We hear a lot these days about internet campaigning, from the groundbreaking tools on MyConservatives.com to leading blogs like Conservative Home.
But what about more practical things? After the election, can the Tories do any better than Labour when it comes to the net?
Let’s face it – we could hardly do worse. This government’s IT failures are a national scandal. Here are some ways Labour has “used” the internet, with your money.
* The National Programme for IT. Delayed. Forecast to be £10.3 billion of your money over-budget. Yes, I did say TEN BILLION POUNDS.
*Department of Work and Pensions customer information system – £48 million quid over budget.
* NOMIS and LIBRA – two Justice Ministry schemes dealing with prison, probation and magistrates courts – £620 million pounds over budget – so far.
And that’s before we’ve even looked at the NHS!
Can Tory strong society improve on Labour big government? In the USA, cheap private websites are revolutionising how people interact with their politicians. The New York Times business section recently lauded the website SeeClickFix.com, which enables users to report a pothole or a broken traffic light. Crimereports.com lets Americans see what crimes have been committed in their area. Everyblock.com carries everything from local political news to reviews of neighbourhood restaurants. Here in the UK we need more publicity for sites like FixMyStreet.com, where I could enter my own postcode and see problems reported.
SeeClickFix was developed by private backing, but also won a $25,000 prize given for internet entrepreneurship. Jeremy Hunt and his team are taking that idea and running much bigger with it. A £1m prize for a website that can truly help government serve the public. Even Labour blogger Alex Hilton, a Labour PPC in a safe Tory seat and an old hand on the centre-left blogosphere, lauded the idea. I read a suggestion of a website where public service whistleblowers could report examples of waste in their departments – completely anonymously. How much might that save us?
What about letting voters keep their eyes on government? If there’s one thing the expenses scandal taught us, it’s that sunlight is the best disinfectant. Politicians need to be held to account. On their promises. On their expenses. On their spending.
The internet offers every voter a way to shine a bright torch into the dusty corridors of Westminster. Every parent knows – when you know you’re being watched, behaviour changes! David Cameron has promised new MPs will publish expense receipts online. But it goes way further than expenses. Steve Hilton gave the example of how Maidenhead council published online, in real time, energy use in some of their buildings. And guess what? As soon as ratepayers could see the energy use, bills dropped by 15%!
Government and internet. It doesn’t have to be costly, snail-paced IT projects. It can be direct conversations, reporting a fallen tree in the road, visual crime records, and sunlight blasting through the so-called governing classes. It can be citizens holding our spending accountable. It can be whistleblowers reporting waste in safety. It can be social justice projects and ways to help people find charities they’d like to assist. In short, it can be fast, effective and user-friendly.
It’s a great irony that a party named “Conservative” should be the one to bring in this revolution. But that shouldn’t stop us!
Comment by Richard on January 10, 2010 at 1:18 pm
That’s really comparing apples and oranges… you can fairly criticise the many disastrous government IT projects, but you didn’t say what you would do in place of them.
The public engagement websites you went on to list are not alternatives to the business process systems listed at the start of the article and on which the overspends take place.
So you might not do any worse on those, but how would you do better?
Comment by Gordon Rae on January 10, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Some good examples, but where is the commitment? Where are the policies? I’d like to see some firm proposals from any political party about how they proipose to rein in wasteful spending, protect government and taxpayers from the atrocious practices of large contractors, reform tendering , open up the S-Cat to smaller, more agile firms, and a lot more besides. If you have the vision, please share it.
Comment by John Isherwood on January 10, 2010 at 2:42 pm
I think the time is not right to go into detail as to how these wasteful expenditures will be reined in. It would be better to know just before the election, when the good ideas can’t migrate to the other parties. The fact that the Conservatives are aware, and are thinking about solutions is sufficient for the time being. We don’t have to make our minds up yet!
Comment by Peter on January 10, 2010 at 4:46 pm
I agree with Richard. This blog post is basically a trick. It doesn’t compare like for like.
Comment by Sean Lever on January 10, 2010 at 5:51 pm
The important thing to remember is that the vast amount of data collected about individuals by this government should be owned by those individuals. Most examples of Government IT projects assume the data belongs to ministers and the civil service. This is wrong. We need a reversal of this presumption, both in local and national government – only then can the true pointlessness of many of these IT projects be seen in their true light and the cost of them register in the minds of voters.
Comment by Phil Simpson on January 10, 2010 at 7:49 pm
This really struck a chord with me, seeing it on the day when I received what could only be a computter generated letter letter from the DwP contracdicting itself on not one but two counts.
Comment by Angus Fraser on January 10, 2010 at 11:40 pm
I agree with the comments above – apples and oranges … and to add to that .. Large scale IT projects bring huge cost savings – but not until they are delivered. The real issue with many of these types of project is the changing scope during the implementation phase – for the simple reason that these scale of projects have never been attempted before and the government departments are often unaware of many of the issues that they will face whne the contracts are first put to tender (but they make provision for flexibility within the contract as they know that issues will occur) thus the apparent over spend beloved of politicial chit chat. There is a huge amount of IT experience in the UK in the delivery of large scale IT projects and I hope that the Conservatives will really take this on board as it will provide many jobs and ultimatly better and more cost effective services of the tax payer. Lets have a change of attitude to the Big IT Projects – ‘coz I can’t go on like this !
Comment by Guy M on January 11, 2010 at 2:48 pm
This whole idea of prizes on delivery for IT solutions is brilliant – but the devil is in the detail of what needs to be the criteria for winning them – re Jeremy Hunts recent announcement I suggest something like the list here: http://wp.me/pHMG9-2y
Pingback by ‘Lots of innovative stuff on the internet’ – Cameron on the Tories’ online ambitions • Will Heaven on January 11, 2010 at 7:20 pm
[...] I would recommend today fordigital democracy enthusiasts. The first is Louise Bagshawe’s debut on the Blue blog, entitled “Putting an end to costly, snail-paced IT projects”. Bagshawe – a chick-lit [...]
Comment by Mike Collier on January 12, 2010 at 9:51 am
In response to Angus’ comments above I would just like to say that you have hit the nail on the head when you say that scope creep is the cause of many problems in major IT project delivery. However I believe you are being a little soft on the cause of this, in my experience the initial project scope is poorly derived by government departments (highly supplemented by expensive consultants who have no experience of the ways each department work). The problem is further exacerbated by poor contracting, an example of which I saw recently where a prime contractor was paid several thousand pounds to provide an estimate of the costs to investigate the change. The investigation would then cost more and the change more on top! Nice work if you can get it.
Comment by Gary White on January 18, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Working at the ‘coal face’ of the Prison NOMIS delivery I can say what we are delivering is an A1 product. If I have one critisism of the project it would be the usual problem with IT projects of the reliance in using the cheapest bidder to supply the infostructure. When are we ever going to learn that cheap now doesn’t mean savings at the end? Why don’t we ever go for tried and tested suppliers with experience in large projects rather than suck it and see individuals that soon find themselves out of their depth?