3.5 Based on information supplied by departments, we have estimated that at least 65 staff and contractors (full-time equivalents) in the Cabinet Office and the public sector worked on the Strategy in the first six months.
3.6 The Cabinet Office intended that delivering the Strategy would be resourced from existing budgets. To implement the Strategy it has drawn on the wider expertise in the Cabinet Office. The Government ICT team are providing programme management support to the Board. The Crown Representatives, a group of senior procurement and commercial directors recently established by the Cabinet Office to ensure that government acts as a single customer, are supporting work on strategic relationships with ICT suppliers and small businesses. The Government Procurement Service is providing ICT procurement specialists to set up contracts and methods to purchase commodity ICT and the common infrastructure.
3.7 The Cabinet Office has recruited senior people from outside central government to the Board. The Executive Director for Digital is responsible for ensuring that the Government offers digital products that meet people's needs. The Director of ICT Futures advises on how government can use innovative new technology to deliver better, cheaper solutions for public services.
3.8 Staff have been redirected from other tasks to work on implementing the Strategy. We have also found collaborative working across departmental boundaries. For example, HM Revenue & Customs and the Ministry of Defence have combined resources to develop a strategy for greener ICT. Teams producing the strategies for cloud computing and common desktops and mobile devices have worked together to reduce the risk of overlap and gaps.10 The Government CIO has promoted collaboration and it will be important that his departure, and that of the Deputy CIO in early 2012, does not adversely affect this new way of working.
3.9 So far these resources have been adequate to establish the leadership and governance, undertake initial planning and scope out the work required. The Cabinet Office has focused on bringing in staff with the necessary technical skills to work on managing the implementation of the Strategy. However, our evidence shows that the Government ICT team has been under-resourced due to the time taken to fill vacant posts.
3.10 We collected forecasts of staff from the senior responsible owners of all projects, except cloud computing and 'agile' delivery as the teams were not in a position to provide a reliable estimate. In total, we found that the public sector will require at least another 84 people (full-time equivalents) to deliver the projects in the Plan.
3.11 We are concerned that there are specific skills gaps in the short term that threaten the delivery of the Strategy's benefits. There is no formal mechanism to make sure staff are allocated to the highest priority areas of work. Our international research on implementing ICT strategies found that one of the most significant challenges governments face is the availability of sufficiently skilled and experienced ICT, project management, commercial and procurement staff. For government to have the necessary capability to deliver the Strategy it will need to join up ICT with other professional areas.
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10 HM Government, Greening Government: ICT Strategy, 28 October 2011. HM Government, Government Cloud Strategy, 28 October 2011. HM Government, Government End User Device Strategy, 28 October 2011.