Labour employs Lotus Notes rebuttal software

The UK's Labour Government is to increase its use of technology in the battle to score political points over the opposition.

The Department of Health (DOH) is pioneering a new Lotus Notes-based system to give officials access to statistics which can be used to counter specific allegations from opposition benches.

If successful, the system could be rolled out to other government departments.

Labour used similar technology during the 1997 general election campaign, when spokespeople could gain access to information using the sophisticated Excalibur search-and-retrieval software.

Joe McCrea, special advisor to Health Minister Frank Dobson, said: "It's about using the database, storage and retrieval options within Lotus Notes to store authoritative facts and figures, and extract them rapidly and across a whole range of users, in order to get the true facts out about what the department is doing and counter inaccurate attacks."

Caron Alexander, head of IS for the business development service of Northern Ireland's Civil Service, said: "The Department of Health has kindly offered us software for co-ordinating rebuttal systems, ministerial diaries and briefings. We're planning to incorporate the diary system in the next several months, and we're keen to use the full potential at a later date."

She added that if and when a Northern Ireland Assembly gets set up, it too will use the Lotus Notes system.