Workers in the UK are more confident that they have the ICT skills that will allow them to change jobs within a year than many of their European counterparts, new EU data has shown.
The latest scoreboard from the European Commission (EC) rates member states on how they performed in 2011 on their Digital Agenda initiatives, which were laid out in 2010 in an attempt to boost investment in, and use of, digital technologies.
Read more: UK more confident about ICT skills than most EU countries
The Royal Bank of Scotland meltdown this weekend should raise three obvious lessons for government. First, relax – it’s not only government that experiences IT problems and, indeed, the fact that government keeps big, complex, legacy systems running in areas such as taxes and benefits is in itself quite an achievement.
Read more: GB: Royal Bank of Scotland meltdown: IT lessons for us all
The Institute for Government did in fact praise the government for setting the right goals in its ICT strategy. But outside of the ICT profession, senior civil servants were found to have ignored the plans designed to get Whitehall ICT on track.
Read more: GB: Civil servants failing to make government ICT 'agile'
The report highlights how much work the government will need to do in order to drive genuine change in ICT across government.
The new strategy was established in a bid to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of ICT across government after a string of expensive IT disasters.
Read more: GB: More work required on government ICT strategy - report
Releasing its new report which identified a number of problems in implementing the government's ICT strategy, the IfG said the government had "first and foremost" focused on reducing costs, with ministers claiming savings of more than £159m.
But the IfG warned this focus on cost savings "must not" be placed above ensuring public servants have the technology they need to "do their jobs as effectively as possible".