360°IT Blog

As election fever subsides and the UK's new Government gets down to business, how will IT - both inside and outside Government - be affected? While no all-encompassing coalition IT strategy has yet emerged, by looking at the Conservatives' technology manifesto and the full coalition agreement, published on 20th May, I'd say we now have a pretty good idea of the direction of change.

First, the Tories have stated they want the UK to implement a truly high-speed (100Mbps) universal broadband network, although the full coalition agreement refers simply to 'superfast' broadband. However, the Government has no desire (or resources) for costly public projects, so achieving this goal will mean encouraging significant private sector investment at a time when budgets are extremely tight. But as Peter Cochrane has noted on this blog more than once, such a network is of critical importance to the UK's future competitiveness and those of us in IT should do all we can to support efforts to hasten its arrival. While the coalition agreement moots the possibility of funnelling money from the TV licence fee into subsidising superfast broadband rollout for "areas the market won't reach", this is unlikely to be sufficient alone. If the coalition is to deliver on its aspirations, it needs to bring potential private-sector partners firmly on side.

One way the Government is likely to try to win the goodwill of the businesses they need to build this network - the ISPs, telcos, etc - is to address their concerns over the Digital Economy Act, which was rushed through Parliament just before the General Election. Leaders of key Internet infrastructure businesses have publicly expressed serious misgivings with the legislation, particularly over the practical implications and costs of having to police their networks for any copyright-infringing material. There has also been widespread concern about the Act's implications for Internet freedom and civil liberties, another area where the coalition is hot. And although there's no mention of Digital Economy in the coalition agreement, Nick Clegg said during the election campaign that he wanted to see parts of the Act scrapped. I'd certainly be surprised if we didn't see it significantly reworked, which would be good news for IT - since getting the legal framework for digital business right, in a balanced way, is going to be critical for our future success.

We should also expect more incentives (and disincentives) designed to drive energy efficiency and sustainability, most probably through the tax system rather than heavy-handed regulation. IT clearly has a big contribution to make here, as recent 360°IT blogs from Quocirca's Clive Longbottom illustrate. We can also be fairly certain of a new compliance regime in the banking industry down the line, once Vince Cable and George Osborne have agreed precisely how to restructure and regulate the industry going forward. This is also likely to cause significant IT upheaval in the sector.

But the area where IT will inevitably feel the biggest changes is in the public sector itself. We all know budgets are set to be slashed. IT will be expected not only to compensate for some of the inevitable loss of manpower, but will also have to become much more cost-efficient itself, while simultaneously changing systems and processes to comply with the new regime of transparency and open information. The Government has already signalled its intention to encourage smaller projects and the use of a wider range of suppliers (as 360°IT's Denise Plumpton recently advocated on this blog), including SMEs and open-source technologies, as well as committing to publish online details of all contracts and projects over £25,000. Public-sector IT procurement and supplier management processes will have to change significantly as a result, as will project portfolio management. Cost pressures are also likely to result in greater use of cloud-based systems and services.

Another Government priority is open data - making as many Government and public-sector datasets as possible available online in an open, machine-readable format. This not only reflects the coalition's commitment to openness and transparency, but also holds the potential to reduce costs (by giving third parties the ability to create useful public and business services by using and 'mashing up' that data, as well as making it easier for public-sector organisations to create their own shared services). Public-sector IT departments will have much work to do in order to make this data usefully available online - both in terms of content and format. The coalition has also pledged to "end the storage of Internet and email records without good reason", which is likely to mean the introduction of more rigorous data management processes for many public-sector organisations.

In all, it looks like many of the proposed changes are indeed what's needed. The real question, particularly in the public sector, is whether IT departments are going to be left with sufficient resources after the budget cuts to implement the necessary changes effectively. Just like the coalition itself, it's going to be a fine balancing act.

Jim Mortleman is editor of the 360°IT Blog and an independent business and technology writer/commentator

Tags:

IT strategy, Government IT, public sector, open data, digital economy, general election, coalition, open source, sustainability, transparency, privacy, compliance


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