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| There are two forces at work here that prevent government from being effective and efficient. 1 Government can't JFDI. The cost of transparency now massively overwhelms the cost of the ICT. If I'm in a private company and I need CRM then I get out my credit card and buy a SaaS based package that costs me say $50/user/month. Government can't do that - they have to convince auditors, the press and ultimately the taxpayer that there wasn't a better service to be had at $49/user/month. That's why government needs servers, consultants and bid processes that add massively to the cost and risk of every project. Whenever I think about this stuff I'm reminded of my time in the MoD when I wasn't allowed a DDI phone. Instead I had to call an operator who would direct my call and supposedly ensure that it was for legitimate business. Of course the operator cost way more than I could ever run up my making phone calls, but was deemed a necessary part of achieving transparency. 2 Government has been webwashing existing broken processes rather than going for the fundamental re-engineering needed to get web scale efficiency. The banks got the savings because they implemented straight through processes, supported by technology, and with people there to pick up the exceptions such as customers who were unwilling or unable to use the web. If you go into a bank today then the person at the counter almost certainly has the same web app as you get online or a similar web skin over the same middle tier. The same is not true for face to face interactions with government. |
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| Chris Swan | chris.swan@iee.org | blog.thestateofme.com | 9 Sep 2009 @ 10:43 | |
| You're right, this is not a technology problem: this is a cultural problem which stems from the structure of British Government organisations at all levels. They are, by their very nature hierarchical. This means that they are top down, inward looking, focussed on outbound messages and incapable of transformational activity which requires a matrixed organisation, which receives messages and welcomes innovation. The technology that should transform process simply reinforces it. The predominance of lean thinking, call centres, large back offices and centralised front offices with simply a nod and a wink to decentralisation and distributed back office functions will never yield the kinds of transformational change that is needed to generate the percentages of cashable savings and citizen engagement. There are issues of ownership. Who owns the solution? Where should the service boundary really sit in a transformed world of service delivery? I would argue that it's not at the traditional firewall, for as long as it does then the technology will continue to strangle the organisation rather than letting it breath new air and transform the way that it does business. |
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| Paul Nash | paul.nash@leaton.eclipse.co.uk | httpwww.penval.co.ukblog | 29 Sep 2009 @ 19:19 | |
