WRITTEN ON November 2nd, 2005 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Transformational Government

We now have the strategy. Jim Murphy has made a piece of history by starting the first Ministerial blog conversation (so far to stunned silence, but it’s only four hours later and there’s a lot to read). Unfold for my initial reaction.

There’s a characteristically good summary of the strategy on KableNet. See also Silicon.com, e-gov Monitor and Public Tech Net.

It’s a consultation document, and the IT Strategy project team is asking for feedback between now and 6 Feb. So feed back directly. I will also offer edited and consolidated feedback from any Ideal Government discussion.

Although the team is called the IT Strategy Project team, it’s not called an IT Strategy. It’s about

1. public services as they affect people, businesses and staff
2. public sector admin, infrastructure and processes including shared services, and
3. last but not least, government IT

It calls for user-oriented design (Hurrah!) a shared services culture (hurrah, no doubt) and IT professionalisation (hurrah – with a caveat. Professional CIOs don’t merely execute what the Board tells them. They help the Board make decisions that are better adapted to the emerging e-enabled world.)

I generally think the aims are easy to support and the assessment of the legacy rings true. We’ve now got ten weeks to formulate our questions and responses. I can see emering starting around whether and how people actually want choice and personalisation of services, and whether there is positive benefit in set6ing out how and where people will be left in peace and their dignity and privacy respected. It’s perfectly appropriate to grasp this nettle and make a positive statement about it, rather than to acknowledge privacy as a cross that progressive, modernising data sharers have to bear. When it says

Information sharing, management of identity and of geographical information, and information assurance are therefore crucial.

..well, yes of course, but in whose interests and under whose control is it to be done? I think we’ll need to unpack and discuss para 39.4

Data Sharing: data sharing is integral to transforming services and reducing administrative burdens on citizens and businesses. But privacy rights and public trust must be retained. There will be a new Ministerial focus on finding and communicating a balance between maintaining the privacy of the individual and delivering more efficient, higher quality services with minimal bureaucracy.

Maybe it’s not a balance: maybe better systems with a more mature approach to privacy management are more secure, create more trust, and are better all round.

The paragraph on identity management speaks cautiously of converging towards biometric identity cards and the National Identity Register. There’s scope here for engagement by some different Ministers with critical friends in this area – see discussion to date.

There’s lots more detail. It’s commendably concise, covering a lot of ground in relatively few words. There are working papers behind it and we’ll need the more eagle-eyed among us to address the devils in the detail in due course.

We know we can do things differently. Let’s ask government IT professionals to do to the very best of their ability what, after deep thought, we believe to be right.