UK to reduce ICT complexity

The UK government is aiming to reduce the complexity of its ICT projects in an effort to raise the success rate of their delivery and to save money, reports Guardian.co.uk.

The cabinet office has published details of its plans in a new Government ICT Strategy document, with emphasis on breaking down projects, moving away from 'big bang implementations' and encouraging smaller companies to bid for business in the field.

It is also aims at increasing the use of open source software, building up relevant skills in the civil service and developing a single government Web domain.

Under the government's strategy, it is aiming to become a 'single intelligent procurer of ICT', and will develop a procurement process, especially designed to make it much easier for innovative SMEs to obtain government contracts, writes IT Pro Portal.

The government is also likely to publish guidance within six months on prerequisites for IT projects worth over £100 million.

Around £16 billion was spent on IT between 2008 and 2009 by the labour government. A series of measures are being taken by the coalition government to cut costs and reduce the size of its IT projects.

Cabinet office minister Francis Maude, says for too long, government has wasted vast amounts of money on ineffective and duplicate IT systems.

“We need to ensure that frontline services have the tools to do their job to deliver effective public services.”

According to The Register, Maude said government ICT has a really bad name. “Much of this is unjustified. All big organisations - whether in the public or private sector - have examples of failure in delivering big ICT projects and programmes.

“In the public sector, the failures tend to be very public, while in the private sector, it is easier to keep them in decent obscurity. It is not obvious that the record of government is significantly worse than that of other big organisations.”