Internet Changes Everything

Boost for digital delivery of public services

ePolitix.com - Boost for digital delivery of public services

Ministers have outlined plans to make more public services available via mobile technology.

A Cabinet Office strategy document published on Tuesday promised a "step change" in the delivery of services online, including the possibility of allowing parents to check their children are at school.

The 'transformational government' document outlined plans to make every Whitehall department make more use of IT, do so more efficiently and make the provision of services more relevant to users' lives.

Departments will have until the end of the financial year to decide how they intend to take forward the strategy.

But one concrete policy to emerge was that customer service directors will be appointed within the civil service to champion IT provision for particular social groups, such as older people or farmers, and "ensure the services they access from different parts of government are joined up to meet their needs".

Another goal is to ensure that businesses only have to provide the same information to government once, in a bid to reduce red tape.

And a new emphasis will be put on security and identity protection, as more services move online.

Cabinet Office minister John Hutton said the government needed to update its approach in line with rapidly changing technologies, including mobile phones and interactive digital television as well as the internet.

"In 1997, fewer than 16 per cent of households had a mobile phone and fewer than one in ten used the internet," he said.

"Private companies have been swift to shape their services around people's needs and lifestyles - now public services need to raise their game and offer people the levels of convenience, choice and efficiency they rightly demand.

"That is why I am publishing a cross-government strategy today to ensure government uses technology more effectively to deliver better services that are focussed on the needs of the customer."

He added: "We will also increase value for money for taxpayers by transforming the way public services join up back office services such as HR, IT and finance.

"Through innovative use of technology we can save money and deliver faster and better services for people."

November 2, 2005 at 12:20 PM in eCommerce | Permalink | TrackBack (16) | Top of page | Blog Home