A safe strategy

If one thing stands out about the new Government ICT Strategy , it's that it focuses overwhelmingly on the business end of the field. It deals with procurement and technical issues, with only minimal references to the information management efforts that provided a core element of its predecessor, the Transformational Government strategy of 2005. The document is concerned with rounding up various initiatives that are already in place, ranging from the work on architecture and standards that has its roots in the earlier paper, through the data centre rationalisation within Greening Government ICT , to the plans for a G Cloud of virtualised services for the public sector and the Government Application Store, both of which were announced last year. Considering that work on all of these is now well advanced, it does not provide any surprises, despite the press notice's announcement of a "radical shift" and its reiteration of the savings target of £3.2bn per year on ICT. But it does flesh out some of the plans, and provide an insight into the governance structure that is overseeing the effort. On reading the document, it's tempting to question whether any of it will be under fresh scrutiny later in the year. We're just a few weeks from a general election in which most people expect a change of government, and the Conservative Party has been eager to claim that Labour has made a hash of its use of IT over the past 10 years. But there is nothing here that is likely to provoke calls for a change in direction. Almost every element of the strategy is directed at saving money; it's all about government doing its business with the IT industry in a smarter fashion, a cause that is likely to touch the right buttons with an incoming Conservative administration. There may be some figures in the party who would feel inclined to pick at the edges of the strategy, claiming they have a better angle on the details with the promise of saving more, but there is nothing that could prompt an incoming minister to demand a radical rethink. While the Conservatives have often complained of wasted money, this has focused on the execution of major projects, and they have been more vociferous over the past couple of years about the government's use of personal data. They have made it clear that they are not happy with one of the underlying assumptions of government policy, that a more open exchange of people's personal details is justified in the cause of joining up services. Senior Conservatives have given an ear to the louder voices in the privacy lobby, and shadow justice secretary Dominic Grieve has indicated, in his Reversing the Rise of the Surveillance State , that the party would search for a different approach. The most likely reason the new strategy does not address the issue is that the government's attitude has been set for some time, and Cabinet Office thinking has been focused on new routes to savings. But it does suggest that, if there is a change in government, there could be a new strategy document in a year or two that focuses on information management, and how it aligns with privacy, rather than technology. Mark Say Senior editor, Kable