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The Rt. Hon. Patricia HewittWorld Congress on Information Technology: "Better Government: The Vision and the Challenges" |
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It is a great pleasure to be here with so many distinguished speakers and participants. And I should like to congratulate Taiwan on hosting such a successful and well-attended congress ? a real tribute to Taiwan's leading position as a high-tech island. Prime Minister Tony Blair appointed me last July as the UK's first e-Minister. Of course, that's nearly four Internet years ago. In those days, perhaps the No 1 issue was the cost of Internet access for UK consumers. Today, according to the latest benchmarking data, our domestic consumers enjoy the cheapest Internet access in the world. I am responsible for co-ordinating the Government's work on all Information Age issues. Today, I shall talk about what we are doing to put government online - to create electronic government. In government, as in business, we are all learning from each other, which is why a congress like this is so useful. We are all learning by doing. There is, of course, a great deal going on - much of it in cities and states as we've heard here. But I believe we have one of the most ambitious programmes of transformation of any major national government. But you will understand that this is work in progress. First, let me set e-government in the wider context. We all know we are living through an economic, social and technological revolution. Or rather, we are making that revolution. The pace of change is startling. The way I like to sum it up is that:
TB story Last year, Tony Blair set the goal of making the UK the best place in the world for electronic commerce. And we were pleased to see that a recent Economist Intelligence Unit study suggests that - with the exception only of the Netherlands - we are indeed the best place in the world to do business. Certainly we remain the No 1 destination for inward investment to the European Union - and we are working hard to keep it that way. Our second goal is universal Internet access no later than 2005 - and I believe we'll get there much faster. Internet access, of course, won't be just through PCs at home and at work. Increasingly, it will come through digital TV - and mobile devices. We have just held the world's first auction for Third Generation mobile spectrum, and we expect to see very fast roll-out of infrastructure and new applications. We are also seeing a very fast take-up of digital TV - from zero to over 3 million in just over 12 months. And third, all Government services on-line by 2005. We are now conducting a review across government to ensure that we have the plans and budgets in place to deliver that goal. Our strategy can be summarised very simply. We have to get the market framework right. That means driving competition further and faster into our already highly liberalised telecommunications markets. The growing competition between telco's and ISP's is driving down Internet access costs fast. As a recent global benchmarking study revealed, our residential customers - and many of our businesses - now have the cheapest Internet access in the world. It means modernising our laws. Parliament has now passed the Electronic Communications Act, which confirms the legal validity of digital signatures and enables us to update hundreds of existing laws, so that paper and pen is no longer required. At the European level, too, we are working with other European member states to create a true single market in electronic commerce. The Electronic Commerce Directive - recently passed by the European Parliament - is an important break-through, which allows any UK-based company that complies with our statutory regulations to sell on-line to consumers in any other European member state, without having to comply separately with fourteen other sets of legal requirements. Second, we have to close the digital divide. The great opportunities that the Internet brings must be available to everyone - and not just the wealthy or best-educated. We are connecting all our schools and libraries to the Internet. Almost every secondary school is now connected, and the majority of our primary schools. Existing teachers are being trained in the new technologies - and from this year, all new teachers will graduate with a good level of ICT competence. And in several schools, we are now piloting laptops for all teachers, to help them work more effectively ? and laptops for all pupils, to help them learn more effectively. We are also creating, this year, 700 UK online centres in low-income communities. These will allow anyone in the neighbourhood to drop in and try the Internet. They'll offer people the chance to borrow a PC or laptop to use at home, or to try their hand at creating their own multi-media web site. Like every country, we are short of people with ICT skills. So we're offering discounts on ICT training courses. And we've created learndirect ? a new organisation that will offer high-quality on-line learning, in ICT and many other subjects, so that people can learn at work, at home, or in a learndirect local centre. The third element of the strategy is to put Government itself online. That, I believe, is the biggest challenge of all. And I shall devote the rest of my presentation to explainig how we are tackling it. Government doesn't face the same commercial and competitive pressures as business. There is no burning platform. Instead, we have to generate our own imperative to change from within. But of course, we face our own drivers of change. Citizens are becoming more demanding. When they can bank or shop or book their travel on the phone or online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, they increasingly want the same 24 by 7 service from government too. At the same time, costs have to be kept down. Neither individuals nor businesses want to pay higher taxes - and in any case, global financial markets exercise their own discipline. So, just like business, government has to do more with less. Scale of the task
? equally, you can see scale of the opportunities. Potential savings on government procurement alone. Office of Government Commerce suggests savings of many millions of pounds. Our starting point is very simple. G to C - Government to Consumer - means that, like any e-business, we have to start with our customers. Our customers are individual citizens, but they are also businesses - particularly SME's. But too much of the time, our citizens are confused. Different government departments, different public agencies, non-departmental public bodies and local authorities. Services organised for the convenience of government officials, not the convenience of the consumer. Vetical silos, not horizontal processes. And - like every other large, long-established organisation - legacy IT systems that won't talk to each other. Our Department of Social Security alone operates over 100 different IT systems. So our goal is to make life easier for our customers ? individual citizens and businesses alike. We recently published our e-government strategy, our road-map for this journey. We want citizens to be able to access government any time, any where and using any device. Wired or wireless. PC, TV, mobile phone, palm-top, laptop and a host of other appliances. And if they prefer to talk to someone - on the phone or face to face - then of course the official they deal with should be using the same Internet-enabled system. So the user will access public services through a portal. Right now, we're creating a new portal - UK online. It's designed to be a one stop shop for government. It'll be customisable - so that users can get information and services that fit their family situation, where they live, and what they're interested in. We're also building a portal for SME's - businessadviceonline. Again, tailored to the needs of the user - the size of the business, the sector, where it's located, which markets it sells to. But users of government services won't be confined to government portals. Private companies will combine government and commercial services. For example, ihavemoved.com lets you register one change of address when you move home - and then deals on your behalf with utilities, the post office and so on. Not for profit organisations will be involved as well. For instance, a service is planned for people with disabilities - seetheperson.com that will link users to government services, charitable bodies, transport services, and pharmaceutical and specialist equipment providers. At the back end we'll still have the different departments and agencies. But, of course, they have to be tied together if the customer is to experience a seamless service. Most of our government departments are now connected to the Government Secure Intranet - the GSI. The next stage is to create what we've called the Government Gateway ? the middleware that will enable legacy systems to talk to each other. And as part of our e-government strategy, we're now mandating XML for government systems and working with the GovTalk consortium to develop the necessary schemas. Already, the Inland Revenue is launching the world's first online tax filing service to use XML technology. As we know from business, there are many stages involved in going online. The first - level 1 - simply involves putting information or government forms online. Brochure-ware. Then we move to simple transactions and services - intelligent forms completed and returned on-line. Next come complex transactions - filing income tax returns, for example, and making secure electronic payments. But beyond that, we in government need to think about how we can exploit the Internet's potential to create 'mass customised' services to meet the individual needs of individual citizens, and to create entirely new services. That's what's happening in the commercial world. There are examples everywhere. One in the UK is 'Stoves' - a company making cooking equipment that no longer has a production line. Instead, it uses small teams to build products to precise customer requirements - with over 5000 variations possible. It's happening in government too. In Finland for example, tax forms are sent to citizens already completed with details of income and expenditure. The individual citizen is just asked to check to see if these are correct. Let me show you a few examples of how we are starting to put government online in the UK. The National Health Service, the NHS. We have already created NHS Direct - a 24 hour, seven days a week telephone helpline staffed by nurses, using cutting edge call centre technology. The principle is simple: give people fast advice and information so that they can care for themselves and their families when it is safe to do so - and guide them to the right health service, at the right time and place, when they need professional care. Routinely, two thirds of callers are advised to take a more appropriate course of action than they had intended before calling NHS Director. That's particularly important when you realise that thousands of people would otherwise have gone to an overcrowded Accident and Emergency Ward when they didn't need to. Now we're putting NHS Direct online. Information on health is one of the main reasons people use the Internet, but the quality of material is not always reliable. NHS Direct Online has evaluated all the main health sites, and signposts people to the best ones to use. One of our most popular sites - the Foreign Office - provides up to date travel advice on over a hundred different countries. Much simpler, more efficient and cheaper than the telephone service it is beginning to replace. The system also invites users to register their e-mail address and countries of particular interests. It then uses 'push' technology to send automatic updates when conditions change in those countries. A better service - at a lower cost. Childcare Link is just one example of how we're connecting up different services. Traditionally, if you're a woman wanting to return to work after looking after your children, you would have to go to the careers office to get advice. The job centre to find out about jobs and training opportunities. The benefits agency to see whether you'd actually be better off working than remaining on social security benefits. And all over the place to see if anyone could look after your children while you were at work. Childcare Link was piloted in Cambridge - a city that had already created a partnership with business to instal on-line kiosks for the community. Now it's being rolled out nationwide. It brings together information on jobs, training and local childcare - all at the click of the mouse. Now we are bringing together the Benefits Agency and the Employment Service - previously two different agencies - to create ONE. This will be a single service for everyone of working age ? people changing jobs, the unemployed and their partners, lone parents, people who are sick or disabled. Not just a single website ? but a single service. We know that transforming an established organisation into an e-business requires personal leadership and commitment from the top. Our Prime Minister is giving that leadership. And he has created both a political and an official structure to ensure that we deliver on our goals. As I indicated earlier, I co-ordinate our Information Age work across government. I also have day to day responsibility for e-commerce: essentially for getting the market right, getting our SMEs on-line, and ensuring that we drive ICT through our more traditional, established industries. I work very closely with another Minister, Ian McCartney, who has the day to day responsibility for e-government. And I chair a group of Ministers who are responsible within their own departments for ICT and Information Age matters. I am supported by our lead official, the e-Envoy, who is based at the centre of government - in the Cabinet Office. He chairs a network of senior officials, Information Age Champions in every department and agency. Like other large organisations, we're having to resolve the tension between how much we centralise decision-making and how far we leave departments free to initiate and be entrepreneurial. And like other large organisations, we've learnt that there are some functions that must be performed centrally. Probably the most important is to mandate the basic technical framework : adopting I/P based standards for all government systems. Making the browser the key interface for access and manipulation of all information. And adopting XML as the cornerstone for government data integration. Central government doesn't have to buy everyone's computers: but it must create the standards that allow the government system to operate as a whole. This structure of e-Ministers and Information Age Champions is driving forward the G to C transformation that I've talked about. But it is also driving forward G to G - government to government - joining up the different parts of the UK government itself. Information and communications technology will enable this transformation of government services. But we've learnt a vital lesson about IT and government. In the past, IT procurement hasn't always worked well. We've had too many cases where an IT project hasn't delivered the savings it promised, or where the system simply hasn't worked. Of course, that's been true in the private sector too. If you simply apply IT to existing business processes, you don't get the results you hoped for. We have to stop treating IT projects as IT projects: instead, we have to understand that we are transforming business processes and using ICT to enable that change to happen. So we're changing the way we handle IT procurement, and starting to create instead more effective partnerships between government and the private sector. We are also transforming the way we exchange information right across government. I talked about government departments operating in isolation from each other. We recently discovered, for instance, that across the UK government, we had 15 different teams all dealing with different aspects of our relationship with Russia. But most of them didn't know the others existed! Our new Knowledge Network will change that. You may have had a chance to watch Prime Minister's questions on CNN. Once a week, for half an hour, the Prime Minister goes to the House of Commons and answers questions on any subject from other Members of Parliament. All the information needed to brief him had to be collected by telephone and post, and put on paper. Now it's done on-line. The Prime Minister's Office already has on-line access to over 4000 documents, all regularly updated. Later this year, that system will become part of a government-wide Knowledge Network that will link departments and agencies with each other and with the outside world. Each Minister and government official will be able to get the data we need, when we need it. So there is the vision : access for our individuals and our businesses, any time, any way, any where. And there are the challenges : Start with the citizen, not the service We certainly haven't achieved everything right yet. The world is changing so fast, that this is a journey without end. But we are working hard to make the United Kingdom one of the most exciting knowledge-driven economies in the world. One of the best places to do e-commerce. A world leader in e-government. We're already working in partnership with many of you here. And I hope to work with more of you - and learn from all of you - as we drive this revolution forward and, in doing so, help to create a better life for all our people. |
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Other speeches by The Rt. Hon. Patricia Hewitt
(the following are available from the archive) |
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