Back office operations and IT, led by Martin Read, recommends better management information, benchmarking and review of costs, and better governance of ITenabled change programmes to achieve USD5.9 billion of savings a year on back office operations, and USD4.7 billion of savings a year on IT spending, HM Treasury said in its study titled Operational Efficiency Program.

The UKs stateowned departments are seeking help from the Indian offshoring industry for bringing troubled government technology systems back on track and lower the cost of managing government IT systems anywhere between 25 to 40 percent. The UKs national healthcare modernisation programme pegged at almost USD9.6 billion is among some of the initiatives that failed to deliver.

Apart from the troubled National Health Service NHS modernisation programme, which needs restructuring, HM Revenue and Customs HMRC will also seek to outsource more work, as the department plans to make it mandatory for firms employing more than 50 employees to file tax related and other information online by 2011. The UK government IT projects almost always suffer from scope creep, financial and time overrun of a significant dimension, McDowall had said.