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Last updated: 15 May 2009
Thank you, John [Higgins, Intellect]. Welcome, everyone and thank you for coming.
A little over a year ago, I addressed the Tower ’08 conference to share with you my views and ideas on how technology can transform government.
In the intervening time, we’ve continued to see example after example of people from all walks of life harnessing the power of technology. At last year’s conference, only the truly young, the truly cool or the truly geeky knew about Twitter – now, Stephen Fry tweets about getting stuck in a lift and people as decidedly un-young and un-cool as the US Congress tweet presidential addresses. In that same time, we’ve seen the Obama campaign effect what can only be described as one of the most profound examples of harnessing digital technology in public life.
Well, as they say: a year is a long time in politics. But it’s a nanosecond in government. It won’t be the most shocking thing for all of us in this room to hear that sometimes the pace of change is slower than we’d like it to be. Which means that the successes that you’ve delivered in the past year take on that much more meaning.
So what I’d like to do today is first, say, ‘thank you’. Thank you for remaining the pioneers for change. Thank your for making the digital realm open up for millions of UK citizens.
Second, I want to talk about what we’re doing right now, and what the next steps are.
And third, I want to issue something of a call to arms; I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved so far, but we all know that it’s the result of a tremendous amount of commitment, and we absolutely cannot let up until the job is done.
The progress we’ve made so far is good by any standards.
DWP’s shared services saved £50 million.
The Audit Commission’s expanded data-matching programme helped detect £140 million in fraud and overpayments across local authority services in England.
Over 155 million prescriptions through the Electronic Prescription Service.
DirectGov has over 15 million visits a month and customer satisfaction for Businesslink is better than most private companies, at 90 per cent – I’m told that’s better than Amazon.
Those are just some of the many examples of how technology is changing the face of the service landscape in Britain. There are many more in the Transformational Government Annual Report, published today. I urge you to pick up a copy – for a little light reading…
People have been referring to ‘the age of the internet’ for over a decade now – and in every instance it’s been true.
Technology has so transformed our lives in such a short period of time that we are occasionally guilty of letting our imaginations run away with us. We have seen absolutely revolutionary changes, there’s no doubt about that, but those changes have come in stages, and there is still a way for us to go.
Nearly fifteen years ago, Web 1.0 was about the creation of websites; though those websites were static pages with bits of text – or in the case of many government sites - a great deal of text. A lot of them, pioneering as they were, looked like the same kinds of policy documents that have put all of us to sleep at one time or another. Fast-forward to Web 2.0 – the social web – and we’ve got intuitive interfaces – we’ve got social networking, global interaction, worlds of information at our fingertips. This is the bit that really excites me as a civic representative: this is about connecting people, getting everyone’s voices heard; it’s the greatest democratising tool of our time. Now we’re gearing up for the next phase; Web 3.0 is the data web – the journey is all about joining up data.
For us, this is roughly equivalent to the advent of television 50-odd years ago – I'm always struck when I watch Mad Men by the fact that the way they’re going through the transition to television is the same way that we’ve made our transition to the internet. A couple episodes ago, they were appointing first Head of Television and Product Placement; the same way companies now have heads of digital and web communications. Or the way the Cabinet Office just appointed its first director of Digital Engagement – hi, Andrew – or the COI is recasting itself with a digital function. There is no question in my mind that digital engagement should be a strand in all departmental teams, sitting alongside traditional media and policy functions. It should be thought of as an important other channel to television, radio and print media. Now let me also say, lest the more analogue journalists get the wrong impression – I am not making a new spending announcement. These things should become core business to departments within existing budgets.
I want to tell you that I love geeks. The idea that Steve Wozniak can take part in the American version of Strictly Come Dancing is a cultural milestone that should not go unmissed.
But just because there has been a re-make of Star Trek does not mean that Digital Technologies should remain the preserve of the geek – the technically able, early adopters.
Using digital tools, helping citizens navigate the public sector through social networks, should be the preserve of all public servants in the modern age.
I know that telling you we need to make best use if the internet is equivalent to my rubbing two sticks together and telling you about this stuff called fire… But we all know government doesn’t necessarily move with the same acceleration as other big institutions. I know that sometimes – from both the inside and the outside – the pace of change can seem snail-like. And while it can frustrate us, we know that first and foremost, government needs to be thorough. Last year I told you that we have to provide services with pinpoint accuracy at scale with no tolerance of failure. It’s the tallest order in the book.
Secondly, we have to make a massive cultural shift that we all know – for any insitution - can be a slow and painful process. I say to people outside the public sector that they should imagine making massive change in a midsize organisation – say, 500 or so. Even with the most responsive, fast-moving company, that’s going to take work. Now imagine that change multiplied by 1,000; or 100,000. This is the scale of government’s task.
Which shouldn’t be read as making excuses, or that we don’t evolve to accommodate change. But I’d like to see us get even better at it. I’m not saying that we need to bet the farm on the next new thing – I’m saying that we try small, innovative ways of doing things, and as they work, we bring them into the mainstream: innovate small and scale.
This is our chance to personalise the relationship between government and the citizen.
I am far from the only Tom Watson in the world. I share a name with a couple of thousand of Tom Watsons, at least. I want to be distinguished from Tom Watson the professional golfer, Thomas Watson the legendary New York blogger and social entrepeneur, Thomas Watson, the former chairman of IBM and Tom Watson, the highly esteemed Broadway wig designer. Technology is how my needs are personalised. I’m not the only one; all our public service users, all our clients now expect that personal attention.
It’s time to equip government to rise to the challenge of higher expectations. And to do this, we will rely on your involvement, your perseverance and your leadership.
What comes next: POI response
Fifteen months ago, Power of Information was yet another document lying in the middle of our Whitehall in-trays. Now, I consider it the blueprint for the core business of government.
But in order to take on the recommendations, we had to get the basics right. The Prime Minister has endorsed the Power of Information and talked about the four principles of openness:
Open feedback
Open conversation
Open information; and
Open innovation
And I’m pleased to say that we have already made progress.
So today, I’d like to give you a sense of what we’re doing.
The Cabinet Office is building its capacity to support its leadership role:
I can also tell you that since publication of POI taskforce report, we have made rapid progress on the thorny subject of making the public’s data more public. The bottom line is, this is the public’s data, we just want to make it useful:
Part of the reason we can make what really are some important steps is that we’ve laid solid foundations. We can only start building because we’ve got everything in order:
We’ve already started the website rationalisation process; we’ve already made our websites accessible, and we’ve launched a package on government usability, offering standards, help and guidance.
Which leaves us free to start innovating:
Innovate.direct.gov.uk [External website] is a shared innovation space for government. This is saying to government: if you’re innovating in your webspace, open it up to the public, see if there’s a better way to do it; or, as a colleague recently described it: walk into government’s kitchen, stand next to Jamie Oliver, use the same ingredients and come up with a better dish.
But, as I've said, this is a massive cultural change, and we need leadership.
Government leadership is in place, you have our commitment. Now we need your help.
So here’s my call-to-arms:
We need you to help us. You are experts. You know the problems. You know the solutions. We need to continue working together to truly transform service delivery.
We have a moment to grasp here, and it’s essential that everyone get involved. This change hasn’t occurred in a vacuum, and we need to keep working if it’s going to continue. You have been absolutely key to getting the pace of change up and moving, and I’d like to thank everyone for their contribution. But, as I said, there’s a lot more to be done. I’m here today to ask you to keep it up, to help us to truly transform government.