ntouk.com - Jerry Fishenden's technology policy blog

I'm currently helping re-think existing approaches to IT, in particular how we can really deliver value from its use in the public sector. With some 17bn GBP being spent annually on public sector IT, it's an area where we need to ensure a high return from taxpayer investment.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, the UK's spend on IT in the public sector is running at around 150% of what is spent annually on the NHS drugs budget. So citizens have a right to ensure that this spend is returning proportionate benefits to them in the way their public services are operated and delivered. At present, it is not clear that this is the case. Indeed, it is difficult to determine precisely where current IT spend is going and precisely how it is improving (assuming it is, of course) the quality and effectiveness of our public services.

On the financial side, there seem to be two main competing views of how to drive fundamental change.

The first is that the overall public sector IT budget should be cut, and dramatically at that, in order to really focus minds on what is necessary. Cuts of 50% or more are being suggested. I recall Steve Ballmer suggesting to Gus ODonnell that if the civil service really wants to produce genuine efficiency savings (rather than paper-based notional savings), salami-slicing budgets in small year-by-year wafer-thin increments would not work: only sharp, deep, shocking cuts of 25% or more can produce a real change in the way people design and deliver services.

The second view is that overall administration and overhead budgets should instead be dramatically cut (by 20% or more) and that departments should be left to choose how best to administer these changes. In some cases, they might choose to increase IT spend, provided doing so delivers savings elsewhere, possibly through headcount reductions in mid- and back-office personnel.

The Canadian government example from the 1990s, which recognised that the remote centre does not usually have enough information about where to cut effectively (in terms of cutting waste and pointless expenditure rather than hitting service delivery and quality), is an interesting one. It suggests the way forward for the UK may be the second option above, aimed at delivering tangible savings but ensuring that those closest to the reality of service-delivery make the hard, and hopefully right, choices, that actually improve the quality and design of public services.

Prior to either of these options (or indeed others) being considered and settled upon, there is a more fundamental question about the effective configuration of government itself to be considered. After all, many of the UK's administrative and functional structures are there by accident rather than design. So a review of the functions and capabilities required of government is a necessary precursor to deciding where IT fits and what budgets are most appropriate. A particular dimension to this is the reduction of remote Whitehall departments and an increase in the ability to locally configure and deliver services.

What does seem clear however is that we need to develop a left to right integrated set of IT building blocks to underpin public service delivery right across the board, of the kind outlined in the figure shown below.

Such an integrated approach to technology policy will bring together the necessary elements to underpin updated UK public services and the daily experiences of public sector employees, citizens, businesses and other organisations. Underlying the approach to technology policy is the assumption that the Internet and World Wide Web architectures and standards should be employed wherever possible.

One other significant current technology policy challenge is the problem that Internet policies and communications policies operate in different policy domains. And yet they span common issues such as provider obligations; security, privacy and identity; standards; and intellectual property and digital rights.

As with the configuration of government itself, this type of out-dated separation in areas of technology policy needs replacing with a new, properly integrated approach. In our digital age, the scope of these considerations is global, not national, and the pace of change is both a constant and accelerating, with the result that policymaking all too often lags reality. We need to tackle the fact that current models of regulation are insufficiently dynamic or successful and that where new approaches have been applied they proceed in episodic, incomplete bursts (and become outdated).

Hence the analysis that we need to tackle this through a comprehensive left to right strategy for technology policy that moves beyond the current historic / policy function-based approach. What we are seeking is an approach that recognises the fluidity of the system and puts into place a more adaptive ecosystem underpinned by some key principles, such as:

• citizens sit at the centre of public service (re)design
• businesses operate within an environment established by broad policies (rather than the complex interpretation of specific, brittle, over-detailed legislation / regulation fossilised at a moment in time)
• Government is the ultimate arbiter and line of last resort and enforcement of citizens' rights

Pivotal to this debate is consensus on the idea that the public sector needs an efficient, secure information architecture that recognises fulfilment is localised (not centralised), and which takes account of the reality of our digital age (most specifically the Internet and the World Wide Web).

In achieving this consensus, one of the largest problems currently being considered is the tendency (whether intentional or as a by-product of inadequate technological expertise) to misdirect IT towards some kind of UK digital uber-state, which, unlike the Internet and WWW, seems to be envisaged as a centrally imposed monolithic database state without citizen consent.

To use technology to potentially set a democratic state against its own citizens seems not only expensive (politically, technologically and financially), but to be a significant missed opportunity. IT can be designed to reinforce the importance of the rule of law, security, and privacy and our other core democratic freedoms and to contribute to trustworthiness and to honour values such as privacy, freedom of expression, protection of minorities, freedom of association, and freedom of belief.

We need to rethink how IT becomes an ally of the citizen, and the UK's best interests, rather than being seen as a negative.

The other challenge to overcome is, as Professor Patrick Dunleavy has articulated it, [the fact that] "... managers, civil servants and consultants change too slowly or [that] inconsistent strategies are implemented by the same departments, e.g. UK government paralysing loss of personal data problems".

With the recognition that any IT development has ambiguous potential (to develop either utopian or dystopian outcomes, or indeed a blurred, inconsistent blend), the current constructive debate about the type of future UK we want to see, and the role of technology in this vision, is timely.

What we are all seeking, I hope, is an approach to reform of public services where technology plays a positive role as a policy lever, helping renew the configuration of government and public services in a way that builds citizen trust and delivers better quality and more efficient services.

Of course, much work remains ... and which model of budgetary efficiency wins the day has yet to be determined. But one thing is clear. Whatever the outcome, the current model will not persist. It is in urgent need of reform and change will come.

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