said there was "progress across the three core strands of putting the citizen at the heart of what we do; shared services; and professionalising IT-enabled business change", in a year when the government spent £13.7 billion on IT.

He added that there was more change ahead, with the Greening Government strategy, "a significant rewrite and expansion of , open standards and re-use", and more extensive use of social networking.

The recession meant there would be "even more focus on driving value out of the [IT] investments we make", he said.

Suffolk's comments come in the foreword to the Cabinet Office's third annual Transformational Government report, which is the government's assessment of its own expenditure. As expected, the report heaped praise on government IT-led changes, even on the highly troubled £12.7 billion National Programme for IT.

Services across government were more centred on the public, the report said. It highlighted initiatives including the "Tell Us Once" programme, led by the , which aims to allow people to tell the government once about births and deaths, and even address changes, and for a range of department's records to be updated.