Having been nice about the New Labour blog we can now get back to the business in hand and point out their inconsistency, hypocrisy and sheer brass neck once more.In this instance it is their spin on the decision by the Administration not to proceed with phase two of e-government using Capgemini.
It has been clear for some time that this part of the scheme was unaffordable and needed to be re-thought out. In fact members of the Administration have said as much in the Evening Post. It is also the case, contrary to what is said in the Post and on the Labour blog, that phase one is likely to achieve both its objectives and the savings expected of it. Indeed, half of those ten year savings have already been identified. That fits precisely with what we said on 28 April 2006.
The Evening Post say that projected savings have been scaled back from between £30m and £50m to £26m, but that is because only half of the original scheme is being implemented as envisaged. As for Councillor Phillips' allegation that we need phase two to implement the contact centre, that is not strictly true, and of course it is always possible that phase two can be resurrected with a new partner or via a scaled back in-house option. All of these are being looked at.
The biggest laugh however is Labour's selective quotation of the Evening Post article. They note the paper's description of the decision as a u-turn but ignore completely the comment article in which the Council is praised for taking this course of action:
Pressing the pause button heralds a common sense approach from County Hall and its new chief executive, and is in marked contrast to his predecessor's head-in-the-clouds attitude to local government.
Having taken this project through a strike caused by the previous Labour administration's mishandling of the issues, and having had to mould their wild ambitions for IT into a more manageable form, we believe that our whole approach to e-government has been a common-sense approach. If Labour had had their way the Council would have been bankrupted. Now we can enjoy the benefits of improved working, better IT systems, a combined contact centre/library and financial savings. Phase two may still be possible, but we are not going to put front line services at risk to pay for it.
