UK public services have moved on radically since 1994 when the Cabinet Office announced that all central government and agency websites would be routed through open.gov.uk. Since then, the use of technology to deliver improved public services has adapted and developed in a way that could never have been foreseen in the mid 90s. While technology has played a key role in improved service delivery, this has also been matched by a greater understanding of its potential. It has not only changed expectations but also increased demand, and made it easier for Government not only to do its day to day business, but also help those who most need help. Technology can be used to provide access to citizens who might otherwise be excluded from services delivered using traditional methods – for example, using websites to inform teenagers/children about the dangers of drugs (FRANK) or NotSchool.net which provides online learning for young people excluded from mainstream education.
We are not alone in success, but we are one of the world leaders in using technology in the public sector. Delivery of citizen based services is benchmarked by the European Commission approximately every 18 months. Between 2004 and 2007, the rate of growth in the percentage of fully online services delivered across the UK has exceeded the EU average.
The EU also measures the overall sophistication of online services towards the ultimate goal of a pro-active automated service. Against these criteria, by 2007 the UK had reached 90% sophistication against an EU average of 76%, ensuring that most citizens and businesses can make use of services online in addition to other routes.
Quoting from their report “online sophistication of [UK] public services scores 90%…The level of sophistication of services for citizens is almost as equally developed as those for business”. “Four of the nine “pro-active” services attain a 100% score, thus pro-active user-centric service delivery is developed above the European average”. “The UK national portal [directgov] achieved a 90% score against an average for the EU27+ of 75%”
As the chart shows, significant progress has been made in ensuring that citizens and businesses can undertake their services online in addition to other routes. In the UK, we also make significant use of Telecommunications technology to improve access to services.
POINT ONE: Stop calling it ICT. It’s IT. Calling it ICT makes you sound like a clueless cretin that has never used a computer.
I have worked in IT my entire professional career, and nobody outside the UK public sector has ever called it ICT.
It’s an important signifier. If you call it ‘ICT’, you’re wearing a big t-shirt that says “I have never worked in IT. I am using a term I think makes it sounds like I know what I’m talking about, but I don’t. I am so astonishingly ignorant of IT, that I have no idea what the profession calls itself in the private sector or the rest of the planet.”
So, please. ICT MUST DIE.
It’s not a good start. Buzzword bingo by inept civil servants seems to be the order of the day.
It should be a criminal offence to use the word “pro-active” non-ironically.
Then a list of meaningless charts of vaguely-defined statistics with no crosstabs. There’s a bad smell to this introduction.
There is a lack of evidence to support the assertions in this report and where it is quoted as in this section, it is meaningless.
100% online automation presumably means filling all your data in online and then a civil servant sending you a letter (without providing an email address), like HMRC does every year after I have suffered the pitiful online experience of submitting my tax return? Shameless self-congratulation and complacency are the hallmarks of this report and the smug “professionals” who wrote it.
In professional IT the term ’service’ has a number of very specific meanings. It is unclear which is meant here, or even that the author understands that the word doesn’t just mean ’stuff that we do’.
Also, it should be remembered that computer and internet use is at about 70% of households according to the Department of National Statistics in 2009. This, of course, means that 30% of households do not have internet access and it is very important to remember that in designing government policy. Computers are very useful, but they are not the entire answer.
Do we not think that worrying about ICT v.s IT or whether a letter is sent v.s an email (given that legislation may not keep up with this – letters are sent because they have to be sent for it to be considered informed) is really adding to the debate. Rather it seems self-congratulatory and complacent focusing on the negative, I suspect Luke and Martin here have never really engaged with the analysis of a very large IT/ICT! project and its success or failure… Still if crowdsourcing is the future for ICT policy in the UK this is in their hands!
Having worked in public sector IT for most of the time since 1979 until my retirement 3 years ago, it is only too obvious that what the public, the civil servants and (last, but not least) the politicians have to realise is that historically public sector IT systems have, with few exceptions have failed to deliver the true requirement when first implemented and have required considerable additional expenditure to rectify. The main reason for this being that insufficient effort has been applied up front to specify the full requirement at all levels – political, strategic and operational. This does not just relate to the functional requirements but also to non-functional requirements, programe delivery and the changed business processes the IT systems are meant to support.
I hope that if this strategy is implemented we don’t see more of this, but I’m not holding my breath!!!
Interesting that we only see the EU average – not a ranking of countries. The graphs make us look really good but there are probably some really poor countries that drag the average down. Many EU countries could be doing far better than us.
Speaking as someone who recently had to renew his photocard driving licence, I find those figures most suspect. Are they counting the number of services offered, or the number of citizen interactions, I wonder.
Whilst central government and its agencies often manage to offer reasonably good services, it is very evident that many local government IT services have been contracted out to second (or third?) rate software houses. The results are plainly ugly, non-interoperable, and unmaintainable: really poor use of public money.
There are a couple of visions in here, for example BT21CN (British Telecommunications’ twenty-first Century Network, see soho) and then there is also IBM21CW (International Business Machines’ twenty-first Century Workforce, see Shenzhen.). Now, the internal affairs of BT Operate impact onn us all whereas the BT Group Operations charge us for their advice in security, randd and legal. IBM are too busy with The Nasdaq plus Barclays global investord to comment in a conservative, comprehensive and contemporary mode.
> 1994 when the Cabinet Office announced that all central government and agency websites would be routed through open.gov.uk
Oh – I thought 1994 was when gov simply announced the first major web site, well designed and appropriately called open.gov.uk. And – do you know what, it was spot on. What more did we want?
Much more straightforward than the spin-machines that were ukonline and directgov. How much have we spent on these in total since? £200m+?
> in a way that could never have been foreseen in the mid 90s.
Oh tosh. What is government doing now that was not foreseeable? The online car tax disc?
Actually, far more of this was foreseen than the government IT community *with rare exceptions* wanted to pay attention to. It’s just a question of listening in the right way, and not simply to big suppliers and consultants. And this draft strategy is the clearest possible evidence that you’re still not listening.
> We are not alone in success, but we are one of the world leaders in using technology in the public sector.
I think you are – in my experience – alone in your misguided smugness.
What grass-roots evidence s there, eg from CABx or from feedback from online users, or from frontline staff that these systems are sophisticated and wonderful? What may look wonderful from the wrong end of a Brussels telescope probably feels rather different on the ground.
Rule 1. Only use people with numerate degrees in senior positions. Innumerates are poor at abstract reasoning and frequently do not understand that they are engaged in problem solving at all. (This report is typical innumerate speak)
Rule 2 . Do nothing without producing a Feasibility study. The failure rate of 70% of IT projects suggests that this is not happening. By the end of the study, the objectives, the costs of software and infrastructure, and the defined benefits will be known. At this stage many projects can be either scrapped or the objectives substantially modified on the basis of either cost/benefit analysis or viability.
Rule 3 Ensure that those who will be using the system are fully consulted in specifying it. Specify and design the whole (or at least a component of the whole that can operate independently of the whole) system first and freeze the design. Disallow users from changing the requirements until the end of the project.
> In the UK, we also make significant use of Telecommunications technology to improve access to services.
Is it not truer to say, in plain English, that public sector call centres are as poorly designed as typical CRM-based private sector ones? Do you have any that measure the real time taken by people to interact even with your most straightforward functions?
I agree with all the comments made above.However Prof.Marcus Xaesar comments I do not even understand never mind make any sense of.This seems to be the problem or another problem.Whether it is Whitehall Mandarins or politicians or so called academics/experts that advise goverment:They all have lost contact/touch with us pratitioners in the field.I have been involved at Senior Level with several IT Projects in the Public Sector.When we were left alone by politicians and political expediency we were able to to implement the projects on time and on budget.However as soon as National Indicators and academics and the National Audit office came into the mix projects went belly up.
Lessons were never learned.As soon as you call a project a National this or the other it is bound to fail because to many cooks spoil the broth.Projects should be kept on a local level with strict standards and guidelines (which still do not exist-another National project that failed to deliver)) and managed locally.Project Management is patchy and good examples not fully adhered to.In all the Projects that I was invloved in and that did not fail good Project Management was the key to its success and the Management of expections of the customer.Soundbites like Paperless office, 100% electronic delivery of services is rubbish (BVPI 157).What we really need is effective Information Management and Governance as IT alone can not deliver the efficiencies that we need in the Public Sector and in Business.
IT knowledgable Service delivery Units, Well Trained IT Service Personnel, Info Management and Governance, effective Project Management and IT savy Politicians and Business leaders are the recipe for a good outcome of real Business Process Improvement.IT should only be the enabler of Business Improvement and gaining of efficiencies but not an end to itself.I would suggest that we need not a National IT Strategy-What we really need are Standards like:Open Standards to be used at all times (not something dictated to by Microsoft or other companies and if not complied to should be totally excluded from tendering process),the various ISO standards on Address compatibility,Data Security,Info Management and Governance.Also the Creation of ISO/BSI standards on effective Project Management and Training compulsary for anybody involved in Projects.
PRINCE for example as Project Methodology is very successful.Why not make it a standard acrooss the board?
I am looking forward to other people comments and the eventual outcome.
obviously cherry-picked, these figures come from Cap Gemini’s annual study of online services which is based on a sample of 20 basic online public services and the degree to which each service can be conducted ‘fully’ online and yes, @MarkWood Austria, Malta, Slovenia and Portugal ranked higher than the UK that year. a clear criticism of such surveys is that they inevitably drive and bias policy priorities towards those service areas being measured in a way that strongly favours centralised government portal (such as direct.gov) solutions…
A few comments.
ICT Information and Communication Technology, widely used in both technical and policy domains across Europe, more common useage than IT except by those with a traditional computing background.
eGov services in the UK are well perceived, with the latest benchmarking putting UK in the top 6 EU countries, and the only large one with 100% of the key services. This is achieved with approx the same % of GDP expenditure as others in the top group.
Here is the benchmark report http://www.epractice.eu/files/Smarter,%20Faster,%20Better%20eGovernment%20-%208th%20Benchmark%20Measurement.pdf
So although this paper is self–congratulatory, there are some aspects that are deserved.
Martin, about your Point One. I have to disagree…
I think this document – like the Digital Britain report is far too much just ‘IT’ and not capturing the spirit or reality of the new communications environment.
The ‘C’ reminds us that this is Communications Technology – yes the buzz word stuff of Facebook, Enterprise 2.0, YouTube, Web 2.0, UGC and so on that has swept the globe. IT is simply an enabler of these new powerful ways of collaborating, communicating and connecting and as such should be as sleek and invisible as possible.
IT Nerds please get out of the way – the people are coming.
When my former firm Kable first researched comparative public sector IT spend across Europe we found
- UK had highest spending per capita on public sector IT of the major economies, surpassed only by Denmark & Sweden
- UK spends most on public sector IT in EU, full stop.
And UK public-sector and public-sector IT growth has been faster than rest of EU since then.
I was a bit surprised by that and queried whether our method eg for assessing spend in Germany was flawed. But it seems not.
I’d like to get up to date figures but in mid noughties they were quite surprising, and the UK was out of line.
I dont see why we need one central site for the government. I find direct.gov.uk a very poor website. By attempting to put everything in one place, the standard of everything is reduced.
Whats wrong with having one website for motoring, education, money & taxes, travel etc?
To find the information you want you have to navigate countless subdirectories to find information that is not as informative as expected.
I think that separating these websites would make for a far better service. Whats wrong with having a central page that just links to these divisions? It would allow for better web design, easier navigation and a far more user friendly system.
Finally, why is this government spending countless billions on these projects when 37% (statistics.gov) of the homes in britain either cannot afford or cannot get broadband access? Surely improving the infrastructure to bring acceptable speed broadband to 100% of people that want it should be a higher priority than trying to improve efficiency with the NHS, prison service etc when clearly their attempts are futile.
Labour’s endless PR mumbo jumbo and lack of action has been holding us back. If 100% of british people had broadband access, many online businesses would see a rise in sales due to another 8 million households being able to access their sites. It just goes to show that most politicians care only for themselves and not for the social and economic wellbeing of this country
“Do we not think that worrying about ICT v.s IT or whether a letter is sent v.s an email (given that legislation may not keep up with this – letters are sent because they have to be sent for it to be considered informed) is really adding to the debate”
What total nonsense! To suggest that key documents should be written with a blatant disregard for clarity and correctness is to fail to understand the instruments of success in a project. That is to say, if there does not exist a high standard of communication during the the full project life-cycle, then it will be almost certain that the delivery will be unsatisfactory.
The remark made about the use of the term ICT rather than IT, highlights a common problem in industry, as well as the public sector, which is that too often there is no concern for the accuracy of information. For all but the most trivial project, each term will carry a very specific meaning. Further, each sentence will carry a very specific meaning. A failure to recognise this will lead, ultimately, to project failure.
+1 on s/ICT/IT/g
+1 on graphs being suspect. The EU average presumably includes obscure countries we can’t even spell somewhere in the Balkans, where there’s one computer per village.
Good to know we’re doing better than that I suppose.
Agree ICT comments UK Public sector is the only organisation I’ve ever come across that uses that terminology.
Some interesting stats. Would be more interesting to which areas are succeeding/lagging behind. Which departments are in the 11% that are not fully online in their delivery of services and give an understanding of why not/when they will be. This is very high level; recycling EU figures suggests a lack of research/topic knowledge from the author.
I’m assuming this document came from the office of the CIO, who presumably owns the Government technology strategy ? CIO should be able to provide more detailed status; effectively a rollup of departmental project reporting, assuming the departments are working to the goals outlined here ?