NI14 - When government has IT spending right

A long time before this austerity coalition came to power, a policy called NI14 or "avoidable contact" was introduced to local government. Whilst this sounds rather unfriendly - as if our public servants want nothing to do with us - it was, and is, a good policy and one that might be usefully adopted by any company.

By whatever means, it was established that the cost of a face to face meeting between a council employee and a member of the public costs somewhere around £15, a 'phone call perhaps £3 or £4 but a website visit only has an associated cost of a few pence.

Thus, making information available on a website - anything from swimming pool opening times to a PDF of the application form to become a taxi driver - saved the council money and, crucially, freed employees up to do other work.

This was all very sensible and a good example of IT benefiting both an organisation and its clients or customers.

This policy and its aims have necessarily taken on a darker hue in the wake of the cuts that have been announced since the election and the inevitable job losses to follow. But whether you see the swingeing cuts as evidence of an unleashed Tory ideology or the essential measures required to raise the country out of a financial hole, the goal remains the same: don't tie up council employees' time on jobs that can be done by websites or, by extension, applications for mobile 'phones.

So, I was surprised to see this article in The Telegraph - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/7874856/Government-iPhone-app-spending-disclosed.html - criticising government spending on iPhone applications.

Firstly, the costs involved - £10k to £40k - are hardly scandalous for IT development, and that's before they are compared with the millions and billions haemorrhaged on the police and hospital systems.

Secondly, in NI14 terms the expenditure makes absolute sense. The jobseekers' app, for example, has been downloaded 50,000 times. That's 50,000 people using an app that has cost the equivalent of perhaps three public sector salaries. The maths is simple and compelling.

I am all for keeping an eye on government spending, particularly around IT, but it seems crazy to me to criticise spending that not only makes demonstrable financial sense but is also a success story within the terms of one of Whitehall's own policies.

And don't worry, the irony of the BBC investigating this story with a view to criticising an organisation for not budgeting carefully around its new media spend really is not lost on me.