eGov project nearly done... but how has £10m been spent?

Friday 15 September 2017

A critical government project to get more services online has now spent more than 90% of its £9.9million budget - but the programme’s director says the project is on track and will soon be completed.

From cyber security to Active apps and finding out your nearest recycling facilities, the eGov project has come under fire in recent months over its expenditure.

The team were grilled by the Public Accounts Committee in April over the fact that 75% of the project’s budget had been spent, with the States Chief Executive John Richardson admitting that expenditure was going to be “very tight” between 2017 and 2019.

Then in July, Chamber of Commerce President Eliot Lincoln described it as “a lesson in how not to run a programme” and questioned exactly what value and products that money had brought. 

Pictured: A breakdown of expenditure on the eGov project.

A recent Express Freedom of Information (FOI) request showed that little over £600,000 remained of the original £9.9m budget for eGov, which has seen the involvement of 38 organisations – 17 of which were local.  

But Programme Director Jonathan Williams provided reassurance that expenditure was “robustly controlled… with good internal governance.”

He told Express that the project was nearing its final stages, and should conclude by late next year, adding that a lot of work had gone on “behind the scenes” and was not necessarily tangible.

The programme, he said, serves to “lay the foundations” for future government digital services to prosper, as well as being more digitally secure.

Pictured: The States' system security is threatened by up to 500 "elevated" cyber attacks per day, it was revealed earlier this year. eGov aims to make government systems more secure.

“Many of the things that eGov does are out of sight and relatively intangible. I entirely understand that when you see money ticking over and being spent that you can’t understand the tangible output and that causes concern,” he commented.

A lot of that concern revolved around the seemingly vague ‘Design Authority’ on which nearly £2million had been spent.

“One hugely beneficial example from the Design Authority is the way in which we set standards for our security protocol… We can now manage down the risks associated with being in an online world. Unfortunately, that is not something that is tangible, but it would of course be tangible in the event that we had hacks or risks. We’ve mitigated it significantly by having that expenditure, but it’s just intangible.”

Pictured: School catchments, footpaths, recycling facilities and local GP surgeries... Just a few of the 'geographically personalised' services that will appear on the Customer Portal when it is launched.

Groundwork aside, he said that islanders will soon be able to engage with an eGov-created personalised online ‘Customer Portal’, which is now in its trial stages.

“It’s a very personalised website that sets out the way in which you engage with and access services within government… It will have geographic personalisation – content specific to the vicinity that you’re in. Anything on your profile website will talk about the postcode that you live in - It might have paths, it might have recycling facilities, it might have GP surgeries, school catchment areas, planning applications, and a whole host of things… We’ll seek customer feedback over time over what areas they want most insight into what’s happening around them,” Mr Williams explained.

That portal will work in conjunction with a ‘Digital ID’ – a highly-secure password system that will allow islanders access to all their government-held data online. The tender process for that closes today.

Pictured: eGov also helped bring the Love Jersey and Active Jersey apps to fruition.

While fruits of that labour are yet to come through, the eGov team have achieved 15 other projects, including the Love Jersey and Active Jersey apps, as well as creating a breast screening online appointment portal. They also successfully began publishing Gazette notices online – an initiative that will save taxpayers nearly £250,000 each year, as the government will no longer have to pay to take out space within the Jersey Evening Post.