One suspects that most LAs finger someone in the IT department to report on IEG progress with a directive to make sure every PSTO is green by March next.

This unfortunate soul then has to convince the rest of the organisation that IEG is “not really about IT but improving services – and by the way can you find the budget to implement the new systems”.

Personal motivation probably revolves securing a pension or a job in a consultancy company.

Sorry, I am a bit cynical today.

Wouldn’t this continue the drive to ‘savings’ rather than ‘service’?

But I’m rather tending to the view that they’ve got more than enough managers, administrators, change management consultants, performance units, that funny outfit run by Wendy Thompson, delivery teams, auditors and business process re-engineers etc so let’s not throw our pristine raw skills and precious passion in there with that lot. They don’t want us anyway.

Let’s just concentrate on the outputs – what it feels like at point of contact, and what it should feel like. I find the rest overwhelming – depressing in fact – and it’s somebody else’s job anyway (or rather several hundred thousands of people’s job).