How much does the UK spend on Information Technology?

So in a great display of British organisation it has come to light that the government don’t actually know what they’re spending on IT – however they are happy to promise this year they’ll spend less. £1 billion less.

Cabinet office minister Francis Maude was yesterday asked by fellow MP Charlie Elphicke – “how much government departments budgeted for expenditure on IT in 2010-11, and what changes to forecast expenditure there have been as a result of his policy on IT procurement since May 2010″.

Maude got straight to the point: “We don’t collect total spend on IT.”

It’d be easy to forgive anyone for wondering how you can calculate savings if you are unsure of total spend – but good ol’ Maude had a comeback on that one too:

“We expect substantial savings to arise from IT procurement policies introduced by this government, including the moratorium on new spend which commenced in May 2010. Department accounts, published at the year end, will provide a fuller indication of the impact of these policies on department expenditure. As an early indication of the size of savings accruing from the ICT Project Review process, departments reported the curtailment of 229 projects to gross a compound value of £1 billion.”

What we’d like to ask is; is that £1 billion is the original value of the projects which have been chopped, or whether the curtailment of the projects had saved £1 billion?