John Hudson

Naturally there’s been much debate on the blogosphere about the new Digital Britain report. It’s the final substantive chapter (’The Journey to Digital Government’) that’s caught my eye and, arguably, has the greatest social policy implications.

It concedes that the first phase of e-government reform up until 2004-5 had a limited impact, albeit putting a positive spin on this, summing the period up as  ‘driving Britain [...] from being a laggard’. It notes that the proportion of public services online only reached ‘75% plus by 2005′* and admits that:

‘in many cases they were an online replica of the offline service, based around the silos of providing departments rather than the actual public services needs of the citizen’.

It argues a second phase - ‘Government on the Web’ - kicked in from 2004-5, as key outcomes from the Transformational Government report helped drive more co-ordinated use of ICTs across government and deliver:

‘effective savings, based on process re-engineering of online delivery of public services’.

The report then argues a third phase of e-government should flow from the broader changes outlined in Digital Britain:

‘not merely Government on the web, but [...] Government of the Web‘.

This phrase is awkward - it implies questions of how the web itself is governed in my mind - but is meant to capture the idea that:

in order to maximise the opportunity afforded by universal broadband for the delivery of services, digital Government will need to become genuinely “of the web”, not simply “on the web”. That means designing new services and transaction around the web platform, rather than simply adapting paper based, analogue, processes. It also means integrating web, telephone and face-to-face channels.

Again this could be read as an admission that the e-government agenda to date has failed to deliver the high quality transactional online services it has long promised. However, there is also something more subtle here that builds on the agenda that began to emerge in Transformational Government.

The early e-government policy documents made clear that electronic services were an addition to face-to-face offerings. When the Gershon Review  questioned the financial viability of this approach, the idea of forced migration to electronic channels for some customers gained prominence. Transformational Government took this thinking forward. I have argued elsewhere that:

‘while the first phase of e-government had focused on giving public services an online presence, the second phase was committed to making the presence of public services more of an online one‘**.

The third phase of e-government that Digital Britain promises to unleash seems to represent a further hardening of this position. Indeed, the report argues that:

Discussion with stakeholders inside and outside Government has demonstrated a consistent view that Government should develop a roadmap to a new programme of Digital Switchover of Public Services. ***

This programme, they suggest, should result in ‘online being the primary means of access’ but the report notes that there needs to be a ’safety net in delivery for those unable to access the service online’. 2012 is earmarked as the start date for Digital Switchover of Public Services, with every department being asked to identify at least two services to form part of this programme before this date.

Given the fiscal situation, it seems likely - whoever wins the next election - that the idea of replacing face-to-face services with electronic services will gather pace. There are two obvious concerns from a social policy viewpoint.

The first is how the Digital Switchover of Public Services will impact on services for those without internet access. If the non-digital safety net is an inferior service - which seems likely - then a two-tier service emerges. And, as the IPPR noted almost a decade ago****, the most disadvantaged are likely to be those receiving a disadvantaged service. This is a tricky position for a public service adopt.

The second issue flows from the first: how (and how far) can the government address the digital divide? At times, Digital Britain seems to imply the rolling out the broadband network to all homes will address the access issue. Clearly this is not the case and, to be fair, the report acknowledges this in many places; indeed, it reinforces the government’s commitment to tackling the digital divide, with Martha Lane Fox to be appointed as a high-profile Champion for Digital Inclusion.

But, we know that there is a substantial core of people who are unlikely to be easily coaxed into using the internet, including many who simply cannot afford access or lack the necessary skills. A key lesson from phase 1 of the e-government agenda - which was accompanied by a drive to deliver universal internet access by 2005 - was that there is no simple technical fix to the digital divide: campaigns to address digital exclusion need to be part of broader strategies to address social exclusion.  And, as phase 1 showed, a comprehensive policy here is neither cheap nor likely to meet its targets with ease.

The social policy risk of Digital Britain is clear.  A  government with an eye on the potential cost savings will power ahead with the Digital Switchover of Public Services. Meanwhile, a rather modestly funded digital inclusion agenda will be left to pick up the pieces, undertaking worthy but small scale work at the local level.

Hopefully this will not be the case, but Digital Britain does little to reassure on this count. The digital inclusion agenda slipped to the margins in the second phase of e-government, becoming primarily a local concern rather than a national one. As we enter the era of fiscal austerity, it is not difficult to imagine that the once generous funding for local government and voluntary sector digital inclusions programmes will start to dry up.*****

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* As an aside, this is well short of the 100% by 2005 target Blair had set and the first time I’ve seen the 75% figure in black-and-white. Most documents at the time hinted that the target was much closer to being met with 96% being commonly mentioned.

** Hudson, J. (2009) ‘Information Technology and Social Security’ in Millar, J. (ed) Understanding Social Security (Second Edition). Bristol: The Policy Press.

*** Which stakeholders they mean is unclear - only IBM are mentioned at this juncture!

**** Tambini, D. (2001). Universal Internet Access: A Realistic View. London: IPPR.

***** All this is likely to be particularly so if the Conservatives win the next election and regional bodies are slashed in a bonfire of the QUANGOs.

According to BBC Newsnight: the main new policy announcement in Gordon Brown’s Labour Party Conference Speech tomorrow will be a plan to tackle the digital divide amongst young people. This will be done through a voucher scheme that will subsidize the cost of a computer or an internet subsciption for low income households with children…. if that is the case then it is an interesting development.

Obviously this is a hugely important speech for Brown. If he is pinning his political hopes on the headline grabbing potential of a plan to address the digital divide then this marks something of a return to the fore of the ‘e-galitarian’ rhetoric I wrote about in 2003. It will be a clear attempt to respond to Cameron’s claim that Brown is an ‘analogue politician in a digital age’ by plugging, once again, into the modernising imagery of new technology, but doing so in a way that suggests modernisation must be tied with a concern for equity that is the traditional hallmark of Labour (and, by implication, alien to the Conservatives, no matter how modern they might now appear.)

That the scheme will only be for young people is a nod to the human development potential of the internet for those in education: investment to boost equality of opportunity for learners rather than a social right for all. Internet access is not, it seems, regarded by Brown as an end in itself, but merely a means to an end, a way of improving human capital by boosting learning and, in turn, of improving social outcomes through a more level educational playing field.

In short, the plan has all the hallmarks of the limited, fragmented vision of e-galitarianism rather than the universal, comprehensive egalitarianism of Old Labour.

An article on John Hutton - who will be the minister responsible for overseeing the culmination of the 2005 e-government target - in yesterday’s Guardian Online.

As it points out, there are over a dozen ‘mission critical’ projects underway at the moment. Moreover, it seems likely - despite Blair’s reduced majority - that the ID cards bill will feature in the Queen’s Speech.

Blunkett’s move to the DWP will, no doubt, add impeteus to this: while crime, migration and terrorism issues are those connected most commonly with the proposals, Blunkett tried at the Home Office to sell the idea of an ‘entitlement card’ and it seems likely that he’ll look to follow this agenda at the DWP too - if nothing else as a route into tackling benefit fraud.

Caught the end of a question on one of the BBC’s political programmes a few days ago in which the presenter was asking a minister to explain a recent research finding that public sector spending accounted for the clear majority of the GDP in some of the UK’s regions.

This sounded an interesting piece of research, so I’ve been trying to track it down… unfortunately:

(i) no sign of it on the BBC site
(ii) A Google News search brought no solid reports on it

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An interesting little spat about the importance and impact of think tanks is going on within (a section) of the policy wonk community.
Rob Blackhurst, formerly of the Foreign Policy Centre, has published a piece in the New Statesman titled ‘The sad decline of the policy wonks in which he argues ‘The British policy wonk has never been more in demand’, but that ‘enslaved by corporate sponsors, [the think tanks] no longer have a significant influence on the political parties’.

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An interesting social policy making development in the USA: a judge has ordered a $5.6bn annual increase in school spending in New York and ordered an additional $9.6bn be provided to improve school facilities in the state after a pressure group claimed rights to a decent education were being undermined by a lack of funding.

A potentially useful illustration of the unintended impacts of institutions on policy outcomes perhaps?

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 just returned from the Social Policy Association annual conference at the University of Nottingham. Some papers are available online: those that stood out for me were two given by Michael Hill and Hugh Bochel on the policy process; a couple of interesting papers on e-local government by a team from Newcastle; and a series of comparative papers from a team headed by Peter Taylor-Gooby. The conference ended with a lively plenary on ‘Where Next for Social Policy?’ featuring Paul Spicker, Adrian Sinfield and Nick Ellison; this will be taken forward in the next issue of the SPA newsletter that I’ll blog about nearer the time.

There was also a formal launch of The Policy Press’ new Understanding Welfare book series, including the text penned by myself and Stuart Lowe: Understanding the Policy Process.