This will be the Committee’s third evidence session of its Inquiry into the Government’s use of IT. The first panel, with representatives of local government, will focus on how local government has used IT to meet the demands of reduced budgets and what central government could learn from this experience.

The second panel with the Department of Work and Pensions and HMRC will focus on the challenges central departments face in changing how they use IT. It will also look at the lessons learnt from previous IT programmes and how they have been applied to current projects such as Universal Credit and Real Time Information.

Particular issues that may arise include:

• How IT has enabled councils to move towards the “virtual council” model;
• The use of shared services and cloud computing in local government and what Whitehall could learn from these experiences;
• Why it has been so difficult to effect change in how government uses and manages its IT;
• The barriers preventing greater use of open source, open standards, agile development, and cloud computing by government; and
• The government’s relationship with larger suppliers.

Witnesses:

Tuesday 22 March 2011

Committee Room 5

At 10:30 am

• Mark Adams-Wright, Chief Information Officer, Suffolk Council
• David Wilde, Chief Information Officer, Westminster Council
• Martin Ferguson, Head of Policy, SOCITM

At 11:30 am

• Joe Harley, Director General and Chief Information Officer, DWP
• Malcolm Whitehouse, Group Applications Director, DWP
• Phil Pavitt, Director General and Chief Information Officer, HMRC
• Mark Holden, Director Projects and Programmes, HMRC

via PASC continues Government IT inquiry with evidence from Local Government and Central Departments – UK Parliament.

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