Joined-up government has secured two notable achievements. Firstly, with the work of the CPS and Merseyside police in bringing the killers of Anthony Walker to justice today.
Secondly, with the Department for Constitutional Affairs being named yesterday as winner in the Guardian’s Joined-up Government category as well as overall winner. The Guardian reported that the
With the new pensions report to be published today to set a new retirement age of 67 I wonder if anyone would point out the possible conflict with another population trend? The belief that the rise in levels of obesity in young people will mean they could die younger than their parents. Though there are sceptics regarding this idea, I only ask because having worked on a WHO-backed programme concerned with young people’s health this concern seems strongly held with dramatic evidence of the rise of obesity in the US:
But maybe that’s part of the calculation for increasing the retirement age, with less young people to support the retired? It would be interesting to know if that was factored in.
Yesterday’s NESTA report into the worrying state of science experimentation in UK schools made me smile:
“The opportunities for science enquiry learning, in particular more open-ended forms of practical experimental work, continue to be inhibited by familiar issues. These include resourcing, time, concerns about health and safety, and the perceived restrictions of curricula and assessment systems..Yet this research shows that more innovative and creative approaches to science education can support the achievement of curriculum learning objectives, and encourage learners to consider further study in science.”
I mean surely, that was why Andy set up Crocodile Clips and others like him to provide educational software to enable scientific experimentation? I’ll just have to be patient and ask him when I next get to see him at BETT in January. In the meantime a free Galilean thermometer to the first person who can tell me my connection to ‘Croc Clips’ beyond once advising Andy on usability issues (btw the usual competition disclaimers apply)?
Just caught up in Computer Weekly on last week’s Choose and Book story with the DH and Connecting for Health in the press over changes to the programme. Connecting for Health chief executive Richard Granger is reported as saying that as a result of the need to include the independent sector that, “Choose and Book’s
Stuck for a Xmas gift idea? Here’s one gift which should appeal to the nerd in all of us, designed by Galileo, and now available at Argos..I have one myself and its a found way to check the temperature of the bedroom before lights out!
I had a very pleasant journey back to London in the company of Nicholas Wood-Dow who was at the conference to promote open source software. We touched base on a few topics including Brazil and the connection between the Brazilian ambassador’s wife Lucia Flecha da Lima and Princess Diana, open source software of course (the best example in the public sector being its use by the German Government), and even the Cambridge connection (him Cath’s & me Christ’s). I mentioned I had worked briefly for Linux User magazine (which also included contributions from Dr Douglas Carnall), and said I thought an article on how NASA has used GNU/Linux could motivate key policy makers who love shuttles and space stations and all the rest.
Nick also mentioned the fact that another Nick – Nicholas Negroponte – chairman and founder of the MIT Media Labs, has produced a sub-$100 PC to run on Linux and as I found out is aimed at children in Brazil, as well as China, Egypt, Thailand, and South Africa. It was launched at the the World Summit on the Information Society earlier in November.
The last session titled ‘No Citizen Left Behind’ focused on the complex issues of exclusion from e-services, a feature of all EU states. Kevin Cullen, of the Work Research Centre, summarised the usual solutions to bridge the digital divide from possible policy measures like universal service through to targeting excluded groups (indeed there is a service for older web users in my local inner city community centre which maybe I should take a look at).
On the important issue of accessibility Barry McMullin of Dublin City University launched the eAccessibility of public sector services in the European Union report. A long title for a study which found that 70% of the 436 sites (around 305 sites) surveyed failed to meet the basic Level ‘A’ standard. Not surprisingly it also found that there was a significant correlation between states with strong policies supporting website accessibility and accessibility of those sites. I was hoping the worst offending EU websites would be revealed by Barry but of course for the purposes of the study this information was anonomised. However, Barry did tell me that the detailed data has been provided in confidence to each of the members states so they can locally do whatever further they think is appropriate. So look out public sector web managers if your’s is one of the 70%!
So first off I went to the session titled ‘Local/Regional eGovernment: Programme for Change’ with Tim Rainey from Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council, Kari Nenonen, from Finland, and Tom Auwers from Belgium. Again some highlights..Tim highlighted the significant cost savings from the internet for dealing with customers, 21 euros for fac2face as against 0.37 euros for using the web. Kari started off by bringing Xmas greetings from Lapland, outlined the work of his city of Oulu, and pinpointed despite their considerable successes the need to raise levels of awareness among officialdom – key to implementing services rather than simply repeating current processes in digital format. Tom meanwhile produced a nice example in dealing with social security benefits where one key process time in dealing with customers had been reduced from 3-4 weeks to five seconds.
I followed this up with a session on procurement, which I freely admit is not the sexist of subjects, but starts to seem more appealing when you talk in terms of billions of pounds in the context of the NHS. And representing the health service, Peter Holt from DH, outlined the significant work being done in this area including the establishment of a commercial directorate within DH in 2003, and the restructuring of the national procurement organisation PASA, with the idea that the bottom line work in saving money in procurement feeds through to top line targets in freeing up money to plough into patient services. This chimed with AT Kearney’s Stephen Fowles who noted the gap in many public sector organisations in joining together procurement and core business performance – in contrast to the private sector – even though the cost level is about the same to both public and private sector. Finally, Mikkel Hipp Brun from Denmark raised the importance of standard business documents, and the role of the OASIS universal business language in this respect.
Right at the end of the morning Rolf Alter from CISCO in a plenary session highlighted again the potentially revolutionary impact of customer choice and co-creation, with work from around the globe from Victoria in Australia to Catalonia in Spain where co-production involved all stakeholders from individual to government. Don’t know if I agree that technology and government connect together simply because they both in their own way represent the ‘crystallisation of aspiration’ but it was a nice note to end the morning.
Georgie Best is dead, so he’s really just popped to the great big Yellow Submarine to hang out with John Lennon and the rest. (Hook here is that the FC United chant about Georgie the other night was sung to the tune of ‘we all live in a yellow submarine..’)
Now that I’m sort of recovered from last night’s footie and post-match drinks, I’m here to distill some highlights from the E-gov conference. So far liked the mention of ‘co-creation’ as an engine of change from William Heath from Kable. Also enjoyed Sean Smile from Accenture pinpointing the value of customer group directors who will take charge of customer groups as part of the new IT strategy.
Of course there are plenty of familiar themes, in particular the stress of the benefits and risks of sharing vs protecting individual’s information for example. This was highlighted by the chair of the Soham Enquiry Sir Michael Blancard, who also emphasised the need for cultural change within organisations to go alongside new technology to effect the glittering prize of ‘transformation’. Specifically that staff need to feel they occupy an environment in which they feel confident they are be able to pass on ‘bad news’ without needing to go into further detail.UK Information Commissioner Richard Thomas added that unpublished research from the ESRC had picked up on substantial public uncertainty about data sharing.