Memorandum to Public Administration Select
Committee (ID01)
INTRODUCTION
1. My name is Richard Tyndall; I am employed
by Mouchel Parkman as Principal Consultant in the Local Government
Consultancy team.
2. Bracknell Forest Borough Council has
been the lead authority for the National Smartcard Project since
2003, and has retained Mouchel Parkman as Programme Managers throughout
that time. I have been Programme Manager since August 2004. Before
that I was Programme Manager for Bracknell Forest's own edge Smartcard
Programme for two years, and managed the ODPM-funded ACTVaR (Association
of Councils in the Thames Valley Region) smartcard project.
ELECTRONIC PUBLIC
SERVICE DELIVERY
3. The possibilities of modern technologies
are such that most services are now delivered, at least in part,
with electronic systems. On the whole, these systems have, to
date, been developed to aid the service provider rather than the
service user, and typically, each system stands alone. A recent
audit of cards and electronic IDs in a County and its District
Councils found that there were 42 different card schemes in operation
(including all card types from dumb to smart), and an average
of two cards in circulation for every man, woman and child in
the County. Over 120 different staff members spent some or all
of their working time administering these schemes. There were
nearly 2.5 million separate electronic IDs (with or without associated
cards) for a population under 600,000.
4. This situation is largely a legacy of
the pre-internet age. It is only recently that developments in
networks, the internet, wireless systems and the affordability
of brute computing power have allowed e-Government strategists
to campaign effectively for more joined up and citizen-centric
solutions.
CUSTOMERS FIRST
5. Like other computing technologies, smartcards
are evolving according to "Moore's Law". Technical capability
is racing ahead at the same time that prices are falling. There
are now cards on the market with as much computing power as early
games modules. The biggest challenge facing the public service
is modernising so that the users are delighted and amazed by the
way in which services are made accessible by the new technology.
For instance, an Oyster Card user recently told me that she was
amazed to get an e-mail at her work computer warning her of delays
on her tube journey home. On comparing notes with fellow workers,
she found that the system was clever enough to send the warning
only to Oyster Card holders who regularly used the affected line.
This example may not give much comfort to those delayed by the
fault on the line, but it does show what is possible when service
planners start to think about how they can serve the individual
customer better.
6. Putting customers first means change,
and with change comes risk and resistance. Public Service is risk
averse, and there can be considerable resistance to changing the
way things are done, even if the leadership is comfortable with
the levels of risk involved. Smartcards are no different from
other new technologies in this respect.
JOINING UP
PUBLIC SERVICES
7. The Oyster Card scheme has shown what
is possible when a substantial capital investment is made in modernising
one service. In some ways a victim of its own success, it is now
being lobbied by individual London Boroughs seeking to merge their
own card scheme offerings with the Oyster Card, so that citizens
could carry one card that would work in their Library or Leisure
Centre as well as on public transport.
8. This problem is repeated throughout the
land where individual councils seek to merge school meals cards,
parking cards, bus passes, rent payment cards, library cards,
leisure discount cards, building access cards and the like into
single schemes.
9. These ambitions are difficult to achieve
because, in each service area, there are competing specialist
system suppliers who have little or no experience of the rest
of the public sector. Library management systems are as specialist
as parking management, or bus ticketing, or leisure centre management
systems.
10. This already difficult problem gets
considerably more complex when you add in the challenge of offering
a seamless service to citizens across council boundaries.
THE NATIONAL
SMARTCARD PROJECT
(NSCP)
11. In 2003, as part of its National Projects
Programme for Local e-Government, the Office of the Deputy Prime
Minister funded Bracknell Forest Borough Council to bring together
those councils who had made a start on tackling these issues.
The task was to review the lessons learnt by the early adopters,
and to recommend a way forward for the deployment of multi-application
citizen smartcards issued by local government.
IT'S
NOT ABOUT
THE CARD!
12. "It's not about the card!"
quickly became a motto for the project. The smartcard is a solution,
but the project was not about creating problems to solve via the
card. The problem was how can we allow citizens to identify themselves
to e-enabled services in a way that is easy, convenient and efficient.
We quickly focussed on the need for each Council to have robust
systems for registering citizens and managing their electronic
identity in a way that is fair, easy to use, understandable and
legal. The smartcard that is subsequently issued is the token
that represents the citizen and their entitlement to use the services
provided for them, and is their means of accessing those services
and recording the usage and uptake.
SMARTCONNECT
13. A software tool known as "SmartConnect"
was developed by the project, taking a solution first designed
for the Cornish Key scheme by Cornwall County Council. This product
was strengthened and improved, and made configurable for use by
any Council wishing to take it on. This phase of the work was
led by Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council, and used the early
adopter experiences of Cornwall, Bolton, Mid Suffolk District
Council and Chester City Council. The product is now in the ownership
and control of Bracknell Forest Borough Council and being rolled
out to the next wave of Councils.
14. Considerable success was also achieved
in demonstrating interoperability across a local authority boundary
in a pilot scheme involving Bolton and Blackburn with Darwen and
bus, library and leisure services. Take-up of the services also
increased.
STARTER PACK
15. During its development, SmartConnect
was called a starter pack. It is very good at what it does, but
it only has the limited ambition of allowing a Council to get
started. Several people involved with the NSCP realised that while
SmartConnect could help a Council join up its own services, an
altogether different effort would be needed to deliver interoperability
between councils, and also to deliver secure online authentication.
GOVERNMENT CONNECT
(GC)
16. The Government Connect Programme, a
national programme now being led by Bolton MBC and funded by ODPM,
was inspired, at least in part, by the vision of delivering a
system of joined-up, citizen-centred public services that was
beyond the scope of the NSCP. The purpose of GC is to solve the
problems encountered by public bodies in local and central government
who are trying to deliver seamless services to citizens. It is
a complicated, but necessary task.
17. The project will create a secure electronic
environment within which the various agencies of central and local
government can conduct e-transactions with each other and with
citizens. To enable this, a Citizen Account will be established
for each citizen that registers, and a smartcard token can be
issued to carry the electronic credential of the relevant authentication
level proving the card holder's entitlement to the services they
use.
18. This will build on the SmartConnect
product, and be based on each local authority making arrangements
to register its own citizens, and issue its own cards within the
technical framework dictated by GC. The aim is to register a citizen
once, and use that information many times over.
WHAT ARE
THE POSSIBILITIES?
19. The recent DfES Green Paper "Youth
Matters" has announced the intention to pilot a Youth Opportunity
Card in conjunction with Government Connect and existing local
authority smartcard schemes. This is testing out a new way of
responding to the challenge of providing young people with "Places
to Go and Things to Do". The idea behind this initiative
is that the smartcard technology will allow targeted financial
subsidy to be given to young people in a controlled and measurable
way that will give them the spending power to access constructive
activities and transfer that value to the activity provider.
20. Another example of innovative service
delivery utilises the ability to write information to a smartcard
as well as read from it. Thus citizens are rewarded with points
when they display behaviours in line with public policy objectives,
such as choosing healthy eating options in a school canteen, or
exercising at the leisure centre, or taking adult education courses,
or using recycling facilities.
21. In settings such as school meals delivery,
smartcards have been successful at de-stigmatising free school
meals recipients. In settings such as concessionary bus fares,
they provide an auditable trail of exactly how much subsidy is
due to the operator.
WHAT ARE
THE PROBLEMS?
22. Neither the business case, nor the financial
case for multi-application smartcards, is straightforward. Considerable
effort is currently being applied to the production of a comprehensive
publication which makes the case for a fully specified multi-application
citizen card scheme which includes access to local services, remote
on-line authentication, and robust e-payments systems, especially
for transaction values that are too low for existing debit/credit
card schemes. This work is being led by GC and fully supported
by the National Smartcard project, and is due for publication
in the spring.
CONCLUSION
23. Smartcard technology is now tried, tested,
and reliable. As part of an overall offering of e-enabled services,
smartcard deployments hold out the prospect of faster, more accurate
service delivery, with an auditable trail of who uses which service
how often. Alongside this is the prospect of better targeting
of services to promote take up by those who are entitled and to
prevent fraudulent access by those who are not entitled. The realisation
of the potential of smartcards as part of the modernisation of
public service relies on a citizen-centred approach. An agency,
or departmental, or service specific approach which puts the organisation's
needs ahead of the citizen's needs will miss the point.
24 November 2005
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