March 28, 2010
A week in politics can be a long time and the once commencing 22nd March 2010 was no exception! Tuesday saw the PM’s speech about the semantic web and Mygov. Wednesday brought the budget with the cuts to jobs and spending afforded by the various efficiency savings. Thursday brought the Total Place report being published by the Treasury. Friday produced the updated Smarter Government report, announcing the demise of NI14, which came from the CLG.
So, apart from coming from different bits of Whitehall, what can we glean in common from these four? Not very much? Perhaps that’s a clue? Whilst the CLG have had to drop NI14 when it had barely started, the most hotly challenged and debated performance indicator on record, Total Place demonstrates that efficiencies, in this time and place, are less about channel shift and more about channel focus, along with being more about understanding citizen behaviour than recording how bad government services are at not doing what they expected.
What about the DGPSU (the Digital Public Services Unit!)? How will this differ from the previous incarnations (including Office of the E-Envoy and the E-Government Unit)? The E-Government Unit became the largest unit within the Cabinet Office. Will the DGPSU follow suite? Will this aid or contest the Government ICT Strategy’s aim to centralise at least a good chunk of government IT management?
I suspect we will have to wait and see, but at least this time I gather there is a local government presence there at the moment - let’s see if anyone listens…
2 Comments | 
NI 14, NI14, Systems thinking, citizen, e-government, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: DGPSU, Gordon Brown, Mygov, smarter government, Total Place | 
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March 25, 2010
In this blog I haven’t tended to agree with Ben Page, the Chief Executive of Ipsos MORI. I am now going to make an exception!
In the Municipal Journal of 18 March 2010* he contributes to the Soapbox column, as he has in the past, with a piece largely on council communications and the financial cuts. In response to politicians sating that they are going to get more online to save costs, he picks up some key points including:
- the fact that citizens are more interested in service information than performance information
- that a number will continue to rely on printed material for sometime
- information is unlikely to empower anyone apart from the small minority already engaged
He concludes by stating that “A cultural shift in the relationship between service users and public services is required. Don’t expect dramatic changes in awareness and attitudes in the next five years.”
My own academic research supports that and indicates that one way forward is implementing the “Citizen Engagement System” and actively employing the feedback at a service and political level to regain trust from the public. Even using such a mechanism, it will take time, since recommendations will have to be seen to be being carried out.
This is also reflected on page 45 of the new (launched 25th March 2010) Total Place report where it considers what a successful procurement system would look like:
“Local services geared towards meeting the needs and demands of service users and citizens – structuring services to meet those needs through engaging them in service design and monitoring of performance and working across service silos to focus on the outcomes for the person rather than the individual services they receive.”
So I may not be far from the truth, after all!
* To those without a paper copy I apologise – the content of MJ is frequently reproduced on http://www.localgov.co.uk but at a later date!
1 Comment | Metrics, citizen, customer satisfaction, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: Ben Page, Ipsos MORI, Municipal Journal, Total Place | Permalink
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March 23, 2010
Andrea di Maio of Gartner highlights the E-Gov Satisfaction Index Q4 2009 from the USA in his blog of March 12th 2010 #. What Andrea picks up on is the factor that the leading sites in the satisfaction ratings are ones that focus upon particular services, whilst the portals don’t gain the same levels. In Andrea’s words “more focus, less thrills and frills.”
This comes in contrast to the Prime Minister’s announcement on the 22nd March 2010 about Mygov. Mygov is a project to be led by newly promoted UK Digital Champion Martha Lane Fox that it is claimed will provide a simple dashboard for managing pensions, tax credits, child benefits and paying council tax amongst many, many other government services.
Whilst I applaud the concept, I am asking ten years on from the Modernising Government White Paper and the start of the e-government experience, that rather than starting the excavation of the foundations for another BIG project we survey the public for the “quick wins”. OK, this one is only £30 million, but lets make the best possible use of the money and see about some savings coming back from the investment.
I am aware from my seat on the Local CIO Council that the Chair, Jos Creese, recently wrote to Martha Lane Fox offering the LCIOC’s support to her work as Champion for Digital Inclusion. In her new role I would suggest that the involvement of the wider public sector is more important. Local councils are in day-to-day contact with the public over a range of matters, many of them should never warrant being made electronic, when detailed and complicated advice is required (that’s not to say that information and guidance can’t be published), but we are also at the coal-face of democracy when we administer elections, deal with basic local issues and recognise the communities in their geographic and social settings.
If this is truly a move towards deliberative government, before any work starts we need to be asking questions about which government services the citizens would like online? Is it to do with health? Is it to so with benefits? Perhaps it’s around planning or highways? I don’t know, has anyone ever asked them?
# One thing confusing me is that Andrea describes it as being published on March 12th, whilst I had it as 26th January, having blogged about it a few days after that in “Satisfaction levels out“?
Leave a Comment » | citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: Andrea Di Maio, Larry Freed, Martha Lane-Fox, Mygov | Permalink
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March 21, 2010
Whilst the local authority where I reside (City of York) has just published the reults of a survey of residents stating that 17% would find out council information through social media, another report has been issued by NESTA, The Lab and I&DeA promoting their use.
The new report, “Local by Social – How local authorities can use social media to achieve more for less“, is written by Andy Gibson and is a sort of follow-up to another report Social by Social, but this time focused upon local authorities. In reality, from a lot of the examples he provides, it’s actually as much about Web 1.0 as it is about Web 2.0.
Andy proposes the way around the digital exclusion factor of social media is for others to do it for those excluded, an idealistic dream reminiscent of those distant days when many people didn’t have a home telephone and bad news (and sometimes good) was delivered by telegram, and the lucky neighbour or business might prevailed upon in time of emergency for the use of the telephone!
He’s also misled, in these times of increasing austerity, if he thinks councils have the resources to experiment with social media. This maybe so in a lucky few, but many are looking for savings, and luxury items are a target. His argument that better service and savings will be presented is unlikely to be proved, if it was ever viable.
The report also focuses on London and big urgan authorities. On the occasions it does get out to the sticks by describing activities on Lichfield’s web site, he’s describing something that many web masters and mistresses have been doing for some time, which is signposting local services. This is also only information provision, and not really service delivery.
An admirable attempt by someone on the outside, to teach local authorities something they are already attempting to do, against formidable cultural, financial and political barriers.
NESTA have also been optimistic and contrary in the recent past, when driving their Reboot Britain campaign.
Leave a Comment » | Metrics, Social media, citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement | Tagged: IDeA, Local by Social, NESTA, reboot britain, The Lab | Permalink
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March 17, 2010
During my research on e-government I’ve needed to take notice of the Center for Technology in Government (CTG) in the United States, along with its newish director Theresa Pardo who has been involved in some interesting e-government research. A report in NextGov about a recent activity caught my eye and I then trawled around a bit chasing supporting documentation.
The CTG had organized with the National Science Foundation and the National Association of State Chief Information Officers a workshop around technology and governance. One paragraph from the NextGov report by Jill Aitoro interested me in particular:
“The federal government must take a more nuanced approach to developing technology, scientists and government practitioners said during a workshop earlier this week. Too often agencies fail to consider the context in which information technology products and services will be used, said Theresa Pardo, director of the Center for Technology in Government at the State University of New York at Albany. CTG organized a two-day workshop at the National Science Foundation in Arlington, Va., to discuss challenges in melding technology and governance. The event, which drew 40 participants, was co-sponsored by NSF and the National Association of State Chief Information Officers. Often IT projects would benefit from more research on how the citizens they are designed to help interact with government. “There is a consensus among computer and social scientists, as well as practitioners of state, local and federal government that we don’t understand this interaction sufficiently, nor do we have the resources available to build that knowledge,” Pardo said. “People intuitively understand that there are differences, but we continue in government to develop technology strategies that treat them as if they don’t matter,” she said. “There’s this overwhelming sense that one size fits all and context doesn’t matter — because it’s technology, of course it will work. We know that’s not true, but we don’t understand what do to about it.” Nabil Adam, a researcher in the infrastructure and geophysical division of the Homeland Security Department’s science and technology directorate, pointed to the government’s recently launched Data.gov Web site, which acts a depot of government statistics, as another example of an IT offering that could benefit from customization. “This site has some valuable information, but is it really being used to the full extent that we’d like to see it used? We need to find a way to dynamically customize the information for the individual users,” he said. “As more and more data is being provided by government, providing some context would help ensure the public can best make use of that data.” One major lesson that came out of the workshop was the need for federal officials to collaborate more regularly with their state and local counterparts, as well as researchers in the computer science and social science communities. NSF plans to consider the recommendations made by participants when allocating research funds. “Let’s get back to when this concept of e-government came about, and let’s get the whole community involved to try to reassess where we are and where to go from here,” Adam said. “Involving interdisciplinary teams of people will help us prepare ourselves to deal with this technology, as it applies to everything we do.”
Unfortunately, although the papers they started work on are available, the outcomes aren’t publicly available and won’t be until the summer.
Leave a Comment » | Metrics, Systems thinking, citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: Center for Technology in Government, Jill Aitoro, National Association of State Chief Information Officers, NextGov, Theresa Pardo | Permalink
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March 14, 2010
A new report from Accenture is entitled “Performance Management – Driving High Performance by Focusing on What Really Matters to Citizens.” At 28 glossy pdf pages it’s probably what one would expect from a high-class consultancy.
Surprisingly, in a bullet-pointed list on page 2 to stress the need for performance management, there is no mention of the citizen, although they do appear later, fortunately rather more often than customers!
Interestingly, on page 9 a number of points are made about performance management in government – that it’s not used for measuring citizen-centric social outcomes, it is deployed in silos (not as an end-to-end enabler) and that it is used as a means of retrospective review or accountability…to report accomplishments (or failures).” Which I’d probably agree are points of failure.
They develop the neologism of “social outcomes”, sometimes used in educational circumstances, and employ it in mixed contexts with public value and social capital, which it perhaps is.
Overall, nothing I’d disagree with, apart from having to probably pay through the nose for what should be common sense to the public sector by now.
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March 11, 2010
In the EU eGovernment Benchmarking 2010+ report by Alexander Schellong advantage is made of the “democracy cube” developed by Archon Fung, I presume, one of his colleagues at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Fung’s paper, recipient of 81 citations to-date, is entitled “Varieties of Participation in Complex Governance” and is well worth a read in its own right.
Two brief sentences from the conclusion, starting on page 23 say it all for me:
“Citizens can be the shock troops of democracy. Properly deployed, their local knowledge, wisdom, commitment, authority, even rectitude can can address wicked failures of legitimacy, justice, and effectiveness in representative and bureaucratic institutions.”
“Reaping (indeed perceiving) these pragmatic benefits for democracy, however, requires a footloose analytic approach that jettisons preconceptions about what participatory democracy should look like and what it should do in favor of a searching examination of the actual forms and contributions of participation.”
Currently we are recycling mechanisms of approaching citizens and pretending they are new and open. Real change will require real changes.
Leave a Comment » | citizen, e-government, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: Alexander Schellong, Archon Fung | Permalink
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March 9, 2010
…or should that be participative democracy? No, the two are definitely not the same! However, so as not to get confused with a post about participation, per se, I thought some expansion necessary! Thanks to Jose Manuel Alonso for mailing the W3C e-government interest group with the European E-participation Summary November 2009. The authors include Ann Macintosh and the document attempts to play out both the necessity and practice behind e-participation in the light of the Lisbon Treaty of December 2007, which is now ratified.
It’s only 30 pages and fairly graphical but the key sections for me is number 24 on page 28 where it states:
“In a context where at least 30% of Europeans will not be online for the foreseeable future, where ICT is still in its infancy as regards participation, and where ICT is unlikely ever to meet all the needs of participation (especially those related to its social and community experience, and the needs for considered long-term and highly nuanced debate), multi-channel solutions are highly desirable.
- eParticipation rarely stands alone. Both implementation and research should focus on why and how switching between channels occurs. “
- The role of intermediaries needs to be better understood and encouraged where appropriate.
- eParticipation can be and often needs to be combined with traditional channels like meetings, personal consultations, mass media, the use of the telephone and mass mailings, etc.
- Alternative e-channels like digital TV, kiosks, mobile phones could also be exploited especially for enhancing the participation of specific target groups.”
Which confirms for me that the EU is also getting it head around the fact that e-government is not a majority event and there will always be a significant minority to support. It also appreciates the little understood channel switching that occurs and needs to be seriously researched when designing systems.
An excellent report appreciating the challenges ahead!
Leave a Comment » | e-government, engagement | Tagged: eu, European Commission, Professor Ann Macintosh, W3C egov IG | Permalink
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March 7, 2010
A report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) and the IPPR entitled “Capable Communities – Public service reform: The next chapter” has appeared. It’s another short one at 24 pages and it follows a long list of other reports concerned with co-production, such as the ones I’ve managed to cover here, here and here (and even back in October 2008, too)
It doesn’t seem that long ago since the Baroness Thatcher decided that “society” didn’t exist, we now have them coming at us from all political directions, along with various combinations of the words “social”, “good”, “value”, “capital” and “public”, and this report is no exception!
Whilst I support the obvious statement that “services work best when citizens are involved in producing them”, I cringe at some of the expectations of those who must be so detached from the society they are now trying to involve. Most councils struggle for volunteers be they school governors, PTA members, attendees at consultation events, community forums etc, so where are all the additional ones to come from?
The report is right in that in order for this ever to happen, the state needs to change. Citizens will only spend their time when value is returned to them and the community, not through the penny-pinching or pseudo-consultative exercises that it has been so often in the recent past. Results will have to be delivered before they are expected!
I hope that the survey results from the report are taken with a pinch of real experience before anyone decides that communities are actually willing or able to do many of these exercises without adequate funding or support. If the truth is out, they’ll be initially used as ways of finding savings, and we can then watch community, services and society wither, as well as the state.
Leave a Comment » | Metrics, Systems thinking, citizen, customer satisfaction, e-government, engagement, transformational change | Tagged: co-production, IPPR, PWC | Permalink
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March 4, 2010
With the ongoing debate about broadband availability in the UK it comes as a slight surprise that the United States is little different. A recent report in the MIT Technology Review, 16 February 2010, from Associated Press confirms this stating that 40% of US homes lack broadband access. Unsurprisingly, just like the UK, there is an urban versus rural divide. There is also a racial and age divide with blacks, Hispanics, and those aged over 55 less likely to have broadband at home.
Or perhaps I shouldn’t be suprised? It’s a big country!
Leave a Comment » | Metrics, citizen, e-government, transformational change | Tagged: broadband, MIT | Permalink
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