31 Dec 2004

Old mysteries end and new mysteries begin

An interesting new myth is circulating among the tribes...it seems that from tomorrow you can ask the natives anything and they give you whatever answer they’ve got.

Does this mean an end to all the mysteries, or do the mysteries just deepen from tomorrow?

Our fellow anthropologist Maurice Frankel is the long-term expert. Other good sites: Steve Woods’ blog, Heather Brookes’ Your right to know, and The Guardian FOI special. And the key official, our ambassador in this strange world, is the Information Commissioner Richard Thomas. 

 

30 Dec 2004

Understanding motivation key to e-government development at Local Authority level

After a short-spell working with Local Authorities (LAs) in e-government units and with executive level management, it’s clear to me that the motivation of LAs in general, and specifically the back-office and executive employees, varies widely and needs to more clearly understood before across-the-board recommendations can be made.

For many authorities, particularly those in the CPA category rankings of ‘poor’, ‘fair’ and ‘good’, the executive is mostly driven by the desire to retain and/or improve its current ranking, as this will be the final judgement on performance. In this context, the e-government agenda has played an important role. In the five year cycle (ending in May 2005) LAs were regularly audited on a variety of e-government performance metrics, mostly set out in the BVP 157 category. Although a floor-lifting exercise rather than a process to promote innovation and user-demanded services as is recommended widely on this site, it has not been without merit in my opinion.

Unfortunately, two things have happened recently to undermine the motivation at LA level. Firstly, many LAs were informally informed, as part of the process to create a new set of CPA measurement criteria, that e-government would not be as important to their performance evaluation as it has been previously. Also, there are few effective penalties for not reaching the 2005 targets anyway. The overall effect has been to leave some LAs who strive for excellence in e-government (for instance West Sussex who have worked with the MySociety partnership to sponsor truly innovative outputs which can then be applied at local levels in the most appropriate way), many who see the e-government agenda as a necessary box-ticking exercise to achieve funding, and a selection where the executive and elected officials are so pointedly anti-technology that it will require a change of leadership to even begin the e-government process.

Understanding the motivation of any LA needs to be the first step in evaluating its performance so far. It also needs to be made explicit to external bodies seeking to assist or create user-demanded services, because if the LA thinks primarily in terms of auditing and performance rather than user support and innovation, then even the simplest proposals to change the nature of local e-government may be undermined.

 

Let’s make sure no-one’s fibbing

Rightsnet says the DWP is to join DTI in using lie detectors. But hang on, surely we should get there first and apply lie detection to public servants? If it works, and if it’s cheaply and widely available, it could clear up a lot of queries.

Similarly we need portable devices to check our change in shops and supermarkets for counterfeit notes. 

 

29 Dec 2004

ID register is an “information disaster waiting to happen”

Kim Cameron, guru of the laws of identity, has taken a look at the UK ID system plans.

These “bricks and mortar” cards dont seem to be designed for the virtual world, he says. The central register is an information disaster waiting to happen. The card should emit unidirectional identifiers for each different department. Who would want to be responsible for such a risky system when the same results can be achieved without any risk at all?

Short extract below, and see his blog for full comments.

There’s a lot of work to do, he says: “Maybe technical thinkers in Britain will be able to convey some of the technological options which can better achieve the purposes behind this initiative.” Well, we do hope so.

 

23 Dec 2004

Blogging public servants: it’s catching on

David Copperfield points us to Woody, a new WPC blogger (formerly in IT) in the Wandsworth area - good, fresh accounts of day to day life. This could be a good trend - here’s another. This is much more likely to restore people’s faith in the humanity of public services than any amount of spin and targets.

I dont think anyone foresaw this.

Now we need

- nurses
- teachers (there have been a few books and articles recently)
- health & safety officers
- prison workers
- squaddies
- paper shredders in the DTI
- people working in tax and benefit offices

Come on you Customs & Revenue, come on you DWP - tell us what it’s like from the inside. Otherwise we’ll think you’re simply bureaucratic tools of systematic extortion and random patronage. Start blogging and show us the human side!

(Eek. On the other hand, as soon as public-servant blogging gets noticed they may ban it...I wonder. Any potential bloggers inside Buck House?)

 

22 Dec 2004

Spoof works better than the original

Directionlessgov.org seems to me a better search portal for government serices than direct.gov.

It gets better answers faster, and there are no photos of smiling people. Do I need any more reason to switch?

Is this debatable? Well, if we dont hear a credible defence of DirectGov, we assume not.

I wonder which one the National Audit Office prefers?

 

Landmark decision leaves blogger baffled

Hot news from Rightsnet - bless these people for staying abreast of all this stuff.

It seems that the top elders have just decreed that if something bafflingly complicated goes wrong, and the reason it went wrong is that the tribe doing the bafflingly complicated things got baffled and made a mistake, that’s just tough on you. You cant ask them to go back and do it again and get it right and pay you money they owe you.

This distinguishes it from the set of tribal customs along the lines that if you get baffled by their rules and make a mistake, it’s all your fault and you then incur baffling penalties...The perfectly reasonable response “but I was baffled” is no defence.

Of course we accept that we generally can’t understand their extraordinarily complicated rules and customs, but do we have to consider the possibility that they don’t either?

Story reproduced below, or in original context here. 

New Court of Appeal decision

The Court of Appeal has issued its judgement in Beltekian v Westminster City Council; Secretary of State for Work and Pensions as interested party (8 December 2004). The case related to whether there is a right of appeal against a local authority’s decision to refuse to revise a housing benefit decision on the grounds that it arose from official error.

In the appeal – against Commissioner Williams decision in CH/1855/2003 – the Court held that Regulation 4(2) of the Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit (Decisions and Appeals) Regulations 2001, that provides for revision of a housing benefit decision for official error, makes no reference to an application being made for such a revision, and the provision does not constitute a route of appeal in respect of a council’s decision refusing to revise an original decision as to housing benefit.

The Court of Appeal held that the language of paragraph 6(1)(a) of Schedule 7 to the Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Act 2000, said to create a right of appeal, referred to an original decision or a revised decision but not to a refusal to review.

In addition the court agreed with the position taken by the Tribunal of Commissioners in R(IS) 15/04 that regulation 18(3) of the Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit (Decisions and Appeals) Regulations 2001 - which provides for the time within which an appeal is to be brought - refers only to an application for revision, for which regulation 4 itself makes express provision. Whilst regulation 4(1)(a) makes reference to an application being made, regulation 4(2) does not. Accordingly, the appeal, that relied on regulation 4(2), was dismissed.

 

21 Dec 2004

FoI: let’s take an informed approach

Rightly, there’s been a lot of concern arising from the Times’ story about instructions to erase “old” emails. It’d be horrific if it was as portrayed in the news story - but let’s not be too hasty to attack government.... The media often generates more heat than light around such matters. There are lots of issues and difficulties around email, and it’s not just about the ability to delete damaging “evidence”.  Do any of us have email archives we’re proud of, and in which we can always find key messages? 

The good news is that email is now recognised as an important element of government communication and decision-making. Many departments have been wrestling with how to organise content in a medium which is used for many different purposes.  Some absolutely must be preserved, others are little more than nuisance.

There’s a possible win-win here. Come Jan 1st, any of us can ask departments (not just the Cabinet Office) for sight of the instructions around email management. We’ll then be able to see what was really said, and judge for ourselves the likely impact.

I remember from early debates around FoI that people imagined that civil servants would be rushing around stripping post-it notes off files, and erasing scribbled comments and instructions (we hadn’t at that time engaged with the magnitude of the email issues). But the counter to this was (at least from the Canadian experience) that on the contrary - FoI forces civil servants in particular to make sure that the reasons for decisions and actions are properly documented (else they are potentially in the dock for apparently engaging in consequent actions without any authority). So we’re likely to see better recording of the “why” and “who” of government policy than before… though it might take time…

I hope we’re not all waiting for the inevitable headlines of FoI-deriven “scandals”, engineered by a media which worships negativity. There’s a tremendous, and positive, opportunity to really start rebuilding trust between government and the governed. It’s crucial this opportunity doesn’t get irrevocably damaged at the outset by a few who are looking only for personal fame.

Our whole debate around Ideal Government will, I suspect, be heavily influenced by FoI roll-out.

What a great start to the FoI regime if a few requests for simply the instructions issued (as opposed to what the press says was issued) resulted in clarity that demonstrates (as I’d hope it would) that attempts are being made to ensure that (for FoI purposes, as well as good governance) email was being properly organised so that the important ones were retrievable when required. The hacks, of course, would love to be able to dig up dirt which can be used against someone, perhaps arising from an early informal comment or view on an issue. But such material has nothing to do with either FoI or good corporate governance.

Jan 1st 2005 is a momentous date. Let’s be sure that we, as a fairly informed community, try get FoI off to a positive start… not by seeking to embarrass or humiliate, but simply to get at unvarnished facts, and so be able to properly understand and critique policy. There’s a huge opportunity to get clarity in many areas as to what was really intended, why, and how decisions were arrived at. That, surely, is the bedrock of Ideal Government.

 

End of year returns

I just hate year-ends.

I have a simple IT business and my wife and I manage it closely.  We track everything and we know just how we are doing at any point in time.  However, Companies House still demands a set of accounts in an arcane format understood only by professional accountants.  My wife and I are the only shareholders in the company.  These accounts are of no benefit to us and yet we have to pay to produce them.  Worse, we have to spend time producing documentary evidence to back up our electronic figures (even though it’s not supposed to be an audit) and then we have to struggle to understand the adjustments the accountant makes - only to find they’ve got them wrong and I have to raise adjustments in the following year which makes life even more complicated.  Then, adding insult to injury, we get a set of figures that excuse the accountants of all responsibility followed by thinly-veiled adverts for the insurance industry.

Then there’s the tax return.  It needs similar accounts to Companies House - but not the same, of course!  Somehow I’m suposed to understand the tax return and how it’s been completed on my behalf.  More mumbo jumbo.  And that’s not to mention the IR35 and s600 issues!  Frankly it’s impossible to know where I stand with the Revenue - and that can’t be right, can it?

OK, so here’s the suggestion.  An electronic return that allows me to meet the needs of both Companies House and the tax man in terms I can understand.  One that contains built-in help so I can be sure how to respond to the questions.  Hey, some real-life examples that provide some genuine guidance would be good.  A return that asks for key figures about my business in a simple format that can easily be produced from any well-managed accounting system - I understand that’s how it works in the US, why not here?

An electronic form that does not need professional accountants would:

  1. Cut out tons of cost for Companies House and the Revenue
  2. Encourage more people to start their own companies
  3. Eliminate an unnecessary cost and red tape overhead for small businesses.
Almost everyone wins.  Even the politicians get to meet a promise or two!

Andy Henderson

 

20 Dec 2004

Wibbi…government shared with us the legal advice we paid for and have an interest in?

from Kable

News - ID advice withheld
20 December 2004

Advice to ministers on the legality of the Home Office ID card and database plans is being kept secret, according to a response under the open government code

The government has refused to release legal advice given to cabinet ministers on whether the bill to introduce ID cards contravenes human rights legislation, it emerged on 20 December 2004.

Details of a decision to keep the advice secret were revealed ahead of an expected backbench MPs’ rebellion in the House of Commons vote on the ID card scheme.

The advice covers in-depth legal arguments about the possibility of denying people access to public services and issues surrounding powers of the security services, police and authorities being able to access medical data, financial information and other personal details.

see full story

 

WIBBI… government didn’t just flat-out lie to us

In the debate about the Cabinet Office instructing civil servants to delete any email over 3 months old in advance of the Freedom of Information Act coming into force, the reason reported (The Times, Saturday) is for ‘good records management practice’ to stop files blocking the system, going on to say ‘It is the end of the year and our computer system is getting overloaded.’

What complete and utter nonsense! Anyone would think we were still using punched cards or paper tape.

If the state of the Government’s internal IT is such that they are unable to retain all email indefinitely in a searchable system, then their IT suppliers must be even more useless than those of us in the profession have come to believe.

To be flippant, all they would need to do is forward their email archive to the Echelon system. Or get a few GMail accounts - I have some spare invites, if they’re interested grin

 

19 Dec 2004

Participatory Democracy Networks (tools for civil, public services also)

So many minds seem to be working for the same common good. Browsing to get some training on how to install a php database on a web server, I came across this very exciting news:

FOR THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE...

Participatory Democracy Networks (pdf 575Kb)
Building on the ideas presented by Roy Madron and John Jopling in their inspirational book, Gaian Democracies, this paper tentatively presents a rough concept for a piece of information architecture to facilitate participatory democracy worldwide.

Accepting that soft systems thinking is fundamental for human survival, this paper examines activity on the internet and proposes that one solid piece of open source code will revolutionise the internet like Google did, but to far greater effect.

 

18 Dec 2004

Next deadline: 28 February 2005

Let’s cook up a plan to create an open source style feedback mechanism about public sector service quality - a wikipedia of what public services are really like, and a wibbipedia of what they should be like. JRCT is looking for projects like this so I’m going to send in an application form, and develop it using the open-source model (by which I mean i’ve put my half-baked thought on line and am open to suggestions for improvement). Version 0.1 is meant to cover -

Draft description in max 100 words
Where the idea comes from
Why it’s crucial
How we set about it
What help we need (people, resources, funding) and how we find it
Who benefits
How we know it’s working
Will the world be a better* place afterwards
What are the risks? What might stop us? How would we overcome it?
Are we done after five years? Or does it carry on?

See below for my first pass....

 

Annoying words to avoid

By the third talk at the IPPR event the other day I started a “Fed up list” of expressions that I never want to hear again in the context of improving public services.

silos
targets
things being targetted
sending out messages
miss the boat
UK leading the world (eg in CCTV)
gold-standard (as in ID systems)
actually
frameworks
initiatives
initiativitis
solution
security.

If anyone speaks of CRM (let alone “citizen relationship management") just shun them. As Chris Yapp says - in future the customer manages the relationship - CMR.

Glad of any further suggestions.

I’m getting pretty wary of this word “progressive”. In the context “progressive rock” its pretty harmless. We seem to put up with it when it means “give us your money to spend on civil service pensions”. But now it’s starting to mean “We’re allowed detention without trial and building centralised registers of biometrics, DNA, whatever without you saying it’s uncool”. It seems to involve a progression towards something rather sinister.

With no opposition and Richard Allan not standing for re-election it looks like we’ll all have to take up yogic flying.

I’m also fed up with people proposing different meanings of the “e” prefix in e-government (you know, efficient, effective, etc). As for making drug-related jokes about “e”, dont people realise the Home Office has made such jokes illegal? The war on drugs is no laughing matter. Public servants of all people should know better.

Wouldn’t it be better if...
...we could state what is happening in public services and what we want to achieve in plain English.

 

17 Dec 2004

Better government and e-government - Tom calls for a stiff upper e-lip

Some of the recent posts seem a little discouraged about e-Government, lamenting the proliferation of databases, the quagmire of e-Voting, etc.  Time for some Xmas cheer, I think.

e-Government should be fading from the national agenda at this point in time. Not because it doesn’t work, but because it does. (Think Pat Morita in The Karate Kid--"Properly executed, there is no defense"). People do not brag inordinately about the presence of telephones within their organisation. It’s sort of taken for granted, and so should be the presence and utilisation of information and communications technologies to improve and extend the performance of government functions. We have reached the point in the five-year adoption cycle where many systems should be showing signs of improved productivity and organisational performance--and in fact, we are seeing this. Pity it won’t be counted correctly for a couple of years, but it’s happening.

Proponents of e-Government as a ‘philosophy’ of changing the nature of government have made a couple of mistakes that are extremely typical of movement politics. First, we acted like engineers, in that we looked at what the technology could do before we actually asked people what they wanted. Second, we tried to use our new technologies to address areas of government that were not broken--such as voting, a system that has worked well for a couple of centuries.

However, the passion for improving government survives, and the knowledge that modern technology can be used to do it is not going to fade. Maybe we should focus our thinking on where the problems lie within government first… and seeing how combining different technological processes can solve the real problems.

My nomination of the day is means testing. Why is it tough? Why does the government of the day use it as a bottleneck to minimise and delay the redistribution of income that all have agreed should happen? Why isn’t means testing integrated across all services? Why should citizens submit to the embarrassing--indeed, often humiliating--process more than once? Given that any of the big systems integrators could design and roll out a solution that would answer all of my questions in less than a year, why doesn’t the Ideal Government community collaborate on developing user requirements and getting one or two of the SI’s to draw up a statement of interest that could initiate movement within government, instead of being reactive. Could set a trend…

 
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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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