MONDAY 13 MARCH 2000

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

  120. Please tell me, what system have you now established for cost justification for web investment?
  (Mr Czerniawski) We do not have a formal methodology yet. We have recognised that we need to work on a site and we are working on a site and we have recently conducted a survey and we have plans to repeat that in six months to measure the changing ways in which people access the site.

  121. You are not answering the question that I asked. I asked, what system have you now established for cost justification for web investment? You need to be able to justify the costs that you are going to spend investing in the web. If you are telling me that you do not have a system to justify these costs, then please say so. If do you have a system to justify these costs, then please tell me what it is.
  (Mr Czerniawski) We do not have a system which is specific to these costs beyond the standard appraisal techniques we use for assessing projects.

  122. The Report states in section 2.34 that the prospect of submitting forms on-line to the DSS is still quite distant; is that correct?
  (Mr Czerniawski) Yes.

  123. How distant is it?
  (Mr Czerniawski) It essentially depends on the changes to the underlying mainframe systems that I was describing earlier in the session. The first stage of that will be the Child Support reforms, which will come in over the next two years and we are doing pilot work in the pensions area but we are some years away from being able to offer that as a universal service across all benefits.

  124. The answer is between two years and some years.
  (Mr Czerniawski) Between two years and five years.

  125. Thank you. You said it would soon be possible, this was earlier in your comments to another member of the Committee, to print out copies of forms for oneself and then to send them to the DSS; is that correct?
  (Mr Czerniawski) That is correct.

  126. Is it not the case that until recently your own offices could not cope with such forms because those forms, of course, were not colour coded they were usually printed on white paper and also that they were single sided rather than double sided?
  (Mr Czerniawski) There are issues of that kind, which is why I am saying we are not doing this immediately. Putting a form on the website is the easy bit, it is making sure that we do allow people in the offices who work with them to be prepared.

  127. What I am asking is, have those problems of colour coding and single sided only been overcome?
  (Mr Czerniawski) They are being overcome to the point that when we put the forms on, starting in the next few months, we are confident we will be able to deal with them effectively.

  128. You are confident that within six months all your offices will be able to deal with such forms effectively?
  (Mr Czerniawski) This is a rolling programme, not all of the forms will go on immediately, we will start with the ones which are easy to handle. For example, some are very formal[7] and others are obviously easier to deal with—the ones that are A4 are easier to deal with—so there are technical details like that that we need to get right. It will be more than 6 months before all of the forms are available in that way, however we will make a significant start within that period.

  129. The Report says that it is important for top managers to understand why such limited progress has been made so far. You will recall that it outlines three reasons, do you recall what those reasons are?
  (Mr Czerniawski) I cannot recall immediately off the top of my head.

  130. It is at Section 2.35, it says: "Providing information is difficult. Collecting reliable information is more difficult. The retrieval of information is most difficult." Would you accept that as the reasons that were given?
  (Mr Czerniawski) Yes.

  131. There is not a lot else, is there, other than providing, checking and retrieving information?
  (Mr Czerniawski) No.

  132. The response that the department has given to the question of why such limited progress has been made so far is that those three areas, which you just agreed cover pretty much the subject, are difficult, more difficult and most difficult. That to me does not seem like an analysis of what has gone wrong so far, does it seem like an analysis to you?
  (Mr Czerniawski) It is a way of categorising how we deal with it. By providing information, because it is least difficult within the area, which we are most able to we can move rapidly to improve, whereas at the other end interacting with our systems and retrieving information depends on a level of IT investment that is substantial and would probably take some work for it come through. It is an analysis, in a sense, that it helps us prioritise the work in a way that we can most quickly deliver improvements where we can and we can plan systematically for the areas that will take longer.

  133. The Report also states that your administrative arrangements are shot to pieces, I use a colloquial expression. I think the Report says, "complex and fragmented".
  (Mr Czerniawski) They have been. Since the Report was completed the responsibility for the whole of the DSS Internet site, which brings together all of the agencies, sites described in the Report, has been brought under the direction of the Director of Communication, who sits on the main departmental board. We are relaunching the website in the second half of May to present information in a way that is helpful to people out in the real world rather than along the organisational boundaries of the DSS, so we are addressing that issue.

  134. That is helpful and it actually responds to my next question, which is how you streamlined that administrative system? Mr Bender, do you ever speak to the Prime Minister?
  (Mr Bender) Yes.

  135. Have you ever told him explicitly that the interpretation that you and the Civil Service have put on his Prime Ministerial pledge, that 25 per cent of dealings with Government would be handled electronically by 2002, was to include the telephone as an electronic mode?
  (Mr Bender) I have not put that to him orally. Our ministers are aware of it in written submissions and, as I said earlier, they have asked us to look at all this again, the methodology, the numbers and the take-up.

  136. Do you think that Modernising Government, launched by the Prime Minister and, presumably, considered as some significance, was really about ensuring that we upped our use of 19th century technology?
  (Mr Bender) Can I make a point in relation to that? If the civil servant in the telephone call centre uses web based technology at the other end to provide the answer, then it is an electronic form of information at the civil servant end, so it is not the black and white issue you are portraying it as.

  137. Let me then focus on the specific point that I am trying to make. Am I right in saying that many of the permanent secretaries in the various departments felt that the 25 per cent target by 2002 was not a particularly onerous one because they could always count telephonic communications as being part of that 25 per cent?
  (Mr Bender) That is why we are looking at this again to get a better methodology, which we hope ministers will be ready to announce in the near future.

  138. Would you agree with my own analysis that members of the public would be shocked to find that that is the interpretation that you in the Civil Service has placed upon that target?
  (Mr Allan) I think it has always been made clear, right from when the target was first set, that we were looking at not just ordinary telephone calls, but setting up call centres, for example, to handle queries. Especially in October 1997 when the target was set, it was still fairly novel. The proportion of people using the Internet was quite small and it was explicitly decided by ministers that the target—

  139. You know we are not just talking about telephone communication using the Internet. What we are talking about here is including in those statistics somebody picking up the phone and speaking to somebody at the other end of the line.
  (Mr Allan) You are talking about people ringing a call centre like NHS Direct, for example, and getting information through that, through a system where there is somebody on the other end of the telephone who has access to a database like, for example, the NHS Direct database, and this is somebody, particularly, who would not themselves have access to a PC.