WRITTEN ON December 7th, 2005 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Transformational Government
…writes Stefan M about Transformational Gov (by email):
a) The doc is littered with assertions clearly lifted from other
reports. As every GCSE student knows, attribution is essential for a
document to have credibility. D-
b. As I read it, it’s very dangerous. It’s entirely about the ubiquitous
id-backed biometric database (and I think i smell the odour of
intoxication of potential power all over it), i.e. ’shared’ services,
masquerading as something citizens are clamouring for, rather than
something that on paper makes civil servants lives much easier. This is
disingenuous at least, and bloody stupid at worst.
c) on the other hand, it’s harmless. It would be interesting to dig out
and compare with the original e-envoy strategy. Because many of these
things seem great on paper when you’re a bright young civil servant
fresh from IPPR, but implementation is very different. Especially when
you try and mandate things like the presumptions funding bodies have to
make.
Some specifics, I ran out of patience towards the end.
> 13. “Yet many of these systems are also old and custom-built, use
> obsolete technologies, are relatively costly to maintain by modern
> standards, and hence stretch the capability of the whole technology
> industry when it comes to amending or replacing them.”
Right. So someone at EDS has managed to persuade the govt that somehow
their catastrophic failures are the gov’s fault! All large computer
systems are custom built, and here’s a little fact: none of the
government’s systems are that big or complex, compared to say, SABRE, or
Hertz’ car rental system.
>14. ” Moreover they increasingly fail to meet the needs of modern
>government and the rising expectations of customers:”
Before we spend billions, I would like to see some impartially gathered
evidence of this public desperation for joined up government, and huge
dissastifaction at the crisis in moving house brought on by
change-of-address complications.
>17… is questionable in a number of ways:
a)I don’t think there’s much evidence that private sector capacity has
had any trouble absorbing the gravy train of IT contracts. I’m sure
Kable would know.
b) Public confidence reached a low point by the late 1990s. I’d like to
see the evidence for this. I’d like to see the evidence for any of it.
>19… “There are new information assurance risks: terrorists,
organised >criminals and hackers threaten information and services, and
theft of >identity and of personal data is of increasing concern to
individuals >and businesses.”
What about the paedophiles? To see only 3 of the 4 horsemen of the
infopocalypse out riding is a most unusual portent, Mr Frodo!
I find it hard to understand the point of section 19, except as a bit of
FUD to justify the biometric database.
>”21. Achieving the vision will require three key transformations:
> 1. Services enabled by IT must be designed around the citizen or
>business, not the provider, and provided through modern, co-ordinated
>delivery channels. This will improve the customer experience, achieve
>better policy outcomes, reduce paperwork burdens and improve
efficiency >by reducing duplication and routine processing, leveraging
delivery >capacity and streamlining processes.”
I am so sick of 10 years of seeing this in documents and strategies and
websites that otherwise don’t have a care about what it means.
> 2. Government must move to a shared services culture – in the
>front-office, in the back-office, in information and in infrastructure
>- and release efficiencies by standardisation, simplification and
>sharing.
why? I don’t see the line is vision that requires this, or demand.
> 3. There must be broadening and deepening of government’s
>professionalism in terms of the planning, delivery, management, skills
>and governance of IT enabled change. This will result in more
This, on the other hand, I cannot dispute.
>successful outcomes; fewer costly delivery failures; and increased
>confidence by citizens and politicians in the delivery of change by
the >public services.
22. Heard it all before.
23,24
sounds like gold in them thar hills for Kable or GSKwasNOP or both.
25. Ahh. the Life Events model . being old. Reading this document makes
me feel old.
33.7 good.
39.7 Identity Management: Government will create an holistic approach to
identity management, based on a suite of identity management solutions
that enable the public and private sectors to manage risk and provide
cost-effective services trusted by customers and stakeholders. These
will rationalise electronic gateways and citizen and business record
numbers. They will converge towards biometric identity cards and the
National Identity Register. This approach will also consider the
practical and legal issues of making wider use of the national insurance
number to index citizen records as a transition path towards an identity
card.”
Is it just me, or does this go orders of magnitude further than any
other political or official line on voluntary id cards?
The government will make itself the identity policeman, both for its own
uses, and for the private sector, and use National Insurance numbers as
a stepping stone? Have I been asleep?
39.8 Geographical Information panel? what’s this? Why aren’t I on it?
Ah. it’s this: http://www.gipanel.org.uk/gipanel/
Can I just say how unimpressed I am at the breadth of represention there
is there. No-one from the voluntary sector, no-one, say, doing anything
interesting online with GIS.
>40.2 Bodies awarding funding should presume that public service
>organisations only deliver good value for money when they standardise
>and share services with others.
Just in case we’re wrong, we’re making it a given that we’re right.
54. why is necessary to make the process irreversible? what if it’s wrong?
56. The blurring of the boundaries between departments, central and
local government, and between the public and private and voluntary
sectors may have one more beneficial effect for senior civil servants.
It’ll end the concept of accountability within government.
