Law firms must wade in over government IT plans before it is too late to change them, says Tim Hill


Government IT is dull and inevitable. The dullness is evident. The slow march of the Government Secure Intranet, interoperability standards, or the Department for Work and Pensions' citizen database are of little interest to most firms.



Even electronic conveyancing, criminal justice IT, Legal Services Commission e-working, or electronic filing of court documents cast something of a utilitarian pall compared to the thrills of web 2.0, blogs and social networks.



The feeling of inevitability is a function of perceived lack of influence. Like the protocols that underpin the Internet, government IT exists in law firms' far environment - something to respond to, not influence.



This is a fundamental mistake. The dull, worthy 'municipal' infrastructure that is government IT is being laid directly across law firms' competitive environment and across the relationships between individuals, businesses and the state. As others have pointed out, the technical architecture of this infrastructure represents explicit choices about how the infrastructure can and will be used in future. It will affect the rights of individuals and the survival of firms. In time, it will shape much of legal practice.



To influence the development of relevant government IT programmes, solicitors need to address three core issues.



The first is an understanding of their current use of IT and how this is likely to develop in the short and medium term to support practice. Civil servants can only evaluate the impact of legal IT-related initiatives if they understand solicitors' IT needs and constraints. The same is true of legal software providers. And the better solicitors' interests are understood, the better the Law Society can represent them. This understanding must originate within firms.



Second, to support their clients, solicitors will need a good understanding of the increasingly complex legal and technical framework for personal data-sharing and management, including identity management, being erected by government. This framework is linked in complex ways to private-sector systems - including solicitors' own. It will increasingly generate difficult questions of privacy, accountability and liability.



Finally, it will be essential for the profession to find ways to identify areas in which they can work collaboratively rather than competitively to influence government IT. In many ways, the government's IT infrastructure is likely to create a platform for innovation and intensified competition in the provision of legal services, with some firms seeking cost reductions, while others seek differentiation. Are there common principles around which the profession could unite? How can these be identified and how might firms collaborate to promote them?



Web 2.0, blogs and social networks may, of course, have a role to play here in facilitating dialogue. Lawyers did little to influence the framework on which they were built. To secure its future and protect its clients, the profession must now do all it can to influence the development of the remarkably quiet baby elephant in the room - government IT.



Tim Hill is the Law Society's e-commerce policy adviser