12 Jan 2005

We don’t do Crises – We’re the Government!

The Asian Tsunami again showed a dramatic mismatch between the response of UK Government and that of ordinary people. This raises two questions:

1. What should we expect of Government?
2. Does the current “management” culture in Whitehall stifle initiative and compassion?

In former times, we would instantly have sent in the Royal Navy. A warship (or submarine) would have provided instant supplies of drinking water, food, medical help, electric power, telecommunications, co-ordination and willing, organized manpower.

Many island and coastal communities throughout the world still fondly remember the Royal Navy miraculously appearing in their hour of need.

However, these days our horizons have shrunk. Despite our glorious past, and the people in many countries who are still well disposed to the UK, we now aspire only to be “at the heart of Europe.” Our armed forces are seriously overcommitted, our Royal Navy has shrunk, and Whitehall’s system of budgeting dictates a slow and unseemly round of haggling between ministries before anything can happen. UK Government prefers to act through often bureaucratic, international agencies.

 

Getting a duplicate car tax disc…

I noticed this morning that my scooter tax disc has disappeared. Cost £15 and has ten weeks to run. To get a replacement will cost me £7 and I have to do it in person at my “local” DVLA office (er 20+miles away) between 9-5 on-Fri.

That’s not very customer friendly.

(received from Paul by email)

 

Housing benefit mistakes: not the exception, but the norm

Rightsnet reports on a Court of Appeal finding. It seems if you get into deep trouble because you didnt get the housing benefit you’re entitled to, you can’t argue this was an exceptional circumstance, because housing benefit maladministration is so widespread. 

 

09 Jan 2005

FOI Request Archive

spy.org.uk are providing an archive of responses to their FOI2000 requests - an excellent idea.

 

08 Jan 2005

Is it just me?

On the one hand I find this just a little bit wacky (I am 75% English)

On the other hand, if there are any language options other than English in direct.gov then I have failed to find them. (Compare this and this)

Perhaps we can offer somthing like....

governo senza senso

Regierung ohne Richtung

gouvernement sans direction

 

06 Jan 2005

ID Cards Lost in Tsunami

Along-side the almost unbelievable tragedies, many people have lost their ID cards and passports etc., leading to obvious problems.

This article is from Sri Lanka’s Colombo Daily News Newspaper.

 

Let’s try Transport Direct

Shall we soak test Transport Direct?

It seems to work. It can be really helpful. And it can be high comedy.

Yesterday I looked at how to get Aliya 20 miles across Surrey to help run a massage class. It told her to take a taxi to Witley, take a train to Guildford, change trains and take another to Dorking, leave one station in Dorking and walk to a different station in Dorking, take a train to Ockley, and then find a taxi for the final stage. It also suggested the sensible alternative that I drive her there, which took 30 minutes.

The weirdness of that suggested route (and the reality would certainly be a lot weirder than the virtuality - cheery taxi icons do not guarantee that real-life taxis are waiting for you in remote country stations) isn’t necessarily a fault of Transport Direct, of course. It’s just an accurate reflection that public transport doesnt map very well on to the things we want to do in real life, especially out of town.

So that raises the interesting question about whether something like Transport Direct can help develop and better public transport, including better connections?

Anyway - try it. Interested to hear how it works for you. 

 

05 Jan 2005

Technology should point both ways

It’s the old David Brin point from Transparent Society.

Ideal government wouldnt use CCTV. But when you read about CCTV used by peeping toms at taxpayer’s expense (see today’s Liverpool Echo) you wish it was also used for public accountability (monitoring arrests, watching the watchers etc).

Lie detectors are pretty distasteful, and ideal government would have nothing to do with them. But if we’ve got to have them let’s apply them to official spokesmen and prevent future dodgy episodes like the Army’s racism fibs as well as on benefit claimants.

We could use them on the Queen’s Speech and Xmas broadcast, just to test they’re working. After all, HM never fibs by definition (why would she?)

 

04 Jan 2005

Couple of thoughts about the wibbipedia proposal

I find the stress on objectivity slightly odd - and potentially slightly dangerous. 

There is clearly an objective element to a service experience, but the experience itself - like any experience - is a fundamentally subjective one.  This is even more so with services which in some sense don’t work - the process of describing what went wrong is part of the catharsis.  Putting too much stress on the objective component risks creating a mindset which looks for the single right answer, and is thereby almost certainly doomed to failure.  More practically, the wiki approach clearly breaks down the closer it gets to subjects where people are (a) passionate and (b) disagree - which is likely to include areas of personal experience.  So my view is that you should rejoice in the subjectivity of what is assembled, before thinking (collectively and perhaps more objectively) about what could or should be done in the light of the mass observation evidence.  I have similar concerns about ‘scientific’ - though I fully appreciate the distinction you are trying to make between this and a complaints service.

That’s not as abstract a point as it might first appear.  It is, for example, at the heart of the debate about the post office network - everybody experiences the queues and the cramped and often shabby counters, but they differ radically about what the underlying problem is (if any) of which those are the symptoms, and therefore necessarily about what should be done about them

It’s hard completely to disagree with ‘it might be unpopular with government. In my experience public servants can take the view that it is an outrage to report on their activity without their permission.’ - but I don’t entirely accept it either.  My experience is different from yours for obvious reasons - and is that there are many people who are (a) very conscious that the service they give could be improved, but feel very constrained about what they can do about it and (b) feel even more constrained about entering any form of general public debate on the subject. 

So there is an interesting question about whether there are approaches which would facilitate more open dialogue between service providers and service users without getting caught up in the niceties of propriety.
Without that service provider input, there is a risk that all you end up with is a wish list - without some understanding of why some things are difficult (and conversely why other things may be relatively easy), it’s too easy to specify perfection but without an implementation plan. 

Of course there is also the opposite risk of drowning in all the arguments about why something attractive is, in fact, completely impossible, but managing that is also part of the challenge. As you know, few of the obstacles with any of this are technical - some are about resource allocations, some about how the problem is defined in the first place, some about politics (in every sense of the word).  Unless there is some transparency about all that, a more systematic approach to capturing information about how services work (or don’t work) might well not be fully effective.

(received by email)

 

What comes first in Ideal Government? Policy, delivery or responsibility?

It remains a challenge to offer comment for a UK-based blog from an Antipodian perspective. You see, we’re either heroes or savages, and that judgement tends to be quite random – based not on logic – but rather more complex emotional responses to a recent sporting performance, or tabloid reporting of the behaviour of a Prime Minister at some Royal occasion.

So I will chance my arm and suggest there is a prevailing view in the UK that Australia does rather well at delivering government services. Many reasons are cited, ranging from perceptions about the structure of government which minimises levels of bureaucracy to two: federal and state, with local government largely responsible for dog licences (oh, how I wish!). Others point to the creation of major ‘delivery’ agencies, citing the example of Centrelink, which administers all pension, student allowance, unemployment and various other benefits programmes, and the Health Insurance Commission, which likewise administers Australia’s public/private health system. Of course, having a relatively small population heavily concentrated in a narrow 100 mile band inland from the coast, along the south-eastern strip from Brisbane to Adelaide helps enormously, too. That geographic slice of Australia represents over 96 per cent of the population. Politicians say a lot about services to the other 4 per cent, but in practice citizens in these areas pretty much know they have to take what they can bloody well get, and that does not include broadband!

All of which is by way of preamble to some extraordinary changes that appear to be happening at the Federal Government level recently. You see, the creation of agencies such as Centrelink and the Health Insurance Commission was part of the big ‘devolution’ game of government in the 1980’s and 90’s. Customer-facing, focused, no point in politicians having any day-to-day responsibility for delivery of actual services, too complex, need to be efficient…Right? Well, not any longer, so it seems.

As part of the changes in Administrative Arrangements promulgated by the Australian Government of Prime Minister Howard after he was re-elected last October was the creation of a new Department of Human Services, with direct ministerial control and reporting covering six key service delivery agencies including Centrelink and the Health Insurance Commission, which previously had varying froms of statutory independence.

What could this be about? Surely, this goes against the well-read philosophies of Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay? A Minister is going to be responsible in Parliament for the services delivered by these agencies!

Well, that is exactly what it is about, at least according to Australia’s most senior civil servant, Dr Peter Shergold, Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

In a speech entitled “Plan and Deliver: Avoiding Bureaucratic Hold-up” delivered in November 2004, Dr Shergold makes this very clear, along with a number of other important principles, including perhaps the following ‘profanity”:

“If there were a single cultural predilection in the Australian Public Service that I could change it would be the unspoken belief of many that contributing to the development of government policy is a higher order function – more prestigious, more influential, more exciting - than delivering results.”

If that is not enough, how about this:

“There are, I discern, two other related assumptions: that it’s not necessary to concern Ministers with the details of implementation; and that we don’t need to worry about how we will implement policy until after we have decided what it is. Both premises are false.”

Needless to say, Dr Shergold’s speech is a jolly good read for those of us with an interest in Ideal Government. He’s no fool, and has the ear of the Prime Minister along with more than enough power to make or break. It will be interesting to watch.

 

What will ID registration form look like?

I have no idea. In the meantime enjoy this.

 

01 Jan 2005

Welcome to Ideal government - quick start guide

Ideal Government - the next big idea

The next stage is called Wibbipedia. The plan is a project to create an open on-line mechanism for objective, scientific feedback about experience of public services. It invites everyone to become an ethnographer of bureaucracy, to deliver evidence and independent feedback about public service quality. One nation in a mystery shopping groove, if you like. The draft proposal is here- comments and improvements welcome by end January, for final proposal submission in February.

Ideal Government - the early lessons

The first slides and a cheery eight-page pdf output are here. They say in essence that e-enabled public services will work best if we can:

1. co-create them with users
2. build them on a foundation of trust
3. take on board smart low-cost suggestions

 

Audio introduction to the identity ecosystem

Spend a happy hour listening to yesterday’s Gillmor gang talk on the digital identity world.

Garbled summary - it covers the five laws of what’s necessary to establish a successful system, i-names, i-brokers, ID providers, the Liberty alliance, SOAP, federated identity and interoperable identifiers.

The vibe is we’re barely at square one. There’s plenty of squabbling about Hailstorm, which is deemed untrustworthy. But the main issue isn’t trust, they say; its digital relationships. So lay off identity - when we get it right there’s a big bang of social computing.

 

More wisdom of yesteryear

ID cards would be largely ineffective and extremely expensive, said a prescient Labour government 30 years ago. They would also infringe civil liberties. See full story

 

The sixth year in this strange decade

Happy New Year everyone. Good to see tsunami relief on Google’s home page. 

 
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Ideal Government

Let's say what we want from e-enabled government. Let's observe government first-hand. Let's say "Wouldn't It Be Better If" (WIBBI). Become an ethnographer of bureaucracy today! It beats getting frustrated with public services.

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