Top 10 public sector IT stories of 2014
For once, the year wasn't filled with government IT lows, as there were highs too
After years of criticism, IT in the public sector is finally beginning to change and take note of what seems to be working in the private sector. Of course, just because certain local authorities and departments are making changes, doesn't mean that every department is - in fact some seem to continuing to make the same mistakes, while others are still paying for old errors such as signing up to a long-term multi-million (or billion) pound contract with a vendor with seemingly no way out.
Here are the top 10 stories from public sector IT in 2014:
10. HMRC to scrap Aspire contract, with Capgemini to lose out one-tenth of its global revenues
HMRC is one of those departments that is still suffering the consequences of signing long-term contracts with vendors. But in October, the department's chief digital and information officer, Mark Dearnley announced that HMRC was planning to scrap the Aspire outsourcing deal when the contract comes up for renewal in June 2017, and that ditching it will save taxpayers at least £200m in costs. HMRC believes that planning for the cessation of the deal and its replacement will cost £5m this year and £25m next year. However, preliminary costings, according to Dearnley, indicate that the replacement for Aspire will cost 25 per cent less - depending on the cost of making the shift.
9. GCHQ's Tempora programme deemed legal by Investigatory Powers Tribunal
Under the radar, GCHQ's Tempora programme was deemed legal by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) - which investigates claims against MI5, MI6 or GCHQ. The programme, which was first disclosed by Edward Snowden, was reportedly built up over five years by attaching "intercept probes" to transatlantic fibre-optic cables that pass through British shores. The IPT deemed it "legal in priniciple". The legal challenge was made by civil liberty groups, and they intend to appeal the decision.
8. The Universal Credit debacle rolls on
After a former Department for Work and Pensions employee told Computing last year about the destructive nature of the department's IT strategy, a job centre employee told Channel 4's Dispatches in October that Universal Credit was "completely unworkable, badly designed, and already out of date".
The project has been troubled since its inception, with constant delays and MPs insisting that it will write off at least £140m. In November, work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith once again defended the scheme and criticised the "utterly negative" response to the stuttering project.
7. The NHS's transition to Spine 2
Since the winding down of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT), little has been left for the NHS to savour. That is aside from NHS's Spine. Computing spoke to many of the suppliers involved in or affected by the new Spine to understand how successful the transition had been, and the general consensus was that the transition had gone smoothly. An NHS IT first? Perhaps.
In a dig at his former employees, and sector, Phil Pavitt, the former CIO of HMRC claimed that many government departments are likely to fail in their quest to be truly digital because they are still reliant on legacy systems.
"Where the UK has played it wrong in many of its departments, is that it has pimped out its front-end, but it has not changed its legacy engines - that is not truly digital," he said.
5. Government saves more than £14bn, claims CTO
In October, government CTO Liam Maxwell claimed that the government saved more than £14bn on IT procurement and services over the last year compared to the cost of IT services in 2010.
The government has been criticised for overspending on IT contracts, and Maxwell has brought in a strict limitation on the size of IT contracts, while ensuring that they are no longer than necessary.
4. Private company stored NHS patient records on Google Drive
Birmingham-based private company Diagnostic Health, which carried out ultrasound scans for the NHS was involved in a series of data protection breaches, potentially affecting up to 10,000 patients.
The unencryped data was stored on Google Drive, and staff shared a password to access those files, according to a leaked report from the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), seen by the BBC.
3. Millions of patients' NHS data sold to private companies
An internal review by the NHS information centre found that millions of patients' NHS data had been sold to private companies over the last decade. It found that between 2005 and 2012, 588 data releases were made to 178 private sector organisations excluding charities, for the purpose of "analytics, benchmarking and research". The astonishing revelations put the NHS's care.data plans under even more scrutiny.
2. Open source in local government and other unicorns
When Computing spoke to Jos Creese, CIO of Hampshire County Council, he explained that Microsoft worked out cheaper than open source alternatives.
"Each time we've looked at open source for desktop and it costed out, Microsoft has proved cheaper," he said.
And when Computing spoke to other IT leaders, many of them also resisted the use of open source alternatives, although they did use open source technologies for specific services - something that Chris Puttick, open source advocate and co-founder of child protection and guidance service TwoTen blamed on "laziness". Meanwhile, John Jackson, CIO of Camden Borough Council, said he uses open source for "a wide range of uses including mission-critical applications".
The controversial data-sharing programme would have launched earlier this year if it wasn't for privacy campaigners who asked for the project to be thought through, this has resulted in several delays already.
Since delaying the programme for six months back in February, NHS England vowed to forge ahead with "unchanged" care.data plans in October, and planned pilot schemes in six areas across the country with a full scheme to be rolled out shortly after.
But earlier this month, a report released by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Patient and Public Involvement in Health and Social Care found that there had been a lack of clarity about the project. This was followed by a report by the Independent Information Governance Oversight Panel (IIGOP), chaired by Dame Fiona Caldicott, which called for NHS England to respond to 50 unanswered questions about the scheme before it can indeed forge ahead with the programme. Many may have thought that the scheme would have either been given the full go-ahead or been scrapped by now, but the end of 2014 means that there have been more questions than answers left for the Care.data programme board.