The government is, of course, not bound to honour job offers made by its predecessor. And its decision to keep digital entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox at a distance from plans to develop online public services – a story broken last week by CSW – may be entirely sensible. After all, the coalition already has two senior officials – permanent secretary for government communications Matt Tee, and chief information officer John Suffolk – whose job it is to chivvy departments into developing the government’s online public services offer. Had Lane Fox’s input ended up making their lives more complicated, the appointment would have looked like another ill-judged ‘celebrity’ public job like Sir Alan (now Lord) Sugar’s amorphous ‘enterprise champion’ role.

However, Lane Fox has already proved herself an energetic and imaginative operator in achieving public objectives. She knows online business inside out, and her campaign for wider internet access – despite its tiny budget – is more lively and engaging than the government’s own.

This is an important agenda: getting more public services online could both improve user experiences and slash delivery costs. Perhaps ministers have decided that Tee and Suffolk need a free hand to work without a well-intentioned tsar looking over their shoulders. But there is another possibility: that the online services agenda is seen as expensive – perhaps even unnecessary – and politicians were concerned that a frustrated Lane Fox might end up complaining about slow progress.

After all, these objectives demand investment: the DVLA’s much-lauded online road tax renewal scheme, for example, was part of an IBM contract worth £40m a year. In an era when IT contracts over £1m must be approved by the Treasury, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude and the new Efficiency and Reform Group, a knee-jerk reaction against all public spending commitments could freeze out such plans. Where an online service could recoup its start-up costs and save money quickly, this would be a daft outcome – but for all the talk of ‘innovation’, the strongest political messages are those about ripping up the chequebooks.

John Suffolk and Matt Tee are now responsible for developing the online services agenda within government. We can only hope that Martha Lane Fox’s exclusion from decision-making is designed to clear the decks for their efforts, rather than to hide from the public the fact that in reality their hands are bound by government’s ever-tightening purse strings.

Note: Today's Cabinet Office press release supports our news story and interview with Martha Lane Fox, with one crucial difference: she is to join the Efficiency & Reform Group board. So she has an advisory role rather than the more executive role envisaged by Gordon Brown - but she will also have a seat at the table when decisions are made over whether to back online public services spending. If she, the rest of the board and Francis Maude agree, only the Treasury will need persuading in order to get approval; this has to be great news for those involved in trying to broaden and improve online public services, and goes a long way towards assuaging our concerns on the issue.