Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2005/10/27/uk_gov_it/
Government IT review could scrap industry council
UK's e-gov boss completing strategy
Posted in Legal, 27th October 2005 08:02 GMT
The talking shop that has wrestled with some of the most stubborn disagreements between government and the IT industry faces being annexed or disbanded by e-government boss Ian Watmore.
The fate of the Senior IT Forum is still being decided in talks between its co-sponsors, trade association Intellect, the Office of Government Commerce and Watmore's e-Government Unit.
But its function is likely to be subsumed into a wider raft of measures to be introduced in Watmore's National Strategy for Government IT on 2 November that could repair fractured relations between government and industry.
Industry expects a family of talking shops to be announced, including a forum with the working title Public Sector Council that will acquire the strategic responsibilities of the Senior IT Forum.
Gareth Bunn, head of government and public sector at Capgemini, who sits on the IT Forum, said: "The Senior IT Forum has been dissolved and replaced by a different forum to be agreed by the eGU and OGC."
"In my personal view, it got hung up on the same agenda items every meeting that we're not focused on the strategic issues facing government and the IT industry."
Part of the problem, he said, was that there where not enough senior industry representatives on the forum, with suppliers sending marcoms people to represent their interests.
Another Forum member, who preferred not to be named, said he did not expect to be sitting on the new forum when it was flushed, but insisted it was not being disbanded but "reconstituted" with people who could talk at Watmore's level.
"It's been recognised that it needs a new lease of life," he said. "Things need to change."
"It's not saying the IT Forum was rubbish, but there's a new direction for IT strategy to government," he added.
Nick Kalisperas, Intellect's e-government head, said continuing talks were deciding what form government and industry relations would take in the future.
"We are not in a position to discuss this publicly because not all of this has been agreed yet," he said.
"There will be a role for a Senior IT Forum type-body in the revised structure," he added.
He insisted relations between Intellect, the OGC and the eGU were "probably stronger" than they had ever been since the Senior IT Forum was launched five years ago.
The forum was born from the McCartney Review of Major Government IT Projects in 2000, which sought to address the abysmal track record of public sector IT and advised: "Implementing an improved approach will be impossible if relationships with suppliers are poor or procurement is badly done."
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.
Then punitive new model contracts were introduced by the Office of Government Commerce last November in the face of industry opposition that they could make government's track record for IT project failure even worse.
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."®