Top 10 government IT reforms so far

The government has promised to restore privacy to individuals by rolling back centralised IT projects and databases

The new coalition government has announced a series of cuts in a bid to reduce the national deficit by £6.2bn.

Many of the savings spell bad news for the technology sector, which has clearly benefitted from the numerous public sector databases and centralised IT projects brought in by Labour in its 13-year term of office.

However, Downing Street has argued that many of the IT cuts are not just for cost purposes but to roll back Labour's 'surveillance state' and restore privacy to individuals.

Centralised NHS agenda
Despite investments totalling almost £12.4bn, a whopping £10bn over budget, the much maligned NHS Spine designed to create an NHS-wide integrated records management system as part of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT), was always ripe for the kill.

The new government has been open about cuts to the NPfIT, but has left many questions unanswered, such as how deep the cuts will be, whether the NPfIT will ever go ahead or whether the establishing of a centralised records service should be seen as a failure. Nevertheless, is seems likely that the project will be placed on the back burner for the forseeable future.

One concrete reason for being more cautious with creating a nationwide database of patient information is that the NHS has one of the worst records for data security.

However, health professionals have suggested that the loss of the Spine will be detrimental to public health because citizens will not have the same kind of access to health data statistics.

ID cards
Labour's desire to issue the UK population with identity cards had always been controversial, and the Tories did themselves no harm when they pledged to abolish the plans if brought to power.

Theresa May, the new home secretary, has already announced the government's intention to abolish the scheme within 100 days, and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has called the legislation "wasteful, bureaucratic and intrusive", a sentiment most of the population would share.

Still, the coalition government has met with some criticism for refusing to refund individuals for the cost of the £30 cards.

ContactPoint database
ContactPoint was designed to improve child protection by increasing the amount of information shared between government departments. It holds information on all children under the age of 18.

The database, which has cost the taxpayer £224m so far, and is finally operational, will be scrapped by the new government.

ContactPoint can be accessed by at least 330,000 people, and has been heavily criticised for reasons of privacy, security and child protection.