Shared IT, professional standards and reconfigured services around the citizen are to be focal points of the Cabinet Office e-Government Unit's forthcoming agenda, its senior official Ian Watmore said on 18 October 2005.
In a speech to mark his first year as the government's chief information officer, Watmore said that he wanted the focus to shift from e-government to "transformation-government". Much of his vision informs the government's IT strategy, which is to be published during the first week of November 2005, the Cabinet Office confirmed ahead of the speech.
Watmore said that e-government is a means to an end, but the end itself is "t-government" - the transformation of councils, the NHS and Whitehall.
His plans for the forthcoming agenda have three key themes. The first is putting citizens and business at the centre of services.
"I like NHS Direct to give me medical information. But this is at the margins and I really like to see the doctor. So I want to doctor to have the best information available," he said.
Watmore wants technology to make the best information available to doctors, and to help them spend less time on bureaucracy and more time providing health services. The same goes for teachers, police and other front line professionals, he said.
On a recent visit to Wormwood Scrubs Prison to discuss rehabilitation with the governor and his team, Watmore asked how IT could help. Currently, the prison profiles offenders before release – detailing their family history, employment prospects and mental health – but it has some difficulty joining this information up with the local community organisations.
"That's where technology could help, linking up profiles on the system with other bodies in the local community," he said.
The second key theme, shared services, needs further promotion across the public sector, said Watmore. Although it was signposted in the Gershon review it is still "a long way" from reality, he told council IT managers.
"We need to light a fire under that initiative," he said. Watmore told delegates that there are 13,000 parts of government with individual accountability and the scope for joint-working is huge. In particular, he highlighted the potential for the sharing of call centres and websites as well as data.
Civil service unions have long highlighted problems such as poor purchasing and reliance on failing suppliers, caused by a lack of in-house IT skills. Watmore intends to turn this around through the third part of his strategy, professionalism.
"The idea is to build capability and build networks, so that our people can build skills and careers in the public sector," he told delegates.
Watmore was keen to emphasise that the development of his strategy had been a joint effort, between the e-Government Unit, IT professionals and public servants.
"Woody Allen said, 80% of my success has just been turning up. I have tried not to be a prisoner of Whitehall," said Watmore. During the last 12 months, Watmore has travelled the country under a programme to engage with people involved in frontline delivery.
A chief information officers' council, made up of a representative group of CIOs from across the public sector, and a "business board" specialising in service transformation, had made valuable input to the strategy he said.
Quelle: KableNET, 19.10.2005
