John Hudson

Science dull and hard, pupils say (via BBC):

Some 51% of teenagers think science lessons are boring, confusing or difficult, a survey suggests. Figures from the OCR exam board, which interviewed 950 children aged 13 to 16 in England, showed 7% thought people working in the area are “cool”.

No information, though, on whether these teenagers find other subjects any less boring, confusing or difficult. (And, after all, it’s school, not a trip to the amusement arcade.) Only 7% thought scientists were cool. So? Are all scientists definition cool? Should they be? Maybe if they’d asked the teenagers a more sensible question (a more scientific one?) they might have got a more meaningful answer.

Clara Kenyon, director of general assessment at OCR, said: “The results go to show the growing apathy in today’s students about science and their ignorance of modern day achievements. It is startling that no students named those responsible for recent scientific advances, for example, Ian Wilmut who cloned Dolly the sheep or Professor Colin Pillinger who headed the Beagle 2 space probe to Mars project.”

Again, why should teenagers be familiar with these personalities? Many, I am sure, would be familiar with the general stories behind Dolly the sheep or Beagle 2 (though it might be argued that neither was much to write home about!) - does it matter if they can’t recall the names of the chief investigators? Would we be concerned if they couldn’t name some high profile geographers, historians or mathemeticians? I don’t think so.

So what was the point of this unscientific survey of science?

OCR is launching a different type of science GCSE from next year, which it says will encourage more involvement with modern topics such as cloning or mobile phone technology.

Ah, I see…

Last week, the GMB raised concerns about the government’s use of private consultants, claiming that it had bought in advice and support to the tune of at least £1.47 billion in 2003/4 (the figure being based on answers to Parliamentary Questions about specific parts of government and, therefore, not covering its full range of functions).

Their Press Release notes that ‘At the average rates of pay for consultants that means the government are employing an army of 27,093 private consultants a year’…. and this is on the assumption (based on Official Statistics) that consultants earn £51,770 pa on average.

There was little surprise in the finding that the Department of Work and Pensions tops the table here: it spent £307 million on consultants (which the GMB claim approximate as 5,930 consultants). Paul Kenny, the GMB Acting General Secretary, was pretty enraged, arguing: “These figures show that the tax payer is paying far too much for management and consultancy advice. There is scope to save money on these consultants and to spend the money instead on the front line public services. The culture of continual re-organisation in the public sector is creating a field day for consultants”.

Much of the usage of outside consultants is, of course, as a consequence of large scale computerisation programmes, where external contractors are routinely used. However, the story stretches beyond the front-line and right up to the top policy making echelons of the civil service too according to a story on the front page of today’s Guardian: ‘Fears over management consultant’s role in No 10‘.

A former management consultant controversially hired by Tony Blair to head Downing Street’s policy unit will have a role in deciding the appointment of Britain’s most senior civil servant, the Guardian has learned.

The prime minister has delayed the decision on who should become the new £220,000-a-year cabinet secretary while he takes the advice of David Bennett, a former partner with the global US consultancy McKinsey, on the appointment. Mr Bennett has no experience of politics or government.

His arrival in Downing Street on June 1 has attracted criticism from Labour backbenchers and trade unions who are unhappy at the number of management consultants being brought into Whitehall. His involvement in such a sensitive decision involving the civil service will be taken as proof of the influence that figures from the private sector now wield.

Interestingly:

Mr Bennett, who has a 20-year association with McKinsey - dubbed the “Jesuits of capitalism” - is expected to press civil servants to become more entrepreneurial and push through an electronic revolution in the delivery of all services. He backs the McKinsey slogan that “everything can be measured, and what gets measured gets managed”.

This policy could have massive implications for further job cuts - on top of the 84,000 already due to go - and will put him on a collision course with the Whitehall unions where resentment is already high about the appointment of business analysts and computer project failure.

And:

He came to Mr Blair’s attention after he was involved in the ground-breaking NHS project - due to start this year - to put everyone’s medical records online. He produced a report by McKinsey which urged the purchase of off-the-shelf software from major commercial companies or paid them to adapt of one of their systems. Critics say the report sounded the death knell for small computer firms or for the government developing its own systems to bid for the project.

Also:

He previously advised Tessa Jowell on IT strategy

Is all of this, perhaps, an illustration of how deeply the IT/consulting interests have penetrated the core policy networks in the UK?

Not that we are aware of the full nature of Bennett’s role. In the spirit of open government, ‘Downing Street yesterday declined to provide any details of Mr Bennett’s appointment by not disclosing his six-figure salary, duties, hours or his age. A spokeswoman said: “No press release is being issued, and MPs will have to table questions if they want to ask about his salary or job.”‘

According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Information Technology Report, the Nordic countries account for four of the six most networked economies in the world. The USA slip down to fifth (from first), being replaced at the top by Singapore, while the UK come in at number 12 (up from 15).

Leading Nations:

1. Singapore

2. Iceland

3. Finland

4. Denmark

5. US

6. Sweden

7. Hong Kong

8. Japan

9.Switzerland

10.Canada

11.Australia

12.United Kingdom

13.Norway

14.Germany

15.Taiwan

There’s an interview with the Chief Economist and Director of the WEF Global Competitiveness Programme, Augusto Lopez-Claros, on the site too, in which he says:

The Nordic countries again top the rankings this year, with Iceland, Finland, Denmark and Sweden in the second, third, fourth and sixth place respectively. Iceland, in particular, recorded an impressive ICT performance, climbing from 10th position in 2003 to second out of 104 economies in 2004, which represents the greatest improvement among the top performers.

Such a development does not come as a surprise as Nordic countries have consistently shown very high ICT penetration and usage rates and come out among the top performers over the last four years.

Besides having an excellent macroeconomic, regulatory and infrastructure environment, those countries share a commitment by their governments, business communities and households to ICT use. In addition, they are constantly innovating.

As a result, Sweden, Finland and Denmark outrank some of the larger European economies in the number of US patents registered per million population, a frequently used indicator of a nation’s innovation record.

World Usability Day (via usabilidadedigital) has a focus on e-government this year. Events are planned for November 3, 2005.

The Adam Smith Institute (ASI) hit the headlines last week with their claim that the 31st May marked this year’s ‘Tax Freedom Day‘. For those who missed it, ‘Tax Freedom Day’ is calculated by dividing the country’s total tax bill by its national income and then converting the percentage - 42% this year - into calendar days. According to ASI the resulting date marks the theoretical point in the year when we stop having to work for the government, rather than for ourselves. And, of course, the aim of the ASI in calculating it is to make us begrudge the amount of effort demanded on our behalf by the state.

Public finances are regarded as a notoriously dull issue but Tax Freedom Day captures the imagination because the thought of working five months of the year simply to pay tax can even give a firm advocate of the welfare state reason to pause for thought. Eamonn Butler, Director of the ASI, used the opportunity to compare Gordon Brown unfavourably with a medieval baron, arguing ‘the average serf in the Middle Ages only had to work four months of the year in the service of even the most rapacious feudal lord’.

As was to be expected, the right wing press lapped it up. The Sun were outraged that Gordon Brown had ‘effectively gobbled up every penny we have collectively earned for five full months’ in order to pay for his ‘lavish spending sprees’. The Evening Standard celebrated it as the day ‘employees will finally stop working for Gordon Brown today and start earning for themselves’. In The Times, Stephen Pollard told us to ‘Crack open the Krug’ to celebrate, but then had second thoughts and said ‘far from celebrating, we ought to be commiserating with each other. Last year, we could start keeping our own money three days earlier; when Labour took office in 1997, Tax Freedom Day fell on May 25′.

Freedom is a complex term with many contested meanings but it hardly makes sense in this context, not least because the vast majority of the money Gordon Brown has ‘gobbled up’ comes directly back to us or to our friends and family. But by expressing tax in days of work it Tax Freedom Day not only gives a very complex issue a simple personal dimension, it also emphasises the least popular dimensions - tax and work - of an equation that needs to be balanced with the public goods that emanate from them. What, then, if we were to perform the same trick with public spending? Rather than suggesting a feudal burden we need to be freed from, perhaps the figures might highlight how well we collectively use our time to support our families and serve our local communities?

For instance, it turns out we each work just one day a year to fund our public libraries, museums, galleries and concert venues. That seems remarkably good value to me - put like this it doesn’t seem too much to ask. Similarly, we might want to spend more than a mere 32 seconds a day of our time funding medical research - heck, why not go for a whole minute?

No doubt it’s the welfare state that the ASI are really objecting to, but if we break social spending down into discrete programme headings then the billions Gordon Brown is ‘gobbling’ for his ’spending sprees’ seem more like modest contributions of our time to help family members or close friends and neighbours. Consider the biggest single item of social security spending - the state pension. It turns out we work just seventeen days a year to provide income for our parents or grandparents. Is that too much to ask? Perhaps ASI staff don’t get on with their elder relatives, but it seems a bit much to begrudge them the rewards from one-and-a-half days out of every calendar month. Perhaps they have more pressing needs for their money - like the Krug they keep cracking open?

It’s a similar picture for schools, where just under a day month is worked to fund our primary and secondary schools. Most parents would view this as an absolute bargain. While the NHS commands a much bigger chunk of our time - some 25 days this year - this still compares very favourably to the private sector driven system in the USA that swallows over 50 days a year of collective effort in order to satisfy its cash hungry insurance funds.

Almost all of us will, at some point, make use of our public schools, hospitals, libraries, museums and state pensions and even if we do not use them at this particular moment in time then it is likely someone in our family will be. Personalising public spending by converting it into days of effort worked towards supporting ourselves or our own families helps reconnect it with the people in our own lives we are supporting. It also reveals the often paltry investments we make in some key areas of direct concern to us. For instance, we might want to spend more than just fifteen minutes a day working on environmental protection.

Of course, while primarily acting as kind of intergenerational savings bank, the state also acts to redistribute income between the rich and the poor and it is probably this that the ASI objects most strongly to. However, if we use the same methodology to demonstrate how long the nation works to fund the incomes of different social groups then it actually makes the case for redistribution remarkably well.

According to the latest published data (for 2002-3), the richest 10% of the country commanded 32% of our national income while the poorest 10% received just 1%. These figures are stark, but if we convert them into days it turns out that the country as a whole worked until April 25 to pay the incomes of the richest 10%. Unlike the taxes taken by Gordon Brown, I imagine much of this money really was ‘gobbled up’ in ’spending sprees’. Curiously enough, it is less than a week short of the full four months of income only the most rapacious feudal lords asked us to hand over in the Middle Ages. Meanwhile, the nation worked just four days to produce the income of the poorest 10%.

Even after Gordon Brown intervened to redistribute some of this cash the picture changed little: in a picture reminiscent of a Dickensian tale we only turned our attentions to the poorest 10% on Christmas Eve - working a paltry eight days to raise their income - and while the richest 10% generously gave up two weeks of national effort compared to their pre-tax incomes they still asked us to work the first 101 days of the year for them.

Put differently, it wasn’t until April 12 that we had finally reached the theoretical point in the year at which we stopped working for the rich and started working for ourselves. Let’s call this ‘Fat Cat Freedom Day’. However, far from celebrating, we ought to be commiserating with each other. It used to fall so much earlier than this in the past.

What a great phrase… from Martin Dodge of UCL in a Guardian article about firms tagging workers to improve their efficiency.

Workers in warehouses across Britain are being “electronically tagged” by being asked to wear small computers to cut costs and increase the efficient delivery of goods and food to supermarkets, a report revealed yesterday.

New US satellite- and radio-based computer technology is turning some workplaces into “battery farms” and creating conditions similar to “prison surveillance”, according to a report from Michael Blakemore, professor of geography at Durham University.

The technology, introduced six months ago, is spreading rapidly, with up to 10,000 employees using it to supply household names such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Boots and Marks & Spencer.

Under the system workers are asked to wear computers on their wrists, arms and fingers, and in some cases to put on a vest containing a computer which instructs them where to go to collect goods from warehouse shelves.

The system also allows supermarkets direct access to the individual’s computer so orders can be beamed from the store. The computer can also check on whether workers are taking unauthorised breaks and work out the shortest time a worker needs to complete a job.

According to BT (via Computer Shopper):

The number of broadband connections in the UK has exceeded dial-up usage for the first time. BT figures show that there are now more than 7.4 million broadband users, with two million using cable and 5.4 on DSL.

The UK is bottom of the EU league table for e-government take up accroding to a recent report by Eurostat (via e-gov monitor; full text via Eurostat):

Less than a third of businesses in the UK used basic eGovernment services compared to the European average of 45 per cent and 90 per cent in Sweden… Survey findings released by Eurostat show 31 per cent of UK companies used online government services to obtain information during the first quarter of 2004… 27 per cent downloaded forms from government websites against an average figure of 41 per cent for the EU25 and 84 per cent in Finland. The UK also came joint bottom with Cyprus in the EU Member States in terms of businesses using government services to send online forms, reported to be just 11 per cent, compared with the average of 29 per cent. Take-up in this area was highest in Poland at 68 per cent, followed by Finland at 61 per cent.

Similar figures for e-Government take-up by citizens were, in a sense, relatively better compared to the EU norm. A fifth of UK citizens were reported to have obtained government information online (EU average 22 per cent), seven per cent had downloaded forms from government websites (EU average 10 per cent) and just three per cent had used online forms (EU average seven per cent).

It’s a poor record, particularly given that the UK tops the IT spending league table in Europe (report only available at huge cost from Kable, but this snippet from electric news):

The UK is spending more on public sector ICT than any other European country, according to a new survey by market analyst firm Kable. ICT expenditure across Europe is set for slow but steady growth over the next two years, according to the report, titled “ICT Spend in the European Public Sector.” Total spending this year will amount to EUR87 billion, reaching EUR94 billion by 2007. The UK accounts for an estimated 23 percent of the total for this year, or EUR21 billion, a figure that is 40 percent higher than the amounts spent by Germany or France. The UK spending is largely being driven by major investments in e-government and back office infrastructure, says Kable, and includes major IT projects like the Connecting for Health initiative, the Criminal Justice IT programme and the Defence Information Infrastructure.

Obviously the figures are not fully comparable, being in absolute rather than per capita amounts, but it seems clear that the UK isn’t getting the return it ought to. Given this, it is no surprise that on-the-record explanations are starting to emerge. Last week, an ODPM official argued that the UK struggles with e-gov ignorance (story via FCW):

Setting up government Web sites for citizen transactions does little good unless the public uses them, a U.K. e-government official said today. Almost all of the UK’s 400 local governments will provide electronic services by the end of this year, said Julian Bowrey, divisional and programme manager of local e-government in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. Bowrey was a panel member at FCW Events’ Web-Enabled Government Conference in Washington, D.C. Although a digital divide exists between those who have access to computers and those who do not, e-government usage is low even among those who have access. “The first thing we do when we get access to a computer is go shopping,” Bowrey said. “Very few of us do e-government.”

Given his responsibility for local, rather than national, e-government, his proposed solution was, perhaps, to be expected, but interesting nonetheless:

To increase usage, the central government’s Web portal should link to local government Web sites, Bowrey said. The U.K. equivalent of FirstGov.gov is Directgov, but its content is mainly limited to policy statements, he added. Users searching for information on special education in schools, for example, would be more interested in information about local schools and how to contact local officials, Bowrey said.

In short, devolve down to the local level and bring a government (i.e. a political) dimension back in:

A U.K. marketing campaign should target two segments of the populace most likely to start using e-services, Bowrey said. One is “grumpy young men who want to pay their parking fines online and want to complain, preferably at 3 in the morning,” he said. The other is women with an interest in local community services, he added.

The United Kingdom also must overcome the public perception that local authorities are unresponsive and accessible only during banker’s hours, he said. The “view among some people is ‘Well, local government just doesn’t do this stuff. It’s all 19th century,’” he said.

But, he also conceded that building e-government is, in itself, not enough:

Surveys show that interest in e-government is far higher than actual usage. More people don’t use available services “because they’re not aware of them,” Bowrey said.

However, it might also help if some of the basics were done properly — and this applies to local government as much (perhaps even more than) central government. Central amongst these is surely accessibility and here the record is often poor. Indeed, a recent report found that 85 per cent of London borough web sites were yet to achieve web accessibility.

It has also been suggested that services need to be made more user friendly too. Nigel Dunn, Vice President of Genesys Conferencing, has argued this can be done through giving e-government a clearer visual identity; some of this is, no doubt, a plug for his products, but worthy of some attention perhaps (via Publictechnology.net)

His argument is simple but compelling - putting a human face to an e-government service will in crease take-up. Though it may sounds like a sales pitch for video-conferencing, the message is an important one to heed for e-government service marketing. The public have greater trust and usage of a service if there’s a face attached to its marketing and communication - so videoconferencing or avatars could make a real difference if embedded in the front end of an e-gov service.

It might help too if the Prime Minister himself had a stronger understanding of what’s going on in the field; his shameful ignorance was exposed in a recent House of Commons session:

Q88 Mr Allan: You have something of a reputation of being a technophobe on a personal level, is that fair?

Mr Blair: I am afraid that is fair actually, yes.

Q89 Mr Allan: It is. Have you ever visited the multi-million pound central government website that you have set up to get us all to use these new electronic government facilities?

Mr Blair: I think that is a very unfair question. The answer is no.

Q90 Mr Allan: Do you know the address of this multi-million pound project?

Mr Blair: No.

Mr Allan: Your head of e.government, Ian Watmore, would be able to tell you all about it.

Mr Blair: That is exactly why delegation is such an important part of the job of a prime minister.

Oh dear…

Computers to marks essays… if only.