Chattering classes deserve a debate about e-government
Michael Cross writes in The Guardian about Transformational Government:
What no one has done is set out the e-government programme in a political context. It’s never featured prominently in election manifestos, or been debated in Parliament, let alone put to a referendum. Instead, it’s presented almost as a force of nature, an inescapable tide of demography and technical innovation.
Yet there is nothing necessary or inevitable about joined-up e-government. The UK is not a unitary state like Singapore, and there seems to be a perfectly respectable argument for allowing taxpayer-funded organisations to operate as islands of information, held on paper, if people really want it that way. As it happens, I think that would be bonkers, but we need – as politicians always say – to have that debate.
Thanks to an almost inconceivable blunder at the interface between HMRC and the National Audit Office, that debate is now getting under way. Its ebb and flow will mingle with, and be reinforced by, existing streams of concern about ID cards, the NHS electronic care records service and the ContactPoint children’s index. This is healthy and necessary, because all these projects should be seen as part of a whole.
December 22nd, 2007 at 10:28
This debate will reveal three things.
Firstly, the impetus behind eGovernment is a naïve hostility to the good work done by front-line staff. The papers written by the likes of the Cabinet Office and the New Local Government Network explicitly seek to replace the professional judgement of these experienced staff with computer systems.
Second, the driving force is not the UK government but the EU with its 5-year plans, eEurope (2000-05) and i2010 (2005-10). The UK and its 26 partner countries are just trying to implement the EU’s wishes.
Third, the effect of the ’scream test’ suggested — turn off the computer systems and see who screams — would be an access of renewed front-line relief, pride and energy, the interference of their ignorant political masters being at last removed.