A week in politics…

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…

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Cultural shift

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!

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Focus not frills

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“?

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Social mediating

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.

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Tailored technology

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.

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