda, and with departments to plan and implement shared services.

The team has identified barriers to sharing and is working to break them down wherever possible. A progress report on removing barriers is available online.

A toolkit that provides shared service examples, guidelines and templates is available online and has been accessed by practitioners around 1,500 times each week.

Common infrastructure

The Government Gateway is an exemplar of the 'build-once-use-often' common infrastructure model. It provides departments and local authorities with a consistent interface through which their customers — and their agents — can securely access over 100 government online services. There are currently over 9 million active enrolments by individuals, agents and organisations, and Gateway availability stands at 99.96 per cent for the last 12-month period.

Data sharing

The Cabinet Committee, MISC31, is developing the Government's strategy for data sharing across the public sector. In September 2006 the Department for Constitutional Affairs published a new vision forg ;data sharing, and a strategy is planned for publication by summer 2007.

Government is using information sharing to expand opportunities for the most disadvantaged, particularly those adults who require support from a number of different public bodies. One aim of the social exclusion action plan, published in September 2006, is to share information so as to identify people with multiple needs and then better manage the provision of services to them.

A programme of pilots will explore alternative approaches to supporting these people. This will give government a better understanding of what information needs to be shared, (for example police, housing and employment information), how to achieve this and what barriers exist to the effective sharing of information to benefit this group.

Defra's Whole Farm Approach

Defra's Whole Farm Approach will drastically reduce the number of forms a farmer has to complete and deliver savings to the industry of up to £16.5m per year.

Identity management

Managing customer identity information more effectively and improving the way data is shared will help government improve the quality of the services it provides, target resources more efficiently and reduce the need for repeated customer contact.

The Identity and Passport Service leads on identity management policy, and one of its corporate objectives is to transform practice across the public and private sectors.

To support better identity management, in the past year government has:

put in place a new Ministerial Committee on Identity Management;

established the Public Private Forum on Identity Management chaired by Sir James Crosby; and

commissioned the Service Transformation Review, led by Sir David Varney, which has now reported and presents a case for making the most of existing identity management assets and wider data sharing to improve front-line services.

delivered a for the National Identity Scheme.

An Enterprise Architecture

The key achievement of the Chief Technical Officer Council over the last year has been the agreement and publication of Release 1 of the cross-government Enterprise Architecture. The first release of this Enterprise Architecture focuses on building the initial portfolio of opportunities to share and reuse proven services, patterns and designs. It also addresses the technical barriers to data sharing by providing a route to interoperability across government through a common infrastructure. This will help decision makers reduce the total cost of ownership and deliver improvements to services in a quicker and more efficient way.

Achieving a step change in professionalism

To use technology to transform public services, we need to have the skills within government to plan, develop and deliver large-scale, technology-enabled business transformation programmes.

Government IT Profession

We have launched a new profession within government that will ultimately put technology advisers on a par with policy, legal, statistical or economic advisers. More than 7,000 people have joined the Government IT Profession since it was launched in July 2005.

The Government IT Profession offers training, career development and a framework of standards for IT staff across the public services to help increase technology and delivery expertise.

Building skills

During 2005, the Government IT Profession skills framework was launched, based on the industry standard Skills Framework for the Information Age. As part of the Professional Skills for Government programme, this framework now underpins the recruitment, performance management and skills assessment of all civil servants working in IT. This will raise the quality and consistency of staff assessment across the Civil Service.

The Government has strengthened its relationship with the industry-wide IT profession in the UK. The Government is working with the ProfIT Alliance to raise the standards of professionalism in the demand and supply side of the IT industry and to establish the infrastructure of a formal IT profession.

Improving policy delivery is not just about the Government IT Profession: technology needs to be reflected in policy-makers' skills frameworks too — just as an understanding of law and economics is now. We are working closely with the Department of Trade and Industry and the Sector Skills Councils for IT and Telecommunications, and government, to develop a blueprint for the IT skills required by non-IT professionals across government.

We are also working closely with other public sector professions to build the broader capabilities required to successfully deliver large-scale change. In particular, we are working closely with the OGC — in its capacity as Head of Profession for the Programme and Project Management and Procurement professions — to ensure that the necessary skills are embedded in departments.

"The Government IT Profession is taking a lead role in the development of a broader, industry-wide IT profession. Innovations like the new Technology in Business Fast Stream for talented graduates send the significant message that technology and delivery skills are no longer second class; they are a priority for government.€

Karen Price, Chief Executive of e-skills uk

Government IT Academy

To ensure that we have the skills within government to plan, develop and deliver large-scale, technology-enabled business transformation programmes, we need a focus on training.

We successfully piloted two workshops in 2006, developed and delivered with the National School of Government and the University of Oxford's Said Business School. We plan to run these again in January and February 2007. Following the success of the pilot, we have worked with the National School of Government to develop a strategy to create a Government IT Academy. The strategy is currently undergoing

consultation and will be finalised early in 2007. The Academy will have a strong virtual element and will build upon existing development opportunities. It will develop IT skills that:

support every career level, from new IT practitioner to CIO;

support the Government IT Profession competency and skills framework; and

complement the 'core' skills in the Professional Skills for Government programme.

We are currently developing seminar and secondment programmes as part of the Academy, and plan to launch both during 2007.

Managing our talent

We have continued to provide support to departments and large-scale business change programmes to ensure that the right individuals with the right skills are deployed to key roles. This brokering role had not previously existed — major technology appointments used to be made in isolation. In particular, a number of departments have formally established the Chief Information Officer role as a board-level position.

In August 2006, we launched the Technology in Business Fast Stream — a new scheme to recruit technology graduates as part of the Civil Service Fast Stream. The scheme will provide an entry route for talented graduates interested in delivering technology-enabled change in the public sector, and who have the potential to become future Chief Information Officers or leaders of large-scale, IT-enabled business change.

"Having started my Civil Service career as a tax inspector at the Inland Revenue in the 1970s, I know from experience that a career structure that rewards professional competence leads to successful delivery of public services. As the new CIO at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Transformational Government strategy provides my business colleagues and me with clear direction and a framework for developing the professional skills of my staff."

Chris Chant, Chief Information Officer at Defra

Reliable project delivery

Continuous improvement

CIOs are working with OGC to create the conditions for greater certainty of success in public sector business change programmes. OGC Gateway Review was an early foundation stone: the National Audit Office (NAO) has recognised that it (and other measures) have strengthened our capability year on year.

CIOs and OGC have worked with NAO to learn lessons from successful public and private sector programmes and projects in the UK and overseas. The recent NAO report 'Delivering successful IT-enabled business change' provides recommendations on how departments can take these forward.

New measures

The CIO Council has approved new measures to help ensure that the public sector launches the right IT projects and then manages and implements them well. These new measures build on good practice in DWP, HM Revenue and Customs and Criminal Justice IT. They have been developed — and will be implemented — with input from OGC, to ensure that they complement the Gateway review and other processes.

Portfolio management

There has been no strategic management of the government's overall investment in IT since the mid-1970s, when all government computers were owned by a single organisation.

Portfolio management is being introduced to provide oversight of, and insight into, significant change programmes that are underway in each department and therefore central government as a whole. Through portfolio management we are seeking to:

match supply with demand;

anticipate generic challenges;

identify duplication and other opportunities for standardisation and sharing;

challenge relatively low value projects; and

set priorities when competing for scarce capacity.

The portfolio management process will also provide a viewing platform from which to ensure that the of failure are not occurring and that the findings from the recent NAO report are being adhered to.

Relevant case studies and a detailed description of the portfolio management process can be found on the CIO website.

"This report should act as an encouragement to those in government responsible for IT-enabled business change to believe that success is entirely possible.€

National Audit Office, Delivering successful IT-enabled business change

Programme roles and control mechanisms

CIOs will bring further improvements in management capability by ensuring the robustness of appointments and the recognition of role responsibilities. Improvements will include the following:

Ensuring that those appointed to key roles such as senior responsible owner and programme director have skills and experience that are commensurate with programme complexity and risk.

Encouraging departments to recognise that senior responsible owner roles are critical to programme success, and that these individuals must therefore be afforded the time to fulfil their programme responsibilities.

CIOs will also bring increased rigour to the established programme control mechanisms, based on best practice already being applied successfully in some departments. The approach complements project management and other processes already in use, and further reduces the risk of failure by providing a hard-edged control mechanism that can stop or restart a programme at key points in its life cycle — from policy formation through to benefits realisation. The approach is set out in more detail on the CIO website.

The challenge

Delivering success in the public sector is tough and the risk of failure is often high. The diversity and complexity of the public sector, the scale and security requirements of its operations, and the need to respond to policy change and legislative deadlines all mean that legacy issues can be expected to continue to surface. As issues arise we will review our policies, our approach, our training and risk management, and will implement changes to avoid repetition of the issue.

This annual report details other activities that are underway and that also have a positive impact on the success rate of programmes and projects. They include the professionalism agenda that aims to increase the breadth and depth of our information and communication technology teams, our work with suppliers to improve the transparency, team working and understanding between buyers and sellers, and the common infrastructure activities that seek to reuse existing assets rather than building new systems and facilities from scratch every time.

CIO Council IT expenditure

The data shown here relates to the IT
expenditure in 2005/06 of those parts
of the public sector represented on
the CIO Council, with the exception of
the Government Communications
Headquarters, for which special rules
apply. Other parts of the public sector,
not represented on the CIO Council,
are not included here. Explanatory
notes are provided, as accounting
practices in relation to IT expenditure
can vary across the public sector.

 

Comment now Link here Dept/sector Comment now Link here	Comment now Link here IT expenditure 05/06, £million Comment now Link here	Comment now Link here Explanatory notes Comment now Link here
Comment now Link here Audit Commission Comment now Link here	Comment now Link here 13 Comment now Link here	Comment now Link here - Comment now Link here
Comment now Link here CO Comment now Link here	Comment now Link here 68 Comment now Link here	Comment now Link here - Comment now Link here
Comment now Link here CfH Comment now Link here	Comment now Link here 1,056 Comment now Link here	Comment now Link here - Comment now Link here
Comment now Link here CLG Comment now Link here	Comment now Link here 45 Comment now Link here	Comment now Link here Based on 2006/07 expected expenditure, and includes capital and resource ICT spend for the department's own business purposes, together with sums that are transferred to local authorities and others for ICT-related purposes. FireControl and FireLink project expenditure is excluded. Comment now Link here
Comment now Link here CPS Comment now Link here	Comment now Link here 46 Comment now Link here	Comment now Link here Approximate annual spend on Compass contract with Logica CMG. Comment now Link here
Comment now Link here DCA Comment now Link here	Comment now Link here 243 Comment now Link here	Comment now Link here - Comment now Link here
Comment now Link here DCMS Comment now Link here	Comment now Link here 5 Comment now Link here	Comment now Link here - Comment now Link here
Comment now Link here Defra Comment now Link here	Comment now Link here 153 Comment now Link here	Comment now Link here Planned expenditure for 2006/07 for core Defra activities split across four main headings: base, services, projects, Chief Information Officers Directorate overheads and IT consumables. Comment now Link here
Comment now Link here