Nov 8 2005, is IT entering the mainstream (... at last)?

Yesterday's FT leader was a good step forwards. It synthesised several points I have made previously on this blog and elsewhere:

• the need to recognise that IT project failures are actually business transformation project failures (see public sector IT projects and the “blame game”)
• the need for the Government's Transformational Government to enter the mainstream and break outside the trade press (see transformational government)

Referring to a year's delay in the implementation of the new NHS booking system, the FT comments:

... these are management, not IT, failures ... Nothing, however, better illustrates the fact that these huge investments in public service reform are actually about IT enabled change, not IT itself.

This is welcome progress indeed. It would be useful when post-mortems take place in future of "IT project failures" that they examine this wider context, or we'll continue to see lessons failing to be learned and the same mistakes made time and again. I hope the likes of the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee reflect this in any future reviews of where "IT" has succeeded and failed.

Referring to the Transformational Government strategy, the FT goes on:

... the government's slim strategy document last week offers grounds for hope. Since the arrival a year ago of Ian Watmore, the government's chief information officer, the Cabinet Office has ceased to bark (largely unheeded) orders about IT at Whitehall and the wider public sector. A council of chief information officers from across the public sector has been brought together which appears to be turning into a group of people who can help and learn from each other, and want to do so.

With this strong team in place, I believe that IT itself will be more strategically managed and co-ordinated than in the past. The challenge now is to ensure that the management and project processes are also addressed. Let me close with another quote from the FT:

This remains a strategy, not yet a set of results. It will require consistent political, as well as managerial leadership to get these projects treated as business change, not IT. Yet the departure to pensions of John Hutton marks the fifth change in ministerial oversight in a year. His successor needs to grasp what is needed and be around longer. Otherwise more teacups will be broken and more projects will fail.