Press Releases

Peter Gershon announces Working Groups to deliver improvements in Government IT business projects

The inaugural meeting of the Senior Forum, sponsored by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) in conjunction with Computing Services and Software Association (CSSA), has announced that it is setting up a number of working groups for its future work programme as part of the Government's objective to improve the performance of its major IT projects.

The meeting chaired by Peter Gershon, the OGC's Chief Executive, identified a number of priority areas for its work programme and agreed that the Senior Forum should be supported by a number of working groups.

Peter Gershon said:

"The Forum has identified a range of priority topics to tackle some of the systemic issues that have caused IT enabled government projects to fail. I look forward to working with my colleagues from government and industry to bring about real and tangible improvements in the success of government projects."

John Higgins, CSSA Director General said:

"The creation of these working groups clearly demonstrates that the IT industry and the Government are committed to working in partnership. This will ensure that the UK derives the maximum benefit from the public sector's investment in IT."

The working groups will address:

• Building Open Relationships
• Procurement Process - selection and award
• People and Skills
• Delivering Business Change

The working groups will be delivery orientated, having a finite life-span, producing recommendations to be considered by the Forum. The membership of the working groups will be inclusive, providing opportunities to involve a broader range of government and industry organisations from outside the Forum membership.

Each group will have a sponsor and deputy reflecting the membership of the Forum, one from the public and one from the private sector:

'Building Open Relationships' will be led by John Yard, Inland Revenue, and Martin Goodman, IBM

'Procurement Process - selection and award' will be led by George McCorkell, Department of Social Security, with Roger Crabb , Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC);

'People and Skills' will be led by Carol Wyatt, EDS, with Andrew Matthew, Department of Trade and Industry;

'Delivering Business Change' will be led by Deryk Outram, Chair, CSSA eGovernment Group, with Clare Pelham, Prison Service.

The purpose of the working groups is to develop recommendations that will assist the improvement of the implementation of government IT projects acknowledging that they are, in fact, business projects with an IT element.

The leaders of the working groups have been asked, with the assistance of the Secretariat, to constitute appropriate working groups. The working groups are expected to prioritise the work within their area and come back to the Forum with proposed terms of reference, mappings of the interdependence between the work strands and realistic timescales for delivery.

The inaugural meeting also decided that, in addition to current member organisations, the National Audit Office (NAO) and representatives from the telecommunications sector should be invited to join the Forum.

The next meeting of the Senior Forum will be held in mid January.

NOTES TO EDITORS

• The establishment of the Forum follows the publication in May of the government report into IT project failures "Successful IT: Modernising Government in Action" and the parallel report published by CSSA "Getting IT Right for Government".
• Peter Gershon, Chief Executive of the OGC, is chair of the Forum. The membership consists of equal numbers of senior representatives from government and the IT industry (see Annex A for names of representatives).
• Other public and private sector organisations will be kept informed of the Forum's activities through the Information Age Government Champions network or the CSSA e-Government group accordingly. The Secretariat is considering what additional formal communication mechanisms should be utilised or established.
• The OGC announced on 31 July that it was sponsoring a Senior Forum between Government and the IT industry as part of the Government's response to the report on major Government IT projects.
• OGC press enquiries to Malcolm Graves on 020 7211 1366 or to the OGC's website at www.ogc.gov.uk OGC public enquiries to Sam Pittam-Smith in the Secretariat on 020 7211 1347.
• CSSA press enquiries Alex Quinn on 020 7395 6731 or to the CSSA website at www.cssa.co.uk CSSA public enquiries to Nick Kalisperas on 020 7395 6700

ANNEX A