July 29, 2009
As a member of the Local CIO Council I know John Suffolk, Her Majesty’s Government’s Chief Information Officer and the person responsible for the existence of the Local CIO Council. However, it took Public Sector Forums to advise me of his new blog. As I should have already written, I’d met and spoken to John in July at ECEG 2009 before he’d opened the second day with a presentation about the future of e-government. In the blog John develops upon the presentation he gave, along with the goings on at the CIO Council.
It also informs me of what I’d missed at the last CIO meeting, since being ‘down south’ for the conference I needed to get back to work and couldn’t attend. It was apparently regaled by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt assisting thoughts on the way forward for government IT and e-government, so I look forward to the next meeting of the council, along with the up and coming entries on John’s blog.
A single criticism, as if I’d dare, but where are the mentions of multi-channel operation, citizens, metrics - those little things that have been swept under the e-government carpet for the last ten years?
I’ve added it to my blogroll, anyway!
Leave a Comment » | 
Blogroll, Metrics, citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: ECEG 2009, John Suffolk, Local CIO Council, Nigel Shadbolt, Public Sector Forums, Sir Tim Berners-Lee | 
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Posted by greatemancipator
July 26, 2009
Another document recently appearing on the Cabinet Office web site – if only you all had time to read them all – is “Power in People’s Hands: Learning from the World’s Best Public Services“. Its 70 A4 landscape pages may be picking up on the interest Liam Byrne and David Milliband have been demonstrating in Nobel prizewinner Amartya Sen’s work, whose latest book “The Idea of Justice” is freshly published.
I don’t know if the Cabinet Office realise how insulting works like theirs can be, since many of their examples of good practice are actually in use in the UK, but people are too busy doing them to shout about it! At least on this occasion they have started calling the government’s customers “citizens” and taking a look at all the good practice from Canada, who probably do better at service delivery since they have insited upon calling the users of government services “citizens” for many years!
Key conclusions of the report – common standards, greater incentives for improvement and promotion of equity!
I didn’t need a study tour to tell me that, just a bit of study!
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Leave a Comment » | Systems thinking, citizen, e-government, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: Amatya Sen, cabinet office, Power in People’s Hands, The Idea of Justice, World Class | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator
July 22, 2009
Tim Berners-Lee has made one of his not-too frequent posts upon the topic of e-government. In fact it’s not really e-government its about putting data online. The article is on the W3C web site.
This is probably highly appropriate since the W3C eGovernment Interest Group has reached its latest phase and published a draft charter.
With everyone working on data handling and information management, what I’d like to see is that we can use linked data, as envisaged by Berners-Lee but in a coordinated manner, so that the tools we emply internally can produce the data for external use by ourselves (which we may not need when external hosts can do it) and others.
Anyway, Berners-Lee provides lots of suggestions plus some ‘do’s and don’ts’. Lets do some.
The same metter is picked up in a piece in the McKinsey Quarterly entitled E-government 2.0, which reinforces the method but accepts the cultural hurdles to be leaped or stumbled over. Very importantly for me, Baumgarten and Chul, also consider it in a multichannel context by stating the need to “provide consistent experience and share learning across channels.”
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Leave a Comment » | e-government, transformational change | Tagged: Baumgarten, Berners-Lee, Chul, E-government 2.0, McKinsey, W3C, W3C egov IG | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator
July 19, 2009
Those of you who aren’t subscribers, for want of any other description, to GovMetric might like to take advantage of a free peek at some consolidated data from it being made available through localgov.co.uk. You’ll have to register upon their site, which results in a weekly email newsletter, but the data from GovMetric can be useful in supporting channel delivery arguments.
Lots of conclusions can be generalised from the data, such as the fact that while the web may be quicker, it doesn’t always have what the citizen wanted, so they may then be back to you by ‘phone or face-to-face. There are also some differences between particular services.
I think its splendid that GovMetric have made public the outputs of a tool to help us mend our ways! If you read the introduction to the section, you’ll find my comments upon the benefits of citizen engagement.
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Leave a Comment » | Metrics, Systems thinking, citizen, customer satisfaction, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: GoMetric, localgov.co.uk | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator
July 15, 2009
If you don’t look at the Cabinet Office web site you might have missed the launch of a new report ‘Listening to the front line’, which has appeared in response to another report ‘Engagement & Aspiration’, from the Sunningdale Institute.
The essence is that the higher echelons of the Civil Service need to experience the work along with listening to those dealing with citizens. This is not a bad ideal, but what about listening to the citizens themselves, at the same time? Their view may be somewhat in contrast to the person the other side of the wire-mesh or glass panel, or the desk firmly screwed to the floor.
It’s a good start anyway…
PS – If anybody is wondering who the Sunningdale Institute are, I can only presume its a group from the National School of Government which is based a lengthy walk from the small Berkshire town of Sunningdale. It’s a lovely spot, rural and well forested.
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If you are interested and, preferably, in UK local government please complete the survey, it doesn’t take long at all. I’ll keep feeding back through these pages, which are also covered by localgov.co.uk and PSF.
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Leave a Comment » | Systems thinking, citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: Engagement & Aspiration, Listening to the front line, Sunningdale Institute | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator
July 12, 2009
Two of this month’s reports seem to have diverse opinions, and one in particular, to much that has been reported recently!
The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) when starting its Reboot Britian campaign, reported the results of a survey of a nationally-representative 1092 adults in the UK. The survey report concluded that 95 percent of people questioned are regularly using the web for everyday activities. if this were to be true we only have a digitally excluded minority of 5%, I presume? Their press release was entitled “Post Office queues to become a thing of the past.” The Public Service web site picked up a different focus from the results, the fact that when asked the question “Do you think switching as many public services and facilities as possible online is a good thing?”, 57% replied maybe, 22% said yes and 21% said no – an interesting contrast to the spin from NESTA.
In marked contrast to NESTA wanting to shorten Post Office queues, Computing published a piece about a report from the UK Parliamentary all-party Commons Business and Enterprise Committee which questioned the drive for e-government and accused Whitehall departments of undermining local Post Offices! The MP’s opinion was that the public should be encouraged online but not driven there, again rather in contrast to the government’s own Digital Britain report.
The NESTA report by picking up the public’s own restraint on government services cannot expect government to swallow the massively inflated figure of Internet usage it purports. Citizens have their own elderly or disabled friends and relatives for whom electronic services won’t work currently and so know its too early. Time for mediated services maybe, but purely online – not yet!
Leave a Comment » | Systems thinking, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: Commons Business and Enterprise Committee, Computing, digital britain, NESTA, publicservice.co.uk | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator
July 9, 2009
I’d been asked a question off blog about how the various figures apparently showing the incrementally lesser costs of face-to-face, to telephone, to web, that keep cropping up, were calculated. Since this discussion is becoming more common and seems to rely upon mythology as much as science, I thought I’d try to briefly fill out some of the blanks.
I did a quick survey of some of the figures being quoted:
| |
NWEGG |
Lambeth |
Socitm (min) |
Socitm (max) |
| Face-to-face |
£7.81 |
£1.66 |
£4.83 |
£9.56 |
| Telephone |
£4.00 |
£0.85 |
£1.28 |
£5.57 |
| Touchtone |
|
£0.09 |
|
|
| Web |
£0.17 |
£0.09 |
£0.22 |
£0.56 |
| Payment network |
|
£0.50 |
|
|
| Direct debit |
|
£0.02 |
|
|
The methodology used by NWEGG in association with CIPFA was documented and published by the CLG in March 2008 and entitled –
Delivering Efficiency: Understanding the Cost of Local Government Services
and can be found here:
http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/localgovernment/pdf/730431.pdf
Socitm employ CIPFA Accounting Code for Best Value as the basis for collecting costs, which should mean that the NWEGG and Socitm figures are on a par. CIPFA charge £850 for a copy – http://secure.cipfa.org.uk/cgi-bin/CIPFA.storefront/EN/product/AC073_
- must be a best seller at that price!
I do have a slide with the Lambeth calculation and I would say that looks like common sense, too.
So, why the differences? As was discussed at a meeting I attended with Socitm a while ago, an authority who had done their own sums found vast differences between services. This does make sense. Not all services are equal, displaying planning information on the web is easier than displaying benefits information and is likely to be accessed more often, too. So it probably depends which services one chooses to account for.
My conclusion – get everyone to pay by direct debit wherever possible!
3 Comments | Metrics, citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: NWEGG, CIPFA, CLG, Lambeth, Channel costing | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator
July 7, 2009
Two or more recent on-topic posts from Gartner blogger Andrea di Maio. In the most recent Andrea considers how enthusiasm for Web 2.o might shift away from being profitable to the private sector – Why The IT Industry Could Derail Government 2.0 – which takes a very big picture and has an essence of ‘may happen’. This contrasts somewhat with the excess spin put on the topic by Accenture in ‘Web 2.0 and the Next Generation of Public Service’, which is only compensated by their ‘Public Service Value Governance Framework’, which my set the thing in context.
The post before it (Cool idea from an unlikely vendor) from Andrea also heralds a warning, a government supplier demonstrating a simple Web 2.0 e-government solution. I’d thought that was the essence of it all, the provision by government of datasets, widgets etc so the citizen could, without much difficulty get what they want, if they wanted to.
I think Clayton M. Christensen’s book The Innovator’s Dilemma has something to say on both the previous – and its largely that those already heavily in the market don’t innovate.
The other July post from Andrea picks up on the issue of another contract from the EC to CapGemini to do yet another round of benchmarking e-government – what a waste of tax-payers money. Has the last seven years work delivered anything of value to require another four of the same? I doubt it!
2 Comments | Metrics, Social media, Systems thinking, citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: Andrea Di Maio, CapGemini, Clayton Christensen, EC, Gartner | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator
July 5, 2009
Published by the Centre for Policy Studies is a view from a Conservative councillor on the present government’s IT policy, particularly in the arena of personal data – It’s ours. The report by Liam Maxwell is a useful read for anybody working in government IT since it may be the approach subsequent to the next election!
For me it has an awful lot of sense, as can be found in earlier posts, I was never quite happy with the ‘deep truth’ that central government wanted us to seek, I never treated it as personal imformation, just a lot of mumbo-jumbo that would never help anybody. It also identifies the limited use being made of electronic government ‘services’.
In fact in terms of evaluating IT projects, one of the issues raised, Cabinet Office has already got its own rottweiler investigating – Stephen Jenner – who I met at ECEG2009, and whose book I bought, which is largely common sense and to save you the fifteen quid here’s an interview from the CIPFA PinPoint magazine – CipfapinpointJune09 - he’s also looking for people to do a survey for him -ABRMsurveyv1.0eceg
Importantly for this researcher Maxwell does state that “Putting the citizen, and not the government, at the centre of IT design can have startling results.” (P.14)
One place I would argue with the report is on P.16, where it states that ” information acquired for one purpose in the public sector may be used for another entirely different purpose”, if that had been the case the delivery of electronic government would have been much easier and I’d argued with a senior civil servant about that being a barrier some years ago, and nothing eased.
The same applies to Service Oriented Architecture and Cloud Computing, both praised in the book and both being promoted at Cabinet Office, unfortunately the governmental monolith moves slowly and acceptance of these concepts will take time.
Having said that, I welcome a fresh political take on the frequently ignored (by politicos) area of government IT and don’t disagree with any of the conclusions, however implementing them through Whitehall may be a different matter…
Leave a Comment » | citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: CIPFA, SOA, ECEG2009, Centre for Policy Studies, Liam Maxwell, Stephen Jenner, cloud computing | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator
July 1, 2009
Whilst away presenting a paper at the European Conference on E-Government ’09 in London, I read a new report from Canada entitled: From Research to Results: A Decade of Results-Based Service Improvement in Canada.
This turned out to be extremely appropriate, since all three papers in the stream my paper was in identified the missing link between academic research and the e-government practitioners. In this excellent, small and readable 46 page guide, what Marson and Heintzman conclude is the key to Canadian success, it is the implementation of “action research focused on obtaining feedback from citizens that can be quickly translated by public managers into service improvment that citizens want and notice, including single windows, electronic gateways and service clusters.” They also list “service improvment methods that focus rigourously on the drivers of citizen satisfaction with government service delivery.”
Their documenting of the last ten years in Canada reinforces what this blog has been saying, that is, the need for web managers, IT managers, customer service managers and service managers to focus upon citizen satisfaction, but not as interpreted by by annual surveys or ad-hoc measurements, but instead by the continued monitoring of service delivery across the multiple channels.
The Canadians employed their academics and practitioners to prove that the customer is always right – but as to how far one takes their advice is down to the politicians and their budget management.
Leave a Comment » | Metrics, citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: Canada, ECEG09, IPAC, Marson & Heintzman | Permalink
Posted by greatemancipator
