E-governing could be big issue in next UK election

Wired on Friday/Mike Butcher: Few would have thought that the next general election in Britain might be fought, in large part, on the basis of technology, but such a prospect emerged this week.

You might think the signs for this lie in how former US Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean managed to harness the power of online community to rally supporters. And it is true to an extent.

Mr Dean used Meetup.com to co-ordinate his rallies and "blogged" his site to bypass the mainstream media and reach his natural supporters. Dean's campaign looked, at least early in 2003, to have wrong-footed the other contenders.

But the heavy emphasis on gathering support in the virtual world failed to materialise in the real world. Like a boom-era dotcom, he put too much faith into easy "click here to support me" commitment from the electorate.

In an essay on the use of "social software", New York University professor Clay Shirky pointed out that because it's now so easy to get 500 people to a political rally via the Net, it's almost taken for granted. Furthermore, the buzz created around Dean's campaign online made supporters feel the job was done, when it still needed old-fashioned street pounding.

So, in about a year's time, we could very well see Tony Blair waxing lyrical on his own blog about how the hustings are going. But technology looks like it could have a bigger impact on the fiscal positioning of Britain's political parties.

The reason is simple old-fashioned economics.

Sir Peter Gershon has been heading the government's efficiency review. His report, leaked to the Financial Times, suggests cutting civil service jobs by 80,000 to save an estimated £15 billion sterling (€22.3 billion) a year. Much of those savings could come from cutting out the people who push around paper by putting government services online.

A policy like this could easily undermine the Conservative's plan to slash £35 billion from government spending over five years, when Labour is plotting to cut £10-£15 billion a year for the next three years and pump the savings into the one thing the electorate cares about: public services.

Sir Peter suggests that certain interactions the public has with government should be made compulsory among the "e-capable": internet-savvy groups such as accountants, young people and higher-rate taxpayers. Everyone else would be sent to call centres, jobcentres or, as a last resort, paper forms.

His proposals are uncannily reminiscent of the SmartGov report from the Work Foundation think-tank last year. It also suggested that government should compel some people to use online e-government for services such as filing tax returns and use the consequent savings in admin staff to help the less advantaged get online.

SmartGov's author Noah Curthoys says: "If you have internet access at home and are computer-literate, why should the state subsidise you to use a more expensive, more time-consuming, paper-based tax-return system?"

However, the Work Foundation also pointed out that the government's stated commitment to deliver all public services through electronic channels by 2005 could be a huge mistake.

Why? Because large swathes of the population have no concept of interacting with government online and would not use the services. E-government that is available but isn't used would just lose the confidence of industry, policymakers and the population.

Even rarely used processes such as the regulations on burial at sea have made it to the Web. But checking your council tax bill has not.

And the warning signs are already there. A study published for the government found only 11 per cent of the British public deal with the state electronically, compared with 18 per cent in France and Germany, and 40 per cent in Canada.

This is despite only 4 per cent of Britons lacking internet access somewhere close by, according to the Oxford Internet Institute.

The panacea to this quandary may lie in e-enabling the most appropriate services on the correct electronic platform - services aimed at teenagers would work best on a mobile phone, tech-savvy adults could access them online, while the least wired might plump for interacting through their TV.

Interactive TV can reach audiences other e-media often cannot reach.

Early trials of interactive TV advertising have produced surprisingly good response rates. Household names such as Honda, Orange, Procter & Gamble, BT and Unilever are backing a new initiative to lobby for a digital TV channel dedicated to interactive advertising.

The British government already has a policy framework designed to encourage departments to look at using interactive digital TV to deliver public services. Now it looks like the savings technology could deliver might even win them the next election.

Mike Butcher edits mbites.com