Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280
- 299)
TUESDAY 11 JANUARY 2000
DR HELEN
MARGETTS, PROFESSOR
CHRISTINE BELLAMY
AND DR
STEPHEN COLEMAN
Mr White
280. Something that follows on from that point
is one of the things I am interested in is what are the barriers
to change. To me change is about human reactions not a technological
one. One of the things that has concerned me about the whole of
the debate so far is that it has been about the Internet rather
than the speed of change. Is not the real debate about how you
deal with innovations, which goes way beyond the Internet, about
the speed of change rather than whatever the particular technology
happens to be? Have you done any work on that side of it?
(Dr Coleman) We have done some comparative work on
different parliaments and the way that they have responded to
change. Different parliaments have done better in different areas.
Some are much better at handling e-mail and e-mail filtering.
Some have particularly good web sites. There are some web sites
which put the Westminster Parliamentary web site to shame. Some
are using electronic voting inside the chambers. I do not think
there is a model parliament or model government anywhere in the
world as far as this is concerned. For example, in the United
States of America there is not a single federal or state assembly
that has ever run an on-line discussion collecting evidence from
citizens whereas the United Kingdom Parliament now has. In terms
of who does what first I think everybody is feeling around and
the message that all of us would put to the Public Administration
Committee is that that needs to be done in a rather more structured
way. One needs to start looking at best practice from other countries
and thinking about opportunities for learning from those. Certainly
in each of the specific areas we could give you examples of best
practice in relation to e-mail. As I said, the Canadian Parliament
has done some important work and indeed the Irish Parliament has
as well.
281. If you go back to e-commerce you are talking
about how we manage this and regulate it, and they are going very
much in the opposite direction of light-touch self-regulation
because they recognise that by the time they make a regulation
they are out of date. How does that tie in going back to the point
you made about how you interact with citizens?
(Dr Coleman) Is it not the same response most corporations
take when they know that they are involved in a ten-year strategy
for change? They do not put all their eggs into one basket. They
take small steps in a particular direction and then they change.
In 1983 the Members' Services Committee of the House of Commons
proposed that all MPs should be given computers which would be
consistent with one another. It was not until 1994 that in fact
the House of Commons decided to adopt a computer system and that
was not centrally procured and it led to inconsistency. So in
the end it is far better to take small steps and be careful about
what you do. In 1983 the computers bought would no doubt have
been inconsistent with the needs of today.
282. One of the things that the European Union
did particularly when Bangemann was around was to promote e-government
and e-commerce. Have you looked at that and were there any lessons
from what he tried to do, electronic cities and things like that?
(Professor Bellamy) Yes tele-cities which I think
connects to the question you were asking a while ago about digital
cities, for example. There has been quite a lot of money poured
into the tele-cities initiative. The problem with them is two-fold.
One is in fact that most of the innovation went into things that
had to do with the delivery of services and support of e-commerce
rather than democratic initiatives. One of the lessons which has
pervaded this whole thing is that the democratic element in this
can easily get side-lined by other sorts of initiatives. The second
is that there was some faith put in this idea that you could have
civic nets or whatever sponsored by local authorities and voluntary
associations and that I think has largely come a cropper mainly
because the incentive for people to join in was that they got
free Internet connection. Of course the growth of ISPs has really
made that rather redundant. This is a point I made in my paper,
which is that if you rely on government sponsored or voluntary
sponsored networks to provide the kind of public space that Stephen
was talking about then they are not likely to work. I think that
when we are talking about the growth of the global superhighway,
this turns out to be a cul-de-sac. The future is about commercially
sponsored initiatives. It is about finding room on those kind
of networks, which is why the problem you were raising earlier
about the regulation of those is a central, crucially important
issue.
(Dr Margetts) Also the question of telephone costs.
If you look at the countries where telephone costs are low you
are talking about 40 per cent and rising Internet allocation.
You do see examples where the usage is high. In Australia and
the Australian job network, for example, a million people access
that every day and you are beginning to see something that looks
like it really is part of everybody's life which was the idea
of the digital cities to some extent.
283. What is the role of the media in this brave
new world, the traditional media, the newspapers and television
news and Internet?
(Dr Coleman) They have been adapting very fast. The
BBC now essentially has a third service which is BBC On-line.
The Financial Times has been the leader in terms of the
British press but certainly the main change in terms of British
newspapers is going to be in the lead-up to the next election.
Most of them are trying to create portal sites which will direct
people to party web sites. They are trying to learn from the United
States. I am not sure they will be able to replicate that in United
Kingdom conditions but one of the things that I thought was very
significant earlier in the year is that at the time of the Chancellor's
statement two months ago more users reached the BBC on-line site
to follow the Budget than watched it on television.
284. How do you see the existing government
departments changing? Do you still see a role for government departments
as opposed to holistic government or do you see the silent mentality
of departments reasserting itself and continuing to exist in some
changed form?
(Dr Margetts) I think you are a long way from seeing
that in Britain, I have to say. I do not think government organisations
will disappear but they will change their focus. I think it is
possible to visualise a time where the government organisation
will be the support for a web site and therefore you can imagine
organisational shapes changing quite dramatically. There is tremendous
opportunity to present joined-up government but people cannot
do everything at once so the things that they want to do with
government they will do with one web site and other things they
want to do they will do with another web site. So I still envisage
organisational groupings but I do think that you can see a situation
where a government organisation, a department is a support mechanism
for a web site.
285. Do you see that having a role with the
non-government departments like the economic regeneration partnerships
and things like that or is that just going to be left by the wayside?
(Dr Margetts) I think it is possible for any governmental
or quasi governmental organisation. Obviously it depends what
an organisation does. Some of them are more suited than others.
286. The point I was trying to get at is the
link. You are saying that the Government will be lagging behind
and there are some private sector companies who are leaping ahead
which tend to be the ones taking initiatives in local areas. How
is the interaction of those two, one dragging, one pioneering,
going to affect our public administration in the future in those
quasi governmental type organisations?
(Dr Margetts) If citizens and enterprises cannot communicate
with them electronically and they can communicate with other organisations
electronically then I think inevitably they will lag behind. The
Department of Social Security does not have much competition,
but if citizens cannot communicate with some social security agency
and they can communicate with a loan shark then that may be what
they do. I think it will matter more and more.
(Professor Bellamy) There is going to be a major problem
about public accountability, because what is becoming very clear
is that the information silos in government are not going to be
broken down easily. And therefore what an organisational unit
in the back office of government is increasingly going to be co-terminous
with is a big mainframe processing system, because it is going
to be years and years and years before those big mainframe processing
systems are disposed of. The strategy behind the 25 per cent initiative
and then the 100 per cent by 2008 is that you put a joined-up
front-end to government, so that it looks joined up and it behaves
as if it is joined up, but the back offices are going to be very
very separate. From the point of view of public accountability,
that seems to me to be hugely problematic because it is masking
the underlying responsibilities for delivering the services. If
you have private sector organisations who are running a lot of
those systems and then you have government departments in partnership,
not only with the private sector but with other sorts of quasi
governmental organisations as well, you have got behind this apparently
joined-up edifice a governmental system which is still very very
complex. And it is going to be very difficult to get to the bottom
of who was responsible when things go wrong.
287. What makes you think that the private sector
has not done exactly the same thing and that it is only a front
to the world that they have changed and the old fashioned mainframe
computers are the same for the private sector? Is that not the
reality rather than there being this brave new world where the
private sector is wonderful and the Government is bad?
(Dr Margetts) That is the reality, yes.
288. So what is the difference between private
sector and public sector in that respect?
(Dr Margetts) It is not all the private sector by
any means, but some private sector organisations and a few governmental
organisations have recognised the importance of this development
and to some extent they have refocused themselves around the Web
as their means to communicate with their customers and to work
out what their customers want. Although they will carry on with
many of the organisational barriers to change that they had before
in the existing government, they have recognised the importance
of this development and they have refocused their business towards
using it because they have had to and I think that is the difference.
It is a question of changing focus. This brave new world does
not drive away all the antiquated computer systems that have been
patched up to overcome Millennium Bug problems and are hopping
along, it has not changed that and it will be a while before it
changes that. There has to be a linkage there. You can present
information on the Web, but in order to do transactions on the
Web and to use information from internal information systems something
quite radical has to happen and if it turns out that you do not
have control over your existing information systems, as many public
and private sector organisations do not necessarily have—and
that comes back to the point about confusion of ownership and
Public Private Partnerships where the control really is in the
hands of the private sector—and the Government is moved
towards doing that to a much more radical extent in the private
sector, so the kind of Public Private Partnerships that exist
in government information technology systems are bigger and more
unwieldy and much harder to control than the kind of contracting
that the private sector tend to do, you are likely to see more
problems of ownership in the public sector than in the private
sector.
289. You seem to be arguing that there is a
homogenous solution to this, that all government is one. Is not
the reality that where you have diversity is where you tend to
get innovation and that were you to get a situation where it was
all one it would actually stifle innovation?
(Dr Margetts) What am I suggesting should be all one?
290. If the Government achieved the objective
you said and got all of its systems up-to-date and all the rest
of it, would not that stifle innovation because does not innovation
come from the problems that people get round in their diversity?
(Dr Margetts) You mean innovation in the US internal
revenue service comes from having systems that were built in the
1960s. I am not suggesting that that is something that has to
be overcome because I do not believe it is overcomeable quickly,
it happens incrementally and with much difficulty, but if it did,
no, I do not think it would necessarily stifle innovation.
Chairman
291. Could I try a couple of questions on you
as we edge towards the end. If I asked you to give me an example
of the kinds of activity that was engaged in that materially affected
the outcome of the political process in some way could you pluck
them and give us them? If asked individually to do that what would
you come up with?
(Dr Margetts) I think one example is the one Christine
mentioned, which is the World Trade talks in Seattle, which could
not start because of a mass demonstration organised on the Internet.
That is an example of political participation on the Internet.
If you look at political party membership, it is falling through
the floor. People are not interested in belonging to political
parties. I do not think we can see a time when it is suddenly
going to rise up, but if political participation took place on
the Internet I think that overcomes the problems associated with
it. "Socialism cuts awfully into the evenings", as Oscar
Wilde said.
292. Surely it still cuts into the evenings?
(Dr Margetts) Not if you can do it in the odd hour
sitting at home at your PC at any time you like. That is not the
same as going to a meeting.
293. The fact that you describe it in this way
is very revealing because if this does not count as real activity
why are we to accept the product as having some validity?
(Dr Margetts) I think it does indicate real activity.
294. In that case it is real time, real evenings,
is it not?
(Dr Margetts) I think it is less painful in the same
way as possibly phoning up your bank at 11 o'clock because you
have forgotten to pay some sort of bill is less painful than going
to the bank the next day.
295. If you describe it in that casual incidental
way that gives a picture of people in a sense having nothing better
to do but press buttons, not because they have anything particular
to contribute but because it is dead easy to do it.
(Dr Margetts) Maybe I should not have quoted Oscar
Wilde who might take that approach. I do not think it does necessarily
devalue it. I do not see why that is not a valid form of political
participation carried out by people who care about the political
process but who have lost interest in traditional, very inefficient
methods of political participation.
Mr White
296. Is not the subtext of what you are saying
that the old fashioned scenario where 60 people turned out to
talk about traffic calming is undervalued by statements that it
has got to be by the new technologies that we do this?
(Dr Margetts) I do not see why that should not take
place. I do not think there is so much public participation going
on that we should say people have to do it one way or the other.
I do not see why you cannot have a plurality of ways. This might
appeal to some people and other ways they may find difficult.
(Professor Bellamy) What would be really nice of course
is to put some kind of note of your meeting up and then let other
people join in. Again to answer your question that started this,
if you were to go and talk to some of the people in Digital City
and City Talks in Amsterdam they would talk to you about that
kind of model where it is a supplement to rather than a replacement
for meeting.
Chairman
297. The disruption of the World Trade talks
stands as the best example we can find?
(Dr Margetts) No.
Mr Browne
298. In a sense though the disruption of the
World Trade talks is the answer to Brian's point which is that
communication in this form encouraged enough people to actually
turn out to the public demonstration so there was a synergy between
the two. They complemented each other.
(Dr Margetts) Absolutely. In the same way that Amazon
Bookstore is good news for courier companies.
299. That is another point of course. As you
know, there is an issue about delivery of e-commerce as there
is about delivery of political policy. I think a lot of people
round about Christmas time discovered the delivery infrastructure
was not as good as the ordering infrastructure. Are there examples
of good interactive web sites? Are there good examples of ordinary,
not highly dramatic, policy issues or political events where this
form of communication has improved the democratic process and
improved the quality of decision making? Are there any out there
that we can use?
(Dr Coleman) I think there are some. I think the difficulty
is that we cannot present them to you here visually because of
the very problem that we are looking at. I think the Minnesota
e-politics e-mail discussion has been tremendously important.
I think the portals in the United States have helped to get the
election debate on a much more informed basis. I think that some
of the candidate web sites in the United States have been successful.
Some of the ways in Australia that the Internet was used during
the referendum campaign helped bring a bit more intelligence into
what was otherwise a not very intelligent debate. I certainly
think participation for groups which have traditionally been excluded
has been increased. I think of the Native Titles debate in Australia
which was transformed as a result of people being able to submit
petitions through the Internet. I think of the coup in Pakistan.
I was able by looking at the Pakistani news groups that existed
in New York and in Britain to find out what I subsequently discovered
was a much more valid picture of the coup in Pakistan as something
that seemed to be supported by a large number of Pakistani people
against a corrupt regime whereas the BBC did not tell me that
for about 48 hours. The change of government in Indonesia was
to a very great extent a result of some of the pressures that
came through people organising on the Internet. It has not happened
in this country to a great extent. The experiments are in a fairly
embryonic stage and one has to actually go out and set them up.
Local authorities have tried to use on-line consultation methods
but neither in terms of national government nor Parliament has
there been anything that has been a coherent strategy.
(Professor Bellamy) There are examples that go earlier
of course, particularly in the United States with cable TV, which
were attempts to do similar things with an earlier form of the
technology. The Oregon Governor in the late 1980s took advice
on the shape of the Oregon budget, which is always quoted as something
that worked very well. In Santa Monica there was a campaign about
the provision of facilities for homeless people in the city which
was organised through the Public Electronic Network there, where
a group campaigned and brought about a very concrete change in
the public policy of that city. Going back to Holland, I think
there were some changes made in the decisions about the new runway
at Schipol airport as a result of some of the discussions that
went on in the Digital City. There are examples round the world.
The problem with them is the one Stephen indicated, which is on
the whole, with the exception of the Digital City, they were experiments.
They were innovations that were set up with the precise aim of
showing that this kind thing can be made to work. They are not
things that were institutionalised into the fabric of democracy.
So you have to take them with due care, but they do seem to indicate
that we can have the kind of outcomes that you were talking about.
Mr Browne: It occurred to me when Dr Coleman
was answering that question that perhaps you might have been better
equipped to answer it if at the same time you had access to the
Web and you were able to show us things. It does seem to me that
the illustration of what you are telling us is all there for us
and we would better understand it if at thesame time as explaining
to us you were able to show us.
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