As expected there were no big giveaways from Alistair Darling in this year’s budget. Whilst it was nowhere near as drastic as the recent second Irish budget in which taxes were hiked and budgets were slashed, the Chancellor gave a keen sense that the UK is battening down the hatches to weather the economic storm. But it was not all doom and gloom, and indeed there were plenty of positive points for the technology industry to take. So was this the first ‘Technology Budget’?

From what was said in today’s budget and the intentions laid out in Lord Mandelson’s ‘New Industry, New Jobs’ paper launched on Monday it’s clear government is positioning the high-tech industries as drivers of future growth and job creation in the UK.

There were several points in the budget which we welcome in particular.

We welcome action on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths) skills that underpin the knowledge economy; we welcome action on trade credit insurance that will help local electronics and electrical retailers; we welcome the action to fill in the remaining gaps in broadband provision; we also welcome the new Strategic Investment Fund: all these are part of the picture of the UK’s future. We also welcome the temporary increase in First Year Capital Allowances, which we called for in our ‘Helping Innovation Flourish’ paper, to encourage business investment, including in telecommunications.

But significant areas of blank canvas remain. Next Generation Broadband, the crucial new infrastructure demand of the 21^st century so far, is given some necessary but nowhere near sufficient help. The case for a public private partnership on the 3i model is put out for review, at a time when high-tech start-ups, who could be the engines of future growth, risk perishing in the cold economic climate for lack of venture and risk capital. In both of these cases the time for reviews is all but over and the time for action is now.

By Daniel Smyth, PR and Public Affairs Executive

Yet more concerns about the impact of the recession are hot off the press courtesy of report from Deloitte called  Turning the Tide, which looks at the how the downturn is likely to affect the ‘business of government’.  But for once it’s not all bad news, the report makes the case that while economic change undoubtedly represents a threat it could also create new opportunities for public sector organisations to transform and “emerge as leaner, more commercially savvy entities”.  Something tax payers might suggest has been a long time coming.     

Harnessing the data that public sector organisations hold on customers is cited as a way of embracing innovation and rethinking delivery models, but the report also signposts the huge potential for back-office efficiencies generated by shared services which Cabinet Office estimates at £7bn.  If only things were so simple.  In last week's Guardian, Michael Cross looked at the DVLA shared services project - an implementation that was intended to save £57m but has so far cost £81m – and suggested that believing that shared services can improve public services and reduce costs is akin to “technological alchemy”.  

So what is the government to do?  Clearly it can’t afford to ignore the rising demand for better public services and need to make sweeping efficiency savings.  But to achieve this public sector organisations are going to need to undergo radical reform, and with the economic downturn the pressure is really on.  Technology has an integral role to play in the process, but ICT alone is not the answer.  Ultimately, transformation depends on collaboration across and within public sector organisation and with industry partners.  The new procurement tools launched by OGC earlier this month not only advocate, but having been developed in conjunction with industry, exemplify this approach.  The Joint Statement of Intent and Pre-Qualification Tool are designed to make it easier for the public and private sector to achieve a common view of the outcomes they are looking to achieve and identify the time, cost and quality parameters that define success.  Helping teams to agree what approaches and behaviours they should adopt in pursuit of their goals should help turn this powerful tide.      

By Melissa Frewin, Programme Manager

In a speech at Intellect before Christmas, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced a new consultation on the use of Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) and defended the DNA database, stressing the importance of DNA profiling in modern policing. Her speech comes at a difficult point in the debate on how government should use the personal information of citizens. Recent high-profile data losses have knocked public confidence and created a atmosphere of distrust, but this speech rightly focuses the public debate back towards an open and forward looking discussion.

We are on the edge of a new age our security and for the government, it can now imagine seamless services centred around the individual and delivered unprompted. That means a pensioner could be able to sort out all their benefits and allowances with a single call, that people could go online to a single portal to manage school applications and child benefit, and that the sad business of a death could be reported just once. On a larger scale, data analysis of a hospital’s performance, for example, means that poor outcomes (for whatever reason) have nowhere to hide. Taking advantage of technological change doesn’t just mean improving services for the citizen, but it also enables us to have greater accountability of government.

Technology now offers the prospect of ending the age of the bureaucrat. That is to say the individual whose role in society is constantly collecting information from individuals and applying complex, technical rules to their cases. In the very near future, we can hope to manage our entire relationship with the state, with the council, with public services, with the tax system and with the benefits system through a few simple gateways.

The promise for our security is simply that our modern, mobile world is not inherently less secure than that more settled world of the past. Where we could once rely on communities and people’s immobility for basic knowledge about others, now new communications, movement and social fragmentation make that far harder. The difficult truth is that a few people are able to live out fraudulent or predatory lives in the cracks between our knowledge of what goes on around us. Far from aspiring to a surveillance society, we should hope simply to restore a basic knowledge of who’s who. Our freedoms should be properly protected by rights that are suited to the digital age we live in, not randomly upheld by the ignorance and lack of data sharing among government.

A more responsive, less-bureaucratic state and a more secure society lie within sight but are not yet quite within grasp. The barriers are no longer technological. We must admit frankly that the conversation between government, technologists and the wider society has not generated sufficient understanding or the current problems or confidence in the solutions at hand.

There are three challenges ahead.

First, the government needs to articulate to the public at large the kind of transformation their public services could achieve by ‘knocking through’ some of the data silos held by government bodies. Similarly, the government has a duty to explain how ending the game of ‘information arbitrage’ where people can live between the shadows of different agencies’ ignorance is harmful and must end.

Secondly, the industry itself must recognise that sometimes small is beautiful and gradual is preferable. Understandably we tend to favour the big database and the big bang where change goes live all at once. Perhaps we should think of ourselves less as the builders of new data-motorways and more as the builders of link roads and of connections between existing systems.

Thirdly, government and industry must continue to work to improve trust in the handling and use of personal data.  Whether we like it or not, handling personal data is an intrinsic and unchangeable part of the system of government. Whilst we, the citizen, must come to terms with this, it is also our right to ask that the state respects the responsibility it has to robustly protect this valued information. But we must not be fearful of this fact. We enjoy the benefits of this new digital age in so many other aspects of our lives, let’s not miss out on it here.

By John Higgins CBE, Director General, Intellect   

Last week the civil service published a new strategy to help government seize the opportunities and meet the challenges of managing knowledge and information in a digital era. The document, titled ‘Information matters: building government’s capability in managing knowledge and information’, has been led by the Knowledge Council and will help develop the framework, tools and capabilities for knowledge and information management.

In order to gauge the significance of this issue, one must only imagine how things will transform over the next 50, 10 or even just five years. As Gordon Brown said, “this is the century of information. Our ability to compete in the global economy, to protect ourselves against crime and terrorist attack, depends not just on natural wealth or on walls or fences but on our ability to use information.”

The strategy begins with the recognition that knowledge and information management is a government function of the same importance and gravity as finance, IT and communications. In this sense, the document reflects the twin concepts of the ‘information society’ and the ‘knowledge economy’ – the notion that resources such as know-how and expertise are as critical as other economic resources in a world of information.

Much of the strategy is concerned with how the Government can improve the value of knowledge and information held as well as how it can be shared and pooled. Professionalism, as always, is essential here, and amongst the document’s key actions one indeed finds the recommendation to develop a professionalism programme to support knowledge and information management as a key corporate function of government.

Like Transformational Government, effecting these changes is about culture and process as much as technology. Nonetheless, the technology industry can play a role in helping the Government as it devises its timetable for change (due in April 2009). Last year, Intellect’s Information Sharing Group provided input to the strategy via a joint workshop with the Knowledge Council. Next year, we hope to assist the Council as it begins to deliver those envisaged changes across Government.

By Sebastian Fox, Programme Executive

The digital divide, the term commonly used to refer to the gap between those people with access to digital and information technology, and those without, is a complex and divisive topic. Broadly speaking there are two schools of thought about how best to address this gap: one that says if people believe something of value can be gained from accessing digital technologies (staying in touch with friends and family, shopping online) then people will be incentivised to pay money to access the platforms and learn the limited skills required to participate. If this natural migration isn’t enough by itself then lower broadband and hardware costs combined with shifting demographics and the central role computers now play in an increasing number of people’s working lives will take care of any stragglers. This argument can be characterised as being one that says ‘the gap is shrinking and will continue to do so: the market is sorting it out’.

And then there is the contrary school of thought that says that the digital divide is an expression of larger social inequalities with divisions including (young/old), the socioeconomic (rich/poor), the educational (tech savvy/tech illiterate), and the geographical (urban/rural) all being perpetuated by the digital divide.  In this argument the third of the populace without a broadband connection in the home are being excluded, by prices, by a lack of skills, by a fear of the technology. For many policy makers and consumer groups the digital divide is unacceptable and government intervention is required to help drive those citizen’s not there already, into the digital age. This argument can be characterised as being one that says ‘the gap will only shrink by so much, and real help is needed for some societal groups’.

Which brings us neatly enough to ‘Britain’s digital champion’ a position that the Department for Communities and Local Government is looking to fill to help champion these new technologies. The lucky candidate will "work as a high-profile public figure who can raise the profile of this agenda, gaining support from industry, the third and public sectors, plus central and local government". While this sounds a bit like the job description of the old e-envoy, the government is looking for someone with a bit more public recognition for the new post.

Paul Murphy, the minister for digital inclusion, will not be drawn on who the ideal candidate would be. But he is understood to be looking for someone whose face is familiar to the constituencies that the campaign needs to reach: the poor, elderly, some minority ethnic groups and disadvantaged families.

The interesting subtext in all of this is the government’s move to try and ensure that all its citizens can participate online. This can partly be justified as a way of allowing people to enjoy new products and services like email, Facebook and online shopping, but also as a way of ensuring that the citizen gains maximum benefit from public sector content in the shape of iPlayer but also in the enormous amount of information the government now posts online about healthcare, education and taxation. This is a good move and one that even the free marketers should endorse.   

By Sam Ingleby, Programme Manager

Attendees gathered at the Guoman Tower Hotel on Wednesday to attend the ‘Tower 8.5’ workshop on avoidable contact. Organised jointly by Intellect and Cabinet Office, the event focused on the National Indicator 14 (NI14) – an indicator set by Government to reduce avoidable contact between the citizen and Local Authorities. Avoidable contact can assume many shapes and forms, but often involves a citizen having to make contact with a local authority multiple to times to secure a single objective.

Contact management lies at the very heart of the government’s interaction with the citizen. It entails redesigning local authorities’ approach to service delivery in a way that eliminates duplication and enhances the quality of services provided. In this sense, reducing avoidable contact is really about creating more meaningful contact between the government and its customers. It resonates with the broader vision of the transformation government agenda, namely to provide citizen-centric services while generating efficiencies along the way.

As the morning session progressed, the conversation shifted to a consideration of how NI14 – one of 198 new national indicators for local authorities announced as part of the Comprehensive Spending Review 2007 – could be delivered. Delegates heard from a range of public sector bodies that had used CRM tools, customer surveys and other feedback mechanisms to identify the needs and priorities of the citizen. Tom Wraith from the Audit Commission provided an overview of the reporting requirements for NI 14, while Kay Batty, Tameside Metropolitan District Council, and Anthony Bamford, DVLA, providing a practitioners’ perspective. As the presentations demonstrated, NI14 is part of a wider customer insight strategy.

Attendees were informed about the seminal guidance documents from IDeA, Cabinet Office and the Department for Local Government and Communities that are helping authorities to tackle NI14 effectively. It is clear, though, that there is no one right way to deliver NI 14; reducing avoidable contact must reflect local priorities and ways of working.

Although the debate on avoidable contact is only just beginning to take shape, it was positive to see that contact management was high on their agenda. Participants were keen to understand the ‘emotional journey’ of the customer – a concern already recognised by the ‘tell-us-once’ initiative in  cases where a person has suffered a bereavement – as well as acknowledging the more clinical benefits to people, processes and technology.

In the end much of the discussion boiled down to understanding the customers’ needs and wants, in addition to the more tricky issue of how ‘avoidable’ services are measured by front line staff. It is simple things that often count the most, such as creating an accessible website with user-friendly URLs or compiling a simple but helpful online directory. Lastly, cultural and organisation change must factor heavily into any local government strategy. As in many other instances, IT is neither a quick fix nor a standalone solution, but needs to be couched in a wider process of business change.

Most of all, Tower 8.5 was helpful in that it was so specific. Targeting avoidable contact as a specific issue will, hopefully, enable local authorities to achieve the broader goal of delivering excellent services to the citizen.

By Sebastian Fox, Programme Executive

Today was a big day for Gordon Brown, and he certainly delivered some big messages.  But the one that caught my eye was his pledge to provide home-based internet access for the 1.4 million children who currently do not have it.  It is an ambitious plan, and if delivered successfully, it will undoubtedly prove invaluable to those children who will benefit.  Having said that there are some big questions about how such a scheme could, or rather should, be implemented.

The internet is a powerful educational tool that can unlock access to an almost infinite wealth of information. It is really important, therefore, that we see the government taking action to reduce the digital divide, particularly at a time when the importance of broadband is increasingly being recognised in the UK.  The initiative announced today will give up to one million households (many of them low-income households) access to a vast pool of digital knowledge and online economic opportunities.  As a gateway to the online world, the scheme promises to give children the chance to sharpen IT skills that will be essential to their future prosperity.  In a 21st century knowledge economy equality of access delivers equality of opportunity.

While Gordon Brown’s intention is clearly laudable, the announcement raises a number of important questions that the government will need to address if the scheme is to be successful.

• What role should the government play in helping people develop new skills so that they can make the most of this opportunity?

• What guidance will need to be given to ensure that people use the vouchers wisely and invest in environmentally-friendly technology that will support their children’s’ educational needs?

• What safeguards should be introduced to ensure that children can access the internet safely?

• How can the scheme be protected against financial fraud and misuse? 

Ultimately, if this is to be a sustainable scheme that delivers on its promises there will need to be careful engagement with the market and relevant regulatory bodies on these issues.

By Melissa Frewin, Transformational Government Programme Manager