29 Sep 2004

Civil servants, local councils, information and transactions

Following on from William’s remarks in the last post, I think that Ed Straw’s recent paper for Demos, The Dead Generalist, is also worth reading in this context.

And following on from posts made by Helen and others, it’s often the seemingly simple stuff that just doesn’t seem to happen. I’d say that e-gov often tries to run before it can walk. Targets are made for transactions, when it’s often just basic information that doesn’t get joined up.

Take an example. I live in Southwark. Southwark has various refuse collection serices: for domestic wate (bins), for garden waste (different types of sacks), for cans and bottles (boxes) and for paper (special bags). I, as citizen, see all these as waste collection. I need to know what will be collected when, so I know when to put it out, and I also need the wherewithall to put it out. But when I visit the Southwark website, I’m told about ‘recycling’ in one place, and ‘garden waste’ in another. I have umpteen different paper schedules for each type. Frankly, it took me a while to cotton on to the idea that ‘recycling’ was different from ‘garden waste’...and I’m sure I’m not the only one around here.

When I try to find out where to get garden waste bags, the only link on the Southwark home page about domesic refuse is to something about ‘schedules’, which does not link to any other info at all (hey, I need bags, and I need to fill them, before the schedules become useful). Everyone around this area is putting out different stuff on different days and nobody knows when it’s getting collected. The council’s scheme seems to be silo-based, with each department thinking about its own services, but not about the Southwark resident who has to deal with it all.

Having said that, the guys are all very helpful when they turn up, and pass on info that I then pass along the street grapevine. Kind of an alternative Internet…

Then take the phone. When I called Southwark, I used to have to hang on for around an hour...to pay them money. Now (there’s a brand new call centre) I call them and get a response within 15 minutes, which I’m told by call centre staff is much appreciated by residents used to the old regime. There’s expectations for you.

At iSociety last year, we did some primary research that included one London borough (part of my research patch), where I learned that local surveys showed that residents primarily (70%) wanted to communicate with the council by phone. And the phones *were* extremely busy. But the council tax department depended on a ‘fell-off-the-back-of-a-lorry’ call queuing system (I kid you not - it was a freebie that had been thrown away by someone else). Staff did their best, within the contraints, and senior staff were doing their best to bring in new call managment systems for some services. But frankly, as I resident I would have been tearing my hair out - just as I do in Southwark. There have been so many years of underinvestment that there’s a lot a ground to make up.

So why the central government focus on e-gov rather than phones? I think they think phones are not sexy...but most people have no problem calling all kinds of commercial and entertainment services.

Where I do find public sector transactions online (like the supposed filled-out PDF achieved after going through a dozen screens, that then fails to appear - I won’t embarrass the body concerned publicly, and I’ve already mentioned it to them privately) the outcome is often not worth the effort.

In my opinion, there’s too little citizen-centred design in evidence right now, and too little thought being put into the provision of basic information in a sensible way, to justify moving up from information to transactions.

We need to think seriously about the basic building blocks, the way information is architected, as it relates to the citizen, before moving on to the heavy-duty stuff. And we need to think about the language that is used: what the heck is ‘environmental services’, when it’s at home? It may well be a council department, but it’s not a council service and it’s not the language that people use when they need to get their bins emptied. The same problem applies across swathes of government (with central government often the worst offenders). Getting rid of the silos is the first step to getting anywhere. But having read Ed Straw’s pamphlet, I don’t hold out much hope.

Posted by Louise Ferguson on 29/09/04 at 6:26pm
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Ideal Government

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29 Sep 2004

Civil servants, local councils, information and transactions

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29 Sep 2004

Civil servants, local councils, information and transactions

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