Digital Britain week: Digital Switchover for Public Services

I sat in the audience for the Birmingham Lord Carter’s launch of the Digital Britain report. I have to say that it was one of the most impressive, clear, well argued and impassioned policy launches I have ever seen. Lord Carter was persuasive on many of the points that the report’s press coverage have attacked and gave some insights into what he thought would actually happen. Perhaps because he’s nearly free from his ministerial shackles he was refreshingly candid about what key players like the UK games industry need to do next.

One of the most trailed features of the report was the commitment to universal availability of 2Mbps broadband by 2012 (what wasn’t so expected was the 50p/month per fixed line levy that will be introduced to pay for this universal coverage). However, buried deep in the report is another interesting policy statement that flows from the drive to universal broadband coverage: a commitment to digital switchover of public services. In particular each government department has to offer up two candidate services that will move to being delivered primarily online by 2012. And, there is a clear expectation that all government services that are capable of moving to this model will do so in due course.

Of course considerable progress has already been made in getting government services and transactions online. But, the timing for this new commitment could not be more interesting. With political debate fast moving to argument around where and how deeply cuts will fall on public services, it’s clear that tinkering with existing delivery models just isn’t going to go far enough. Instead departments will have to look at more radical options like reimagining how public services are delivered, combined with a presumption of self-service for all but a small group of people who really do need help to access essential services. There have been notable electronic government successes already and Digital Britain identifies new candidates for early ‘switchover’ such as student loans and electoral roll registration. But the intriguing question is whether we can go further to start saving really significant sums and transform our public services using digital thinking. For example, could the NHS be made more self-service with greater numbers of consultations delivered online? Could support for new businesses be delivered online and by volunteer networks instead of through face-to-face local business link operations?

The big challenge is the 25% of the population that Ofcom’s own research shows are stubbornly resisting broadband. As you might expect, this groups skews older, towards lower social groups and to those who don’t have children. Main reasons for shunning broadband are sometimes financial but often wrapped up in issues of fear, low skills or simple disinterest. Without concerted effort to reduce the size of this group it will be hard to create meaningful public services switchover because it will be too easy to argue for retaining existing analogue services to serve this sizable minority. The government already has schemes in place that address some of the barriers to broadband take-up. A good example is the Becta Home Access scheme which provides financial support for getting broadband and computers to families with kids. But addressing the barriers isn’t the same as creating demand. What we now need is some really effective marketing that creates the case for broadband in those that don’t currently see the need, or for whom the fears outweigh the benefits. This shouldn’t be too difficult. Those of us who are broadband users would be horrified if we lost it – we need to explain why in a way that gets late adopters to take the plunge.

Given Lord Carter’s background in advertising it’s a little surprising that Digital Britain doesn’t give us a clear way forward on this issue. But if the rumours are right and he ends up taking a big media job next, he might just end up with this on his plate anyway.