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E-GOVERNMENT EXAMPLESTony Blair's highly rated
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In the online future you'll be able to pay your council tax, report a faulty streetlight and chase up your benefits via the web. E-government is promising to make all this possible – but, asks Gary Flood, how close is the reality?
E-government: worth voting for?
Whatever you feel about the internet, you can't deny its convenience.
From your desk you can order books and CDs, communicate with people round
the globe, and with broadband connectivity listen to music downloads.
What if you could also use the web to ask your council to change the
way you pay your council tax, renew your library books, pay your tax bill,
or apply for a new driving licence?
Seems sensible enough. But you wouldn't believe the fuss, problems and
general malaise that laudable goal's causing local and central government.
E-government - at least UK-style - is proving to be in its own quiet way
at least as problematic for New Labour as an integrated transport policy
or education reform.
And just as with these other initiatives, the basic impulses are totally
laudable. In 1998 Tony Blair set a target for the UK: to make it possible
for citizens to access all government services online by 2005.
This is more than being up to date or any 'cool Britannia' stuff. Blair's
tech gurus think they can use electronic procurement and communication
methods to cut as much as £4bn of taxpayer overhead by trading with
suppliers this way.
But few observers have any faith that 2005 target will be reached –
or even that it makes much sense anyway.
Targets
Two years ago technology industry research group Forrester
produced a pretty damning appraisal of e-efforts at central government
departments.
The report gave UK e-government efforts a lowly D overall, noting, "The
fundamental issues of changing the way government deals and works are
not progressing at the same pace."
Another research firm, Gartner, has said that it doesn't expect e-government
to really start delivering better services until 2010 at least.
And last April the National Audit Office said as many as 66 departments
and quangos still didn't have any web site, three years after the 1998
target was set.
Many of those that were operational aren't up to scratch, though some
are excellent (see box). Some are too difficult to search, it found, like
the Customs & Excise effort, where finding out where your local VAT
office is is a difficult task.
2001 figures suggest only one in 10 Britons has used an e-government
service – a figure way behind countries like the US, Canada and Australia,
and in sharp contrast to the 26% average for European countries, according
to researchers Taylor Nelson Sofres.
Nonetheless Westminster continues to throw money at the problem. One
estimate says there are at least 100 e-government projects on the go,
costing billions of pounds.
And at a special 'E-Summit' last November Blair promised at least £6bn
more in the next three years in areas like hooking up broadband in every
British school and hospital by 2006.
This isn't to suggest that it's all a stupid idea or a waste of money.
E-government is a good idea, maybe a great one, and could really help
make it much easier for state and taxpayer to communicate better.
Or that there isn't a genuine will to succeed. "There is an over-riding
commitment to improve the quality of the services the citizen receives
by the best use of technology," says Geoff Llewllyn, director of
strategy and government at large computer services firm ShlumbergerSema,
which does a lot of work with central government.
Tricky beast
The reason the results haven't been that impressive so far is that, as
we've seen with the dot com bubble, the internet is a tricky beast. It's
such a fast-changing medium that what made sense last year might not this
– and that you really need to know why you're doing anything with
it in the first place.
"Just e-enabling a service does not in and of itself make that service
delivery more convenient or cost-effective," warns Wendy Hewson,
head of research at independent consultancy Hewson Consulting, a firm
which looks at the cultural impact of technology on organisations.
Hewson worries that worthwhile centrally-set e-government targets are
being misunderstood in the field. "Reporting on the proportion of
services e-enabled gives no clue as to the quality of the online user
experience delivered, or whether the service provides value for money.
Likewise, reporting on the proportion of services e-enabled will not drive
performance improvements in online provision.
"Instead, reporting on things that actually matter to end-users,
such as their perceptions of the service, the percentage of users able
to complete their transactions online, or the time taken to act on their
requests or fix their problems, certainly would."
If things go on like this, she warns, "we can predict a very poor
online experience of e-enabled public sector services for the majority
of us in the UK, delivered at significant incremental cost – not
a happy prospect".
Local government
Meanwhile, similar things are happening at the local town hall, which
has also been charged with getting more e-friendly. How is local government
faring?
After all, in many ways e-government at local level must be what it's
all about. Services such as access to the internet and email from your
local library, online voting in council elections, smartcards for public
transport or buying your kids school meals so they don't need to carry
cash, are all examples of simple but effective e-initiatives.
Just as important are opening up the council offices out of hours, so
that you could ring up and ask a range of questions like reporting your
wheelie bin's been stolen to get advice on how to safely dispose of used
cooking oil. This could be done cheaply and effectively via call centres
and the web – but is it?
It's a mixed picture. In June 2001 it put aside £25m for between
15 and 20 local councils to become so-called 'pathfinders,' leading the
local e-government charge and become centres of expertise for other authorities.
This funding is set to rise to £190m this year.
Bracknell Forest Borough Council became the first pathfinder, crossing
the finish line in February 2001. Some 110,000 citizens have full e-access
to all its services. Other start councils are Leeds, Liverpool and Rotherham
(see case study, right).
Fine – but maybe because we've come from such a low baseline, there's
still a long way to go.
In December 2002 research from the body that represents IT in local government,
the Society of Information Technology Management (Socitm), said that while
a healthy average of 30% of all council services are available online,
up from 25% in 2001, only half of councils contacted said they'd meet
the 2005 target, and a few (13%) said they wouldn't even try.
This same research said that only 89% of council staff had email and
63% internet access on their desktop, with only four PCs for every five
local government staff.
Whitehall wants this improved, and again, the will is there, but if you're
pressed for cash would you rather spend your budget on a new school or
a website with lots of user-friendly features on how to electronically
file your land registry request?
That's obviously a tough one, and unfair to make it an either/or –
in an ideal world you'd want both, of course (anyone who's ever tried
to sell a house would probably agree).
Job implications
At the same time, e-government at the local level represents a bit of
a puzzler for UNISON staff.
On the one hand, better public service is what the union's all about,
so in the abstract UNISON members should approve of all this. But on the
other, if, and as many local councils are, the first step on the joined-up
government road is a call centre, whooah – when were call centres
last hailed as the most staff-friendly environments?
Some suppliers feel that's a legitimate fear, but overdone.
"This will actually in the main improve people's jobs as it provides
answers for a lot of routine enquiries and will streamline dealing with
many of them," says Martin Gillate, e-government consultant for RightNow,
a company that sells the so-called Customer Relationship Management software
some councils want to start using.
But even Gillate admits "some will need less staff to deal with public enquiries
as a result". Are we to blame those lost jobs on progress?
E-government, then, is set to be a factor in our lives as consumers of
public services, to a greater or lesser extent, in the next few years.
For many of us its impact could be dramatic in terms of changed jobs or
having to learn to use new technology.
"Every worker in the public sector is part of this," says ShlumbergerSema's
Llewllyn. "Everyone will be able to feel pride in the fact that the
overall service to patients and consumers will be better. There will be
glitches and there are massive challenges but the e in e-government will
stand for 'effective and efficient' not just electronic."
Contact the article's author Gary Flood
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