Here is a lesson in openness and transparency for everyone working in UK government IT.

President Barack Obama’s new federal chief information officer (CIO), Vivek Kundra, has launched a web-based IT dashboard, detailing the spending and project progress of government technology initiatives in the US.

The dashboard can be found here: http://it.usaspending.gov .

The web site allows citizens to track the progress of projects over time, and includes information on more than 7,000 initiatives, of which nearly 800 are classified as “major”.

The dashboard shows costs involved and the number of projects classified according to their status and progress - whether they are “normal”, “needs attention” or “significant concerns”. The site is currently a beta version, and there are a few glitches that need to be ironed out.

But what a refreshingly open approach – and how contrasting with the UK.

Come on John Suffolk, UK government CIO, how about something similar for this country?

When culture secretary Ben Bradshaw finished his speech introducing the Digital Britain report to Parliament, his Tory shadow stood up and dismissed the report as a “disappointment”.

Over the next few days you will undoubtedly hear other vested interests proclaiming the faults of the wide-ranging plan, pointing out its deficiencies, omissions and flaws.

My advice would be to keep the well-worn phrase “you can’t please all of the people all of the time” in mind as you assess the responses.

If you put aside the inevitable quibbles about individual proposals and recommendations, this is a hugely ambitious programme and frankly the government deserves congratulation for attempting it. If there is one major criticism I would make, it is to ask why we waited so long for such a report.

If Digital Britain is implemented as planned, it will help the UK take a huge step forward in putting technology at the heart of our economy, our workplaces and our lives – something that Computing has called for more times than I can remember, and which can only benefit the IT profession.

The £6 per year “broadband tax” to fund rollout of next-generation networks will attract a lot of headlines and controversy, but if it helps deliver superfast connectivity, it will be worth it.

There will be cynicism – from me included – about a lot of the proposals, especially relating to skills development, that resemble too many past, failed initiatives.

And there will be those who question the commitment to online public services, universal broadband and digital inclusion after even Ofcom research has shown there is a significant minority of people in the UK who have no interest in going online whatsoever.

But as report author Lord Carter said: “Digital Britain is a statement of intent and ambition, a commitment to infrastructure and access, and an overdue recognition of the industrial importance of the creative industries."

The plan is best viewed as a whole, and indeed this may be judged greater than the sum of its parts, which will be pulled apart and scrutinised and in some cases no doubt discarded. It’s a first step and mistakes will inevitably be made along the way.

But come on – IT industry, digital industry, creative industries, ask yourselves: This is far, far better than the nothing we have been used to.

Click here for more Computing coverage of Digital Britain.

You go on holiday for two weeks, and what happens.

The UK political system erupts into crisis over dodgy expense claims. Chancellor Alistair Darling releases his latest attempt to reform the dodgy banking system. And then today, a press release arrives about some Ernst & Young research that claims half of Europe’s company employees think some forms of unethical business behaviour are acceptable practice.

One way or another, trust and ethics in business and politics have taken a battering like never before over the past few months.

And of course, you know that for IT leaders, it’s all going to lead to more work.

Trust is going to be one of the most critical issues in the public relationship with government and companies in the coming years, as bruised and battered MPs and chief executives look to rebuild relationships with citizens and customers.

The inevitable reaction will initially be to impose new controls to monitor, identify and report on unethical or untrustworthy behaviour – think of real-time business intelligence on MPs’ expenses or banks’ credit lines and you get the drift.

It won’t be the first time this has happened, of course. In the US, the much-criticised Sarbanes-Oxley Act was brought in to prevent another Enron. Not only was it widely blamed for pushing international firms out of the US and in to London and other stock exchanges, it was seen as a massive bureaucratic overhead.

There’s every chance that you ain’t seen nothing yet, as the slow pull out of recession continues.

IT leaders today face a choice: Sit back and wait for new controls to be brought in, then reactively try to shoehorn them in to your plans; or act now, and champion the sort of IT-enabled governance in private and public sectors that would allow your employer to prove its trustworthy credentials ahead of the game.

It’s an opportune time for IT to show yet another way it can help to lead organisations out of the downturn, and back to a position of trust.

I don’t want to get party political, but if David Cameron’s aims for saving money by cancelling government IT projects are anything to go by, voters need to scrutinise Tory plans for cost cuts elsewhere to test their veracity.

Cameron told his party’s Spring Forum yesterday that, as part of his plans to cut public spending, he would: “Scrap the ID cards scheme. Cancel the ContactPoint database,” and highlighted “over twelve billion wasted on the NHS computer.”

Good, populist, vote-winning statements for the party faithful, of course. And not the first time those three IT projects have been singled out by the Opposition for special attention if they were to win the next General Election. Previously though, the objections have been mainly political, not financial.

Politically, there is always a case to be made.

Financially, as a way to cut public spending, the argument doesn’t stack up so well.

With ID cards – much of the project is going towards overhauling the passport system and introducing biometric passports, which is an international obligation. And at some point, a government of any hue has to tackle the problem of electronic identity management. So we might not have ID cards, but it would not save much cash.

ContactPoint, the controversial children’s database, is already live. Not much to be saved there apart from a few maintenance and service fees.

And as its critics are loath to acknowledge, £12bn is not being wasted on “the NHS computer”. That figure covers a range of projects, many of which are already complete and successful, and none of that cash is being spent until working systems are delivered, so it’s hardly going to waste.

Cameron also said: “One part of it is the electronic patient records system - a central state-run database designed to let GPs, hospital doctors and nurses share your medical notes. Now I want you to imagine how we’d have gone about it, if we’d had the chance. We would have said: today, you don’t need a massive central computer to do this.”

Erm, there isn’t going to be a massive central computer to do this. Every NHS region will have its own system, linked together by the NHS Spine.

“A web-based version of the government’s bureaucratic scheme, services like Google Health or Microsoft Health Vault, cost virtually nothing to run” said Cameron.

Now come on, can you honestly see anyone being happy with Microsoft or Google being given the go-ahead to store our most sensitive personal medical records? Privacy campaigners would have a field day. Or that either provider would house 60 million UK records for "virtually nothing"? And besides, those services are designed for a very different US healthcare system.

Now I’m not standing up for Labour here – far from it. Their record of IT spending certainly deserves the closest scrutiny. It's hard to single out the Tories without sounding party political, but that's not my point.

My concern is that if the Tories think that scrapping a couple of politically-controversial IT systems and asking Microsoft to store our health records is central to their plans to save the economy, then such naivety deserves being seriously questioned.

Well, not many people saw that one coming – least of all perhaps IBM.

Larry Ellison’s pockets seem to be full of endless funds as he snaps up Sun Microsystems for $7.4bn and instantly turns Oracle from a software supplier to a genuine rival to IBM.

For some time now, Ellison has identified Big Blue as the competitor he is most gunning for, and with Sun’s hardware lineup at his disposal he is now even better placed to take aim.

Sun has of course struggled to make money from its server products for some time, but Ellison will strip away the sacred cows in Sun’s business, cut costs, and focus on the areas that his acquisition has always been good at – technical and engineering excellence. Hardware margins become less of an issue when they are bundled in with highly profitable database, middleware and application software. Sun’s drive into open source envisioned a future of free software running on profitable hardware – which was never going to happen. Oracle recognises the commodity nature of even the best bits of kit.

Meanwhile, Oracle gets its hands on Java – probably the most valuable aspect of the purchase. Oracle’s software already runs on Java, but the potential for the programming language is even greater – it is increasingly the de facto standard for Web 2.0 development and for mobile applications. Oracle immediately opens up a whole new market to play in and dominate.

No wonder the press release describes Java as “the most important software Oracle has ever acquired”, ahead of BEA, PeopleSoft, Siebel and all the many other software suppliers the company has purchased in recent years.

IBM reportedly pulled out of talks to buy Sun because it would not stump up enough cash. Oracle will be hoping that stepping into the breach will cost IBM far more in the long term.

For the umpteenth time today, I have just sat and watched a blank screen on my browser, waiting – usually in vain – for the web site of the Digital Britain Forum to load.

Not for the first time, it came back with a timeout connection error.

Mind you, earlier today it was working, and I tried to watch the live video stream of prime minister Gordon Brown’s speech to the high-profile event, to hear what he had to say about our digital future.

From what I could tell, he said this: “I clck zxxc Britzx digital economingft is futurppptthh an pk globlll spthzx.”

Insightful stuff, eh?

You know those comedians who pretend their microphone is not working, and talk in garbled bursts of intermittent word parts? It was rather the same experience. Add to that the stream being seemingly broadcast at about three frames per second, and you’ll understand why the government has managed to royally shoot itself in its digital foot. (Even if they acknowledged the problems and eventually put them right).

The Digital Britain Summit brought together a fantastic line up of speakers from ministers to business leaders across the creative, digital, technology and communications industries. It is undoubtedly the best line up of speakers and experts you will find at such an event for some time. It should have been a showcase for the UK’s ambitious digital plans. Yet they couldn’t even get the web site right.

Why didn’t I go to the event, just in case, you might well ask. That’s because the government didn’t actually tell anybody in the IT press about the event until yesterday. And then, when we asked for a press pass, we were told we didn’t need one. Because it would all be available live online. Ahem.

Of course, the government is being all trendy and social media about it, with a “live blog” on the web site (when it’s available), which is useful, but is clearly one poor bloke desperately trying to type while the speakers talk.

There’s also the obligatory Twitter feed from the event, which includes startling nuggets of information such as: “Large round of applause as the panel exists the stage” and “Johannes B. larcher explains what Hulu is” (sic).

Although my personal favourite Twitter update today was when Gordon Brown reportedly said: "We are I'm a new global age" (sic). After he saved the world earlier this year, it's good to see that Gordon now plans to beat that by personally becoming a new global age.

Of course, because Twitter is involved, Stephen Fry was also invited along as an expert panelist.

And to add a final insult to online injury, apparently Tom Watson, the minister for digital engagement - someone who, with that job title, you would have thought to be an essential contributor to the event - was unable to attend because his invitation arrived too late.

I wish I didn’t feel the need to be so critical. The mere existence of this event, and of the Digital Britain report and strategy it is discussing, is such a huge step forward and the government deserves congratulations for putting “digital” at the heart of the UK’s economic future.

But it inspires so little confidence when they cannot even get the basics of a half decent web site right for such an important summit. It leaves the impression of a digital elite discussing the most social and democratic of technologies in exclusivity in web-darkened rooms.

It’s ham-fisted, divisive and slightly depressing.

Digital Britain is not just the future for the UK IT industry, it is the future for the UK economy. The government needs to inspire confidence to see it through. Getting the most basic of basics right would be a start.

Sun Microsystems has always been a favourite of journalists for its wonderfully headline-friendly name. “Sun rises…”, “Sun sets…”, “Sun shines a light on…” – maybe it doesn’t exactly challenge the skills of a subeditor, but you have to have something to cling on to.

Much like the company itself, which seems unsure whether to cling on to its independence or submit to the reality that the stock markets – and apparently IBM – do not think it is worth as much as Sun’s executives would like to think.

I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Sun – and not only for the chance it gives to recycle an old Nik Kershaw song into the headline for this blog post.

While Sun has in many ways typified the Silicon Valley culture – especially since Jonathan Schwartz and his ponytail took over as chief executive - there has always been something rather British about its recent progress.

Like many British firms, Sun has always had great technical skills, top-notch engineers, and excellent products – but has never quite managed to get the marketing right.

Like many British firms, Sun has seen the trends and innovations before others – its longstanding strapline of “the network is the computer” might just as well have said “it’s the internet, stupid”– but has never quite managed to make the most of such insights.

And like many British firms, its quirkiness and spikiness has made it a thorn in the side of bigger, more successful competitors – founder Scott McNealy’s constant chiding of Microsoft, for example – but has ended up being little more than an irritation to them.

Besides, you have to like a company that for many years was led by a man – McNealy – who names his children after cars: Maverick, Dakota, Colt, and Scout. It was never going to be the same after the ponytail.

But the sad truth is that for the past eight years Sun has thrashed around trying to make itself relevant again, as losses continued and its rivals strode ahead.

At its peak in the heyday of the dot com boom, Sun servers were de rigueur for every online startup. It was said at the time that as long as your business plan showed Sun servers at the heart of any new web business, the venture capital cash would roll in.

Sun was wrapped up in the excitement and hype of the time, flying journalists from all around the world to New York launches of even the most incremental of technical developments. I was lucky enough to be taken on one such event in 2000, and even in a time of such excess, it defined the phrase “no expense spared”.

Then the dot coms collapsed, and all those thousands of barely-used Sun servers flooded the second-hand market, and the supplier has never fully recovered. It has always retained a strong foothold in financial services and telecoms, but the credit crunch will have only put another nail into that particular market coffin.

Along the way, Sun has constantly tried to move with the times and remain relevant. It became an enthusiastic promoter of open source – but failed to work out how to make money out of it. It offered virtualisation years ahead of VMware, but not on Intel-based servers. It stuck rigidly to the mantra of Sparc processors and its Solaris operating system, but then started selling Intel and AMD and Linux.

Having said that, Sun has established one of the most successful industry standards around – Java. But somehow, yet again, it hasn’t really managed to capitalise fully on that success. If IBM were to eventually succeed in a takeover, it is highly likely Java would be made open source, a move many in the industry have already called for.

So now the firm is effectively “in play” – although neither Sun nor IBM has officially commented on the firms’ widely reported buyout talks. 

Sun has gone from a server powerhouse to a niche player, one that is seen as a solid complement to another vendor’s product range.

It is a shame, in many ways, to see its light go dim. Cue the headlines…

At last, a bunch of politicians have accepted the obvious – that one of the biggest causes of government IT disasters is, erm, politics.

A committee of MPs investigating the dearth of engineers in the UK has highlighted the fact that too many Whitehall IT projects are determined by political pressures, and don’t take enough input from experts – that is, the IT professionals who have to make it work.

I can’t say this represents is a Damascene revelation – Computing has been saying exactly this for years – but at least the turkeys have accepted that maybe Christmas has something to do with so many of them being eaten.

As is so often the case, IT is both the problem and the solution.

To its credit, the government is well aware that IT is central to public service reform and modernisation. Without new technology, it will simply be impossible to make the public sector more efficient, cheaper to run, more responsive to citizens’ needs, less bureaucratic or more productive.

But the days of simply automating the everyday “churn” processes of government are long gone. All the basic back-office functions are computerised – tax collection, benefits payments and so on – and they chug along in the background without many problems, barely noticed by anyone because they work.

But for several years, the focus of government IT has been on the front-line functions and on delivering change. You cannot criticise Labour for a lack of ambition with IT – it has enthusiastically tried to revolutionise service delivery, to change organisations, to re-engineer processes and all the other good things that are considered best practice by IT leaders in the private sector. These are the things that IT people should be doing, this is where they can excel.

But where the government has let itself down nearly every time is its inability to detach the reality of project delivery from the imperatives of political necessity. If Gordon Brown says a new policy will be introduced from such-and-such a date, the political implications of missing that date are too damaging to allow. So, IT has been expected to squeeze into whatever timescale it has been tasked with, often regardless of its achievability.

The best example of this was tax credits, Brown’s flagship policy when he was chancellor. The legislation was enacted on the day planned, then disaster followed as claimants were overpaid, underpaid or unable to complete the process. It later transpired that the immovable go-live date forced the system developer, EDS, to cut corners and reduce the amount of testing undertaken. Result: another government IT disaster, and in this case a long-running dispute over compensation from the supplier.

Whitehall has tried to mitigate this problem in several ways. The Gateway review process is meant to flag up such issues – but does it really have the power to force ministers to review policy if a project is in difficulty? The recruitment of CIOs from the private sector, the creation of the CIO Council, and the establishing of IT as a recognised profession for civil servants have and will continue to help. And through the IT trade body Intellect, there is now a process for government to market test its plans and the feasibility of projects (although of course few suppliers are going to say they cannot do it). But none of these measures has yet got to the root of the problem.

In business, a chief executive may not be happy to delay a new initiative because of IT problems, but he or she can do so without fear of rivals across the boardroom telling the newspapers how they have failed the country. Pragmatism is a good quality to have in a senior business executive – but pragmatism is, ultimately, the enemy of dogmatic politicians.

So is there an answer to this seemingly intractable position? There is, but the chances of it coming to fruition are remote.

Whitehall IT leaders have to be involved in the policy-making process at an early stage, in exactly the same way as a private sector IT manager would (or should!) be consulted on business strategy and planning. If IT is to be the great enabler of public service reform as it can and should be, then IT has to have a seat at the table and an influential voice alongside the reformers.

It’s an obvious thing to say. But I can’t ever see it happening, not when there are votes at stake.

There are times when IT and the real world just don’t go together.

Barely six months after most of the 150 affected councils in the UK completed implementation of the latest phase of the Integrated Children’s System (ICS), the man whose recommendations led to the ICS project has said instead it should now be a single national system.

Lord Laming’s first review in 2003 of UK child care practices followed the tragic Victoria Climbie case, and identified the lack of shared information between child protection agencies as a contributory factor.

When the government asked Laming to take another look at child welfare after the awful death of Baby P, he said that ICS is not working, and needs to be a national application.

So, back to square one. No doubt there will be further suggestions made to protect as much of local authorities’ investment as possible, but if Laming’s latest recommendation is pursued, it represents a fundamental shift in the architecture of such a system.

At the root of this is the ultimate dichotomy for IT: Technology changes quickly, but the people who use it change slowly.

Any long-term IT project – which typically means almost every major government IT project – will make vital decisions at its inception which will be rendered invalid by technological change. Architectural decisions, technical choices, even remodelled processes – all seem like the right thing to do on day one, but by the time the project is completed stand out as the old way to do things.

Decision made at the start will nearly always differ from those you would make if starting on the day the project ends.

The NHS National Programme for IT is a prime example. Much of the problems and criticisms it has faced stem from the centralised model it adopted – one that made technological sense at the time, but has since proved to be a huge constraint. Gradually the programme is moving to more local control and local decision-making. But in 2003, the idea of local initiatives that would somehow be integrated together seemed like a technical challenge too far. Today, it would seem the obvious route.

This is a big reason why large IT projects fail. There is always scope included in any project for change management – but when that change involves rethinking the fundamentals of the project, it becomes almost impossible to achieve.

There are, of course, emerging trends that will help. Service-oriented architecture, business process management, web services and so on, all help to keep flexibility and agility (that awful buzzword) in a project to make sure that key technological changes over time can be better incorporated.

But we are a long way from a time when technology is capable of adapting to the real world and the nature of the people that use it. Until that time, there’s a sad inevitability that IT will always get the blame.

Just last week, I expressed my doubts about the true business value of Twitter, and planned to give the online micro-blogging service a try to see what I could learn.

Well, although I still have some way to go to find evidence of genuine opportunities for business IT managers, I have today experienced my first personal example of what Twitter can do for me as a journalist.

When Google Mail crashed earlier today, the first hint I had was from people Twittering that they couldn’t access the service.

The problems raised obvious concerns for IT leaders over the risks and challenges of cloud computing – what if Google Mail had been part of your corporate IT service, as such online applications increasingly are?

I wanted to get a quick response from analysts commenting on the implications of the story – so I asked my new-found Twitter friends.

Thanks to Peter Thomas, Clive Longbottom of Quocirca, and Jon Collins from Freeform Dynamics, I had a set of excellent expert comment within minutes. You can read the resulting article here.

So, I’m learning…