ntouk.com - Jerry Fishenden's technology policy blog

Is it just me, or are the wrong questions often asked about public sector IT? Most of the questions I keep being asked seem to be along the lines of "should we use more open source?", "should we use the cloud?" and "is product X better than product Y?".

Which seems to me to be starting in entirely the wrong place. These questions start with a potential solution in mind without defining what the public service problem or requirement is.

This technology-led approach contributes to the high levels of public sector IT spend that go on procuring and maintaining technical infrastructure, rather than on the efficient running of our public services. An average of 80% of the annual public sector IT spend (some 17bn to 21bn GDP) is estimated to go on watering, feeding and updating existing systems. But what does that infrastructure actually deliver? How does it play an active part in improving our public services, of "doing more with less"?

This obsession with the acquisition and ownership of infrastructure, rather than procuring services and capabilities to meet public service needs, betrays out-dated mainframe thinking in an internet world. We should be defining requirements and capabilities, not infrastructure. And then procuring services that meet those needs.

Yes, that might involve more open source, more use of commodity cloud offerings and swapping product X for product Y or vice versa. But who's to say? The best solutions will result only when we first understand properly what public service requirements we are trying to meet. Not by procuring infrastructure and technology as ends in their own right.

So I think we should start to rethink the questions that need to be asked. We need to start asking hard questions about the fundamental needs of our public services, not by assuming that the answer lies in specifying, procuring and building yet more IT infrastructure, or deploying product X rather than product Y.

The existing UK model seems to provide the worst of both worlds. In theory almost everything is outsourced, but the client is still often making the call on much of the infrastructure and the technology it embeds. Why? The result is both high cost and low impact in terms of improving our public services, whilst all the time risk is retained within the public sector (and ultimately underwritten by the taxpayer).

From commodity services such as word processing and email to more complex service requirements, such as realtime taxation and welfare, we need to move to a model that defines very precisely the needs of the UK public sector. We also need to update our assumptions around governance, architecture and procurement to enable the public sector to become much more agile, relevant and cost-effective in the acquisition of services and capabilities.

The coalition partners both made clear during their time in opposition that they had smart ideas to ensure IT was better managed and integrated into the cost-effective operation of the UK's public services. The recent freeze on public sector IT is a good first step, providing time to plan a new direction and much more rigorous approach to governance, architecture and procurement.

So now would seem to me the perfect time to start asking the hard, fundamental questions about our public services that we need to answer first if we are to ensure the public sector gets the IT capabilities it requires. Only when that is done can we help ensure that an improved, more cost-effective and impactful approach for public sector IT will be successfully delivered.

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