EURIM
Briefing No 31
June 2001EURIM Modernising
Government Theme
ISD Sub-Group
Draft Status Report
May 2001
This paper is a summary
of the current state of thinking of the Corporate& Associate Members of a EURIM
Modernising Government sub group. It is not
a considered EURIM position, but we hope the ideas are of interest and may form
the basis of all-party consensus after the election. Comments are invited; please email them to
info@eurim.org
Modernisation is a major challenge
for Government at national and local levels. Ambitious and far-reaching targets
have been set for providing services online, primarily through the
Internet. Merely enabling citizens to
access existing government systems is not, however, sufficient. The Modernising
Government programme will be effective only if there is a permanent improvement
in the way in which the public sector operates, with the use of technology as
an important tool, not an end in itself.
Integrating Service Delivery is key to achieving modernisation
targets, and more importantly, gaining real benefits for the organisation
itself. The Integrating Service Delivery working partygroup within
EURIM’s Modernising Government Theme focused on the key areas of
"integrating" different government organisations to deliver services,
and alternative methods of service delivery. A short series of workshops was
held to discuss the issues, and to identify possible solutions and lessons
learnt. This paper summarises the
conclusions, and the main points of the workshops.
1.
The
real objective of Modernising Government across all levels, central, regional
and local is to improve service to the public. This should be the clear focus
for all public sector activity.
2.
Targets
for the electronic delivery of services should be adjusted to place greater
emphasis on the needs of individuals and this must include recognition that
there will always be those who for physical or other reasons require the help
of another person to access these services.
population.
3.
Investigations
should be undertaken to take a wider look at the variety of intermediaries
needed to deliver government systems to develop and implement a coherent
channel strategy including non-electronic access where appropriate.
4.
Ministers inevitably look at the short term – 4 to 5 year
cycles are inherent in the political process.
The government must be encouraged to take the long-term view.
5. Public
sector financial rules should be reviewed to make it easier to plan more than a
year ahead and to fund opportunities for change. Annual budgeting does not
facilitate step change. The current split between revenue and
capital does not facilitate incremental change.
6.
Recent evidence shows that “ring-fenced” funding for
projects, which
meet clearly defined standards can be successful in encouraging the kind of
innovative thinking needed to modernizemodernise
government. Steps should be taken to
expand current provision, whilst paying due regard to the need to identify
forward funding for successful projects.
7. Peer review on a cross-departmental basis for setting
objectives and monitoring progress should be widely encouraged. Experience shows that it is one of the most
effective and inexpensive means of breaking down ‘silos’.
8. The National Audit Office should be required to take
evidence on joint/collaborative working and consumer focus as part of their
auditing process.
9. Officials need to be given the means and incentives
to think about their work in different ways and to use a wider range of skills
(including those of professional procurement). This requires the design of new
education and training programmes and appropriate rewards (financial or
otherwise) for those who are innovative. Penalties on individuals whose ideas
subsequently fail do not encourage innovation.
10. Prospective suppliers and partners should be
encouraged to second staff to the public sector to enhance their understanding
of motivation, methods, and constraints within the sector.
People, not technology, should be
the primary focus of modernising Government, not only in their role as
consumers of services but also as the agents of change and the means of
delivery.
The consumer is becoming more and
more sophisticated and the Internet is fuelling the process. Manufacturers and retailers differentiate
their products by providing an increasingly individualised service. The
consumer is also becoming much better informed. Doctors are finding their patients have read the latest research
and have a clear idea of what treatments are available. That the sameThese patients
may, however,
lack the skills to evaluate what they have read, and may not have read the crucial
documents which determine the treatments they may receive,understand the process
which determines the most suitable treatment for them. These are
additional complications, placing further strain on a kind of relationship
which medical training has not equipped the practitioner to handle.
The consumer is learning to expect
more personalised and responsive services from industry. Whilst there is
evidence of public sector awareness of this development, there is a lack of
effective emulation. Yet government is
uniquely vulnerable to the views of the citizen. A government which loses the willing acquiescence of theof
citizen-consumer risks losing its legitimacy.
Ultimately, it may find itself circumvented.
The recent fuel crisis shows how easily this can be done.circumvented – as
illustrated by the fuel crisis at the beginning of the year
Modernising
Government targets should be refocused on the needs and aspirations of the
consumer. Processes need to be
re-engineered so that the consumer recognises that he has received a better, more
appropriateservice, a service -
one more attuned to his needs. A service, moreover,needs and which improves over time.
Some citizen-consumers are also
charged with providing government services.
What of them? Industry has discovered,
through much trial and not a little tribulation, that unless their staff buy
into the change process from the outset it is doomed to failure. Whilst many public servants recognise the
need to change there are many who do not.
Among those who do, there is a need for information, support and
guidance. They are the agents of change
and the means of delivery and must be supported and trained if the process is
not to founder.
Above all, there is a need for
clear leadership and constant reinforcement of the message that change is
inevitable and even desirable; that the focus from now on is the citizen, not
the individual department or that department’s current Minister, and that this
will not be reversed or placed on the "back-burner". For the Government,
this requires the whole-whole-hearted
commitment of the Prime Minister, and the appointment of a Cabinet Minister
responsible for e-government with oversight over the whole process including
budgetary provision to support appropriate projects. It also requires a strengthening of the role of the e-Envoy and a
re-examination of the role of departmental change managers and e-government
champions. These latter need to be
chosen not only for their IT awareness, but also for their business awareness
and customer focus. They also need to
be sufficiently senior within the department to be effective agents of change.
Private sector managers are more
used to partnership sourcing, whereas most public institutions still operate in
customer-supplier combat mode.
Secondment from public sector bodies to private companies should be
further encouraged in order to learn how to manage the inherent conflicts. This also ties in with programme and project
management as well
andas procurement
skills and theirinter- inter-relationship
with making partnerships work.
In general, there is an urgent
need for training programmes to be undertaken by all staff at all levels,
mirroring similar programmes in industry, and covering skills such as change
management, change control, partnership working, leadership and relationship
management as well as procurement and technological skills. There is also a need to identify and
implement appropriatesuitable means of
rewarding appropriate behaviour, whether financially or by secondment and
further training, to encourage those staff who do “think outside the box”.
Financial systems can also be used to bring about
change. Too often Treasury rules are
quoted as the reason why radical solutions cannot be attempted. If we are to break down "silos"
and encourage departments and different levels of government to work together,
a way must be found to allow the transfer of budgets between departments. Without this, projects which originate in
one department but whose benefits accrue in another, or in many others, will
never get off the ground. There can be
few departmental managers who are willing to bear the costs without gaining the
profits.
Current accounting processes
restrict the ability of local authorities and departments to invest in
long-term projects which can eventually result in significant benefits. Annual funding rounds support routine
business, but are detrimental where step change is required. Major cultural change takes time to implement
and achieve its full potential. There
are financial benefits, cost savings, to be found in Modernising Government but
the most significant of these are unlikely to be demonstrated within a single
financial year.
As government contracts are
presently constructed it is difficult to achieve true partnership. Flexibility is inhibited by the way in which
client-prime contractor-sub-contractor relationships are defined. Yet greater flexibility could often enable
minor changes to be made, as the contract proceeds, which would be to the
client’s ultimate benefit. The need to
make a plethora of individual contracts with departments, agencies, and local
councils is also a significant burden on industry where similar services are
being provided across the board. A
unified contract to supply groups of departments etc. would ease this burden, making the
provision of government services more attractive.
If, as seems likely, government
services are to be delivered through a variety of intermediaries, consideration
must be given to the costs of delivering a universal service. Delivering services to the elderly, the
poor, the disabled and the isolated, will always cost disproportionately more. If differential pricing is not acceptable to
the government, how can we ensure that suppliers are not penalised for
delivering a universal service?
On the positive side, the Invest
to Save Budget and the DETR’s Promoting Electronic Government (PEG)
project are encouraging developments.
The former has demonstrated some success in generating worthwhile
inter-departmental projects and, perhaps as importantly, generating interest
and commitment to the idea of inter-departmental working. One County Council has created its own
“Invest to Save” budget with strict payback rules supported by public
consultation. PEG is enabling local
authorities to establish their own practical methodology for developing and
delivering local services. These
projects show what can be achieved when "ring-fenced" funding is made
available to projects which meet specific criteria.
Central government’s role is toclearly identify clearly national
priorities and goals and to take action to ensure that they are
implemented. It is not always
appropriate to leave matters to the vagaries of market forces. Valuable time is being wasted on the
on-going debate of open systems versus proprietary systems. If the Government could publicly state its
support for open systems then the debate could move on. There is concern about the lack of mandatory
standards across government systems.
Interoperability between local and national portals is promised, but the
timescale has not been defined and the responsibility for policing has not been
identified.
It seems likely that government
services will increasingly be delivered through intermediaries. This will required a more collaborative,
commercially sensitive and flexible approach from government. There is much concern about issues of
confidentiality and security – particularly security of government funds – and
how these can be assured. The physical
location of post offices in rural and urban areas enables electronic government
to be brought within the orbit of social groups who can otherwise be hard to
reach. Research shows that this organisation
is also highly trusted by the consumer.
However, electronic government does permit us to re-think the whole idea
of physical service provision. For
example, the viability of a rural school may be limited in educational terms,
but as the location for a part-time doctor’s surgery, a mobile library and
information service, a post office and a community centre its future can look
quite different.
The present approach to meeting
the government’s targets for 2005 seems to be characterised by applying
technology like "sticking plaster" to present systems, losing much of
the real benefits in the process.
Technology should be used to facilitate the provision of better
services. In some areas it is said that
more resource may be spent reporting service delivery to central government
departments than in delivering the service. Whilst it is true that improvements
to communications where demand is infinite can result in spending finite
budgets faster and lead to communications breakdown; great savings can be made
in getting the right answer to the consumer at the first attempt.
It may be that by ordering information differently and at a
more local level we can achieve a more effective result. Whilst Uk onlineUK Online has successfully brought valuable
information to the consumer and will become increasingly effective as the
service is developed there is, perhaps, also space to provide a less
prescriptive system. The citizen’s
relationship with government is on-going and dividing information up into life
episodes may not always be appropriate.
The provision of information is only part of the story. On-line transactions between the citizen and government are
also needed but are much harder to achieve.
UK onlineOnline also
highlights two further areas of concern.
The service is being offered on the Internet via PC’s for very good
reasons. The first is the ease of
updating information. It takes veryrelatively little
time–
relatively speaking – to change information on a
web-site. Government is, perhaps
surprisingly, a dynamic business and needs to be able to take advantage of this
facility. The second reason is the
quality of the service which can be provided.
PC’s with high-resolution screens and their ability to accept complex graphics
are simply the best available vehicles for the communication of complex
information.
Yet the expectation is being
created that government services will soon be available on games machines,
digital TV’s and WAP phones. In the
present state of technology, they will not all look or act in the same
way. If we do not educate both the
public and the
specifiers ofthose specifying services about the inherent
differences in various technologies, we may find that the take uptake-up of
electronic services is inhibited.
Portals need to be responsive to different technologies and easily
up-dated as information and media change.
The
process of modernising Governmentgovernment
will not be complete by 2005 even if the present targets are met.
It is a much more complex task than many in government appreciate. Research shows that the consumer needs a
mixture of delivery systems, including face-to-face and print, as well as
electronic. Much good work is going on
to integrate services and break down traditional barriers between
departments and different
levels of government, much of it isolated and un-rewarded. We need to take full advantage of this
pioneering effort by identifying it and publicising it widely. We need to identify the gaps where little
appears to be happening and find out why.
Above all we need to raise modernisingModernising Government above the short-term
horizons of party politics and make an enduring long-term commitment to
resolving the issues and questions which arise.