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e-Government

While my hon. Friend the Minister was speaking, I was reflecting that it was some 35 years ago that I first sat under your chairmanship, Mr. Hancock—although not in this place. I will not remind you of the event as you may rule me out of order. I was looking at this debate from the point of the view of the progress that has been made over recent years. We should not knock the significant steps that have been taken in unbelievably difficult circumstances. Few Parliaments and Governments have found perfect solutions. Indeed, none have. The ones that have made the most significant steps are ones that started with blank sheets of paper. The new emerging democracies in central and Eastern Europe have some interesting and innovative systems. At the Cabinet meetings in Estonia the system is so sophisticated that there are no papers. Estonia may only be the size of many of our county councils, but it had the huge advantage of building systems around a design of democracy from the bottom up. We do not have that advantage, and therein lies the biggest single problem that we face in empowering our citizens in the complex processes of government. My hon. Friend may have picked this up before, but one of his predecessors said in 1998:"““The vast majority of people do not differentiate between Central and Local Government services. I know this when I go to my surgeries—people don't know whether I am a councillor, an MP, the CAB or whatever. They come because they have a problem and all they want is a solution to that problem. And that just reflects that people do not live their lives in easily defined compartments. Better Government attempts to recognise this and aims to overcome those institutional barriers so that services can be delivered in ways that take account of real people's real lives.””" That was the focus back then and it remains the focus of the work that is being undertaken inside Government. We should not underestimate the complexity of doing just that. When I wrote a paper for the Government in 1998, the prime example that I used to illustrate success in this area was the Australian centrelink project. I still commend it to people as an exceptionally far-reaching project that has been able to provide services to people in small towns and remote areas in a comprehensive way. Again, the Australians had a couple of significant advantages. First, the population base was considerably smaller. Secondly, the infrastructure and the pipe work around the country was enormous and over-engineered by virtue of earlier decisions made by successive Governments. It was not deliberately planned that way; it just happened, and modern Governments exploited it well. Centrelink, which was launched in September 1997, provides under one roof a range of customer services that were then parts of the Department of Family and Community Services, the Department of Education, Training and Youth Services, the Department of Health and Family Services and the Department of Primary Industries and Energy. Centrelink has expanded since then. The services are comprehensive: they are one-stop shops where citizens can get advice online from experienced office staff who provide front-end services to meet the needs of many people. My hon. Friend's predecessor rightly asked why on earth citizens should know the details about the boundaries between the various levels of the state. The concept of single points of delivery at physical locations or through web-enabled solutions is, as a target, worth moving towards and pressing forward with. It requires a huge amount of political will, and, despite the sterling efforts of the Cabinet Office, there is still a lot to do. That includes knocking heads together. It also includes ensuring that the principles established in the e-envoy's office empower his team to bring together Departments to set common ICT standards, ensure common routes by which people can get advice about designing systems, and stop the creation of stand-alone projects, except where essential. Those recommendations were in my 1998 paper, which I still commend to my hon. Friend. Many things have happened and many positive things have emerged since, but politicians must make political decisions to ensure that through the exploitation of modern technologies we get the best out of the systems that we wish to create to serve the population. My hon. Friend will recall that when he met people in my constituency, they did not simply draw boxes around and compartmentalise the lives of people whom they were seeking to assist. Whether it was the citizens advice bureaux, the Siroptomists or whoever else contributed to the discussion, people told us that they were considering the life chances and life events of people, and how they were addressed. They were unconcerned by the boundaries of Department A and Department B; they were looking for solutions. That must be the focus of the Government's activities. I commend the approach adopted by Ian Watmore's team in the e-envoy office. It has built on some of the earlier work, and it now focuses on internal departmental issues. That must drive us towards consideration of our relationship with local government and the voluntary sector, because there is no point in reinventing the wheel. If systems can be brought together through a common delivery channel, that should happen. We should not be jealous of our little part of the system and protect our staff from the intrusion of other Departments. There should be genuine openness and sharing that begins with only one premise: what is the best way to deliver the appropriate level of service, which we have determined politically, to meet the customer's needs? One of the best ways of doing so is asking customers and I commend my hon. Friend the Minister for embarking on a programme of doing just that. We need to build up systems that do not include boundaries between central and local government or, indeed, between the voluntary and the private sector. We should not be afraid of creating common channels. We need to remember that IT is just a tool. It has enormous potential to help us to improve the way in which we serve the citizens of this country, but if misused it can be a pain in the neck. We know that occasional mistakes have been made by successive Governments, and my hon. Friend the Minister was right to acknowledge that. No one made those mistakes through malice or stupidity; it is just that it is difficult to see the big picture because government is complex. Translating what seems like a brilliant idea for service delivery to one part of the population into something that comprehensively works and provides benefits for all Departments is easier said than done. We should look with pride at some of the services that are up and running, which my hon. Friend gave as examples. We should tell Ministers to make sure that they work through the Cabinet Office, or the appropriate agency, to ensure that Departments learn from each other. No more projects should take place in isolation; we should have a co-ordinated approach. Let us see if it is possible to emulate some good ideas, such as centrelink, to provide a better service to the people we represent. Speaking to people throughout the House, I do not think that there is an enormous political divide on the matter. There is a fear of the technology. Technology is merely the enabler; it is not the hard bit. The political will is the hard bit, and I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to take that message to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, my right hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Hutton). I wish him every success in winning that argument in Cabinet, because the political will must stem from there. In 1998, I argued for a Minister for IT for just this reason. I still happen to believe that that is necessary and I am not being disparaging to my hon. Friend, but it ought to be someone of Cabinet rank. He will certainly be in the Cabinet in the not-too-distant future. When he gets there, he should take this baton with him and knock heads together to ensure that we get the co-ordination necessary to get the best out of the technology.