The new Government ICT Strategy has been published on the Cabinet Office website – and to their great credit, it’s been published:
- primarily for web consumption, with the downloadable versions a click deeper; and
- not just in PDF, not just in Word format, but also in OpenOffice format! The quiet symbolism is noted.
Much of the document will seem familiar, as it’s been (notionally) in place, or certainly on the cards, for some considerable time. But I’m struck by the relatively strong language it uses, for example: ‘The Government will also put an end to the oligopoly of large suppliers that monopolise its ICT provision.’
There’s formal endorsement of Agile methodology; ‘mandation of specific open standards’; and a commitment that ‘Government will not commission new solutions where something similar already exists.’ That may sound like common sense… but the impact of such a black-and-white statement could be substantial.
The picture as regards open source specifically is somewhat disappointing, boiling down to little more than a restatement of the same ‘level playing field’ principle of recent years. Of course, as I’ve written here many times, that policy should be all that’s needed to kickstart a revolution; but it hasn’t happened. And I’m just not convinced that the creation of three new committees – an Open Source Implementation Group, a System Integrator Forum and an Open Source Advisory Panel – plus the creation of a ‘toolkit for procurers’ will do much to advance things… in themselves. But maybe that’s just how the Civil Service has to do things.
A couple of other points which jumped out at me:
- there’s an apparent endorsement of Directgov as the ‘single domain’, along the lines proposed by Martha Lane Fox. As I wrote at the time, there are pros and cons to this; and I know there were some efforts to keep services and policy separate.
- an explicit commitment that ‘departments will ensure an online channel is included in all government consultations’, within six months.
- no going back on the notion of open policy formulation, including a pledge to ‘develop practical guidelines on departmental access to the internet and social media channels’.
Coincidentally, Francis Maude is just sitting down in front of the Public Adminstration Select Committee as I type this. I’ll be watching, and hope to provide notes later.