MONDAY 13 MARCH 2000

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

  80. Can I turn to Mr Czerniawski? In relation to the DHSS, I want to ask you two questions which are rolled into one, because my time is very brief. The first is that there are some critical decisions that the department has to take in relation both to computer systems and how the public will access. I am talking about electronic cards, where there has been a decision taken and various other matters. How do you see the department clearing some of those critical decisions? Secondly, I go back to a question that was asked earlier on about social exclusion. If we develop services through electronic media will that increase social exclusion to your customer base?
  (Mr Czerniawski) Let me address those separately. On the first, we are very conscious now of the need in all the decision making on our IT strategy to build into that a dimension of moving towards the goal that I described earlier of bringing together our systems to provide a coherent service to everybody through any medium. In this discussion we are generally using the shorthand of the Internet but essentially, once we have got that basic information together, we can deliver it through the Internet and it is a relatively small step to introduce it then through digital television, mobile phones or whatever other medium may become popular over the next few years. As our back end mainframe systems are gradually replaced, the service that we are able to offer in that way will be enriched, and that is built into the programme. You can be confident that we are not going to lose sight of that requirement. As far as social exclusion is concerned, of course we are conscious of the need to address our client group, which is a bit different from the population average in many ways. There are really three basic strands to that. The first is, as has been mentioned earlier, that we will need to keep going in parallel with other service groups[3], so that people who do not feel comfortable with these technologies can have other ways of discussing things with us. The second is that, as has happened a lot, for example, in the United States, we and other departments will wish to encourage, in the short-term, the greater development of public access terminals—PCs in libraries and in post offices—where people who do not have the equipment at home can get access to the Government on-line. Thirdly, it is the development of the further technology, digital television particularly, where we see the greatest growth coming from the people that we deal with most. Not very many people on benefits have their own personal computer. Virtually all of them have a television and in a few years a large proportion of them will have digital television, and that will provide us with huge access to a very large proportion of them.

  81. I wonder if I can just follow up the last point, while I recognise this is an extremely exciting area I am particularly concerned with the question of social exclusion. Certainly in my constituency it is one of telephone ownership, never mind PCs. Indeed in the DSS Department they cannot keep toilets open in the Benefits Office simply because of the number of people using them to shoot-up. I am worried about this new trend, can I ask whether or not there will be a special budget in some way for the increase or the encouragement of special access terminals and the like in public libraries or are you leaving all that to other people?
  (Mr Allan) There are, indeed, budgets for that. There is a programme, first of all, to connect all schools and libraries to the Internet by 2002 and there is a programme for opening up 1,000 IT learning centres over the next year, which will be the sort of place where people can go and access the Internet. Then there are various other programmes that are being introduced. There is a programme for 100,000 poor families to lease or buy refurbished computers very cheaply to use at home. There are large discounts on IT courses for people who are changing jobs who want to train themselves in IT skills and are looking for a new job. There is a lot going on from various different budgets addressed at exactly that issue.

  82. Can I seek clarification as to whether or not you would accept that there is going to be pressure from the potential cost savings to be achieved through using the Internet, and the like, to transfer as much as possible of your business on to that and that might then cause some of your clients, some of my constituents, some difficulties if they feel they are pressed into following a route they are not happy with?
  (Mr Czerniawski) It is certainly not our intention to pressure anybody into doing this, which is one of the reasons why the targets are at the moment expressed in terms of coverage. We want to make our services available on-line as far as possible, we do not want to compel people to use them on-line if they are more comfortable with other ways. You mentioned that in your constituency telephone usage was relatively low. We do know, for example, that across the country as a whole there has been a significant increase in the last few years of benefit recipients who do have telephones at home and that is a means of access that is very widely available and allows us to do much more sophisticated telephone services than would have been the case a few years ago. At the moment we certainly cannot presume, and we do not presume, that everyone who wants to deal with the Social Security system will be able to or wish to do so on-line.

  83. It will be possible in the future for benefits to be claimed from Spain?
  (Mr Czerniawski) There are some people in Spain who would be entitled to United Kingdom Social Security benefits. If we can provide the service that allows them to do so with less cost to them and to us, that would be a very good thing.

  84. Can I just ask about issues of fraud? I am conscious that this is a difficulty with a wide variety of benefits at the moment, what steps are being taken to make sure this does not explode?
  (Mr Czerniawski) I think it is important in Social Security to look at fraud in different categories, one category is simply abuse through various forms of forgery and misrepresentation of giro cheques, order books, and so on. Part of our strategy is to move away from those completely so that we provide payments directly to people's bank accounts but at the same time have arrangements through the banks and the post office to make sure that people who wish to get cash from the post office will continue to do so, but avoiding what we have at the moment, which is a payment transmission system which is separate from everybody else in the country who uses the banks. We will use that same system. There is a fairly substantial chunk of current fraud loss that we can effectively eliminate through moving our payments on to a more robust system. As far as other kinds of fraud are concerned, the largest in terms of the loss to the taxpayer is generally around people who are doing things other than what they say they are doing. The obvious example is people who are claiming benefits while purporting to be unemployed but in one way or another they are working. The means by which we accept claims from them and signatures, and so on, does not directly address that risk and we are very deliberately saying we do not, at the moment, intend to allow people to claim those benefits in a purely electronic fashion end to end. We will want to see them, we will want to interview them, we will want them to come and sign on and we will want to discuss with them how they get back into work. With the current and foreseeable state of technology we will be doing that face-to-face for some years to come.

  85. I wonder if I could ask somebody about what page 19 is intended to convey to us? I am not sure who to ask about this.
  (Sir John Bourn) Perhaps it would be right for me to respond. What that is intended to convey is the modern instancing of the use of technology. It is part of the attempt to present the work of the NAO Office not simply in its old way of words alone but by the use of photographs, graphics and other devices of that kind.

  86.  Was it considered that this was stereotyping the assumption that anything to do with the web deals with young people who are prosperous rather than extending to the whole community?

  (Sir John Bourn) No, it was not seen as an example of stereotyping.

  Mr Davidson: Perhaps that is a point that could be considered possibly for the future.

  Chairman: Jim Murphy, young and prosperous.

  87. First of all, an admission I am not that young—I was young when I was elected—and I am certainly not prosperous. I do not have a website currently, primarily on the basis I just find it so much of an effort to maintain, so, hopefully, any criticism I offer is in that context and under that admission of guilt. The first thing is about service to citizens. I am intrigued, I think you are the first group of witnesses that we have had before us who have absolutely used the word "citizen" at all times rather than people or customers or clients. I make that as an observation, if you want to comment on it you can. My first question about the service to citizens or customers is about this response time of 15 days. Others have referred to this point. Just explain to me, again, why, when you are cutting out the Royal Mail or at least one part of this transaction from a customer or citizen, you cannot at least cut one day off this response time?
  (Mr Bender) Can I respond, if I may, to the first point?

  88. As long as you do so briefly I am happy.
  (Mr Bender) I see people as having three elements, citizen, taxpayer and customer, and our role is to deal with all three. On your specific point, yes, we can cut out the time of the Royal Mail but underlying it the Government is providing us with an earlier authoritative reply on particular issues and you cannot cut the corners on that because it is a matter of dispatching information on the Web and you can do that by pressing a button.

  89. I accept and agree with that. It is my reading of the Report that a response from a taxpayer, customer, client or citizen through the Internet would be same as if it was delivered as hard copy through the Royal Mail and I want to know why you cannot cut out that one day. You are aiming for fifteen days, as you would with the hard copy, the traditional 100 year old system, why can you not cut a day off?
  (Mr Bender) I think we will have to look at that point. I cannot answer that directly.

  90. You signed up to a Report that says that you would take two weeks and a day, three working weeks to respond. Why? Why can you not cut a day off it? If I go home and post a letter to you this evening before 6 o'clock it would take you a day to get, however, if I e-mail you by 6 o'clock it will take a few seconds. Why do you not cut that day out in your average response times?
  (Mr Allan) Certainly our guidelines say there is an expectation that people respond to an e-mail with an e-mail extremely quickly. We have a requirement that if you cannot reply within two days you should send an acknowledgment and say why you are not replying within two days. The sort of cases where it would take the full two weeks are ones where it requires a lot of checking within the department. I take your point that this is slacker[4], and if you are sending a reply back by e-mail you have an extra day.

  91. You have a day either side, of course. I would be delighted to get a fifteen day reply. You have a day either side and that should take you into 13 days, if you had a target of 15 either electronically or on foot. When one of my constituents calls they are frustrated because a different person picks up the telephone and deals with the inquiry. There are other impersonal approaches such as computer to computer, but nevertheless, it will be tempered by the fact that the customer will be aware that it is the same person who is dealing with an inquiry in any government agency, or is it anyone who walks up to the terminal who acts in that unit?
  (Mr Bender) It could be anyone but the customer would have the services they wanted when they related to the Government, which is a slightly different sort of answer, on the issues they want.

  92. My experience is that a large amount of the cause of delay in individuals dealing with the government agency is the fact that someone else picks up the work and then someone picks up it on Wednesday and misinterprets what had been interpreted. Would that be cut out because of the use of Information Technology, or are the problems staying the same or getting worse?
  (Mr Czerniawski) The way the Child Support Agency should develop is to develop the use of technology. We use computers to help humans be more human. At the moment the amount of information staff have immediately available to them is very limited and they do have to go through the same stuff over and over again. It is immensely irritating for both sides. The new systems will have a complete picture of the person's circumstances and record transactions. If you ring on Tuesday and say something and then ring again on Wednesday, the person who picks up the phone will see what has happened much more clearly.

  93. Can I stop you? CSA reforms are going to make that one of the necessary aspects of customer relations anyway, so there is guidance coming through from the new CSA, so the CSA might not be a good example, but is it an unusual example in terms of named employees or named civil servants being tasked to see a named constituent from inception to completion?
  (Mr Czerniawski) The Child Support Agency does not embody that.

  94. Is it setting out to do so?
  (Mr Czerniawski) The reforms are being designed to achieve that, but it will be a big change and the CSA will not be able to do so from tomorrow. How far other parts of the Government are less able to do it at the moment and intending to do more of it, I could not answer.
  (Mr Bender) I cannot answer directly the proposals that the CSA are introducing, but something should be introduced across Government, where, as the citizen is in contact, whoever responds on the other end should know the story so far. We do not have a cross government plan, it is the identical one throughout. It will be for agency by agency to determine.

  95. Another area in respect of dealing with citizens is regarding the Passport Agency, and I see from the document here that that was one of the agencies that was investigated. Can I ask you how many, during the debacle of last summer's Passport Agency, people visited the Passport Agency website, do you know?
  (Mr Bender) I cannot answer that.

  96. How many are envisaged in the future, do you know?
  (Mr Bender) If the Committee would like that information, I can provide it, but I cannot answer it now.

  97. I do not have the figure. I am not trying to catch you out. I am trying to get to the position where if that debacle is ever unfortunately repeated, and we have received assurance that it will not be, in your investigation of the Passport Agency technology, are they able to cope with very large numbers of people contacting the Passport Agency website to make a complaint or request in a very short period of time? Are they capable of dealing with that?
  (Mr Allan) I think the answer was that last summer they had a problem dealing with all the queries, whether they were coming in through e-mail, through the website, phone or post. I do not think there was a question that if it all came by e-mail it would all be okay.
  (Mr Bender) The Passport Agency has plans where you can download the form on-line and you do not need to visit the Passport Office. We cannot get to the situation where you can receive the passport on-line because of the security problems again.

  98. What are you doing to change the attitudes of chief executives?
  (Mr Bender) You mean top civil servants?

  99. In respect of the faith or affection they have for websites for their organisation or Intranets within their organisation, what has been done to improve that culture?
  (Mr Bender) Certainly as far as permanent secretaries are concerned, it needs to be an issue that is addressed at board level in departments and agencies. That is something that Mr Allan is driving out across Government. In all departments and agencies our external presence on the web is a business issue that needs to be addressed by the management board of the department or agency. That is a cultural change that many have adopted and the rest need to adopt, and that is part of the role in the Cabinet Office, to drive across that cultural change.

4   Note: Sentence should be amended to read: "I take your point that this is quicker, not slacker. Back