Maybe
The history of e-government is littered with utopias (and disutopias), but the language of transformational government is a modernist dream run riot. You can see it from the strategy's title and Tony Blair's first sentence in his foreword: "The world is changing around us at an incredible place due to remarkable technological change" to its core vision, which is "not just about transforming government through technology; it is also about making government transformational through the use of technology.
When it comes to citizen-centric government, there are several good points. The Service Transformation Board sounds like an excellent idea, putting heads of the big service delivery departments together for perhaps the first time. But again, the modernist thrust wins out over a considered strategy for making e-government something that citizens are likely to use. The plan is to "rationalise" the 2,500 websites in operation and get everyone using direct.gov and the Business Link. But the internet isn't like that. You can't make users work it in a particular way or come in from a particular place.
There are things you can do - work out the link structure of the government domain; employ strategies to make it easier to navigate; use hyperlinks to lead users into the domain and raise its visibility on Google; and employ external links to point outwards to other sources of information and expertise. You can track usage statistics and carry out experiments to find out how citizens use government online and how they might be encouraged to interact with government electronically. But there isn't much about these possibilities here, apart from a highly-welcome admission that "the UK has no systematic view of what citizens, businesses and frontline staff want and need" and what looks like a pointer to a link-up with Google for government searches.
We can expect another strategy for implementing the strategy, apparently. But even for a policy document, this is written very much in the abstract, with few examples of how technology might be used to make a better world - cleaner, for example, though e-pricing of road use; more secure, through e-borders; healthier, through e-health. This lack of examples makes it hard for the document to inspire the reader and I should think it would leave most citizens cold.
It is not easy to imagine alternative technology-enabled futures in an intelligent and inspiring way particularly after the dashed hopes of earlier e-government initiatives. But if we are going to be modernists, we ought to try.
Oxford Internet Institute: www.oii.ox.ac.uk
John Higgins, director general, Intellect, a body representing the IT industry
Yes
Too often large-scale changes in technology have failed to deliver the improvements envisaged because of an over-simplification of what's needed, unrealistic expectations about the pace and speed of delivery, and failures in overall project management.
Public sector IT projects are cited as "invariably" costing more than planned and delivering little or no discernable benefit. In reality, the headline-grabbing projects are mainly those focusing on introducing changes in the way people work. In such projects, IT is just one component; an understanding of the wider business change is often overlooked or, perhaps more worryingly, not understood by those running projects.
Pure IT projects are delivered every day - much of them about upgrading computers, networks and communications to do the same job as old equipment but do it faster, better and cheaper. They go wrong sometimes but only in the same way as other complex pieces of work - the London Eye, Millennium Stadium, Millennium Bridge, Jubilee Line extension, west coast mainline - projects that are now considered successful.
In comparison, projects of a similar scale are delivered successfully by the IT industry on a regular basis, taken for granted and rarely reported or lauded - new passport applications processed in four days, car tax without having to visit a post office, and land registry searches done in days rather than weeks.
The emphasis must be on establishing an open and effective relationship as a platform for success. Intellect's IT supplier code of best practice provides a respected platform on which supplier commitment can be assessed and rewarded by the public sector customer. And Intellect's "concept viability" scheme for assessing projects has gone some way to show how engaging early with suppliers can help reduce the need for post-contract changes.
This commitment needs to be maintained over time, with care taken to ensure political imperatives do not take precedence or override commercial reality when it comes to delivery timescales.
So contractual agreements must be negotiated on the basis of a partnership between the customer and supplier and should avoid terms that distort the market, stifle innovation, unfairly burden the supplier with unrealistic levels of risk and inadequately reward the supplier for success. The strategy has laid down a series of challenges for politicians, civil servants and the IT supplier community. We should be proud of the progress made and stand ready to meet the challenges ahead.
Intellect: www.intellectuk.org
Peter Ryder, vice-president of the Society of IT Management and head of ICT services at Preston city council
Yes
Socitm members are generally encouraged by the new strategy. Given the right support, the strategy should help ensure that progress towards the development of modern, joined-up services - which started with the announcement of the e-delivery targets in 2000 and has been supported since then by the ODPM-funded local e-government programme - will not be lost when the latter ends in March 2006. Rather, it will gain momentum and really start to deliver.
Socitm has had its criticisms of the e-government programme. Earlier this year, partly as a response to the efficiency agenda, it launched a campaign for a more radical, ambitious version of e-government. Technologies available today enable organisations to connect citizens, but they should also be stimulating a rethink of every service from a citizen's point of view, involving, where possible, a completely redefined business model.
So we welcome the strategy's emphasis that services enabled by IT must be designed around the citizen or business, not the provider, and be provided through modern, coordinated delivery channels.
Socitm also supports another key plank in the strategy - the aim of moving public service organisations towards a shared services culture and improving efficiency by adopting a standards-based approach, simplification and sharing. (Socitm Insight will release a report on this topic early in 2006.)
The strategy's call for a broadening and deepening of government's professionalism in the planning, delivery, management, skills and governance of IT-enabled change is close to the core purpose of Socitm, which is actively involved in the initiative on IT professionalism.
And the understanding, implicit in the strategy - that public services are delivered by all parts of the public sector, including local government, the voluntary sector, the health service, police, and other locally managed organisations - is also welcome. Policy documents like this sometimes overlook the fact that 80% of public services are delivered outside Whitehall departments.
The strategy provides an excellent platform on which local government in particular can develop and deliver the modern, joined-up public services that citizens and businesses want and, increasingly, expect.
Society of IT Management: www.socitm.gov.uk
Quelle: Guardian Unlimited,, 23.11.2005