WRITTEN ON January 8th, 2010 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Ideal government IT strategy, Policies, Political engagement, What do we want?

Ha! The clever old Tories have just raised the bar several notches in our highly specific ideal-gov world. The “makeitbetter” site, where we were all invited to pile in to point out the glaring shortcomings in a leaked draft government IT strategy, has struck an unexpected positive note with the addition of an “our proposed approach” tab.

Makeitbetter+ is in line with the broader Tory publication of its draft manifesto, and crowdsourcing questions eg on the NHS using Google Moderator.

It’s still unusually informal for an official party site, a bit obscure about authorship, but it’s now open to feedback on a draft solution. The attribution is

This document draws on the work previously undertaken by Mark Thompson, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Independent Review of NHS and Social Care IT , published this summer by the NHS IT Policy Review Group (commissioned by Stephen O’Brien) of the NHS National Programme for IT, a programme that has become a byword for “how not to do it”.

Now, of course, this is a doppelganger for the CTPR Ideal Government IT strategy project #idealgits (part of the new constructive & mutually courteous dialogue #CMRD).

So how do we all feel about it?

The answer is: great. We want to make theirs better. We want to make everyone’s better. The CTPR/IdealGov IT strategy project makes no claims about being officially aligned with anyone, though we talk to lots of people.

It does claim, with good reason, to be a big tent (watch this space). And it does have the offer of being presented to all three major parties.

If the UK ends up with a new administration with a rubbish government IT strategy after the next election, it won’t be for lack of ideas, or for lack of effort on the part of the public-sector blogosphere posse.