I came across this article in the Times. It would seem that Francis Maude has quietly gone about achieving (or well on the way to achieving) a grip on Govt IT projects by bringing someone into the Cabinet Office who actually knows what they are doing.
Rather than follow the old traditional waterfall model (ie spend years writing a spec which by the time it has been coded is out of date) of IT development that govt always seemed to adopt, they've woken up to more modern development approaches (Lean or Agile etc).
Govt IT good news
Govt IT good news-1
I've also noticed the radical improvement in Govt websites - clean design, lots of white space - very very good TBH.
They've also gone away from awarding contracts to the large multi-nationals in many instances. One quoted example in the article gives a 98% cost saving plus improvement in quality by using a British firm !