Prime Minister David Cameron should voice his support for Government-as-a-Platform (GaaP), which needs more buy-in from senior government figures to transform the public sector, it is claimed.
GaaP is the Government Digital Service's (GDS) attempt to replace expensive legacy IT contracts with user-friendly platforms that can be adopted at little cost across the public sector.
However, the concept requires more support from key Whitehall mandarins and politicians, according to Mark Thompson, University of Cambridge's senior lecturer in information systems.
Speaking at an event hosted by trade body techUK this week, he said: "GDS is doing a fantastic job, but where's [chief executive of the civil service] John Manzoni in this? Where's the Prime Minister, frankly?
"What this is talking about is transitioning to a digital business model for the UK public service economy.
"It's going to be country-changing and we're not getting anything like the level of interest [from senior government figures]."
GaaP will see public bodies' individual, customised IT systems replaced by shared, standardised platforms in a wide transformation of public sector IT.
But, as it stands now, Thompson claimed that public sector IT leaders will be "dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century" by the GDS as it tries to get people on board with its digital agenda.
GDS is responsible for several digital projects in government, including shifting more than 300 public body websites to a central platform, Gov.uk.
Other examples of GaaP platformss include the identity assurance platform Gov.uk Verify, and the team is about to create three new ones addressing payments, messaging and bookings.
A commercial model'
Thompson sees GaaP not simply as a way to revolutionise government technology, but government as a whole.
"A platform with no ecosystem is like one hand clapping," he said. "It doesn't make any sense to me, it's just a piece of tech."
Instead, GaaP requires a wholesale rethink of government: the UK could avoid many frontline cuts if it commits to reorganising how the public sector runs as a model, Thompson claimed, hence his call for high-level support for the concept.
Richard Sargeant, GDS's director of performance and delivery, agreed that GaaP is only in part about technology.
He tried to position GaaP in the context of other society-changing innovations created by governments past, claiming these too have been platforms for cultural and economic life.
"The platforms that [government] has provided have often been in the form of common infrastructure; the roads, the energy networks, the law," he said. "This really is more similar in some ways than the iOS or Android comparisons."
Thompson added that consequently, GaaP will have far-reaching consequences. including a shake-up of public sector bodies.
"Ultimately for me GaaP is a commercial model," he said. "The challenge... is what the hell that means for the wider ecosystem of suppliers, what that means for changed roles right up and down the public sector."
Government can't do it on its own
As much as Cameron, Manzoni and other Whitehall bigwigs need to consider GaaP's potential for reforming the way the public sector runs, the GDS stressed that government can't create GaaP by itself.
Sargeant argued that the concept requires third-party expertise and collaboration between the public and private sectors.
He said: "This is not something that government alone can do, but something that will require a constructive engagement with the private sector, the third sector as well as all of the agencies and government departments involved in service delivery.
"GaaP will also involve enormously a selection of suppliers and advice and wisdom from all quarters, including people like Mark and other thinkers across the world."
This commitment from the GDS follows Gov.uk Verify signing up Barclays, GB Group, Morpho, PayPal and Royal Mail as identity assurance suppliers to join the four already part of its programme.
But it contrasts with a recent blog post in which Alex Holmes, the deputy director of the GDS, recommended departments develop services in-house, rather than using external suppliers under the tower IT model.
TechUK said at the time that this had caused its members "some alarm".
But the trade body's director of technology for government, Gordon Morrison, said he welcomed GDS's desire to engage with the private sector over GaaP, saying it was an exciting initiative.
"GaaP is [an] opportunity for the tech industry," he said. "GaaP will play a big role in opening up the public sector to innovation and has the potential to attract really innovative suppliers to government."
Whitehall's former Cloudstore lead for cloud procurement framework G-Cloud, Mark Craddock, told IT Pro on Twitter that any tenders for private sector involvement should be open and transparent.
He pointed to G-Cloud 7 the forthcoming update to the programme as a place to publish GaaP services.
And subsequent to the event, the Cabinet Office revealed plans to trial a new transparency clause in central government department contracts.
It calls for the proactive release of contract details, calling for an approach to disclose information regarding any deal between government and a supplier - but will likely exclude monetary details.
Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said in a statement: "Transparency is an idea whose time has come. A transparency clause ... will ensure that public authorities can make the necessary information on outsourced public services available to the taxpayer."
