WRITTEN ON January 26th, 2006 BY Robert Taylor, Ethiconsulting AND STORED IN Transformational Government

The last three points on your list strike home for me. A few further thoughts:

1. Some of the recently appointed CIOs have experience of transformed customer service in areas outside of public sector. They could dream up
some visionary possibilities and experiment with a few small scale pilots that transform service to the public, and allow a better experience of work
for public servants. But that could be a shift of power from those who do the policy formulation.

2. There is a danger that the strategy could become a barrier to do anything quickly as guidelines, reviews and checklists are formulated and
must be obeyed. Have you looked at the size of the toolkit for shared services on the CIO site? Check it out here – if you can. What is the best way to share knowledge, experiences of success and failure?

3. Successful “Delivery” is important but the obstacles do not lie with technology alone. Dealing with the issue of retirement age for civil servants is not an ideal precedent.

4. The detailed working papers prepared for the CIO Council’s report have much detail. Included amongst the recommendations is the involvement
of the Treasury and NAO to give clout to project scrutiny. There is also a recommended governance structure. However, I see no external advisors and
observers being invited inside. Some academics with relevant experience could be valuable as non-execs in that area.

5. Finally, why not encourage a research project that looks at the effect on public sector productivity of a variety of IT investment projects?
You will recall the project run jointly by ONS and LSE that concluded recently that UK (& European) subsidiaries of US multinationals made higher
productivity gains per $ of IT investment than UK & European domestic companies. Worth looking at the public sector also?