Under Major, Blair and Brown, the UK Government has followed a deliberate policy of running down its internal IT expertise and relying on external providers – mostly big companies like Capita and EDS – to provide IT expertise, systems and services.

The result, many argue, has been expensive IT that’s been very successful in maximising the profits of the consultants but rather less good at meeting the needs of the public sector or, for that matter, the public. Project after project has run massively over budget and time, with the companies responsible often seeming to be rewarded for their shortcomings.

So what’s the new coalition government going to do about it?

Back in 2008/09, Dr Mark Thompson wrote a report for the Conservatives on just this issue (and, to be fair, it moved them well ahead of the Lib Dems on IT policy). Thompson’s report was pretty good, and recommended fewer big IT projects, breaking projects down into smaller modules where possible and more use of open standards and open source.

That work’s made it into the coalition agreement in the form of two paragraphs:

We will take steps to open up government procurement and reduce costs; and we will publish government ICT contracts online.

We will create a level playing field for open-source software and will enable large ICT projects to be split into smaller components

Which is all good, but the devil’s in the detail.

To give one example, Labour would claim that there’s already a level playing field for open source software – guidelines issued a few years ago made it clear that open source and proprietary should both be fairly considered. In reality, though, that’s not quite happened. The combination of a lack of in-house expertise, and open source being perceived as riskier by bureaucrats who quite reasonably don’t want to damage their careers by going out on a limb has held it back.

Further, the reliance on the model of the last twenty years of buying in IT solutions externally (as opposed to the more common method of developing them in-house prior to that) makes it difficult to get the full benefit from open source.

To really benefit from the development model, you want to be taking open source software, adding to it and then releasing it so as many parts of the public sector as possible can use it. You want a piece of software developed by the Treasury to be usable – with no licensing cost – by the NHS, the Department of Education and your local council, and for their developers to be able to modify it to meet their specific needs.

So the direction of travel under the coalition – thanks to the work the Conservatives have done – is much more promising than anything for the last twenty or thirty years; but it still needs to get there.

That’s where we come in. Tech-savvy Lib Dem members can play an important role in shaping how the Government actually delivers on these promises and good intentions, and in the process catch up on an area of policy where the party’s fallen behind.

The Act group Lib Dems for some decent IT policy, with over 120 members, has the chance to work with other groups and shape the way Government does IT. If we can get it right, we’ve got the opportunity to save billions of pounds and improve public sector IT into the bargain.