The government’s strategy for ICT was finally (officially) published this week, with the Government CIO John Suffolk outlining plans to deliver cost efficiencies and streamlined services across the public sector IT within the next few years.

 

The strategy features several key proposals, including implementing a Government Cloud (G-Cloud) to ‘enable public sector bodies to select and host ICT services from one secure shared network’; reducing the number of data centres from hundreds to a dozen, saving up to £300 million; creating a ‘Government Applications Store’, speeding up procurement and saving approximately £500 million per year; and implementing a common desktop strategy, leading to annual savings of a further £400 million. 

 

Arguably the government CIO’s defining innovative component of ICT strategy, is the design, development, and implementation of the G-Cloud. Suffolk acknowledges it remains very much at the design stage, though a first phase is expected to be completed soon (“The first phase [of the G-Cloud and Apps Store] is due to be completed in February,” Suffolk explains). Given recent indications that multiple, smaller Clouds could be the way forward, should the term ‘G-Cloud’ now refer to a brand used to define a multitude of smaller government Cloud entities, rather than a single homogenous entanglement?

 

“It’s hard to perceive of a single G-Cloud for government. For one, I’m not a fan of putting all my eggs into one basket" admits Suffolk.  “It’s not a ‘one size fits all’. Do I think we will have lots and lots of G-Clouds? No, but I do think there will be more than one. I think there will have to be some scale, so they’ll be big rather than small. You have to have an economy of scale; you need to drive through the efficiency. I see a handful of reasonable size Clouds over a period of time.”

 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the government CIO won't be drawn to comment on whether the NHS’ forlorn and unwieldy National Programme for IT would perform better in the Cloud or if such a big ticket project should have been green lit at all (“I would never make such a comment,” he says).

 

Instead, he believes individual departments and government authorities should take responsibility for whether their future lies in the Cloud or now.  “Departments, whether it’s health or transport or local government, understand their business requirements better than anybody else," he suggests. "I think what they should be doing is assessing what is the best way of fulfilling their business requirements at a price they can afford. If they believe things should be moved into ‘a' Cloud’ or ‘the' Cloud, then that is the best decision for them.”

 

Suffolk also reiterates that there’s likely to be a mixed economy of both private and public Clouds, though one of the most important decisions to be made relating to the G-Cloud initiative rests with the location of the datacentres used to hold the information. Will they all be based within the UK, or given the robust data protection measures in place across the European Union, can UK data be held in any European Union state? “We already have a lot of datacentres here in the UK, so would say it would be logical for us to start with those if they fulfil government requirements,” he says.  “You still have to go and validate and make sure [EU datacentres] conform to our security requirement,  you still need to understand all of their policies and procedures,  their laws and regulations.  There’s just another layer of complexity if you use a non-UK datacentre.”

 

So are there any data security factors with off-shoring away from the UK.  “You have to satisfy yourself that whoever the country, whoever the party – on-shore or off-shore – fulfils the requirements of the UK government in terms of data-handling and security" explains Suffolk. "So whilst the law is maybe the same across Europe, they may not be interpreted the same across Europe; generally speaking it is of course, but you still need to validate them. Why would we do that up front? We wouldn’t! We would start with on essence UK on-shore datacentres and then work out from there – if that is appropriate.”

 

Socitm disapproval

 

The report’s launch comes just a week after Socitm (the Society of IT Managers -  which represents ICT executives in the local government sector) published its own report on IT trends in 2009 and 2010, in which it aired misgivings over Suffolk’s G-Cloud initiative, and the likelihood reaching a 20% cost efficiency target set out in the Operational Efficiency Programme (OEP). Suffolk disputes Socitm’s claims, insisting the OEP’s targetis achievable.  “The 20% is realistic, based on what we know. Clearly, the more people that positively engage in moving money from the back-office to the front-office by using the Cloud, the Apps Store, the public sector networks, and common designs, the quicker we can reach 2%.”

 

Critically, Suffolk claims the 20% savings can be achieved without migrating jobs offshore.  “The precept in [the] question that we’ll have to offshore jobs in order to deliver on the target, [is something] I don’t believe," he argues. “Government is not giving us a choice on the 20%. People need to help us and themselves deliver good savings so we can move the money to protect frontline services.”

He describes the ICT strategy as a document that shows how the government executes the OEP, and Digital Britain: “My belief is the strategy is there to show how we deliver OEP; underpin Digital Britain; put the frontline first; build Britain’s future – the list goes on. The 20% is very much doable; it’s about re-use and not re-inventing the wheel; it’s about rationalisation; and so far, I’ve not been involved with any debates which have mentioned taking jobs offshore.”

 

Many innovative IT projects are developed on an annual basis on a local government level, and some of these are initially funded by contributions from central government. Despite the impending budget cuts in the public sector, Suffolk denied there’d be a stifling of IT innovation. In fact, he argues it would actually facilitate greater levels of creativity, and paraphrases analysts and entrepreneurs: “The next big innovation will come out of the financial environment we ourselves in today.”

 

He continues: “If you have less money, you tend to look for new and innovative ways to do things which you perhaps wouldn’t have thought about when you had cash in your pockets. I also don’t think we’ll see a stifling or a reduction in innovation.  I think we’ll see tremendous innovation.”

 

Katy Ring, of Sift Media’s K2 Advisory services says the ICT strategy has much to offer, commenting: “There are some excellent ideas – such as the development of G-Cloud and G-AS and their role in provision of shared services. However, without making use of such services mandatory within central and local government uptake is likely to be slow, delaying projected savings.”

  

For more on G-Cloud, read:   [2]Suffolk hits back at Socitm misgivings over Cloud [3]