Public sector spat

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Over the last couple of weeks, a row has been brewing over how best to manage public sector IT.

In the one camp, there are the experts who believe that the public sector can wring more savings from its existing infrastructure, by tying applications together and trying to work round information silos.

In the other, there are those who say that nothing short of ripping and replacing much of the public sector’s IT infrastructure will do the job.

As yet, the full scale of spending cuts faced by individual government departments is not clear, although in this week’s Emergency Budget George Osborne, the Chancellor, did say that departments other than health, education, defence and international development would face cuts of around 25 per cent.

Making the way the public sector works more efficient has to be one of the best ways of reducing costs, but also preserving services, as this column has said before.

But it is difficult to make the case for spending any money that doesn’t have to be spent now, at a time when wages and benefits are being cut, and projects scrapped. So it is especially unhelpful to see the IT industry start to fight with itself about the right direction for the Government to take.

A war of words has broken out between vendors Adobe – the maker of Photoshop, PostScript and, increasingly, collaboration tools, and Erudine, an IT vendor that specialises in replacing legacy IT systems.

The full text of Adobe’s and Erudine’s positions are online, for anyone who wants to examine the arguments in their detail. But the gist of the argument appears to be that Erudine’s executives take issue with some of the conclusions put forward by an Adobe-sponsored round table, attended by a number of senior public sector IT professionals.

It does not seem to be stretching the argument too far to suggest, as Adobe does, that better co-operation between Government departments, and better communication between the people who use public services and those who deliver them, is to the good.

Of course, there are arguments the other way. But it does the cause of public sector efficiency, and the role IT can play in it, little good to describe some reasonably practical measures as “yet more lipstick on the pig”. But that is the phrase used by Erudine’s Adrian Hepworth.

Hepworth is essentially correct to argue that making incremental savings, and small changes to systems, will not deliver the same results as more radical reform. The issue is that, as one senior public sector IT officer told this writer, that there is just no appetite for new spending on technology in Government right now.

So rather than argue with each other, vendors should stick to arguing the business case. That way, maybe some sensible investments will survive the cuts.

Stephen Pritchard is a contributing editor at IT PRO.

Comments? Questions? You can email him here.

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