Business Design Centre, Islington

18 April 2000

I understand there is a concept called Internet time. It’s like Ministerial time —there’s never enough of it.

In Internet time you have to do in three months what it takes a whole year to do in real time.

In taking our agenda forward we’ve been working in Internet time.

• Published our detailed strategy for achieving Information Age Government: ‘E-Government’

• Published a series of technical framework documents on websites, smartcards, security, authentication and interoperability

• Set ourselves the task of ensuring that all services are delivered online by 2005

• Developed partnerships with industry and local government

• Introduced an Electronic Communications Bill

• Begun to tackle the problems of e-exclusion and information technology training and skills

• Been examining the lessons we can learn from Major IT Projects

• Commissioned the Cabinet Office’s Performance and Innovation Unit to look at electronic service delivery in the public sector

• And appointed an E-Envoy, Alex Allen along with Information Age Government Champions for every Government Department

•  We are delivering on-line advice on health, overseas travel, consumer protection, as well as offering Internet filing of self-assessment tax-returns and payments

You can already:

• Search the Companies House database of over 1.5 million registered companies and 5 million documents a year. You can get company reports, details of directors and disqualified directors mortgages
• Get export sales opportunities from our embassies abroad
• Get travel advice and full details of Consular Services abroad from the Foreign Office
• Download over 230 forms from the Court Service and get access to the daily lists for the Crown Court and Supreme Court
• Search the complete database of university courses or a database of over 1000 Access courses that prepare adult learners for admission to university
• Get consumer advice and information at the Consumer Gateway
• Fill in self-assessment tax returns and submit them to the Inland Revenue
• Access extensive information and advice for small businesses via the new Small Business Service.

I hope you’ll agree that we’ve made a start. A lot done, a lot to do.

In the coming year we expect that:

• Prescription information will be transferred electronically between GPs and pharmacies
• Online registration for VAT will be possible
• Vehicle details can be submitted electronically to DVLA and
• HGV certificates will be issued online

And within the next few years our aim is that people will be able electronically to:

• Look for work and be matched to jobs;
• Get information and advice about benefits
• Apply for training loans and student support
• Be paid by government for goods and services.

Well, the list goes on. But I’m sure you get the message.

We have created an environment in which government electronic services can flourish. They are already emerging, we have clear plans for more. These electronic services are not novelties, they are the early fruits of real transformation. A transformation that goes far beyond technology, but in which technology is an enabler.

It is important that we understand and manage this process.

The Performance and Innovation Unit Study into Electronic Service Delivery will help us do this. It is exploring the major benefits and also the challenges to electronic service delivery.

The benefits are fairly clear:

• Enhancing service quality Enhancing service quality for the citizen in terms of:

• Convenience: 24x7 services from home and
• Getting away from impersonal, dehumanising bureaucracy and using technology to give a personal touch. In a way that seems strange to many people, but modern IT can be a platform for responding to the individual in a more individual way.
  
• Electronic service delivery will help us to Modernise Government:

• It will put the focus on the citizen not the provider
• Lead to new partnerships between the public and private sectors to deliver new services
• And play a part in widening democratic participation — providing better opportunities for wide consultation and feedback

• Enhance UK international competitiveness

• Government can act as an exemplar of and driver of e-commerce for the UK economy as a whole.
• It can create a host of new opportunities for ventures to act as intermediaries between the citizen and government. This could be a big growth area.

So what about barriers. I would prefer to call them challenges.

• Government, its suppliers and the wider public sector need the motivation to change. Target setting has helped but old organisational structures are still resistant to real innovation.
• And those existing structures are finding it difficult to ‘join-up’ when their budgets, service delivery, employment practices, accountability and experience are based around old models
• The range of electronic delivery platforms is a challenge as well as an opportunity — personal computers, mobile phones with internet access, digital TVs, kiosks, even games consoles are some of the ways people will be able to access government services. Government does not want to pick winners from competing technologies or get locked into a particular way of doing things.
  
• Another challenge is access. We do not want to create a division between the information rich and the information poor. We do not want the best, most convenient services to be available only to the relatively wealthy, or well educated, or young.
• And finally, we need to deal with the problem of trust. If people are going to use electronic government services they have to be confident that their information will be secure. Many people are reluctant to order goods over the Internet because they are afraid that someone will intercept their credit card details. In providing the kind of highly personal information that government holds there concerns could be even greater. The Electronic Communications Bill will help to reassure people but we must play our part as well.

So these are some of the issues the PIU is exploring. They would welcome your views. They are based in the Cabinet Office. I would urge you to get in touch with them.

I would now like to pick out some issues that I hope you will think about during the conference.

Why is the government modernisingWhy is the government modernising?

• Good services are crucial to quality of life
• You, as public servants can make a difference to citizens by providing better services

The second concerns what we are doing to modernise. Key initiatives are:

Listening to customers – People’s Panel, Better Government for Older People, Consumer Focus and the new code on consultation.

Partnership working is at the core of better quality public service.

This means joining-up across Whitehall in the development of policies and joining-up across departments and agencies in the delivery of services. It means working with customers, suppliers and local communities to get the best out of people, improve performance, improve communications, improve delivery and, for public sector workers, improve the quality of the working environment.

But as well as listening and working in partnership, the right frameworks are essential.

We have set out our strategic framework for public service in the information age in our document titled ‘e-government’ published at the beginning of April.

E-government sets out how the public sector can transform itself through business models that exploit new technology.

The key themes are:

• Building services around citizen’s choices
• Making government and its services more accessible
• Making government more socially inclusive and
• Using government information better

It also represents our detailed strategy for achieving the new electronic service delivery target agreed by the Cabinet and announced by the Prime Minister at the end of March.

I am sure you are aware of this. It speeds up the pace of change in government by bringing forward the target for offering all services online from 2008 to 2005.

Departments have been asked to set out their e-business strategies by October 2000, with the E-Envoy — who owns the strategy and will report to me — also reporting to the Prime Minister in December 2000 on progress.

This will be a major challenge. It will involve joined-up working between departments, an end to bureaucratic paperchases and the development of new ways of working.

It is challenging but it is essential if we are going to achieve the Prime Minister’s objective of making the UK the world’s leading Internet economy.

It is also essential to the delivery of top class public services.

Finally, how you and your organisation fits into the picture. I have some challenges to issue about that.

I have already outlined some of the challenges we face. I would now like to be more specific.

Firstly, to the private sector.

There will be opportunities for the private sector. But our relationships must be open and transparent.

We have been learning from the IT mistakes of the past and we are not going to repeat them.

Also, if you want partnership, if you want to contribute to our vision, you must understand it. Partnership must be built around a common language:

• read our e-government strategy if you have not already done so
• seek to understand the administrative and legislative frameworks within which government operates;
• understand how government works.

We are planning to work very differently in the future.

But our successful partners will understand where we are now and where we want to go.

My challenge to you is to understand our business if you want to offer us effective services.

My challenges to local government echo the words of Bernard Quorell — Chief Executive of the Isle of Wight Council and Local Government Information Age Champion — writing in the supplement to the Conference.

Bernard picks up on a number of themes from the local authority guidelines:

• the need to define an e-strategy for each authority’s business
• the need to develop targets to guide implementation
• the need to share best practice
• And — a theme I very much endorse— the need to set Information Age Government within the wider modernisation agenda.

These are real challenges, calling for hard work and leadership. I hope that in reflecting upon how you will rise to them, you think about Bernard’s comments about Best Value, Beacon Councils and the Local Government Bill. Above all, I hope you reflect on the real difference Information Age Government in Local Government can make to your customers.

Finally, my challenge to those of you in central government departments and agencies.

Central government faces a range of challenges. Some are technical, some are legal.

They need to be overcome if we are to deliver electronically a range of services:

• General information obtained from Government General information obtained from Government (tax/benefit rules, health information, employment regulations)
• Personal information obtained from Government Personal information obtained from Government (NI records, personal tax details)
• Personal information supplied to Government Personal information supplied to Government (change of address, change of circumstances)
• Payment to Government

(vehicle licence, general taxation, council tax, NIC)

• Payment from Government Payment from Government (benefits, student grants)

In doing this we face legacy systems that are creaking at the seams; Acts and Regulations drafted long before the growth of Internet technologies bureaucratic management structures that hark back to the nineteenth rather than forward to the 21^st century. We must maintain existing systems whilst introducing new ones.

We must start putting policy outcomes at the top of our agenda. And we must be willing to take managed risks. This programme is as daunting as it is important. It is important because it will make a difference. I hope that as individuals you will make a personal commitment to contribute.

Indeed, I hope that everyone who has the opportunity to contribute to the modernisation process, in central and local government, in the wider public sector or the private sector, will make that personal commitment.

Modernisation presents us all with a challenge.

To everyone I would say, making the best use of new technology is a technical, but above all a human challenge, to which we must rise. I hope you enjoy this conference and that you all play a full part in the coming years in the transformation of public services in Britain. 

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