With the public sector spending plans of all political parties coming under close scrutiny, IT is being labelled in equal measure as the cause and saviour of the current spending crunch that the public sector is facing.

However, it is not a simple either/or argument. It is not a case of should the country have an eGovernment strategy, but rather what that strategy should be.

The debate reached a new height this week with the Conservative Party’s announcement regarding its suggested alternative to the spiralling costs of the NHS database project. Moving on from general statements of intent, this was the one of the first acknowledgements that government technology purchasing is under the spotlight and seen to be an important part of a party’s manifesto.

The idea of moving NHS data into the ‘cloud’ through providers such as Google is a bold choice; however it mimics strategies that have been adopted across the private sector. There is no doubt that the landscape of public sector technology purchasing is changing and the adoption of open source/ open standards technology provides a more transparent, democratic approach to technology purchasing.

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