Conservative party leader David Cameron has said his party would call a halt to massive IT projects, such as the £12 billion NHS national programme for IT (NpfIT), splitting them into modular components.
Giving a speech at the National Endowment for Science, Technology and Arts in London, Cameron came out against large-scale projects and in favour of open source computing. "Never again could there be projects like Labour's hubristic NHS supercomputer," he said."I passionately believe that if we are to take on and beat the great challenges of our time, we need the culture of public policy-making to have innovation at its heart. That's the way to get the best results. And that's the way to get value for taxpayers' money.
Cameron said there needed to be a reversal of thinking. "We're going to move from a top-down system to a bottom-up one.,” he said. “Where money follows the needs and wishes of individuals and the users of services - not the priorities of the bureaucracy. Where we don't ask, where does the voluntary sector fit in? - but rather: where doesn't the voluntary sector fit in? Where we in government concentrate on the results that public services deliver, not prescribe the processes they have to follow.
“Too often, as so often in the past, top-down government has stifled innovation rather than stimulated it. It reminds me of Harold Wilson and the famous white heat of technology. The phrase sounded good, but what it meant in practice was putting Tony Benn in charge of the Ministry of Technology. The odd thing about the Government's innovation policy is how un-innovative it is - more spending, more state control, more reliance on the levers of bureaucratic intervention.
“The chapter on public sector innovation in Government's "science innovation" document, has this as its centrepiece: the proposal to create a "Whitehall Hub for Innovation". Something about that doesn't ring true. Whitehall and innovation don't go together, for the simple reason that innovation is the product of many heads not a few, and free thinking not state control. Indeed, some of the best inventions of modern times come out of research which had a completely different intention - or none at all.”
He praised open-source development, and said the government should look to such methods to overcome difficulties with large-scale projects. "The basic reason for these problems is Labour's addiction to the mainframe model - large, centralised systems for the management of information," he said. "A Conservative government will take a different approach. We will follow private sector best practice which is to introduce 'open standards' that enables IT contracts to be split up into modular components. So never again could there be projects like Labour's hubristic NHS supercomputer. And we will create a level playing field for open source software in IT procurement and open up the procurement system to small and innovative companies.”
Cameron also called for what he referred to as “information liberation”. “It's do to with information - the vital currency of innovation. We should empower people by, as far as possible, setting data free,” he declared. “This approach - 'information liberation' you could call it - is inspired by some amazing stories in the world of business. Take Goldcorp - the Canadian mining firm which put its geological surveys online and invited the world to help find gold.The world found deposits worth $3 billion. Look at the private sector's take-up of open source software, developed collectively by a community of individuals, universities and small and large firms from around the world. They build the product, suggest improvements, check the source code and critique each others' work. Linux, the open source pioneer, is now the fastest growing operating system in the world, and even IBM is basing their new hardware on it. Information liberation could be hugely beneficial in the new economy.
“After all, what are the great new giants of the internet - from Myspace to eBay - but information processing systems? These companies have grown because people rely on them to transmit information quickly, easily, cheaply and securely.Imagine if the information that government controlled were available to the public too? I don't mean sensitive information - we don't want to see Revenue and Customs posting all our private records online, whether by accident or on purpose. I mean information which will allow people themselves, expert and non-expert, to create innovative applications that serve the public benefit.
“We have already set out a series of policies that embrace this open approach to government information. They will enable both greater accountability and enable new services - that we can't predict - to emerge to benefit the public. So our Spending Transparency Bill will require future governments to publish online, in an open and standardised format, every item of government expenditure over £25,000. And our commitment to standardised local government information will for the first time enable people to compare performance between different councils. This will put power properly in the hands of the local citizen.”
