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Think tank: Government ICT could cost less if approached better

Posted by Gary Flood on Wed, 08/09/2010 - 07:38
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A research group has said the way for Francis Maude and his team at the Cabinet Office to delve into ways to cut public sector ICT cost could lie less in contractual re-negotiation and more in a fresh way of looking at projects.

The so-called Network for the Post Bureaucratic Age, which describes itself as a network “which exists to collate and improve Government 2.0,” said breaking down projects into smaller 'chunks' could return large rewards in terms of saved time and cost.
 
It also noted, "It's really obvious that way too much money is spent on IT in government, and the current government knows it,” so a framework for the government “to look at the situation and identify ways of delivering better services for less” is in order.
 
The organisation also believes a greater use of commoditised IT and open standards may curb often runaway ICT/transformational projects. Managers should look to break down such ambitious projects into component parts so as to isolate the commodity and non-commodity elements. 
 
Public sector IT leaders in central government could help by looking to support local innovation where possible, promote the re-use of code, applications and business functions across government and look to build a commercial framework that could support a proposed commodity-sharing central service.
 
A focus on the commodity elements in ICT will both allow managers to pare down costs but also offer improved services, argued the authors.
 

Comments

Thu, 09/09/2010 - 12:48 — outstream

ICT could cost less if approached better

Isn't the strength of systems design that it gives the client the outputs they need in an efficient way for their users?

Context, analysis, design, testing before implementation - of which training is a key part & evaluation. This doesn't seem to be happening before "go live" when it's too late to rectify costly errors