The government's much-heralded strategy to transform Whitehall by improving professional delivery skills, reducing wasteful duplication, making services more tailored to users and providing greater strategic leadership has resulted in some savings, but few really big initiatives.
The Cabinet Office's annual report, released on 15 May, on how the government has used IT to make the public sector more effective shows big rises in spending on IT by two government departments - defence and health.
The Ministry of Defence raised its IT spending by 37% in 2007-08 to £1.86bn, while the NHS produced a 21% increase at £3.24bn.
The report shows that NHS Connecting for Health spent £1.39bn in 2007-08, 24% more than 2006-7, while other NHS organisations spent £1.85bn, up 19%. The Department of Health did not provide figures for itself.
This contrasted with significant cuts for two government organisations that make the widest use of IT. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), spent £1.1bn in 2007-08, down by 5.7%, and HM Revenue and Customs made an 11% cut year on the year to £815m.
Local authorities spent a total of £3bn on IT, up 11%, while police forces and their national agencies spent £1bn, up 2.6%.
The overall IT spending of state sector organisations represented on the Cabinet Office's CIO Council rose by only 3.1%, to £13.65bn.
This includes most Whitehall departments and agencies, as well as English local authorities and the Northern Irish public sector, although it excludes GCHQ on secrecy grounds. It does not include Scotland and Wales.
Although savings have been made through more services in government being joined up, such as the savings of £50m in the work and pensions department, there is little sign of a really big push in this area.
Although the report highlights the Tell Us Once scheme, led by the work and pensions department, calling it a "major example of service redesign", this scheme is still only at pilot stage and has not been seized on by other departments.
In his foreword, John Suffolk, the government's chief information officer, sounds a warning note: excellent service will still be at the forefront of our agenda, he writes, "but even more focus on driving value out of the investments we make will be paramount".
From Bubb's Blog
From Whitehall Watch
