IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Government plans to cut costs by sharing administration systems are forging ahead as two Whitehall organisations sign up to the Cabinet Office’s central IT deal.

The newly-created Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (Dius) is the first big department to join the Flex managed service contract signed with Fujitsu in May. And the Office of National Statistics is also using the deal for parts of its IT support.

Socitm president Chris Guest, speaking ahead of the event, said that driving adoption of e-government services among citizens would be the big challenge in the next 12 months for his members.

Softer management skills are more important than technical skills in senior e-government roles, such as e-champion and head of ICT, according to the Delivering Local E-government report from Socitm.

Many councils have faced criticism over their websites. Some organisations have criticised councils for spending large amounts of taxpayers money on websites at a time when public funds are stretched.

But others have said that investing in more customer focussed websites can reduce the need for far more costly face-to-face or telephone interaction.

One of the officials involved told Government Computing News on 2 September 2005 that it is believed to be the first local authority project of its type on such a scale. The site will be made available to about 1,000 users over the next 18 months, some of them from council partners.

The Treasury should change the way it funds government IT programmes to include people costs such as training, according to the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR).

The left-wing think tank is publishing its Digital Manifesto today (Thursday), following a year-long examination of technological change and its impact on policy and politics. The programme featured issues such as digital inclusion, public sector efficiency and identity cards.

A national agreement for mapping and geographic information services could save local authorities more than £100m over its four-year life.

The framework deal, brokered by the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) with Ordnance Survey, Intermap and Intelligent Addressing, is the culmination of a collective procurement exercise designed to obtain the best deal for the public sector.

Suppliers would be unable to cope if the UK public sector now made a wholesale move to shared services, says a key government figure.

The public sector would disrupt the market by fully deploying shared services at this time, David Myers, director of the Whitehall team leading on shared services in government, warned on 20 September.

The £2.5 million e-citizen national project led by Norwich City Council, is the first comprehensive research programme to investigate the take-up and marketing of local authority e-channels, including the use of the Internet, mobile phones and digital TV.

The reforms are intended to go even further than the sharp job cuts planned in Whitehall.

The Kiosks have been strategically positioned in high-use public areas such as leisure centres, colleges, country parks and the civic centre in order to achieve optimum use from residents of Medway. By integrating the kiosks into the everyday lives of the public it is thought that people will be more likely to become involved in e-services.

The department has been formed by the merger of Inland Revenue and HM Customs & Excise, which came into effect on 18 April 2005.

The home page of the website highlights two main features reflecting the need to file tax returns for the recently ended financial year: PAYE online, including a secure mailbox, and taking advantage of eVAT. The latter includes the facility to pay by BACS (Bank Automated Clearing Services), CHAPS (Clearing House Automated Payments System), bank giro credit transfer or direct debit.

The head of the Metropolitan Police has called for further investigation of the technology to be used in the proposed ID card scheme. Commissioner Sir Ian Blair said that he agreed with the principle of an identity card but raised questions over IT and biometrics.

"The key issue is, are they going to work?" he said at a London Assembly hearing on 15 June 2005. "I am not an expert on iris recognition…what we are now seeing is different experts coming forward with different positions. We now have to settle the question.