I was up at Portcullis House today, for an event organised by the Oxford Internet Institute and hosted by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. The event was split into two sessions, one moderated by Alun Michael MP, and the other by the Earl of Erroll. I have to say, both moderators did - in their own characteristic ways - a superb job of letting the speakers flow and managing questions from the audience. William Heath of Kable and IdealGovernment gave a show-stopping presentation, in competition with a star-studded cast. Nice one, William.
Possibly the most topical message from all the afternoon's presentations was this - that it's no good trying to design an IT solution unless you have already recognised two things: first, that you need a clear, unambiguous and mutually accepted specification of requirements, and second, that the IT compnent of any endeavour is only ever a sub-project, there to mediate some other business change.
All of which makes the most recent post on the Ideal Government blog all the more piquant. It's a supplier explaining their reasons for withdrawing from the ID Card procurement process:
“Our biggest bugbear was that they [the IPS] still haven’t decided what
it is they really want. They don’t know whether they want something
that is all about security, or whether they want something that is all
about customers/citizens. The two require different solutions. There’s
just too much confusion still in play.”
If this BBC article is to be believed, they might not be the only ones starting to wonder if there's a clear and achievable objective here...
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