WRITTEN ON November 8th, 2005 BY Jim Murphy, Cabinet Office Minister AND STORED IN Transformational Government
Time for my second post to this forum. I’m new to this way of communicating but it is proving useful.
Thanks to all those who have commented on the strategy – especially those from overseas. Great to get some other perspectives. I realise that there’s a lot of strategy to take on board so thanks again for the rapid responses. Please also consider responding more formally by the Febuary deadline – details at the back of the document.
I’m glad the vision of the strategy has been welcomed. It’s only right that some questions about how we do it have also been asked. Well, you’ve asked what does success look like? And, how do we deliver it?
To answer the first question, have a look at these examples. They’re what our partners in departments and agencies think transformational government could look like. Better public services that aren’t exclusive, that are accessible and useable. What do you think success will look like?
To go some way to answering the second question, I’d start by saying that we won’t do it with a magic wand or just by some central diktats. One of the characteristics of the work on the strategy so far has been the role of the CIO Council and the STB in making things happen. They bring together people with great experience to do more than might be possible alone.
As professionals they have recognised that things have to change and they are committed, individually and as a group, to helping make that happen.
Nor will there be one ‘big bang’. Instead, I will be looking for a wide programme of action, engaging specific sectors and the people within them. Where we can build on what is already being worked on – for instance in health, in transport and in criminal justice – then we will do so.
Above all this is about improving the services we deliver to the citizens and to businesses. So, we need to allow and encourage people already working to deliver those services to innovate and improve within the clear overall principles we have established.
Hope that helps.
2 Responses to “What Success Looks Like and How We Get There”
Again, we have a government IT strategy which fails to stress the need for usability. This is costing eGov sites large ammounts – dorsetforyou, the flagship, just did usability *after they built it, how much did that waste? – and usability is absolutely crucial if websites are to become more widely used. Why is government not taking this issue seriously?
I was also disappointed to yet again see no mention of Internet marketing. We get over a third of referrals from Google. Optimising that is essential if citizens are to find our websites. That this is not part of the remit for eCitizen is remakable and just shows the vast disconnect between eGov practice with building websites and commercial best practice.
It often seems to me that we consistently build sites with several bricks missing when this just wouldn’t happen in the rest of the Web.
It is up to you guys to show leadership in these areas because – on the ground – much change is only happening following government edict. Practically, in my job, you taking these issues seriously would be a real help.
There are a number of obvious ways you could do this which would simply duplicate what Australian and American governments have done. For example usability.gov reaches right down to the frontline and provides practical examples and simple methods in plain English. Another thing you could do is run a usability audit and ‘name and shame’. This would certainly catch many eGov sites (esd-toolkit being the most obvious, see the countless postings complaining about its usability).
I’ve read the Strategy with great interest and am extremely supportive – it’s excellent stuff and will undoubtedly, if it is worked through to
detailed plans, result in a major transformation of the public sector.
If I’m really pushed, I guess my only major suggestion for further improvement is to encourage the public sector also to transform the government services they deliver – there is much good talk of for example of really important stuff like closing channels and self-service but I still get the impression that the model behind it all is transformed delivery of the same, or similar, services – I hope I’m wrong. What I’m
getting at here is that whenever a new technology is introduced the initial reaction is to use it to deliver the same services more efficiently but in
time people often realise they can deliver different services. I’m anxious to shorten that time as much as possible and would look to the Strategy to do that by for example encouraging experiments with different services.
As a starter for ten, I would suggest a vision of a public sector whose image is transformed from that of a highly visible gatekeeper of hard-to-obtain services to a supportive organisation, always there when needed: in short an integral part of living that is rarely if ever
consciously accessed. The example I would offer immediately – there are a few – is the Belgian Crossroads Bank (an information bank, not a financial one) enabling the payment of benefit cheques without the need for people to
lodge a claim (of course this raises a whole series of issues on eg information sharing which are well covered by the Strategy).
On one smaller point, in para 37 where those responsible are encouraged to tell users what the benefits are of them using eGovernment services, I’d suggest going further and making it public policy to share that benefit directly with users as many are now starting to do (eg Companies House, Oyster) – it’s sad but true that there is lots of evidence from eGovernment take-up around the world that most people will only use a service if they see a direct personal benefit (typically in time, money or quality of service) – “reinvestment elsewhere in pubic services” is unfortunately not a strong motivator for most people.