John Hudson

Dust to dust

The Register had an interesting article a couple of weeks back reporting that spending on e-government is set to exceed $US1 billion by 2008. Figures on government IT spending are remarkably difficult to pin down; at the Social Study of Information Technology seminar at the LSE in April, Patrick Dunleavy estimated that over 1% of GDP was accounted for by government IT spending - quite phenomenal given that this is (according to OECD figures) 3 - 4 times what we spend on unemployment benefits.

Given this, I was interested in tracking down the research on which the Register’s piece was based to check their figures over. Having found it there is an insight into why so much is spent on IT: one paragraph of snippets for free then a staggering $5,175 to buy the 39 page ‘U.K., Government Sector, 2003-2008, eGovernment IT Spending Plans’ and the same again for the reports on France, Germany, Italy and Spain that accompany it. Crazy…

Over the summer the Commons’ Work and Pensions Select Committee produced a report examining the DWP’s use of IT in service delivery - Department for Work and Pensions Management of Information Technology Projects: Making IT Deliver for DWP Customers - that blasted the department and EDS for failures in connection with Child Support Reform (CSR). Its introduction offers a thinly veiled critique of the current situation:

Much of modern life is dependent upon IT systems reliably processing vast amounts of data speedily without major incident. When they work, reliable and stable IT systems can deliver new services and efficiencies to the benefit of all. But too often, the actual experience can be the very opposite of that. Defective IT systems can cause serious problems and distress to thousands of people. These problems are compounded when IT failures involve the delivery of crucial public services, especially, as in the case of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), where IT programmes directly affect people who are in low-income households and claiming benefits and paying or receiving child maintenance. Defective IT systems may result in: a DWP customer discovering that a regular benefit has been reduced only after the payment is received; thousands of non-resident parents making the wrong maintenance payments; and failure to calculate entitlement properly when people apply for benefit. Customers’ telephone calls may go unanswered, or are finally put through to a member of staff who has no knowledge at all of the particular case and, because of faulty IT technology, is unable to access any relevant files electronically. It is a lucky caller who gets put through to somebody that can actually retrieve the relevant files onto their screen, and extract the necessary information before the computer screen crashes. Defective IT can also have an adverse effect on staff morale and turnover, which is especially damaging in an organisation, such as DWP, that already suffers from high levels of absenteeism and staff turnover compared with some other Government departments and the private sector

Interestingly, the report also raised the question of whether or not IT driven business process redesigns should be regarded as policy issues and therefore subject to prior (and more open subsequent) debate within Parliament. They also suggested that while CSR was sold on the basis of a simplification of policy, the fact that it was to be delivered by an increase in the complexity of IT systems was crucial and should have been debated by Parliament; that it was not raises a question over the mis-selling of the policy. To avoid such situations arising again they argued for greater openness in the future :

Our main recommendations for improving the success rate of IT systems centre around improving accountability. We believe that greater openness is important in its own right, but should also lead to a higher success rate. CS2 demonstrates the lack of accountability that exists, even for defective systems. Although CS2 has been subject to a number of reviews, we have not been given access to these reviews on grounds of confidentiality- which is certainly convenient for the Department and makes us suspicious.

Last week, the government’s response to the report was published and it refused to budge on this issue, arguing:

The implementation of policies requires countless decisions on a range of issues on a daily basis. The Government values its interaction with Parliament on the broader issues around implementation of policies and its approach in general to these issues. It sees individual decisions as a matter for the Department and its Ministers.

The committee chair - Archy Kirkwood - issued a stinging press release in response, in which he argued:

Overall, we are very dissatisfied with the Government’s response. The Government’s record on IT projects needs to get better. We produced a well-argued report into how the Government’s record on IT projects could be improved. Our report was widely recognised throughout the media and industry as a solid piece of work with a set of impressive recommendations. However, we have received a response from the Department that all too often does not fully engage with the letter or spirit of the report’s recommendations. In particular, the Committee sets out an overwhelming case why Parliament and the public require more detailed information about IT projects, including the business case. But instead of addressing the Committee’s concern, the Department defends its secretive approach on grounds of commercial confidentiality and says that it will make information available in the context of the Freedom of Information Act. This isn’t good enough. We will not let the matter rest here.

Some of the specialist press have picked the story up, including Public Technology and The Register (with an hilarious URL that ends eds_is_pants!). The Register have been running on this one for some time, producing a piece slamming EDS after the initial report was published and an earlier article outlining some of the key failures of the new CSA system including that some CSA staff ‘are using pocket calculators to work out what people owe, thanks to the comprehensive failure of its IT system from EDS’ and that ‘less than half the 320,000 applications received since March 2003, when the system was launched, has been processed’.

Obscured by all the general politicing at last month’s Labour Party annual conference was a commitment by Blair - in his set piece speech - to end the digital divide. Outlining ten key policies for a third term in power, the seventh of these future goals was to see:

Our country and its people prospering in the knowledge economy. Increasing by £1 billion the investment in science, boosting support to small businesses and ending the digital divide by bringing broadband technology to every home in Britain that wants it by 2008

Of course, the government has already pledged to end the divide in terms of internet access per se, committing to the delivery of universal access by the end of next year. On this subject, an important new report, enabling a Digitally United Kingdom, was published by the the Digital Inclusion Panel - an umbrella group of public, private and voluntary sector groups established by the Cabinet Office earlier this year - last week. It examined progress in tackling this dimension of the digital divide and made recommendations for future action too.

Amongst the items of interest in it was the announcement of a new body for taking the issue forward:

In order to generate scale and to focus effort, major industry players, in conjunction with the charity Citizens Online, have established the Alliance for Digital Inclusion (ADI) – the founder members are AOL, BT, Intel and Microsoft [...]
The ADI will promote the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) for social benefit. It is independent, but is supported by and seeks to work in partnership with government, as well as
industry and the voluntary sector.[...]
The role of the ADI is to:
• create an industry-led umbrella initiative that will encourage collaboration;
• provide targeted, scalable and sustainable solutions;
• encourage new players to become involved; and
• engage with and influence government on key policy issues.

In addition, it very strongly came out in support of the UK Online centres:

The national network of 6,000 UK online centres is an important resource that has the potential to encourage digital take-up across a wide range of government services. It is also recognised that trusted intermediaries that have a deep understanding of their client group are often better equipped than government to deliver services for hard-to-reach groups. UK online centres are also an important community resource, providing the necessary lift to enable often hard-to-reach groups of people to become digitally engaged. Innovation in these areas should continue.

However, as Michael Cross notes in the Guardian this week:

These are often run by community groups, which are better equipped than government to communicate with hard-to-reach groups. Central government, however, footed most of the cost, and that money is now running out.
No one seems keen to pick up the bill, which may explain why the whole digital inclusion agenda is a bit of a policy orphan. This is reflected in the strategy document, which is introduced not by a minister or even the Cabinet Office head of e-government, but by Andrew Pinder, the last e-envoy.
He supposedly left public life in August (four years after being hired as a temporary stand-in). While it is nice to see Pinder’s picture again, using yesterday’s man doesn’t send the right signals about tomorrow’s agenda. Where is the e-minister?

One of our graduate students has been doing some interesting work on the UK Online centres that very much echoes this point about the insecurity of funding hampering their work. Interestingly, she also found there was, at times, perhaps something of a disconnection between what the centres might be doing and the government’s broader e-agenda. This was particularly so with respect to promoting e-government services and there was a strong feeling that staff at some centres knew very little at all about e-government services that might be of benefit to centre users. This links back to another of the themes in the Digitial Inclusion Panel’s report because they were keen to plug e-government as potential driver of ICT uptake. One of the problems with using community groups rather than public sector agencies to tackle the digital divide is that they are much less likely to be ‘on message’ with regard to issues such as this. Indeed, one feels that there is a lot of ‘joining up’ that needs to be done with respect to the e-inclusion agenda.

In the summer it is was reported that the NAO would be probing the new NHS IT modernisatlon programme. If a report in Computer Weekly is anywhere near the mark then their report (due next summer) is going to be a blockbuster:

The IT-led modernisation of the health service could cost a minimum of £18.6bn - at least three times more than the announced figure - with a large part of the bill falling locally, on NHS trusts.
The estimated 10-year cost of the NHS’ national programme for IT (NPfIT) raises questions over whether trusts, some of which are in the red, will be able to fund all their commitments to make the initiative a success.
Trust staff and GPs throughout England want the programme to succeed. But some trusts are warning that money for the NPfIT may eat into local budgets that are for direct patient care.
Computer Weekly has learned that officials at the Department of Health have estimated the total implementation costs of the national programme at between £8.6bn and £31bn. The programme includes a care records service to give 50 million patients in England an electronic health record, Choose and Book to allow people to select hospital appointments from a choice of dates and locations, and new local IT infrastructures.
After the programme was announced in 2002, the government allocated £2.3bn central funding for the national systems over three years. Since then the procurement figure has risen to £6.2bn over 10 years. But now it has emerged that a further £12bn to £24bn may need to be spent, a large part of it locally. Much of this extra money has yet to be found and there is no clarity over whether it will materialise.
If the resources are not found, and trusts cannot afford local implementation costs, there is a risk that some of the £6.2bn procurement will be spent on advanced systems that go largely unused by doctors and nurses.

Meanwhile, a survey of GPs shows many have grave doubts about the programme and many feel they haven’t been adequately consulted.

Haven’t we been here before?

The Head of e-government, Ian Watmore, is interviewed today by BBCi:

“The getting 100% of services online target is something I inherited and the job is pretty much achieved. The real question is ‘where do we go from here?’”
The answer, he says, is moving on from the glut of information currently available to fewer and better targeted services.
“Let’s make them as good as we can and, most importantly, let’s move to the point where most people are using them rather than some people are using them.”

This follows on from an interview in the Guardian a couple of weeks back - his first since taking up the post:

Watmore said he is more interested in getting people to use e-services than in dogmatically ensuring that every single service goes online. “What we want to do next is to get a high take-up and high impact of services that really matter and which touch people’s lives.” But he said the 2005 target is still “business as usual” - and in any case, it is not in his power to change a directive from the prime minister.

And another in Computing magazine where he outlines the differences between his post (the ‘CIO of government’) and that of e-Envoy.

All this is laying the ground for a major new e-government strategy document due at the end of the month.

In his speech to the Labour Party conference last month, Blair argued:

The 20th century traditional welfare state that did so much for so many has to be re-shaped as the opportunity society capable of liberation and advance every bit as substantial as the past but fitting the contours of the future.

In a speech to Demos and the IPPR on the opportunity society this week, deliverered at Beveridge Hall, he has expanded what he described as a ‘grand vision’ of #a true opportunity society replacing the traditional welfare state’.

The core of his argument is that extended social mobility requires still further radical reform of public services:

In the first two terms, we have successfully made radical improvements to the existing 20th Century welfare state and public services; and we have begun to alter its structures.
But now, on the foundations of economic stability and record investment, the third term vision has to be to alter fundamentally the contract between citizen and state at the heart of that 20th Century settlement; to move from a welfare state that relieves poverty and provides basic services to one which offers high quality services and the opportunity for all to fulfil their potential to the full.
Just as we have moved from mass production in industry, we need to move from mass production in what the state does.
At the centre of the service or the structure has to be the individual.
They have both the right and responsibility to take the opportunities offered and to shape the outcome.
The role of government becomes to empower not dictate.
The nature of provision - public, private or voluntary sector - becomes less important than the delivery of the service the user wants.
In place of rigidity and uniformity, comes flexibility and adaptability.
And there need to be new and imaginative ways of funding some of the services that, though universal, must be funded on a sustainable, progressive basis.
All of this requires an inversion of the state/citizen relationship, with the citizen not at the bottom of the pyramid taking what is handed down; but at the top of it with power in their hands to get the service they want.

In many ways this sounds very much like an attempt to articulate in popular langauge the notion of a ‘post-Fordist’ welfare state. Indeed, Blair invokes the notion of modernism during his speech and implicity attaches it to the Beveridgian welfare state:

There is no better place to make the case for an opportunity society than here in Beveridge Hall. [...] This Senate House, a great modernist creation of its day, is a supreme testament. Beveridge had a hand in its creation, and was adamant that it must not be a replica of the middle ages.

The picture he paints of the Beveridgian welfare state is of an appropriate - but now outmoded - response to the (now unfamiliar) social problems of the time. This is classic third way rheotric, though he makes the interesting observation that while Beveridge was an educationalist (Director of the LSE for much of the inter-war period) his legacy is relatively minor in this field.

Blair then goes on to outline the key challenges that need to be met in order to deliver his opportunity society:

1. employment - ‘we should not rest until everyone who wants a job has a job’. Central to this is reform of IB. A target too of an employment rate up from 75% to around 80% - 1.5m more people in work.

2. lifelong learning. ‘ Lifelong learning is not only central to our education policy, it is central to our employment policy, central to our economic policy, central to our policy for extending opportunity to all those out of work, and central even to our pensions policy as it enables more older people in their 50s and 60s to acquire the skills and opportunities to remain in work’.

3. childcare and work/life balance. ‘In no respect has society changed more - and more for the better - than in the role of women and opportunities for them to work and lead fuller lives. [...] Our third term commitment is to develop universal good quality affordable childcare for children aged 3-14 shaped around parents and children’s needs. This is not applying to everyone a standard state-run nursery system, but providing parents with a real choice between the public, private and voluntary sectors, including nurseries, playgroups, expanded provision in primary schools, children’s centres and childminders’.

4. help people provide for security in retirement. More to come after the various commissions have reported, but hints that those working longer will be rewarded.

5. public health. ‘Striking a balance between advancing public health, and not interfering unduly in lifestyle choices, is never easy; but there is general agreement that we could do more to tackle smoking and obesity in particular, promoting the health of teenagers as much as of older people’.

6. law and order in a changing world. ‘ It means also a wholly new infrastructure to protect our security - through ID cards and the electronic registration of all who enter our country. Once established, this will reduce the costs of crime and illegal immigration and it is a classic example of the modern acceptance that a citizen has duties as well as rights’. Tough measures on ASB and drug abuse too.

7. Housing - ‘pressures on housing mean that it is now a major barrier to opportunity, particularly for those trying to get into the housing market for the first time. Our forthcoming housing strategy will show how we provide new pathways into home ownership as well as improving social housing.’

Of the agenda, he says ‘ All of it united by a recognition that the modern world demands new solutions to the new challenges. All of it based on a belief that today people want the power to change their lives in their own hands, not those of an old-fashioned state and government. All of it pervaded by a strong commitment to the values of social justice, equality and opportunity for all’ and argues ‘I believe it is as compelling a vision, for Britain in 2004, as was that of Beveridge in 1942‘.

The latter rings particularly hollow - this is hardly the five giants. But then, to be fair, this is hardly 1942 either and the mood of the times is quite different. What is particularly interesting is that Blair clearly feels the notion of a ‘welfare state’ now lacks popular appeal and, if anything, is tainted with notions of ‘welfare dependency’. As a lecturer in social policy I would beg to differ, but I can see where Blair is coming from. However, even if he is right on this one, the notion of an ‘opportunity society’ hardly seems to excite either, implying few rights other than the right to work hard and tying justice too firmly to the idea of meritocracy.

Have spent much of this week at the Australasian Political Studies Association (APSA) conference at the University of Adelaide.

There were too many interesting papers to list them all, but Jenny Lewis’
‘Impermeability, incorporation and transformation: ideation and health policy change‘, Geoffrey Anderson’s ‘Standard Bearers for the Markets: International credit rating agencies and the impact of economic globalisation on politics and public policy in the Australian states’ and Rod Rhodes’ (with Mark Bevir) ‘Interpretation and Its Others’ stood out in particular.

I’ll post a copy of our paper - ‘Comparing Welfare State Modernisation in Germany, Korea and the United Kingdom: The Institutional Shaping of Third Way Reform Trajectories’ - on the publications section of the site shortly…