The new government IT strategy signals a move from the monumental IT projects of old to a world of smaller, bottom-up schemes. Richard Parsons examines its implications for senior civil servants

The new ICT strategy, published last month by Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, is something of a paradox. Whilst stressing the principles of simplicity, agility and flexibility throughout, it calls for a complex programme of change across government.

This means it will have implications for senior civil servants and their staff whatever their role or department; and with the first deliverables due within six months, this impact will not be long in coming.

The document envisages change from the very beginning of the policy-making process, with a commitment to “ensure that technology requirements are considered earlier”. This is being enforced by the Major Projects Authority (MPA), which will insist that departments hold a “starting gate review” to “assess the deliverability of all major new policy and change initiatives before project delivery gets under way”.

The reason for this – as Ian Watmore, chief operating officer of the Efficiency and Reform Group (ERG) – told the Commons Public Administration Committee, is that “We now want people to think through the implications of their delivery.”

“If that requires an IT programme of many hundreds of millions or even billions, with a four- or five-year lead time before it is going live and with a big-bang implementation, we will say ‘no’ to that policy early on,” he warned.
Lessons have been learned the hard way, from failures such as the Rural Payments Agency and the Child Support Agency. In both cases, the failing IT systems were the symptom; the cause was policies which might have been well-intentioned, but were in practice near un-implementable. The days of assuming that the technology can be purchased to make any policy implementable seem to be over.

Civil servants working on policy development, then, would be wise to get their IT colleagues on board as soon as possible for advice on what kind of systems are actually feasible. And those who have done so previously may find that the nature of the advice they’re receiving is about to change significantly.

While previous projects have continued for so long that many of those involved moved on to pastures new long before the schemes hit problems, the expectation in the new strategy is that senior responsible officers will “stay in post until an appropriate break in the life of a project/programme”. That, coupled with enhanced scrutiny from ministers and departmental boards, is likely to create greater individual accountability.

It is not just the policymaking process that will feel the ramifications of the IT strategy, though. On the delivery front, a new Government Digital Service (GDS) has been created within the ERG. Led by Chris Chant, the GDS has a remit to put the users of services first and to drive down costs. In line with the Martha Lane Fox review, there is likely to be a much greater emphasis on “excellence in service design” and encouraging ‘channel shift’ to online services.

So business process changes can be expected, particularly in areas with the highest public visibility and the greatest potential to reduce costs. With this in mind, it is worth watching the ‘Alphagov’ prototype currently being developed as a potential successor to DirectGov as the single government domain. Overseen by ex-BBC man Tom Loosemore, the project is a test of both the revamping of citizen interaction and the ‘Agile’, multi-disciplinary approach which the IT strategy sees as key to better project management. In essence, Agile involves replacing big, cumbersome IT projects – often tightly specified at the outset, and built over several years – with an incremental, iterative development process, under which schemes evolve over time as users and contributors feed in their views.

Simon Dickson, principal consultant at website consultancy Puffbox, credits the strategy with moving the government towards an acceptance of the “internet revolution”. But he cautions that Alphagov is “about bringing together a team of tech-savvy outsiders, who don’t necessarily appreciate how things work inside [government], and asking them to demonstrate how they’d like services to be”. He adds: “If we’re serious about customer-centric design, that’s the only way to do it. Their vision may or may not be workable: but for once, it’ll be up to the civil service to explain why not.”

Programme and project managers across the civil service may notice this change in approach. Over the next six to 12 months the government will establish its approach to Agile delivery, taking in practices such as risk-based testing, service-oriented architecture and road-mapping. And within the next 24 months, every department will have trialled at least one project using ‘Agile’ methodology.

Here, again, what emerges from the ICT strategy has wider implications. While the Agile methodology was created by software developers, it may have applications even outside the field of IT. With cabinet secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell pushing for greater innovation in the civil service, there could be greater demand for the skills involved in delivering Agile-based work, with flexible responses to changing requirements.

The strategy also had harsh words for the “oligopoly of large suppliers” which dominate ICT provision. And with ministers looking to open up more contracts to SMEs, procurement reform for ICT goods and services is likely to mirror that taking place in other areas. There will be greater emphasis on specifying outcomes rather than inputs, and reduced timescales in order to lower the cost of bidding.

For communications professionals, the Lane Fox-inspired move towards a single government domain, combined with Matt Tee’s review of the Central Office of Information, is likely to lead to a rethink of existing online content along with better use of marketing on government websites and greater use of digital channels.

Linked to this is perhaps one of the most radical but least explained items in the strategy document. Over the next 12 months, it says, the government will “embed social media as a mainstream channel used routinely to engage with citizens, business and internally”. New guidelines are due within the year, and increased use of social media could have big implications for internal and external communications. Meanwhile, there’s also a pledge to connect and mobilise staff across the public sector through mobile technologies and videoconferencing.

So this is the scale of change which the IT strategy envisages – and it contains one further paradox. If the best way to deliver complex projects is through fleet-footed agility, then this is surely the best way to implement the IT strategy itself. In effect, the strategy will have to serve as its own giant pilot scheme, learning through trial and error as it proceeds.

Richard Parsons writes about politics and technology at http://www.eDemocracyBlog.com.

Written by Richard Parsons