MONDAY 13 MARCH 2000

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

  160. You are a major employer and it seems you are not going to be much help to Mr Bender in drawing up his cross-government conclusions by the summer, are you?
  (Mr Czerniawski) I do not think by the summer we will be able to have detailed, reliable projections of where we think staff changes are likely over a period of time. What I would like to add is that at least part of the effect of doing more business over the Internet is to stop staff having to do work which is tiresome and inefficient for them as much as for the people we deal with. The second point is that if we can redeploy staff and they can do bits of the service by people talking to people, by being involved in interviewing, involved in telephone answering rather than pushing bits of paper around, that is better for everybody.

  161. We all understand that. All I am trying to get at is, and now I see it retreating away from me, Mr Bender must be feeling less sure than he was, with all his caution, a little while ago about being able to produce any meaningful figures? Is that the reply you expected?
  (Mr Bender) I hope that by this summer we will have a first cut at some of this information, but it will not be precise for that sort of reason.

  162. The Americans are estimating that the Internet will cost them, altogether, 9 million job losses across the economy. Are there not any planning figures at all being used within the Government?
  (Mr Allan) I do not think we have any detailed figures like that. As Mr Czerniawski said, on the one hand there may be staff savings in particular areas where some of the processing work is no longer needed. On the other hand, that frees up people to get involved in some of the front line activities, actually dealing with some of the customers of the departments and agencies concerned so that we can improve the service. I think one of the points that is being made here is that the objective of getting government services on-line is not just to cut costs and be more efficient, but also to improve services as well.

  163. We will see what figures you come up with. Again, one or two very brief points. Looking at page 57, we see how far the departments will conduct electronic dealings with the citizens. The Chairman was pointing out to me a little while ago that HM Treasury has a remarkable capability of being able to deal with 100 per cent at the moment, excluding a form, and 100 per cent including a form. In 2002, obviously, we would not expect them to improve on that, so there is still 100 per cent capability. In that case why is the other a constant zero in terms of the actual dealings in both cases?
  (Mr Mortimer) Perhaps I can explain the figures. As I understand it, since the Treasury is not an executive department, these communications with the outside world are mainly correspondence with members of the public. It just so happens that the public chooses to write on paper. If they wanted to send us an e-mail, we would reply in e-mail, but they do not. Therefore, that is why, though we are capable of dealing with all these communications by e-mail, the fact that people write to us on paper means we reply on paper. That explains why zero is handled electronically, but we have the capability of doing 100 per cent.

  164. You feel all neglected. You get masses of Treaty budget representations and masses of circular letters that we get and pass onto you. I recognise that this is done in paper form, but would it be easier for you if it came via e-mail?
  (Mr Mortimer) Absolutely. I think that if the truth were known, in three or four years' time, a lot more of our business with the outside world will be done by e-mail. I am conscious that I get great piles of paper from this Committee, for example, and these communications would be much easier if the information were sent electronically. I think that there are tremendous opportunities here.

  Mr Williams: Can we take this from you as a plea from the Treasury to be included in the age of the new technology?

  Mr Steinberg: As long as it does not take them any longer to answer letters.

  165. It cannot do. You are doing very well at the moment. In terms of the percentage of dealings electronically, you are fifth. In terms of capability, excluding phone, you are third and including phone you are fifth. Then in the next two years you seem hardly to improve at all, you slip to eighth, eleventh and then twelfth. I appreciate that it is very difficult to improve, but why is it that you seem to be stuck at very much the same percentages under each of those columns?
  (Mr Bender) These are forecasts based on field work which was done last year, and we need to look at them further as time passes. We are a department that, at the present time, has, like the Treasury, significant dealings with the public[8]. I am surprised that people prefer to deal with us by e-mail and not with the Treasury, but I am not sure how robust the forecasts are in this and we need to take a further look internally at how to improve the situation.

  (Mr Bender) There are some issues that, of course, Cabinet Office ministers coordinate on behalf of the Government. So, for example, Mo Mowlam deals with drugs issues across the Government in the capacity of chair of the Cabinet Committee on Rural Affairs. She also has GM foods and she receives correspondence on that. There are some issues on which we get significant levels, and Lord Falconer receives quite a lot of correspondence on the dome. How much of that is electronic, I simply do not know.

  167. You were saying earlier that you were thinking of ways in which we might control excessive e-mail, and I think that Mr Steinberg was very explicit in his concerns about his e-mail, and you also said that the Prime Minister was getting a lot at present. Is one of the ways in which you will be trying to control the level of e-mail, that when a lot seems to be coming in you will deliberately delay your replies in order to discourage more?
  (Mr Bender) No, I do not think so. We need to have a more systematic method of dealing with it as the volume increases than we have at the moment. That may involve more staff to deal with that method of communication as opposed to others.
  (Mr Allan) Perhaps I can come in on a couple of points. One is, as the Report says, sometimes the best way to reduce the volume of e-mail is actually to have a very good informative website that provides you with the answer so that you do not need to send an e-mail to find it out. Also, there may be some scope for automated replies when the e-mail simply says, "Please could you send me such and such a form", and if you can get the systems to work so that they can do that without requiring somebody to intervene, so much the better.

  Chairman: Very good. Thank you gentlemen for an interesting outing. You never know, the time may come when we do this electronically. Thank you very much indeed.