Sexing up New Labour ICT

iPads all round as Ian Watmore, Chief Operating Officer of the Efficiency and Reform Group, sings Apple's praises, disses Microsoft and tears into the ICT mentality of New Labour.

Grilled by the Public Administration Select Committee about the use of open-source software, he said: "I personally would like to see people move off Microsoft products onto open source or use Apple technology. I use Apple at home. I know it's not very open but I use it. I love it, it works and I think it is great - I'm Steve Jobs' best customer. But 95% of the business and government world still use Microsoft for its basic desktop products because it is reliable and it works."

More seriously, Watmore - Tony Blair's government CIO - gave a worrying insight into how ICT strategy was formulated by New Labour. Watmore said that ministers embarked on hi-tech initiatives to sex up their policies. IT was often ordered as "an afterthought... or worse, there were people thinking they needed to have a piece of technology to make their policy sound sexy", he told the MPs.

He added that ministers often lost interest in projects once they'd announced policies.

Among the projects started by the Blair administration was the NHS National Programme for IT, now a benchmark for bad public sector ICT practice. Blair also said that it was essential to embark on the now abandoned ID cards initiative partly because he owed it to "modernity" to do so. 

When asked about his role in all this, Watmore said some of the high profile IT "fiascos" under the Labour government was not down to defective technology but to poor project management and badly-defined policies.

PASC chairman Bernard Jenkin told him: "You come from exactly the large corporate culture which has bedevilled IT procurement in government. Are you part of the cultural change the minister is looking for, or aren't you just part of the problem?"

Watmore replied: "I am certainly not part of the problem and I would contest that the corporate industry of this country has caused the problems."