The Final Report

June 25, 2009

Having mentioned the interim report, I suppose I’d better cover the final one! Digital Britain is here at last! Unlike the interim one in January 2009 there is a chapter on e-government (well, its called Digital Government) and so is directly appropriate to this blog.

For me the key paragraphs are 15 and 17. The first has a list of criteria for earliest switchover where it is also stated that digital switchover means the ‘primary means of access, rather than one among many’, meaning that digital exclusion is alive and well in Digital Britain – in this instance for high volume, low complexity and efficiency (for the government).

The second states that there is a need to consider whether an online only or multi-channel approach is needed.

I wonder who will decide?

http://www.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/broadcasting/6216.aspx

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Watmore’s wisdom

June 21, 2009

Reading Computer Weekly informed me there might be something tasty in the evidence given by Ian Watmore, former government CIO and more recently of the DIUS but shortly to be Chief Executive of the Football Association. I couldn’t find a transcript by my own efforts but got a link from Rage on Omnipotent!

The uncorrected transcript of the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee of 20 May 2009 includes such gems from Mr Watmore as:

“people from the private sector – myself included – are always surprised at how difficult the business problems are that we are trying to solve.” Q10

“one of the challenges that we have always had is that people sit too often in Whitehall and do not get out to the front line enough and do not see the consequences of things that look good on a bit of paper in Whitehall but are not actually translating properly in the front line.” Q11

“I think there is a genuine problem of too many initiatives.” Q16

What a guy!

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Don’t count on empowerment

June 17, 2009

My academic colleagues in the Local Governance Research Unit at De Montfort (along with those from Southampton University) have been busy producing a report entitled “Empowering local communities to influence local decision making – A systematic review of the evidence” for the DCLG.

At 216 pages its another hefty read but one key finding on page 80 is that:

 

“The links between e-participation and community empowerment are surprisingly weak. Despite a growing interest in electronic forms of participation and, indeed, electronic democracy, the ways in which the wide range of devices actually empower individuals or communities, and the extent to which they have a direct influence on decision making, is often ignored. Although there is a large literature on the topic of e-participation and e-democracy, the actual evidence base on which to understand this topic is quite limited.”

Which I would also argue extends to much of the material on anything with an “e-” in fron to it, hence the reason for my own research and also the reason why I challenge much of the current hype about Web 2.0 and social media. Have a play by all means but don’t expect the other 98% of the population to buy into it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Getting overfocused on the tools

June 15, 2009

Two recent announcements indicate, in my view, a focus on the tools rather than the delivery of services itself!  In the EU a company seems to think that using the social web will transform services and in the UK central government is using ABC to audit its visitor figures as part of the plan to cost benefit analyze its web usage.

First our so-called system of representative government is not going to make any real use of a tool that undermines its own powers. We can attempt to employ service user feedback to improve services (across all channels) but even that’s not happening to any volume. We can email blog, email and Twitter all we like but its not delivering deliberative democracy, its a one-way street. Its the same one-way street that has governments wasting money having numbers counted that are meaningless. The only use for vistor numbers is to compare across channels and watch the change.  We really need to employ the multi-channel feedback to tune the services, not bean-count for the sake of it.

The web can be a tool of service delivery, when we learn how to use it properly…

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Digital self-exclusion

June 11, 2009

A new (10 June 2009) report is hot off the Ofcom press. Research by Ipsos Mori on behalf of Ofcom has looked at: Accessing the internet at home A quantitative and qualitative study among people without the internet at home

The 184 page document examines in great detail a statistically significant population, whilst proposing different options  that might encourage people to take up computer usage and broadband. Of the estimated 30% without access it appears that in 42% of cases there is no interest and of the adults who do not have access to the Internet, 43% would remain unconnected even if they were given PC and connection for free.

Whilst nothing to celebrate, these figures do confirm the need to maintain other channels or mediated services through e-channels for the foreseeable future.

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