Maude sets out 'digital by default', single-platform vision for UK government

Intellect speech sets out far-reaching vision for public sector IT - but forgets to mention security. Chris Middleton explores its meaning

Debt, recession, cutbacks and economic turmoil in the eurozone present the perfect opportunity to be disruptive with new technologies and to "challenge old orthodoxies", says Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude.

In a speech to IT vendor body Intellect, Maude said: "Because of, not in spite of, the huge challenges we are facing - the mountain of debt we inherited, the ongoing economic uncertainty across Europe, and an ageing population - our public services need, more than ever, creative, dynamic, pioneering solutions."

An economist might point out that the economic black hole in Europe is evidence enough of old orthodoxies being challenged, but that (plus Jerry cans and queues at petrol stations) aside, Maude is fast building a reputation for himself as Whitehall's procurement enforcer, by challenging major IT suppliers to reduce and standardise prices across government over the past two years.

Maude used the phrase "powerful oligopoly" to describe major suppliers' historic relationships with Whitehall. He said that renegotiations with key suppliers have realised savings of £160m on ICT contracts over the last financial year, with an additional £70m across wider public sector organisations.

Maude has departed from previous administrations' IT procurement policies by tackling the government's reliance on systems integrators and consultancies and setting an "aspirational" target of 25 per cent procurement overall from the SME sector - something that is broadly welcomed in the industry.

Maude has also been prime mover of the coalition's policy of commercialising open data from the centre of Westminster - even if the government has proved to be less open about some other aspects of its operations, according to the Information Commissioner.

"We need to be at the forefront of the open data revolution so we are exploiting our data resources to drive efficiency, increase choice and spur new growth," Maude told Intellect.

Last month, funding for the government's Open Data Institute, headed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, was announced. The ODI aims to find new ways of commercialising open data and creating innovative solutions via partnerships between the public and private sectors. Maude himself recently called for a "dynamic culture of data sharing" in the UK.

"The link between public services and growth is too little talked about," said Maude. "The reality we must face is that the UK government is spending less money and will continue to reduce spending in the years ahead.

"We are using our current assets more intensively, managing our suppliers coherently and integrating our infrastructure.

"We also have more radical ambitions: to transform the way we operate, to channel our resources more effectively, and to open government up: to new ideas, to new businesses and entrepreneurs and to new technology.

"To do this we need to be on the cutting edge ensuring our services are fit for the 21st century - agile, flexible and digital by default," he said.

But how does he propose to do this?

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Maude sets out 'digital by default', single-platform vision for UK government

Intellect speech sets out far-reaching vision for public sector IT - but forgets to mention security. Chris Middleton explores its meaning

Maude said that a key plank in realising the government's digital ambitions is to transform the way that the public sector uses technology internally and for the provision of digital public services.

Maude acknowledged that, in the past, the UK public sector has often been synonymous with high-profile failures of both aspiration and technology, most notably the NHS National Programme for IT (NPfIT).

"The concept of having one supplier and aggregated supply increased project risk and removed competitive tension," said Maude of the old approach to IT supply in government.

"The government repeatedly found itself paying large amounts for systems that were delivered late, over budget and which often did not fully meet the original policy requirement. If indeed, they were delivered at all."

Ultimately, said Maude, the last government "lost control of IT - it outsourced not only delivery, but its entire strategy and ability to shape the future of our public services".

However, little in what Maude has said suggests that this government intends to do anything different. Indeed, it may simply be going about doing the same thing in a radically different way.

By calling for a culture of data sharing, and by increasingly relying on local, private innovation in areas such as the newly devolved healthcare regime - the Department of Health's recent information strategy document is a restatement of Maude's policy of data commercialisation and decentralisation - the government risks presiding over a commercialised data "free for all".

In such a scenario, the dividing lines between public service and private enterprise, and open data and private data, would become hopelessly blurred.

This is not the same thing as free, democratic information exchange and openness. Rather, it would be a competitive market for the private sector to monetise public sector data commercially, and one in which government has arm's-length policy oversight rather than active management and control.

That said, the establishment of the CloudStore, now in version 2, and the announcement of the G-Hosting programme have been notable successes, certainly in comparison with recent government IT programmes. The CloudStore has itself opened up the public sector to greater SME involvement.

"The initial launch led to more than 600 expressions of interest, with the Government Procurement Service subsequently awarding framework agreements to about 250 suppliers, of which about three-quarters are SMEs," said Maude.

"With the ambition of making public service provision ‘digital by default' we have also established the Government Digital Service to drive service delivery to digital across government and provide support, advice and technical expertise for departments as they develop new digital delivery models," he continued.

Maude closed his speech by talking about the creation of a single platform for government. "Already we have seen the beta launch of GOV.UK which signalled a new approach to providing services based on real user needs rather than internal government processes and traditions," he said.

"Later this year GOV.UK hopes to place the information and services from hundreds of different government sites on a single, definitive domain."

However, despite a far-reaching, aspirational speech that did a rare thing in public sector IT - set out an achievable vision with hard evidence of delivering against it - one word was absent from Maude's presentation to the vendor community: security.

Recent DDoS attacks, hacks and data security breaches across government and its security services have presented an alternative, but equally plausible vision of government in the digital age: one over reliant on ad hoc alliances of private companies and public bodies, and falling down as a result.

To have set out such a bold vision of public sector IT to the UK's IT community without once mentioning the need to secure it is troubling indeed.