MONDAY 13 MARCH 2000

MR BRIAN BENDER, MR ALEX ALLAN, MR PETER BURKE AND MR STEFAN CZERNIAWSKI

  60. You are saying that if they have a query, "Am I entitled?", instead of going down to the nearest Benefit Agency office, which may be some distance away, they can visit the website and ask the questions, but you are saying that they cannot then transact?
  (Mr Czerniawski) They cannot directly transact. Again, we have several stages in this. The first stage, which we will be building on over the next few months, is having the forms on the website available to them to fill in.

  61. Did you say within the next few months?
  (Mr Czerniawski) Yes.

  62. So you mean, on behalf of some constituent, when I am in my surgery and want to use my lap-top, if I want to know more, I can visit that website?
  (Mr Czerniawski) You can visit it today.

  63. I cannot download any form?
  (Mr Czerniawski) You can find the leaflets and information today. You will soon be able to find forms. The form will still need to be printed off and filled in by hand because of the whole issue about verifying signatures and identities, which is a dependency across the Government.

  64. I think I have heard you allude to one problem. I wonder whether there are not two. One, you said the computers were out of date and you were talking about old mainframes. Is not the other problem that you have systems between related government departments that cannot communicate with each other? You have got the Inland Revenue on one system, the Contributions Agency on another, the Benefits Agency on another, is this not a crazy world? How long is it going to take you to make them compatible, even without moving onto digital TV and the new mobile phone technology?
  (Mr Czerniawski) The objective that we are working towards on Social Security systems, which is true for Government systems generally and, indeed, for everybody else's systems, is that we get to a stage where we are less dependent on the specific architecture of the mainframe system, because we are managing the information and presenting it to staff and eventually to citizens in a common format accessible through a web browser. If you think about how the Internet works at the moment, you do not care what system the company is running that you are accessing the site of. Similarly, we should be able to get to the stage where it does not matter which bit of the Government is actually providing this information. Our challenge is to join up those channels of information.

  65. And thus join up the Government, in theory. Can I move onto a different member of society? Let us just assume that in the Stone Age, in a typical factory or place of employment, there was an ideas box somewhere, a little box tucked in the wall where people could drop in ideas that might impress the chargehand, the foreman or the works manager. We have moved on 100 years from then. How can junior officials—by which I mean anyone but the great and good, people lower down the order—visit their department's website and drop in ideas? Coupled with that, tell me how the whistle-blower is going to be facilitated?
  (Mr Bender) On your first question, Mr Wardle, giving the example of the Cabinet Office, on our internal Intranet site we have a modern form of suggestions scheme where people can put ideas up.

  66. But you are all smart and ready for promotion in the Cabinet Office. Let us go to the Immigration and Nationality Department. Let us think of people in the immigration services, hard working immigration officers at ports of control, somebody working down in Croydon. How are they going to be able to either whistle-blow or drop in ideas to which somebody can rapidly respond?
  (Mr Allan) I was quite encouraged that when I was in Australia before I came back to this job, I got an e-mail from a police inspector in Northumbria who was very keen to develop on-line services for the police, and he was asking whether I would support him. He applied and successfully got a grant from the Home Office to investigate this.

  67. And whistle-blowers? Let me just give you an example, without quoting names. Within the past few days I have received copies of an e-mail to me from a civil servant who had observed the televised proceedings of this Committee. He offered me some words of encouragement and blew the whistle. I will not say who he blew the whistle on. How can we encourage that if we really believe in open government?
  (Mr Bender) There are internal procedures for whistle-blowing inside departments that get away from the line. Again, if you forgive me for quoting the Cabinet Office, if a member of my staff is concerned about some practice then there are procedures they can do by e-mail or by old-fashioned techniques to ensure that senior management and people not in their line investigate that. I do not see that is different with the new technology, it provides more opportunities, as your informant showed.

  68. Yes. Ideally, the loop should not have anything to do with Members of Parliament or committees. I am not discouraging that, I am just saying that it would be better if it was within departments. Can I get some illustrations from you of up-to-date progress? You referred at one stage to MAFF and said MAFF and were saving mailing costs. It is my impression that most farmers, including even small farmers, who have a plethora of bumph and red tape to deal with, now have PCs, so should MAFF not be really making headway? May I couple with that another area, a Government development which has always had a reputation for heavy advisory paperwork is the DfEE pushing out to LEAs and schools, primary and secondary schools, the lot. To what extent are those two departments now using e-mail—let us stick to the basics—to get that word across and developing websites such that half of the correspondence can be avoided because the information is there if they visit the website?
  (Mr Allan) MAFF certainly want to get to the stage, and beyond that, where farmers can complete all forms electronically. As you say, some of the forms are very complicated and there will be huge advantages in terms of getting the data straight into MAFF's system if they can do that. That is certainly what MAFF are planning. DfEE have an explicit target that by 2002 all communications with schools will be carried out electronically and they will do away with paper circulars to schools, they are very committed to that as well.

  Chairman:I look forward to the time I can e-mail people their times.

  69. Mr Bender, in 1995 the Government set up a central public access website, you talked earlier on about decentralisation of decision making in the period subsequent to that, one of the consequences was that that rather got played down, what part does that now play in your new strategy?
  (Mr Bender) There is a single website called open.gov which went through a period of stagnation, which the Report refers to. That was relaunched last September and in the relaunch it implemented many of the issues raised in the NAO Report. Even this morning I was sent a copy of some PC magazine which was praising its new look. It is the main vehicle for someone who wants to get in contact with the Government who does not really know which agency to contact because there is an address list in open.gov.

  70. What I was really trying to find out is, there are lots of people in the Report that rather criticise the United States, which I thought was rather brave of us, since they are miles ahead of us, but it did criticise them in one aspect, in that it was not easy to navigate around all of Government and it would seem that this central website is the mechanism for doing that. What part will that play, the navigation of the ordinary citizen round the system in your new strategy?
  (Mr Allan) It is going to play a key role. One of things we are developing and will be launching later this year is a new Government portal, as it is called, which will provide much more friendly navigation to different services. Initially it will have access to the services that are available on-line and as more are added you will be able to use that means of access to any of the Government services that are available.

  71. I assume you are talking about the Government's Secure Intranet as the basis of that. Before I ask to you tell me about the progress on that, perhaps somebody could tell me—I do not know whether anybody has the answer—why they named the original site open.gov. It does seem to me not exactly the name when somebody wants to get into government computer technology. Is there going to be a new name and what role will the Government's secure Intranet play in the future?
  (Mr Allan) I do not know why the site was named that: that was, as you point out, some time ago. I think the new site will be accessed through a different name; I do not know that we have decided that yet. The Government's Secure Intranet is underpinning what we are doing. Citizens, people and customers who want to access this will access this through the Internet and the Government Secure Intranet is a means of communicating between departments.

  72. That would be the mechanism by which they get from one department to another, that is the basis of the mechanism they will use once they have accessed. Therefore I presume there is still a lot of development that needs to go into that before it will be in a position to do that and I wonder what progress you have made?
  (Mr Allan) The main development that is needed is department by department getting the forms and the services on-line. I think the Government's Secure Intranet will be able to cope. The other side of things we are doing is we are developing a common platform that will draw together the information from different departments so that it can be accessed from a single point.

  73. Can I go back to Mr Bender for a second? I am interested in this reason you have given about decentralising decision making with departments and why the United Kingdom seems to have fallen somewhat behind after an early good start. This Reports talk about the need for innovation and to catch up, it talks about departments being less risk adverse. I wonder how your department and the work that you are going to do from this centre is going to help them to innovate. My suspicion would be that when it was originally decentralised it was decentralised on the basis that it was going to improve or enhance innovation?
  (Mr Bender) We are not re-centralising, I hope I made that clear. What we are trying to do in the work that we are pushing ahead is provide a coordinated framework to ensure that what departments are doing individually is properly joined-up and the synergies between different things are worked through and developed—brainstorming, if you like—to encourage innovation. There is a group called the Information Age Government Champion Group that Mr Allan chairs and that brings together senior IT people from across government to brainstorm on some of these issues.

  74. Can I move us on now? The Report looked at 315 departments of these agencies, of which 60 per sent had a website, but when looking more closely, less than two thirds of non-departmental public bodies and only a half of the executive agencies. First of all, do you have more up-to-date figures in relation to who has a website now and what action are you taking to ensure that all of these bodies have a website?
  (Mr Allan) I do not know that we have more up-to-date figures. I think at the time the Report was done there may have been more departments and agencies that did have websites and, perhaps, were not easily accessible, and that is one of the things we are changing. We are also making clear to departments in the guidelines that it is their responsibility to make sure that their agencies do have websites, some of them may be an independent website and some of them may be a sub-part of the department's own website.

  75. Can I say, there can only be one thing worse than not having a website and that is having a website that nobody can access. On page 7 of the Report of the executive summary it gives a definition of what counts as an active website, in other words what a website should really be about, would you care to comment on whether those departments and bodies that have websites actually match this criteria? Would you say it is most of them, some of them or a few of them? How widespread is this definition within each of those organisations?
  (Mr Allan) I do not think I can give an aggregate picture at the moment until we have done the survey we will be carrying out with the new media team that is being set up. Most departments meet most of the criteria. Certainly the guidelines that we have put around to departments are very, very similar to this and contain essentially the same points. We agree with the authors of the Report that an active website should meet these criteria.

  76. It has been mentioned by a number of the speakers previously about the targets that have been set, 25 per cent by 2002. The Government is now going through a new spending review, and we know of the role of Public Service Agreements in the previous spending review. What role do you see in the future for the Public Service Agreements in trying to incentivise departments and organisations to actually achieve whatever targets are set?
  (Mr Bender) I think many of the Public Service Agreements themselves, or the underpinning Service Delivery Agreements, will play an important role in that. I think the Cabinet Office's own Public Service Agreement is likely to recognise our role in trying to drive that and deliver that across the Government. There will be a process between us and individual departments, so in a long way I am saying yes.

  77. Can I take you to table 37 on page 57, which gives some idea of electronic dealings of the public with various government departments? Quite a lot of that makes salutary reading. You cannot be proud of that table?
  (Mr Allan) It is a snapshot, some things have moved on since then. For example, the Inland Revenue, from the beginning of April, will be enabling anyone who is submitting a self-assessment tax return to do so electronically, and other services are coming on-line. There are others that have considerable issues to resolve about authentication and security and how the department can be sure that the information is accurate. Those are the sorts of issues that we are going to have to address department by department.

  78. Of course, most of this report talks, in the main, about capability, the ability of the citizen to be able to access and find these forms, and that must be the first priority, but, of course, usage, at the end of the day, will be the acid test. I was interested that in the Report it talks in terms of self-certification for your tax form. The Inland Revenue are only projecting something like 2 or 3 per cent in the next couple of years that will, perhaps, use that, whereas in the United States something in the region of 70 million people are using the service which is currently available there. I wonder what priority is being given to moving on from capability to actual usage? What are you doing to spark the use of the services that you are setting up, recognising that computers and the Internet are spreading very quickly amongst the public in the United Kingdom?
  (Mr Allan) I think in the revised targets that will be published we will need to address the question of take-up as well as just capability. Certainly, I am optimistic that the take-up may well be far more than some of the departments expect. In the case of the Inland Revenue, the Chancellor, since the Report was done, has announced a specific discount for taxpayers who do file their self-assessment return on-line. We are looking, in appropriate cases, at actually providing incentives in that way. There are some services where people would be uneasy if we said we were going for 100 per cent on-line delivery and people felt that they were only going to be able to access it through the Internet. That may be the sort of pressure that would not be welcomed by some people who do not feel comfortable with the technology yet. I think we need to look, service by service, at where the appropriate targets for usage should be.

  79. I did want to come onto that, because I think it is an important consideration, but before I do, the Report draws, in a way, a comparison between the DTI, dealing in the main with business, and the DHSS, dealing in the main with benefit recipients. It is clear that there is quite a lot of pressure from businesses to move in this direction, but almost no pressure—in fact, I suspect that if you did a survey there would be negative pressure—to move in this direction. I wonder how you cope with the different pressures, positive and negative, in the different departments?
  (Mr Bender) In another part of the Cabinet Office we are doing some work on a project looking at consumers' views to devise a consumer led strategy on what sort of services customers will want to be delivered electronically and how Government should be organised for electronic delivery, what sort of channels public sector or private sector should be providing and what sort of service options. That is a report that the Performance and Innovation Unit are doing and that will be published in the summer. That will be an important input to help us answer your question.
  (Mr Allan) The way we are coping with the different pressures, as the Report makes clear, is in the area of services to business. The immediate demand is that greatest progress is being made in delivering services on-line. A number of the important DTI services have been delivered on-line already.