5 years ago: UK e-envoy dubs government IT 'a disaster'

17.01.00 UK e-envoy Alex Allan has admitted that the government's IT systems are in chaos.

During an exclusive interview with silicon.com, Allan discussed the challenges he is preparing to face with the UK government's private and public sector ecommerce policy.

The role includes negotiating between industry and government over the level of regulation surrounding the net and ecommerce. He will also be partly responsible - along with Ian McCartney, e-government minister, and Patricia Hewitt, DTI e-minister - for overseeing the mammoth task of modernising the UK's public services.

Given the current state of play he admitted the job will be not be easy. "We are looking hard at the high profile disasters and trying to take forward the lessons we've learned from them. The message is not to give up but to move forward intelligently," he said.

For the full story from 2000 click here.

17.01.04 Well, we can hear you ask, what has changed? The public sector is still plagued by regular IT failures, splashed on the pages of silicon.com and in other publications (often because there has to be openness that the private sector doesn't face).

But let's put this in context. Allan was new to the e-envoy post when this piece was written, and how confusing does it look now to talk about him, the e-government minister and the DTI e-minister? At least now we have some consistency, some maturity in Ian Whatmore and the way we finally seem to be able to treat department IT heads as CIOs.

It's still too early to say there will be a better success rate in government IT projects but the whole set up at least looks more streamlined and more realistic than it did five years ago.