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

Recent weeks have seen speeches from both Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband on the continued reform of public services, stolidly invoking the Blairite mantra of citizens as ‘consumers’, armed with the weapon of ‘choice’. Hot on their heels is Tom Watson, the erudite and scholarly minister responsible for the transformational government agenda, who this week announced his new Power of Information Taskforce.

The Taskforce is predicated on ideas expounded in the 2007 Power of Information report. Commissioned by the government and written by Ed Mayo and Tom Steinberg, the report examines the ways in which we ‘use, re-use, create, recombine and distribute’ information. It also considers how people organise around information dependent on how it is presented. New ways of packaging and sharing information lead to new groupings and communities of understanding, which in turn lead to new ways of solving old problems. Against this context it looks at the use of technology to augment what we as a species already do and always have done – communicate and share information.

Tom Watson is very keen on sharing. In the crèche of government obstreperous ministers and civil servants are rarely willing to share their toys. However, there is more to Mr Watson’s task than simply getting one department to share information with another. Government must also share with citizens and, worse still, must let them play.

At the recent joint Cabinet Office/Intellect transformational government symposium, Tower ’08, Mr Steinberg cited the example of how his own organisation’s website theyworkforyou.com has profoundly changed political behaviour. Using publicly available information, made easily intelligible and accessible, the site has made MPs’ activities in Parliament much more transparent. This in turn has prompted parliamentarians to behave much as chefs in an open kitchen in a restaurant; there is a clear incentive towards demonstrable best practice.

In his speech on Monday Tom Watson invoked H. G. Wells’ idea that one day the ‘whole of human memory can be... made accessible to every individual’, what he called a ‘world brain’. This idea can be taken further, towards what Andy Clark and David Chalmers called the ‘Extended Mind.’ They suggest that everyday objects used to aid cognitive thought actually form part of that cognition. For example, directions written on a notepad are no more removed from the thought process than the same directions committed to memory.

Technological advances now mean that citizens need be no further removed from social policy than ministers or civil servants. If you make services ‘with boundaries porous to external ideas’, the users can shape the services to deliver maximum benefit. The community of knowledge becomes a community of participation, a kind of extended cognition: instead of government thinking for citizens, each citizen can think and act for themselves based on exactly the same information.

With opportunity comes risk, however. Those currently out of the loop are in danger of being left further behind. In this the government still carries the weight of old-school responsibility. Closing the ‘digital divide’ is a pre-requisite for removing barriers of principle to freer exchange of information. Without it we run the risk of a developing a schizophrenic ‘world brain’.

This should hold as the key tenet of how we as citizens think of our government, our services and ourselves. With technology, with opportunity, as with information, we must share and share alike.

Matt Mulley, Transformational Government Programme Executive

Almost nine months after the prime minister first announced the creation of a National Security strategy and a National Security Council, the government has taken the wraps off what amounts to a detailed assessment of the threats and hazards facing the UK.

This is an important first step, as one of the trickiest parts of this type of work is the need to have a clear understanding of what you’re trying to fight – thus far the UK public’s perception of national security is that it’s something of a mix between counter-terrorism and an excuse to rummage through your bins.

Today’s media fanfare is therefore useful in improving people’s understanding that in a globalised world, security is more than the metal detector at the airport. The many successes of Britain’s first-rate security community are based on good intelligence, effectively used, and strong links across government, criminal justice, defence and our international allies. Likewise the protection and resilience of our critical infrastructure (utilities, telecoms, health and transport) depends on a wide group of people working in concert – from MI5 to fire brigades to BT to the Army to industry.

All of these threats are brought into sharp focus by the forthcoming London Olympics, which for a variety of reasons present a tempting target for terrorism, as well a substantial infrastructure and resilience challenge. The teams running the security of the Olympics have been engaging with industry well ahead of the event to try and bring the most effective programme management and technology into their planning.

Appropriately, the Olympics team is racing ahead of the competition in establishing strategic relationships with all its different partners. In the new interdependent era the government has described, this kind of mature engagement is the way forward if ministers and officials want to access the innovation, expertise and skills of UK industry.

Ultimately, the security strategy (subtitled “Security in an interdependent world”) is the latest in a slew of similar “threat analysis” papers from think tanks, academics and indeed from industry. However the fact that it has been published at all is commendable and represents a welcome commitment to addressing the modern form of threats and hazards.

What’s important is that the government now follows through. Without effective implementation at a practical level, the good intentions and political vision behind the strategy will make little impact on the ground, and without a strong partnership with industry government will struggle to deliver the solutions which make much of our response possible.

The PM has today told us what he thinks about security. Now it’s time for us to step up and let government know what we think.

Tom Watson may have barely unpacked his pencil case at his new ministerial desk in the Cabinet Office, but he’s already sparked excited chatter among those with an interest in government technology. Murmurs of formative years spent programming arcane machines, along with a pioneering and protective attitude towards blogging itself, mark him out as an instinctive ‘friend’ of the technological cause. His opening keynote speech at the Tower ’08 – Moving Forward event on Monday was certainly in-keeping with this impression.

The two-day conference, a joint venture between Intellect and the Cabinet Office, was focused on how public services are designed, enabled and delivered, with the ultimate shared aim of making a positive difference to the lives of citizens. The minister’s speech provided a refreshingly frank assessment of some of the issues which tend to get in the way of that end result, and promised that his most frequent questions to ‘his’ civil servants would be, ‘Why not?’

Well, some of the ‘why nots’ present themselves in fairly short order. A leading mobile phone company has 17 million customers to look after; government has four times that number. A well-known supermarket maintains 1200 stores in the UK; The Department for Children, Schools and Families’ school portfolio alone covers more than 25,000 institutions country-wide. And, as Tom admitted, no private-sector organisation has to conduct its business in anything like the media glare which regularly and relentlessly focuses itself on the doings of government.

Beyond the basic logistical challenges which face the government, the difficulty of re-orienting this monolith to keep pace with rapidly developing social and technological change should not be underestimated. Being the antithesis of the patrician benefactor, Tom Watson’s solution is to turn the government into a ‘giant open source community’. The idea that citizens know what would benefit them most, and suit them best, leads naturally to the idea that they should have some say in how their services are shaped. To allow ‘everyone to improve’ something, the necessary information must be shared, and therein lies the rub. 

Fears about the sharing of data are very real, and totally understandable. It’s hardly controversial to muse that the government’s track record on it is not good. Technology’s track record, however, is. Hi-tech, secure systems underpin every facet of modern life, and the IT industry is certainly not short of ideas which could help the government improve citizen services. The UK IT industry is, after all, made up largely of UK citizens, with a vested interest in those very services.

The idea behind Tower ’08 was to explore service transformation in a much wider context than simply technology. If government is to meet the needs and expectations of its citizens, it must understand them. Likewise, if citizens are to improve their own services, they must understand them. People are not just the end-user of the system, they are the lynchpin of it. To turn a public service into a personal one will require a cultural upheaval to mirror the technological revolution.

Linking up the myriad domains of the leviathan will be difficult. There was, however, a time in the evolution of everything that works when it didn’t work. If sharing data draws departments together, if a more agile and responsive government machine can ask less of its citizens and support them more, if utilising open source really can deliver personalised services directly to those who need them the most, then why not?

By Matthew Mulley, Transformational Government Programme Executive

Arsenal football club’s new Emirates stadium sits imposingly among the well-appointed streets of Highbury as a sort of monument to modernity. The club moved there from their former ground - known in football circles as ‘The Highbury library’ because of its Grecian pillars and rather fusty atmosphere.

In 2006 with the new ground is the identikit modern stadium: aesthetically pleasing, easy to access, and at ease with its surroundings. All in all it seems an apposite choice of venue for the first meeting of the government co-ordinated Convergence Think Tank, which the avid Arsenal fan and former Secretary of State for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) James Purnell established.

The venue captures something about change from old models to new, and manages to frame the debate in terms of the consumer, some 60,000 of whom choose to spend their Saturdays (or whenever the games are played in the Sky-dominated Premiership) there in the decidedly analogue world, cheering on the Gunners. Change, from analogue to digital, and eventually to a converged set of services and devices, and how the consumer will manage this change are of course, some of the biggest issues to emerge in the convergence debate.    

James Purnell’s good friend, Everton fan, and successor as Secretary of State Andy Burnham opened the event and outlined what he wanted the think tank to examine. He began with a wry remark about his beloved Everton’s Goodison Park, and the contrast with the corporate sheen of the Emirates before stating that convergence is something that, first and foremost, is being driven by and affecting consumers. As such when the priorities of the think tank should concentrate on its impact on consumers. It will look to encourage open markets, empower consumers and citizens and allow universal access to high-quality content. Legislation may occur as an output of the think tank but is not a direct aim.

This is Burnham’s second stint at the DCMS. The first time he was a special adviser and in his opening remarks he recalled sitting in his office back in the late 1990s imagining a future where everyone was using their TV to send and receive emails. It is a useful motif of how far convergence has come already but also how difficult it is to anticipate which services consumers and citizens will really value and adopt. 

After Burnham came the big beasts of the media jungle, among them Ed Richards, chief executive of Ofcom, and Mark Thompson, director general of the, BBC both of whom spent time talking about issues of access for consumers and the fundamental difference between access and participation. Thompson read out a short letter he had recently received from a user.

‘Dear Mr Thompson’ it said. "I am a technophobe but can just about work Google. I googled ‘BBC’, ‘Iplayer’ and ‘Damage’ and there it was. Well done." That’s what is happening and that is what is expected, he said.

The think tank is a bold initiative by the government and has been warmly welcomed by industry. There are anxieties regarding its scope, scale and what it can realistically achieve, but to talk about the challenges this rapidly converging part of the world is presenting to consumers, citizens and government is clearly the right approach. This first session at the Emirates may have kicked off something significant. 

By Sam Ingleby, Intellect Programme Manager

Just over 10 years ago our new, well newish, prime minister Mr Blair delivered perhaps his most famous soundbite of all. When asked what his three priorities in government were he replied: ‘Education, education, education’.

Since then, the soundbite has been backed up with hard cash by the Labour government: measured between 1997 and the end of the last academic year, the core "per pupil" funding has risen by 48 per cetn in real terms - or £1,450 more per year per child. By the end of this academic year, it will be a 55 per cent increase.  Yet despite this considerable spike in capital investment from the government, standards have refused to show a commensurate improvement.  The government aims for 60 per cent of pupils to leave school at 16 with 5 A-C grrades at GCSE: in 2007 45.1 per cent of pupils were ending compulsory education with these qualifications - up from 35.6 per cent in 1997, but still some way below target. 

So, we have a government still wrestling with the thorny subject of how to drive up standards in schools.

This serves as some background for the announcement by schools minister Jim Knight that technology and its potential was going to be the latest weapon deployed to tackle educational disadvantage. The traditional school report is to be replaced by an electronic version delivered by email and consumer electronics, such as computers and mobile phones, should be used to give parents information about their children's school work. The minister said  this would give parents access to "frequently-updated information on children's achievement, progress, attendance, behaviour and special needs wherever, whenever they want, using password-protected, secure, online systems".

There all sorts of potential pitfalls to such an idea and the government is precariously positioned at the moment to embark upon such a large scale and ambitious IT project. This is to say nothing of the opposition from the powerful teaching unions who have predictably, if understandably, voiced concerns about teachers’ workloads as well as ‘Big Brother’ style privacy concerns.

However, and I say this as a former teacher, the chance to provide real-time feedback to parents and students on performance and areas of improvement could make an immeasurable difference in underachieving schools. Letting students know where they’re at and what they need to do to improve is an essential cornerstone of helping progression. Sharing this information with parents, some of whom Knight characterises as "hard to reach", could make all the difference.

This is really is convergence in action as information flows freely from a number of sources across networks to a number of devices. Parents can already receive an automatically generated text message sent by an attendance register at school if their child is inexplicably absent. Imagine what the affect would be of both child and parent receiving a text message on a Friday afternoon with the previous week's grades and next week's attainment targets contained. 

This is a remarkably bold and progressive move by the minister – unions have raised a sceptical eyebrow and greeted it "cautiously". If even the bare bones of it come into effect in schools, it will be a lasting and worthy legacy to 10 years of investment.   

By Sam Ingleby