The UK is to get a new programme for ensuring high standards of IT interoperability in the public sector.
Two of the UK's most influential IT organisations are to take responsibility for ensuring that public sector computer systems are effectively developed and managed, the Office of the e-Envoy (OeE) announced on 10 May, 2004.
The National Computing Centre, an independent membership organisation set up to promote effective use of IT, and the Institute of IT Training, the world's first professional body for IT training, have jointly won a £1.2m deal to run an accreditation programme for the government's interoperability framework, or e-Gif.
The e-Gif ensures that all government IT systems adopt common Internet standards and specifies the complex standards, with the aim of cutting costs and ensuring that systems communicate effectively with each other.
The two organisations will set up and run an e-Gif accreditation authority programme. The new authority should reduce risk to public sector IT projects by certifying IT specialists as having the skills needed to meet the requirements of e-Gif compliance and accrediting teams or organisations as having the capability to deliver e-Gif projects effectively.
Income will be generated from a mixture of registration certificates and accrediting courses and qualifications, so that the scheme will be fully self-financing.
"The Office of the e-Envoy fully endorses and supports the e-Gif accreditation authority which is managing the tangible processes that will create a real community of e-Gif excellence," said John Borras, director of technology policy at the OeE.
The OeE expects the accreditation programme to be fully operational in the autumn of 2004 and to run for three years.
