EURIM
BRIEFINGS 35, 36, AND 37
These
three briefings, published on 6th November, address critical issues
that will determine whether or not the Government’s modernisation targets are
met. Those targets entail major change
to put the citizen at the centre of a service-focused public sector culture,
enabled with electronic communications and information technology
EURIM’s recommendations for Modernising Government emphasise the
need to be realistic about timescales, to focus on the service priorities; to act
on the lessons of the past and to make sure that joined up systems can indeed
be joined up.
The
new briefings are aimed at suppliers as well as Government and highlight the
fact that change on this scale – whether in the public or private sector - rarely
works as planned and takes time. Some
very positive steps have already been taken and departments are starting to
focus on the delivery of change. The
Office of Government Commerce is driving improvements in managing programmes
and projects in Government.
Some
things are slow to change and we continue to see project failures in the
Information Technology area. It is as if we have learned nothing in 50 years of
using IT in business and Government – the same mistakes continue to be made. Industry may be better at hiding the
problems, while Government ensures publicity by committing to objectives, costs
and timescales before checking that they are achievable with the skills and
resources available.
Briefing 35 outlines the issues critical to improving
service levels and benefits for the citizen, while Briefing
37 examines why projects fail, the pre-conditions for success, and the
reasons why lessons from the past have not been learned. Briefing 36
focuses specifically on issues of interoperability. Getting computer systems to
work well together is difficult and this presents one of the biggest single
threats to achieving the Modernising Government agenda. This paper is supported by an annex giving a
detailed technical overview of interoperability issues and a set of relevant
case studies.