This True North isn't on the map. It's the code name of a government computer suite being built at a secret location somewhere within 150 kilometres of London.
The site (actually two sites, called data centre one and data centre two, at least 16 kilometres apart for security), is "x-listed" as part of the UK's critical national infrastructure. If Whitehall were reduced to a radioactive smudge, True North's disc drives would go on whirring.
A Nato command centre? International terrorism database? Tony Blair's Outlook Express server? Unless the spooks are playing a very devious game, True North is none of those things. The centre is being built by a contractor, ITnet, for the office of the e-envoy under an £83m contact signed on July 23. Its main purpose is to host government websites.
The doomsday precautions aren't there to impress enemies so much as to persuade other government agencies that True North is a safe home for their e-government projects. This could play a pivotal role in the government's plans to reform - and shrink - the civil service.
True North's first job, from January, will be to host the knowledge network, a briefing database for civil servants and politicians. It will also house the government gateway, a central authentication engine, and the hush-hush "online government store" website due to open for business mid next year.
True North will also host a system called DotP (which stands for "delivering on the promise"). This is a shared content-management system designed to handle big departmental websites on an application service provider (ASP) model.
Technically, the idea makes a lot of sense. So far, electronic government has created electronic duplicates of existing bureaucratic structures. There are well over 2,000 .gov.uk sites on the web, run by local authorities, service agencies and fully fledged civil service departments. Standards of usability and legibility vary widely, even chaotically.
Hosting sites on a single service would create a common look and feel, and simplify searches for information across agencies. Also - and this is the interesting bit - it would allow different departments to share processes, such as administering payments. Hence the potential role in civil service reform.
The problem now is how to sell True North to government. ITnet has a commercial incentive to promote the service, as it will make money from hosting departments' systems. But history suggests that agencies will not pool their functions voluntarily. Organisations will always find reasons, from high constitutional principles to straightforward cost justifications, for doing things their own way.
So far, e-government has allowed them to get away with it. The climate is now changing. For months, Whitehall has been buzzing with talk of the prime minister appointing a new IT supremo, a chief information officer with the authority to bang heads together. It's still unclear how this would work in practice. But handing out directions to True North is one thing certain to be in the job description.
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