"Ratners" syndrome holding back government IT

A cohesive IT roadmap is essential to overhauling the "Ratners" perception of government IT projects, according to government CIO Ian Watmore.

Referring to the famous incident where jewellery chain boss Gerald Ratner labelled his own products "total crap", Watmore said at the Government UK IT summit this week that everyone - often unfairly - from the general public to politicians has a low opinion of IT in government.

"The image and reputation of IT in government is kind of poor. Ratners-like comes to mind because just about every parliamentarian has a very low opinion of what we can achieve with IT," he said.

Part of Watmore's plan involves an IT roadmap for government that will be developed by a "CIO Council" made up of the heads of IT from various central departments and local government bodies. That document is due to be published by the end of November so it can be incorporated as a base for the public sector planning cycle for 2006.

"The reason why we need to develop an IT strategy is to change both the substance and perception behind those comments. It is right in substance but most importantly for the country it is not right to have its public service delivery constantly undermined by actual or perceived failures in IT," he said.

Speaking at the same event David Myers, CIO council member and IT director at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said the aim is not to produce a technical IT roadmap in isolation from the workings of the rest of the public sector machine.

"Most of the debate that happens in the CIO Council centres around business decision making. There isn't a huge amount of discussion around the whys and wherefores of BlackBerrys versus using thin client in a different way. It is about services to the citizen and exploitation of the back-office to support the Gershon efficiency review," he said.