£1bn in govt IT projects on slash list

Maude says 300 projects were reviewed and govt was 'fair'

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude has said that more than 300 IT projects have been reviewed and projects worth £1bn will be stopped or "de-scoped".

A spokesperson for the Cabinet Office told GC News that information about projects which will be axed or scaled back will be "available soon".

"Since the creation of the Efficiency and Reform Group (ERG), the government has implemented tight new controls, ensuring that all new contracts worth over £1m have to be approved centrally.

"As well as this, ERG is going through all large existing contracts to ensure they represent good value," she said.

In a statement on 18 October 2010 Maude said that £27m had been saved on websites, advertising and marketing spending compared to the period of June to August in 2009.

He said that ERG is looking to make radical changes to the way it provides essential services to citizens, "making them easier to access and cheaper to provide".

Part of this plan will include the group working closely with the UK digital champion Martha Lane Fox to improve the government's online services. Maude said it will also be looking at moving to an "online first model" for some services.

"Our priority has always been to do this as fairly as possible and take cost and waste out of the centre of government so that we can protect essential jobs and services on the front line. Every pound wasted unnecessarily in Whitehall on operational overheads is a pound that can't be spent on the services we all rely on, and that is why we set up this ambitious efficiency programme," he said.

"This is not glamorous work, but it is where the money is, and what today's figures show is that the approach taken by the Efficiency and Reform Group is working. In the run-up to the spending review and beyond, we will continue to leave no stone unturned in the search for waste and unnecessary low value spending."

This article was originally published at Kable.

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