Where Will The Coalition Take British Tech?

Gordon Brown’s government pumped a great deal of money into providing online public services, with projects ranging from setting up electronic medical records to providing free ordnance survey maps. However, in January it was revealed that the government’s £12.7 billion National Programme for IT project (NPfIT) for the NHS had enabled just 160 health organisations to set up electronic patient records, out of an estimated 9,000.

The Conservative party previously threatened to dismantle the NPfIT scheme, and the Liberal Democrats have so far posed no objection to the proposal, but the contracts are likely to need negotiation. Meanwhile, the NHS Trust has decided to go ahead with its own patient record system, which it expects will save £3.2 million.

Global tech institutions

At the TEDglobal conference in 2009, Gordon Brown spoke of the need for global institutions to handle international issues such as the environment and the financial crisis. He said that modern communications gave us the first opportunity to fundamentally change the world. In March 2010, he launched the Institute for Web Science, headed by web pioneer Sir Tim Berners Lee and web science expert Professor Nigel Shadbolt, as part of wider plans to make the UK a leader in digital services and content.

Conservatives have previously spoken of setting up a Cyber Threat and Assessment Centre (CTAC), which would act as the single reporting point for all cyber-related incidents. The CTAC would build on the existing Cyber Security Operations Centre, set up by the Labour government in June 2009. Based in Cheltenham, the centre would provide intelligence about the online threats facing the country, as well as threat assessment and situational awareness facilities.

Ian Moyse, EMEA channel director at security software provider Webroot, expressed his support for the centre, but said that a major challenge for the new Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government would be to have “an objective and non-biased approach to the strategy and technology provided by multiple vendors, instead of relying on a single provider.”

“It is key to understand that Internet attacks can be instigated from anywhere in the world; with botnets being used more and more utilising spyware to infiltrate a machine and turn it against its own, it is easy for a UK based machine to secretly become a spambot,” he said. “Stopping these crimes is not an easy thing and certainly not a legislative issue. Having a kitemark type system and encouraging UK companies to step up the security game should be encouraged across organisations of all sizes.”

Possible harmony

While the tech coalition between the Tories and Lib Dems could potentially be harmonious, the state of the economy and the cuts to IT spending will inevitably hold back innovation. The main challenge for the new government will be to identify the areas where savings can be made relatively painlessly – through use of open source and green technology – without stunting the progress of innovative projects such as global tech institutions and universal broadband.

TechMarketView’s O’Toole suggests that the way to manage this balance will be through use of business process outsourcing and shared services. “A strong agreed stance on immediate cost cutting will be good news for the business services companies – the likes of Capita and Serco – and IT services players with UK government BPO experience,” she said. This will be “bad news for the major IT services companies whose existing IT contracts are at risk of cancellation, curtailment or renegotiation, but good news for those with strength in business process outsourcing.”