Official exposes govt IT overlaps
Central govt's suspension of IT projects shows identical projects underway
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A Cabinet Office official has said the moratorium on central government IT projects has revealed a number of overlapping projects across departments.
Bernard Quinn, deputy director and channels lead for the digital delivery team at the Cabinet Office, said that as well as identical IT projects being carried out, marketing campaigns were also being run inefficiently.
He was speaking at Kable's Public Sector Online event in London on 4 October 2010, where he told delegates: "There's a review of marketing spend across departments to look at what campaigns are running. In some places you are getting conflicting campaigns running and going out into the public space."
Quinn, who is also a member of the government's Efficiency and Reform Group, said the problem could be solved and outlined the government's intentions in relation to the forthcoming Comprehensive Spending Review.
"For government, this spending review is not seen as being less for less, it's about doing things better for less, and it is possible, and online has a substantial part to play in that."
He advised local authorities and other public sector organisations to use the online tools they have available.
"If you can put a form online rather than by post, you're not just saving the postal costs backwards and forwards, but you're also saving the back office processing," Quinn added.
This article was originally published at Kable.
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COMMENTS
Re: News just in...
Yes, but you're missing the point. For your average politician, this *is* news.
Because
public libraries are such difficult places to get to, and even then they have no internet access - nor librarians who would help the technologically dyslexic.
I disagree
If you have the ability to have online forms, and enough people use that instead, then you can reduce the back office staff to a level to handle the now fewer paper records.
Adding online doesn't have to mean increases in costs, and in fact can lead to reduced costs.
I would agree that initially costs may rise, but as people get used to using online services the costs would drop. IF managed correctly. To be fair, thats a big if when dealing with Government.....
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