Many bold initiatives have since been characterised by a lack of trust or commitment in the relationship between government and industry, and the Senior IT Forum has been the forum to which discussions over the resulting difficulties were escalated.

Suppliers were kept at arms length and squeezed with some pleasure during NHS IT boss Richard Granger's procurement round for the multi-billion pound National Programme for IT.

Suppliers' opposition to the terms dragged on in the IT Forum for another eight months before the OGC conceded to pull the contracts and test them in a pilot. Nevertheless, the offending terms have begun making their way into current contracts.

Intellect's effort to raise standards among suppliers, in the form of the Code of Best Practice, was revived in January after two years of neglect by both government and industry.

Then in May, after another year-long set of negotiations, the IT Forum came to understand that its concerns regarding the OGC's Catalist rehash of the government catalogue were also being ignored. Negotiations over Catalist continue even as its implementation moves ahead.

All of these issues bar the NHS appear to be on Watmore's agenda, who began his tenure last autumn with a reputation in industry that was topped with a crown that has since been buffed to a halo.

A former managing director of Accenture, he used his first public announcement, hosted by Oracle at a private sector conference, to lambaste the standard of project management in the civil service.

Suppliers have since been impressed by his performance and appear to be investing a lot of hope in his impending report. All members of the Senior IT Forum contacted by The Register expressed solidarity with the e-government boss, despite their continued frustrations under his tenure.

This could demonstrate the weakness of industry's negotiating position with government as much as Watmore's political nous. Industry must cling to what it can, as one forum member, who preferred not to be named, revealed when he explained his zealous support for both the forum and Watmore's plans for its revitalisation.

The forum had given him a vital opportunity to sit face to face with senior government representatives so he could understand their communications about supplier initiatives: "The procurement people have refined it to such an extent that it's difficult to get the true message."®

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