IT in government to be key election ground

Article date: Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:33 GMT

According to a new report, "It's Ours: Why we, not government, must own our data", the government should scrap its £16.5 billion annual expenditure on centralised databases.

The systems often do not work properly and they also have serious privacy implications, the new paper from the right-of-centre Centre for Policy Studies stated. The report argues the government does not understand IT or how to manage IT projects and that 70 per cent fail.

Just days after David Cameron launched a scathing attack on the Labour government's databases, this report is another sign that multi-billion pound IT projects, are likely to become an election battleground.

The government was ill advised in its pursuit of "huge, expensive centralised databases which attempt to direct public services to the point of need as judged by the state", it said.

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