§ Mr. AlexanderTo ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office if she will make a statement on the effectiveness of the initiatives based on the use of IT to improve public services set up by her Department since 1997. [101914]
§ Mr. Ian McCartneyThe Government have adopted a challenging programme to modernise public services using new technology. This ranges from accessing Government services from one's digital television set, accessing the Internet through a PC in the local library or phoning a call centre, such as NHS Direct, for health advice.
We also want to improve the introduction of new technology. As part of our major review of the handling 574W of Government IT projects, we are looking to identify the pillars that support successful IT projects and to make sure that they are put in place in the future. These include:
Full assessment of the risks involved in a project and clear plans for managing them.
Strong contingency plans.
Keeping the scale of a project to something manageable.
Making sure that both the supplier and the purchaser clearly understand the aims of the project, and their respective responsibilities.
We need to ensure that we learn lessons from past projects so that future systems run effectively and deliver value for money.