Building Britain’s Future (BBF) is Gordon Brown’s redesinged house of UK public services. However, like all reconstruction plans the foundation must remain solid yet flexible in its ability to support the new design.

The BBF strategy has a long list of deliverables categorised in different strands. For example there is ‘Real help Now’, ‘Investing for the Future’, ‘Fair Chances for All’, and ‘Fair Rules’. Some require immediate action while others are longer-term policies. A number of the Investing for the Future deliverables will directly affect our industry:
• Tax relief supporting £50 billion of capital investment
• £150 million Innovation Fund which will over time lever in up to £1 billion of private sector funding
• £750 million Strategic Investment Fund established
• ‘Infrastructure UK’ launched

However, the other deliverables are more or less related to the output of our industry. The tech enabled public services that were envisioned as early as 1999 and spelt out in the TG strategy in 2005 are the backbone to what the BBF strategy is calling for. How else, if not with the help of technology, is the government going to be able to deliver:
• a national roll out of an integrated employment and skills system,
• £1.5 billion for 20,000 additional energy efficient affordable homes over the next two years,
• a system where patients will be treated within 18 weeks from GP referral,
• assurance that people are saving effectively through the new Saving Gateway accounts,
• an ambitious global climate change agreement in Copenhagen,
• measures to secure sustainable global economic recovery

What these all have in common is that they are dependent upon an efficient system that can deliver the desired outcomes. Today everyone turns to the tech industry for these solutions becuase they are solid and yet flexible. One would now consequently believe that the government increase its spending on ICT for these deliverables to come to fruition.

Well, if the cuts we are all foreseeing in government take place, ICT will probably get hit as well (even with efficiency savings á la Gershon/OEP in ICT). It is easy to imagine pressures from the powers that be to departments to cut their ICT spending to just legacy maintenance, effectively freezing investment in much needed business change systems. However, although easy savings (initially) can be made that way the cost for the public sector will continue to go up and the quality of its services down.

But how are we to input that connection – that spending cuts for new ICT programmes equals poor service delivery – to the people that need to hear it? How can the Government stay true to its public service agendas when the economic environment looks to undermine it? If the BBF policies set out are to be achieved the government needs to strengthen its IT infrastructure. As of now we have no clear answer or link to how it all holds together.

Most of all the Tech industry must engage better with the government at the right level to ensure that there is an understanding of the dependency policy has on departmental IT capability. If a policy does not have supporting IT to enable its realisation there is always an associated increased risk and cost factor that jeopardises it. The Intellect Public Sector Council is working through a number of channels to redress the issues that we believe harms successful delivery of the TG agenda.

Tags: Building Briatain's Future, efficiency, public service delivery, Role of ICT

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 at 1:59 pm and is filed under Transformational Government, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.