5 The role of digital technology
44. The Government's Digital Strategy outlines
the intention for Government to become "Digital by Default",
which it explains as "digital services that are so straightforward
and convenient that all those who can use them will choose to
do so whilst those who can't are not excluded".[61]
The Civil Service Reform Plan refers specifically to the role
of technology and social media in delivering open policy-making,
and the Digital Strategy itself states that:
Transactional services and information are the primary
focus of our digital by default approach, but digital also provides
ways to improve the broader policy making process, through better
engagement and consultation. It has the potential to transform
democratic participation in the policy process, and improve the
design of policy itself. The Civil Service Reform Plan states "Open
policy making will become the default" and we will use
digital to achieve that outcome.[62]
According to the Government's Digital Strategy departments
will also "incorporate plans in their departmental digital
strategies to listen to and understand conversations in social
media, use the insight gained to inform the policy-making process
and to collaborate more effectively with partners".[63]
45. The evidence we received highlighted the
benefits of harnessing digital technology for the purposes of
policy development. Sciencewise stated, for example, that technological
developments provided "the opportunity of greater levels
of dialogue and involvement of more members of the public and
other stakeholders". Catarina Tully suggested that "web-based
forms of engagement create great opportunities: facilitating input
into decision-making, enhancing oversight, and making community
ownership of public assets possible".[64]
Making the most of digital technology
46. We were particularly impressed by two examples
of digital engagement, which are summarised below. The benefits
of the form of engagement undertaken by the London Borough of
Redbridge, who consulted the public on their budget, is that the
public has to engage with the consequences of their preferences,
as well as confronting political leaders with their aspirations.
The Peer-to-Patent model also provides an interesting and innovate
approach to engagement. In our view, this success rests on the
fact that the process is contained and the objectives and limitations
are well defined and understood by those of the public who are
participating.
Examples of digital engagement with decision
makers
YouChoose (London Borough of Redbridge)
Used as an alternative to paper based consultation,
the London Borough of Redbridge developed a web based tool in
conjunction with YouGov and the Local Government Association which
presented users, principally Redbridge residents, with a simplified
version of the Council's budget areas and a series of graphical
"sliders". Users could adjust the budget with the sliders,
but had to always achieve a balanced budget. The information produced
was analysed and presented to elected Councillors, who retained
the responsibility for making final decisions. In its written
submission, the Council explained that "the consultation
results and the final budget decisions about savings were broadly
similar" but, had they not been, "politicians would
have had to change their policy or explain why an unpopular decision
was the right one".[65]
Open policy-making: Peer to Patent (US Patent
Office)
Professor Beth Noveck, former US Deputy Chief Technology
officer and author of Wiki-Government, was responsible
for the creation of Peer-to-Patent, a pilot project with the US
Patent Office that enabled interested members of the public to
expand the resources of the Patent Office in finding examples
of "prior art" (public information that might be used
to decide a patent's claims of originality). To tackle the backlog
of certain types of patent, those applying for patents were incentivised
to take part by the possibility of faster consideration of their
own application, but they had to bear the risk that it might be
seen by competitors. Small groups of users worked on each patent
application, and members of the group could indicate or vote on
each other's contributions according to whether they found them
useful and constructive. This enabled the Patent Examiner, who
retained responsibility for making the final decision, to sift
the highest quality contributions from the rest, and to keep the
amount of information supplied manageable. It also enabled the
group to police itself and, for example, identify any attempts
by the applicant's competitors posing as reviewers to undermine
the application. Splitting the jobs of researching, commenting
and comparing prior art also kept the workload for any one individual
manageable, and reduced the risk of one person or group acting
together to "capture" the process.[66]
47. When asked whether the use of digital technology
within Government was delivering better and genuine engagement,
Mike Bracken, Executive Director of the Government Digital Service,
suggested that developments such as the GOV.UK website meant that
"for the first time, users do not have to know the inner
workings of Government to engage with government. You do not have
to know all the details about how Government is structured to
petition Government or to find government information". He
also suggested, however, that more needed to be done in the use
of the internet to change policy and public perception, saying
that he hoped "to see a much higher level of ambition statement
in the departmental digital strategies, so we should see a higher
level of radical ambition, I hope, for our core services by the
end of the year".[67]
48. In evidence, witnesses discussed the value
of Government using existing social media platforms, such as Facebook
and Twitter, in engaging with the public. Mike Bracken told us
that government services were beginning to use social media to
have conversations and senior civil servants were beginning to
use these types of digital platforms.[68]
Both Catarina Tully and Professor Noveck endorsed the use of social
media for certain purposes, but felt that its use for deliberation,
which Sciencewise defined as responding to each other's views
exchange learning and interpret responses, was limited.[69]
Catarina Tully advised civil servants to "go to where the
conversations are being held" to hear what people thought,
rather than setting up new structures.[70]
Professor Noveck agreed:
[...]the cost of using things like Facebook and Twitter,
and building that into the daily work of press operations and
whatnot, is relatively low. They are excellent ways of broadcasting
out and reaching people in the same way we use television, radio,
newspaper or other traditional media. For other kinds of collective
action, or organising other kinds of processes, we do need some
purpose-built tools.[71]
49. However, evidence suggested that whilst digital
technology represents an opportunity for successfully implementing
greater levels of public engagement in policy-making, civil servants
lack the skills to use it well. In considering the skills required
to push forward innovation, Professor Nigel Shadbolt, of the University
of Southampton, said that "The level of public technology
skills across Government is simply not fit for purpose".[72]
Mike Bracken agreed, saying that "some departments and some
big agencies have outsourced so much of their capacity over the
last decade that they have no one to define their own technology
architecture and also their digital skills".[73]
In considering digital skills and their link with policy, Simon
Burrall, Director of Involve, summarised the main problem:
One of the issues and one of the big skills gaps
is the people who understand how to engage the public do not necessarily
really get digital, and the digital people do not necessarily
get public engagement. There is a real need to begin to find
ways to get teams to work together and to begin to train across
those teams in different ways.[74]
50. We share the view that digital
technology has a significant role to play in opening up policy-making.
It has the potential to allow those citizens who are digitally
enabled to interact with the Government in new ways, as well as
to allow the Government to expand its reach in a cost effective
way. The Government is making progress in its approach to using
digital technology, but we believe that digital engagement for
the purposes of policy-making could go further and embrace radical
and innovative approaches which support the genuine and continuing
involvement of citizens in policy. The Peer-to-Patent project,
in which experts collaborated on patent applications for the US
patent office, is an excellent example of innovation which not
only allowed citizens to contribute their knowledge, but also
reduced the backlog of applications within the department. The
lesson of this success appears to arise from the fact that the
objectives and limitations of the process of engagement were clear
and understood. We recommend that departments pilot a similar
approach in order to test its effectiveness across different areas
of policy and with different sections of the public.
51. In order to use digital
technology effectively in open policy-making, digital experts
within the Civil Service and outside should work more closely
with policy teams to explore opportunities for digital engagement
and to provide support in carrying out digital engagement activity.
For example, the Department of Energy and Climate Change could
trial the use of eBay, Amazon and supermarket websites to open
up the Green Deal and allow residents to access this offer through
established retail channels. The same approach could be tried
using the Right To Buy, and the Help To Buy programmes.
52. A number of digital infrastructures,
such as Twitter, are already well established and well used by
citizens. In most circumstances, there may be no need to recreate
systems such as these in order to carry out open policy-making
activity. Wherever possible, the Government should use existing
digital platforms to engage with citizens and to avoid "reinventing
the wheel" or running costly parallel systems.
The limitations of digital: other
forms of engagement
53. Our evidence suggested that digital engagement
tools should not be used to the detriment of other forms of engagement.
Instead it was suggested that the place of digital technology
should be considered within a particular engagement exercise.
Simon Burrall suggested that the focus in the first instance should
be on the problem in question and how digital could in turn support
a solution:
What problem are you trying to solve? What is it
the public have that will help you solve that problem, and then
is the internet the way to do it? Is it the internet plus offline
engagement? If you ask the question, "What can the internet
do for us?" you risk getting it very badly wrong.[75]
He went on to say:
If you want deep engagement on quite a complex issue,
say drugs policy, doing it by the internet would be a really bad
way of doing it. What you would want to do is go offline. It comes
back to my point that, if you think the internet is the tool that
is going to solve your problems with public engagement, you are
going to run into exactly the problems you are running into, because
you are not thinking about what this tool allows you to do and
what it does not allow you to do.[76]
54. Those that were supportive of digital technology
also warned against the dangers of relying too heavily on digital
platforms to improve engagement. The National Coordinating Centre
for Public Engagement (NCCPE) stated in written evidence that
"While digital platforms can help to achieve a greater volume
of responses with fewer resources, many topics require longer-term
engagement and the kind of deliberation that can be achieved through
a well-managed public dialogue".[77]
The UK Association for Science and Discovery Centres in their
written submission agreed, stating that "social media is
only part of the answer as it appeals to only a subset of people,
with a subset of interests".[78]
Involve suggested that:
While digital engagement has a number of benefits
and should certainly play an integral role in public engagement
in future, it also has a number of comparative weaknesses (e.g.
deliberation, conflict and ownership) and should therefore not
be used to the exclusion of other methods where they are more
appropriate.[79]
55. Evidence also suggested that some citizens
might be excluded from engaging in the policy-making process if
too much focus is given to digital means of engagement. According
to figures published in the Government Digital Strategy, the percentage
of UK adults who access government information or use government
services online has been stable for the last five years at just
over 50%. It also notes that:
Those in higher socio-economic groups (ABCs) are
more likely to be online, with 92% regularly or occasionally accessing
the internet. 28% of disabled people are not online (rarely access/have
never used the internet), and older people are more likely to
be offline than other age groups (however 59% of people aged over
65 are online). Geography doesn't appear to have too great an
influence on whether people access the internet or not, as people
are offline in urban, suburban and rural areas. [80]
56. Professor Kathy Sykes suggested that "if
digital platforms are the only way people can participate, some
people will be left out. At times, some of those very people,
whether the elderly, or disabled, will be some of the most important,
valuable voices to hear".[81]
In our evidence, the importance of face-to-face engagement was
highlighted. Sciencewise wrote that "the choice between digital
and face-to-face engagement needs to be made in each case based
on the particular policy context. In some cases face-to-face engagement
provides an irreplaceable function".[82]
Research Councils UK (RCUK) promoted "policy which integrates
digital technology and face-to-face dialogue to promote direct
public participation".[83]
57. We support the use of digital
technology in open policy-making, but it should not be used to
the detriment of other forms of engagement. The proposals within
the Civil Service Reform Plan do not appear to give equal weight
to other forms of engagement in open policy-making. We are concerned
that given the proportion of some groups that do not use the internet,
such as the disabled and elderly, the Government risks excluding
many people from policy-making process. There are ways of compensating
for this imbalance, but it is essential to use other forms of
engagement as well. The Government should be able to demonstrate
that digital methods used in engagement exercises are suited to
the needs of those they are trying to engage. Concrete
goals should be set, relative to the importance of digital platforms
in peoples' lives. For example, if 50% of Britons have a Facebook
account, Whitehall interactivity via Facebook should reflect this.
Clear guidance should be set for the wider public sector.
61 Cabinet Office, Government Digital Strategy,
6 November 2012, page 5 Back
62
As above, page 37 Back
63
As above, page 37 Back
64
Ev 49 and Ev 79 Back
65
Ev 65 Back
66
Beth Noveck, Wiki-Government: How Technology Can Make Government
Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful (2009) Back
67
Q 116 Back
68
Q 141 Back
69
Ev 49 Back
70
Ev 79 Back
71
Q 79 Back
72
Q 111 Back
73
Q 109 Back
74
Q 111 Back
75
Q 116 Back
76
Q 118 Back
77
Ev 53 Back
78
Ev 48 Back
79
Ev 59 Back
80
Cabinet Office, Government Digital Strategy, 6 November
2012, page 12 Back
81
Ev 63 Back
82
Ev 49 Back
83
Ev 49 and Ev 57 Back
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