Editor's Manifesto: tales of the entirely expected

 

On a more serious note, there's the change of mood. As perhaps with any major change of administration (even the handover to the heir presumptive in the form of G Brown Esquire), there's a tangible energy and enthusiasm to kick over the existing structures and put something new and shiny in their place. 

 

On the whole, this is commendable, although some of the new team may need to dot there is and cross their ts a little rigorously before rushing out the door to give their latest interviews (yes Michael Gove, that's you we're talking about!).  But where does this leave us ICT-wise?

 

We've been talking a lot at PublicTechnology about our ICT for Recovery initiative, where we're highlighting examples of ICT good practice and emphasising that while cuts are clearly necessary, simply cutting back without considering the longer term implications is a folly.  This has been resonating with a lot of you – which is very encouraging and hopefully will be mirrored in the corridors of power. But in reality, the cuts in ICT spend haven't really begun yet so it's difficult to judge. 

 

Oh we've had a couple of big scalps to be going along with – ID Cards, the schools building scheme etc. But the wholesale blood letting that has been predicted hasn't reall manifested itself yet and won't for several months. There have been some interesting indicators of what might lie ahead though. 

 

The decision to ditch Microsoft's enterprise licensing scheme for the NHS was particularly telling I thought. We're going to see an awful lot more tough talking when it comes to contract negotiations and renegotiations. It's already clear that suppliers are coming under pressure on this front, although it's interesting that every one that I've spoken to to date has been largely supportive of Francis Maude and his ICT purchasing team in the Cabinet Office. But then maybe they're all hoping that their ideas and vision for ICT in the future will prevail...

 

The next few weeks will be telling. It looks increasingly likely that there will finally be a statement on the future of the NHS National Programme for IT, that terrible bloated embodiment of everything that must never be allowed to happen to public sector ICT ever again. What this statement will be remains to be seen. Will it be full scale cancellation? Much as I'd like to think so, it's far more likely that there will instead be a root and branch overhaul, rendering the Programme unrecognisable from its current form, but still attempting to salvage some of the investment to date. 

 

What should also happen is some form of inquiry into the management of the Programme and a detailed analysis of what was allowed to go wrong. The one lasting benefit that the NHS scheme could bring public sector ICT would be a blow by blow, step by step set of recommendations of how NOT to do a big ticket project like this. 

 

But whatever the decision, any statement on NHS IT will give us the clearest indicator to date of just how tough the Coalition is ready to be on the technology investment front. And then the ICT suppliers can start to gauge just how bad this is likely to be! This week Cable and Wireless became the first vendor to blame the public sector cuts for impacting on its financial performance. It was the first; it certainly won't be the last.  For suppliers this could become a tale of the entirely expected.