The Conservative Party would overhaul government IT programmes should it get into office, a senior MP said on 12 April 2005.
Michael Fabricant made the claim following his party's manifesto launch. He said that while the slimline official manifesto is designed to focus on the "big issues" of most concern to voters, the Conservatives have detailed plans for changing the way Whitehall runs IT projects. Major initiatives such as the £6bn NHS National Programme for IT would be subject to a review, said Fabricant.
"All government programmes like that will be reviewed," he said. "We would set up a completely different structure for implementing these projects in the first place. Just like we've said there would be a minister for homeland security, we would have a minister for IT rather than a senior civil servant who would have overall responsibility.
"We have a very clear programme that we would implement immediately when we get into government. It is an agenda setting programme."
Fabricant said the programme would follow the Digital Action Plan drawn up by a Conservative think tank before the election.
Among the proposals, the Conservative Technology Forum said it would rethink the concept of the NHS data spine, making it instead a "directory for communication" with all local systems plus a limited summary of patient information. It also proposed to put more Whitehall IT contracts "in the public domain".
Meanwhile, in the online world the election campaign has also been gathering pace. All parties have concentrated on email campaigning. Labour has set out emails from 'Alastair Campbell' titled 'Don't miss the telly tonight'. It responded to the Conservative manifesto by stating "Thin or what?" and has a video clip of an election advert featuring "Tony and Gordon".
The Conservative emails also have video clips, links to the manifesto and the party's online shop. The party's latest email quotes leader Michael Howard as saying he is "going in to battle for Britain". The Lib Dems' email bulletin attempts to rally supporters by claiming the party is "eight points higher in the polls than this time in 2001".
Quelle: KableNET, 12.04.2005
