Socitm Blog

Socitm's response has been prepared by Socitm's Futures group with input from the membership in Socitm's Regions and other key stakeholders.

Our key recommendations are:

• Regional or sub-regional groupings of local authorities to lead in the provision of health and social care resource allocation information systems, particularly as GP clusters take over commissioning from Primary Care Trusts.
• Creation of marketplaces for service outcome and demand-led approaches to information systems designed to facilitate personalised choice of health and social care services.
• Greater transparency and openness of information on care needs, assessments, diagnosis, research, guidance, treatments and availability and cost of health, as well as social care, services in order to generate conditions for innovation by patients, service users and providers of care and therapies.
• Development of national standards for interoperability, information sharing and consent.
• Mandation or regulation to ensure compliance with standards for interoperability, information sharing and disclosure should be considered.
• Sharing of information with patients and service users in a number of ways, including online access. This information should cover all significant sources of health and social care diagnosis, assessment, prevention, treatment and care, including GP, social care, acute hospital, community care and mental health.
• Support (technical and interpretive) for patients and service users to access their own information online to overcome the restrictions of their capacity or capability.
• Joining-up information across systems and organisations for complex cases to be done with the involvement of users to avoid unnecessary complexity and to remain outcome-focused, tracking typical user journeys through the systems, so that only the information that is genuinely needed is joined-up.
• An initiative to recast the mindset of all staff in public services on the benefits and responsibilities that will come with improved handling and sharing of data and information.
• Access requirements generated by the proposed information revolution in health and social care to be incorporated directly into the Race Online 2012 campaign.
• Leadership, vision, governance and funding to ensure development and implementation of standards, and joined-up information systems and outcomes.

The Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) is undertaking an inquiry into the way in which Government develops information technology policy and the strategy for its implementation. The inquiry will examine the Government's overall approach to information technology including how it identifies business needs, the effectiveness of governance arrangements, and procurement policy and practice. Socitm is seeking the views of its members and other interested parties, so that it can formulate its submission to PASC by the required deadline of 21 January 2011.

Please see the foot of this blog entry for how details of how to provide input to Socitm's submission.

Issues that readers of this blog may wish to comment on may include:

• Scope - central and local government; sectoral coverage; etc.
• Alignment of political and policy thinking with development of IT capability.
• Technology vs. service outcome-led strategy formulation.
• Incentives (for public, civil society and private sectors) to invest in IT-enabled change.
• Propensity for knowledgeable and informed senior level engagement.
• Capability to act as an intelligent client.
• Scale and depth of IT programmes.
• Adoption of business change methodologies.
• Open standards and open source.
• Outsourcing.
• Benefits and savings realisation.
• Learning from past mistakes.
• Other .....

Specific questions from the PASC paper:

1. How well is technology policy co-ordinated across Government?

2. How effective are its governance arrangements?

3. Have past lessons from NAO and OGC reviews about unsuccessful IT programmes been learnt and applied?

4. How well is IT used in the design, delivery and improvement of public services?

5. What role should IT play in a 'post-bureaucratic age'?

6. What skills does Government have and what are those it must develop in order to acquire IT capability?

7. How well do current procurement policies and practices work?

8. What infrastructure, data or other assets does government need to own, or to control directly, in order to make effective use of IT?

9. How will public sector IT adapt to the new 'age of austerity'?

10. How well does Government take advantage of new technological developments and external expertise?

11. How appropriate is the Government's existing approach to information security, information assurance and privacy?

12. How well does the UK compare to other countries with regard to government procurement and application of IT systems?

Socitm members wishing to comment on any of the issues or questions raised in this blog should submit responses using the comments facility at the foot of this blog entry or direct by email to martin.ferguson@socitm.gov.uk by 9am on 13 January 2011.

Responses will be collated, distributed to Socitm regional chairs/secretaries, Local CIO Council members and Socitm Futures members, and presented for consideration by the next meeting of Socitm Futures on Monday 17January 2011, in order to make Socitm's response to PASC by 21 January 2011.