National Technology Officer - UK Web Site

Jerry Fishenden's Weblog Archives - Dec 2005

Dec 13 2005, more thoughts on transformational government

I was talking last week with a variety of senior government officials from the West Indies about how technology is still often an after-thought rather than being a core part of policy-making itself. It was a healthy and productive discussion, with a lot of focus on the problems not of technology or political policy - but on the sheer pragmatics of how you deliver change programmes, particularly those on a national scale.

My proposition was that technology will only deliver a truly transformational impact when we reach the stage that it becomes an integral part of the policy-making process. To illustrate my point, it's worth taking a few statistics from the UK and examining the impact that technology could be having if it were better integrated into the overall process.

The UK Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors claims for example that we waste some £18Bn a year (1.5% of GDP) through inefficient use of property. The CBI adds to this by stating that traffic congestion is costing UK business £20Bn per annum. Some 62% of UK citizens get to/from work by car, with 85% of all journeys being made by car. Transport contributes 25% of carbon dioxide emissions, 85% of which is from road transportation (source: ONS).

Yet the transformational role of technology and the way it could impact such issues barely rates a mention in official policy documents. All too often technology is seen as a peripheral issue, rather than being core to the debate. For instance, if we were to encourage truly mobile and flexible working, what impact could it have upon commute and office utilisation patterns - and on helping bring some of those with long-term disabilities back into the productive workforce? If we could manage to get just an incremental 10% of the UK workforce working from home or remotely one day a week, what impact would that have upon national policies from transportation through to the environment? And what then if we could increase that figure - say to 20% or beyond?

This is why I spend a lot of my time talking about technology policy. To me this is the missing link between political or business objectives and driving desired outcomes. All too often projects seem to jump from high level aspiration to technical solution mode - without addressing the technology policy space. There is much wider significance in the work Kim Cameron has done around the 'laws of identity' than helping bring best practice to identity solutions. There is a broader model here about how, for any particular problem area, we need to have a clear technology policy definition capable of delivering the political or business objectives - before we start any discussions about technology itself.

So my thesis would be that the UK Transformational Government agenda should aspire to a critical fourth pillar: the synthesis of technology policy and political policy. All too often business or political policy remains silod, lacking an informed understanding of the transformational role technology could be playing. Initiatives on topics such as bringing the long-term disabled into the workforce, reducing traffic congestion, working towards the Kyoto targets, aiming to tackle the complex problems around flexible retirement / benefits / patterns of working do not even mention the transformational and economic impact of technology.

I believe we will help achieve true transformational government by incorporating this additional pillar - to transform the framing of policy itself at its inception and development rather than seeing technology as something added further downstream. Citizen-centric services, shared services and the professionalisation of the IT profession are all of course great aspirations too: but I think we need to add in this fourth pillar if we truly desire to see genuinely transformational government.

And if we can work collectively together across technologists and policy makers to get this right, just think about some of the beneficial impacts we could see from the advent of technologically-enabled policy:

transport – the potential for a measurable reduction in commuting, taking pressure off roads and the broader transport infrastructure
energy – the potential for seeing a reduction in petrol demand, and cutting the surplus energy requirements of large office environments (potential Kyoto synergies)
housing and communities – the potential impact on demographic distribution and localisation (with a reduction in the tendency for one or two economic hotspots) and the preservation of smaller communities through renewed economic viability
equality of access – providing practical ways of supporting disability at work, enabling better social and economic inclusion through technology (reducing those in benefits and outside the productive workforce)

These are of course just the beginning. Much more detailed work remains to be done. I'm grateful that there is a realistic opportunity during the current consultation stage for a healthy debate on the Transformational Government agenda.

It is now time for the technology industry to demonstrate it has the capacity to communicate the true potential of technology - and to argue its case for the inclusion of a vital fourth pillar in making sure the transformational government agenda delivers the outcomes it aspires to achieve.