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The government should pay the private and voluntary sector to deliver electronic public services alongside their core business, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr). Such a move could see motorists being able to pay their road tax while buying car insurance and allow people to claim benefits while seeking help from a charity.

ippr argues that government payment for intermediary services should be the norm. This would incentivise other sectors, revolutionise the relationship between citizens and public services and increase access. The recommendations - which argue for merging e-government and e-commerce – follow the government consultation on the future of its e-services. In order to protect the public, ippr says additional measures are needed to ensure accountability, equity of access and strengthen government’s capacity to enforce departmental collaboration with intermediaries.

Ian Kearns, Associate Director of ippr and author of the report said:

“The government has been talking about creating a mixed economy in e-services for three years now but progress has been virtually non-existent.

Three things need to come together if progress is to be made. First, the government should pay private and voluntary sector bodies to deliver e-services. Second, further measures must be put in place to protect public accountability and social equity. Third more power needs to be given to those tasked with driving the policy forward. It is only with all these elements in place that the government can hope to create the right incentives for intermediaries and the political and bureaucratic will for change.

With the Office of the e-Envoy (OeE) planning to publish the first iteration of Implementation Guidelines by the end of 2003 they will need to move fast to take these issues on board.”

Specific ippr Recommendations:

• Move immediately to a far less ambiguous position on payment to intermediaries. At the moment, the offer to intermediaries is not attractive enough.
• Add new elements to the criteria to be used to assess intermediary propositions so that they include not just an efficiency comparison between government and the proposed intermediaries but also a social equity and accountability test.
• Conduct and publish research into the impact of citizen and business interaction with intermediaries on the public sector brand, and encourage co-branding activities in key areas such as health to ensure that the public is aware that a trusted public service is being accessed via a private or voluntary sector body.
• Provide the Office of the e-Envoy, or whichever body is subsequently tasked with driving this policy through, with sufficient powers to insist on and enforce departmental collaboration and compliance.

ippr’s paper Intermediaries and the Electronic Delivery of Public Services by Ian Kearns challenges the view set out in the consultation paper Policy Framework for a Mixed Economy in the Supply of E-Government Services (OeE, 2003), that payments for intermediaries should not be the norm.

Quelle: PublicTechnology, 25.11.2003