I suppose we could use split beer mats, but I am more of a traditionalist when it comes to materials. You just can’t beat the back of a Capstan Full Strength packet when you are scoping out a multimillion IT spend.

And, it seems, I am not the only traditionalist, if you look at the proceedings of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, which recently* challenged Peter Gershon, former OGC Chief executive, over his concerns about major projects that seemed to have been planned on the back of cigarette packets.

Of course, Mr Gershon’s comments in an earlier speech were probably made for dramatic effect, rather than as a matter of record. But you never know.

We may well find in another 40 years or so that we see a whole raft of declassified fag packets made available for public scrutiny. Future technologists will examine their cryptic hieroglyphics, desperate for clues and insights into why government computing in the early 21st century cost so much and took so long.

Perhaps one day the British Museum will juxtapose a grubby Silk Cut carton alongside the Rosetta Stone of ancient Egypt and we will all marvel at the quantum leap in world knowledge derived from these apparently disparate artefacts.

An amusing prospect indeed. But with a serious undertone because in my experience some of the best IT management ideas have been those that were hastily scribbled on fag packets, beer mats and table napkins.

Very often our most incisive and decisive plans can be scribbled on ephemeral objects, such as whiteboards and flip-charts, only to lose their intellectual strength and integrity when transposed to a more formal medium for presentation to others.

I don’t know any IT director who would feel comfortable laying out a strategic plan to the board while clutching a crumpled fag packet or a soggy beer mat. It would be like walking naked down a crowded street so we instinctively reach for our high-tech comfort blankets: powerpoint and colour laserprints, to sell our idea “properly”.

And yet the original scribbled notes are probably the most valuable view of the plan because they were conceived in innocence, before being translated and traduced for the intended audience. Too often we will dilute and disguise a concept during translation from the fag packet to the board pack, in the hope that we will gain stakeholder acceptance, sometimes at great cost to project integrity.

Too often, I have seen excellent first-cut project plans that have been doctored to produce politically acceptable outcomes, at least in terms of cost and timescale, by injudiciously tweaking resource estimates until budget and calendar objectives are met, rather than by de-scoping activities and deliverables.

It’s no wonder then that so many projects subsequently over-run some or all of the three key measures of cost, time and quality; because we have compromised our original, and probably most accurate, vision of the task and the effort to achieve.

Perhaps we should get cigarette manufacturers to put a suitably large warning message on their packets. Something like: “Cutting project resource estimates without descoping activities can seriously damage your project…”

Don’t knock the ideas scribbled on the back of cigarette packets. That’s when they’re at their freshest, and start to dull from the moment they are translated to the flipchart or Powerpoint presentation.

[*I wrote this article in May 2004 but the principles remain valid]

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Of course, it is rare for any enterprise to be entirely self-sufficient so our value chains are usually forged from an intricate mesh of internal and external contributions.

Where the external linkages are formalised, say by contractual relationships and clearly defined service levels, it may be somewhat easier to gauge the mettle of our partnerships.

However, the internal workings of our own organisation are generally predicated on a presumption of willing and active participation, or collaboration. A reasonable presumption, for sure. And particularly one that most stakeholders will take as a ‘given.’

But how often is this presumption of internal collaboration truly warranted?

Do we always pull together, in the same direction? Or do we sometimes get distracted, disjointed and disconnected beneath the waterline?

Collaboration is a worthy aspiration and one which we might expect as achievable. However, I am sure we have all encountered enterprises where external collaboration initiatives quickly founder upon the millstones of weak internal collaboration.

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So, generally speaking new technology investment in the commercial world depends on the existence of a viable business case. Delivering the anticipated benefits is how we measure our success.

But when we look at the public sector situation, we find that the key drivers for IT are all about enabling policy initiatives – and, more often than not, “the policy initiatives” are subject to arbitrary change, or cancellation. Sometimes at very short notice, because Government policy, as opposed to legislation, is subject to the trials and tribulations of the Political world so what seems to be a very good Ministerial idea one year, may well become completely undesirable the next.

That’s the way that “democratic” politicians have to operate and the possible reason why so many public sector computing initiatives are inherently susceptible to failure from the outset.

And, of course, we are not just dealing with a single, mega-sized IT division – the problem is compounded many-fold by the existence of myriad Government departments, each with their own agenda and policies.

Is it any wonder then, that we get so many high profile public IT fiascos?

In fact, the more I look at this problem, the more that I feel that we are lucky to get any working IT at all from the public sector; given their highly complex organisations which are constantly pounded by unremitting tidal waves of Political policy.

And, it’s not going to get any better – unless we can persuade our Political masters to change their ways, radically, by applying the same rigour and quality of thought to their political strategy management, as their counterparts in industry.

At the moment, it seems like this fundamental problem is not properly recognised by the Government – they simply lay any fault firmly at the door of those poor souls tasked with implementing their polymorphic policies, without understanding their own contribution.

Instead of understanding that the complexity and cost of public sector computing are direct functions of the Political agenda, the only “solution” so far to rising IT costs has been to outsource more and more Government IT to third-party providers, in the hope that the cost of public sector computing can be contained, or reduced.

But what we really need is at least a root and branch overhaul of the structure of public sector IT so that it can handle the impact of policy change.

Or better still, to move beyond the IT-centric perspective and introduce properly joined-up-management for a joined-up-world.

Until we take these basic steps, I can’t think of a worse possible scenario for IT governance – we might just as well print Government IT Change Requests on pads made from Million Pound notes.

90% of this article was written and published in November 2002

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