What will the Libservative IT strategy look like long term, I wonder? What an extraordinary couple of weeks. I’ll admit to a feeling of relief now that we know, at least, the main Cabinet responsibilities for this most unexpected of Lib/Con marriages.  The debate will continue for weeks about the implications for LibDem and Conservative second-level policies, although the in depth coalition agreement is due any second. The only thing that IT devotees really know yet about the future of Government IT strategy is that ID cards are dead as a dodo.  Because these had detractors on all sides, I cannot see many people crying about that aside from the usual suspect IT vendors who were either already involved or readying for future stages of the Home Office procurement scrum. Other high-profile IT projects for the chop include the ContactPoint database and second-generation biometric passports. I finally managed to catch up on my reading this week, and while reading Computer Weekly I was interested to see the three party perspectives on IT which were evidently written pre-election, I started to muse on what might happen to the wider IT approach for government given the current scenario. The intelligence starting to emerge from Conservative spokespeople is rather adding fuel to my view that the general IT direction may not look that different from what it would have been under Labour. On the surface, the parties all had different views, but if you scrutinise them they actually have a lot in common. Labour’s big bandwagon was broadband and inclusion of all citizens; the Liberal Democrats focused on fairness for all and the elimination of limits on personal freedom (the former actually sounds a lot like inclusion to me); the Conservatives talked about openness and transparency, and the role of IT in a fairer and more open society (which also doesn’t sound that different). A seeming hatred on both Con/Lib benches for any big database project plus big dividing manifesto themes like the ID cards distract from this underlying commonality. Although the parties have some very different views on ‘where the problem lies’ actually have one undeniable thing in common, which is the need to utilise IT and the efficiencies it can drive. This would have been a factor regardless of the election outcome, because these are going to be a critical complement to the ‘deep cuts’ we are expecting in public services and elsewhere, regardless of the timing. It doesn’t matter whether you are talking about local government delivery, the workings of central government departments, or the operations of the NHS – IT is right at the heart of both the costs they have and the solution to their endemic efficiency problems.  IT and the economy are now utterly and inextricably linked, and Labour had already started to rationalise this with initiatives such as the controversial Digital Economy Act. Although the then-Opposition never really acknowledged it, Labour was actually already pretty well advanced in looking to use IT to make significant savings, after years of seeking efficiencies that could be unlocked through IT in the back office, which it identified in the Operational Efficiency programme.  Also thanks to Labour, IT is firmly and definitively being used today in a way that was undreamed of before to deliver citizen services and increase transparency, as part of the Transformational Government agenda.  Will Dave 'n' Nick seriously demolish all this work? I really hope not. Of course both LibDem and Conservatives will be gunning for government IT procurement – that is inevitable, and both hold up high-profile IT project failures, overruns or budget explosions as examples. After killing off several of the top priorities, those programmes, which are still running or committed beyond retrieval, will undoubtedly receive some public school-style punishment in due course.  In addition, because it is undeniable that aspects of IT can eliminate unproductive, duplicative and repetitive tasks, it will unfortunately also play a role in eliminating roles and jobs within the UK public sector. However, I hope and suspect that what we will also see is a subtle rebadging and refreshing of a number of existing IT efficiency programmes and initiatives which are already putting IT hard to work to improve citizen services.  Latest information gained by CW seems to indicate that the Digital Economy Act is quite safe (see http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2010/05/14/241229/Broadband-a-priority-for-new-government-but-repeal-of-Digital-Economy-Act.htm). On top of this, a greater focus on helping small and medium sized businesses as a wider economic goal is likely to be a big focus for Vince Cable. It may strengthen access for those SMEs in the innovation IT business to penetrate the government procurement system, and see some really smart new technologies and web-based innovations put to work for all of us.