Gordon Brown will become Prime Minister later this month with the mammoth NHS IT project and identity cards among technology-related problems to be addressed.

Richard Granger’s recent resignation means that the NHS IT project will have to be handed over to a new leader despite ongoing delays and disagreements over matters including shared databases and the role of consultation processes.

However, watchers do not expect a major intervention on behalf of Brown.
“I wouldn’t expect to see significant change now in the NHS,” said Eric Woods, government practice director at Ovum. “It’s moving in to a next phase anyway with more choice of applications at a local level.”

Identity cards is another area where Brown is likely to show his hand quickly. Although it was leaked that he opposed the ID cards scheme, recent suggestions are that Brown is now more positive on the project, especially as a way to combat identity theft. Last July, Brown appointed former HBOS chief executive Sir James Crosby to chair the Public Private Forum on Identity Management.

Ovum’s Woods suggested that Brown could fold ID cards into a broader data management project, potentially allowing him to downplay the cards themselves at least until after the next election.

“There’s an opportunity to turn the timetables around,” he added.

Brown has often lent his support to technology skills development, speaking at conferences such as the Microsoft-backed Government Leaders Forum in Edinburgh in February this year. There, he endorsed lifelong learning and hinted that the government could offer incentives to students staying on in education.

“The answer to globalisation is not protectionism, or to stop the clock but to invest more in science and technology and continue to upskill people,” Brown said. “Opportunity is not a one-off pass/fail that stops at 11 or 16.”

Elsewhere in technology-related matters, Brown has won supporters for giving tax breaks on research and development but gained a black mark for reversing out of a popular project that encouraged firms to let staff buy PCs under preferential terms.

However, Brown’s record does nothing to suggest he will make major changes that some watchers have called for, such as offering incentives to firms that let more staff work from home, or providing easier access to investment for technology startups.

Sun Microsystems head of public policy Richard Barrington said, “Whether he recognises it or not, part of Blair’s legacy is Broadband Britain and Brown has to add a layer of value-added services on top of that. Karl Marx wrote ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ and technology is the only option out there to make society more inclusive.”

Barrington added that technology could also help the UK address environmental and transport issues.

Brown is a self-confessed latecomer to IT. At the Edinburgh conference he revealed that his first use of the internet came when on a visit to the US, he wanted to discover the match result of his beloved Raith Rovers.