07 May 2008
Rt Hon Stephen Timms MP
Minister of State for Employment and Welfare Reform
Front Office Shared Services Event
Jubilee Room
Wednesday, 7th May 2008
[Check against delivery]
I am delighted to be here today, and to welcome the shared commitment this event represents to make a reality of the vast potential of innovative technology to improve public services, to make them easier to access and more effective in the interests of all their users – and in particular of those users who through disadvantage of various kinds have found it hardest to access public services successfully in the past.
We often talk – rightly – about digital exclusion and the danger that some people, through lack of access to IT, will miss out on opportunities available to others. What we are talking about today though is the potential to exploit technology to extend services and opportunities precisely to those people who have found it hardest to access them in the past; the vast potential for technology to open up access and serve – not exclusion, but inclusion.
Sir David Varney spoke, I know this morning, and his report pointed out, that it often is people who face the greatest disadvantages who have to, on their own, join up disconnected islands of public services. We have in the agenda of this conference the opportunity to change that. And it’s a chance we need to embrace with enthusiasm.
And there are a lot of opportunities. I am joining the taskforce set up by the Cabinet Office Minister Tom Watson around ‘the Power of Information Review’, to look at the potential for using internet social networking sites. Sites like Rightsnet and NetMums provide ways for people to get access to information and informal advice online which would be very hard to get any other way.
Service Transformation involves searching out new ways for central and local government to design services in the interests not of the Government but of the citizen. It’s also about meeting the target of 3% annual efficiency savings across the public service, which I set out as Chief Secretary to the Treasury in the lead up to the Comprehensive Spending Review for the three years which commenced last month.
They are both important ambitions and we share them in central Government with local government. We need in my department, and others, joined up working with partners – the third sector, the Police, the Health Service – and with the Private Sector, for example, through Local Strategic Partnerships and Local Area Agreements.
I noted while I was at the Treasury and with gratitude that local government delivered £4.2 billion in efficiency savings against a target of £3 billion over the last spending review period. And there are important opportunities here, beyond efficiency, to engage with citizens to design local services together and to work collaboratively with the voluntary and private sectors.
We need to be bold and pioneering. We need to identify the most efficient, most effective channels to reduce the burdens on citizens. And we need to strive for the best possible value for the taxpayer.
The Local Government Online programme has helped improve access to information and services through a multi-channel approach. We need to build on that, developing skills and capacity, being flexible and customer-focused, so that the public sector can be fit to do a great job in the period ahead.
Progress at DWP
You would expect me of course to draw attention today to the achievements of my own department. It’s always seemed to me that the Jobpoint terminals introduced at jobcentres are among the best examples we have of a public service being transformed, replacing tatty old postcards pinned to noticeboards which used to characterise jobcentres, the grim places familiar in the era of the Full Monty. They’ve been transformed. The terminals provide a great deal more information about jobs – not just locally but across the country – and they convey it in a much more dignified way than the old method. You can access the whole database of 400,000 vacancies now from any online terminal, and its certainly one of the reasons why unemployment has come down and stayed down over the past few years. We are looking at replacing dedicated terminals with online access kiosks, so that jobseekers can check out company websites and training information while they’re searching the database at a jobcentre.
The Benefit Payment Automation project has also been a great example, replacing the giro system based on ration book technology. People said the new system was going to be a disaster, with a tight deadline requiring a pin pad to be installed on every post office counter in the country. People said pensioners would never be able to handle remembering their pin. In fact the transformation has been a huge success, delivering – according to customer surveys – a much better service, and saving billions of pounds over a few years.
DWP has not however been regarded as at the forefront of the self service channel. There has been some scepticism about whether the Department would be able to deliver online benefit claims. Well, we have ambitious plans. We have set up ‘My DWP’, which provides access to DWP information online, and we intend to introduce the first online entitlement claims next year.
We want first of all people approaching retirement to be able to claim their State Pension online, and to go on from that so that in due course, most, if not all, of our entitlements will become available online.
Our Change Programme is helping shape the future model for how Government contact centres should operate. We want to reduce the number of avoidable contacts by ensuring more effective signposting to the most appropriate services. We aim to bring those services closer to the needs of citizens and make more effective use of our property estate.
It’s not just about cost savings. The Pension Service as was, under the leadership at that time of Alexis Cleveland, managed through transformation to improve its services substantially, reducing the amount of time it took to claim and receive a pension, at the same time reducing sharply its staff numbers.
The new Pension, Disability and Carers Service, working jointly with Local Government, has established Joint Visiting Teams across the country. They are helping to increase benefit take up and support some of the most vulnerable people in our communities.
There are some great examples of local authorities using technology imaginatively in those joint visiting teams. The London Borough of Southwark is using a hand-held electronic ‘tablet’ to capture information provided by people on visits, including pre-populating DWP benefit application forms. Referral officers visiting customers at home from Tameside Borough Council are using 3G enabled laptops with online access to improve the help they can offer in peoples’ homes – all the laptops of course encrypted for security.
The Pension, Disability and Carers Service has also now secured funding to start to transform the way Local Services work in the community. The latest web-based technology will link into DWP, providing instant access to information and forms, allowing electronic transfer of information direct to processing centres, enabling claims to be dealt with more quickly.
But enough of my bragging about DWP! Let me now update you on three key cross Government programmes.
Tell Us Once
Firstly, “Tell Us Once” is looking at the feasibility of citizens being able to inform Government just once about a change in circumstances. Led by my department on behalf of Government, it’s assessing the demand, costs and benefits of introducing such a service. Initially focusing on registering a birth and reporting a death, it will expand later to include changes of address.
The result will be fewer contacts for citizens and increased efficiency for Government. We are testing the services through pilots involving central Government and several Local Authorities. Different aspects of a potential service are being trialled, and different channels - face to face, telephone and online through Directgov.
Free School Meals
Secondly, the Free School Meals service which currently has paper-based applications. The parent or guardian has to “prove” they are on benefits, which can take weeks to accomplish. Too often people abandon their claim half way through; and their child misses out on what they are entitled to. The process causes unnecessary embarrassment and is undignified. It should be very simple. The project aims to transform the experience.
The ambition is for a child making an application to receive their free lunch that day. It is joining up local and central government for the citizen with very direct results.
The Department for Children, Schools and Families is leading this work, collaborating with my department, and with Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council and Hertfordshire County Council.
Help for Jobseekers
We are also working with Local Authorities and HM Revenue and Customs to improve access to housing benefit and tax credits to make it simpler for people to get back into work. By bringing all the services together to be dealt with at one time, people can have confidence to make sound decisions. In particular, it can help people see how much better off they will be in work, and that is very important information.
Process changes in Government
Identifying and making the most of all these opportunities requires us to organise ourselves differently. For example, we need to build on, and share all our knowledge of our customers. So we have established a cross-government Customer Insight group. That will be looking at the experiences and sometimes complex journeys customers have to go through, looking initially at customers with a disability, and at customers moving into retirement.
At the beginning of April, responsibility for Directgov was successfully transferred to DWP. Along with BusinessLink, DirectGov is at the heart of our ambitions for Transformational Government – building capability to allow citizens to transact with government safely and securely as soon as they register. Banks and retailers offer us that opportunity routinely every day. In Government we need to catch up.
At the moment it can be hard for citizens to find the right website. We are looking to move nearly all Government websites to Directgov by 2011, so that customers have a single place to find information.
We are encouraging the use of self service channels where that is possible. The key to personalisation of services, and getting it right, is to tailor our services to customers’ needs, from self service to face to face.
Data security
Effective data security is clearly vital in all of this, not least after some high profile problems. All online Government services require citizen identity assurance and safe data handling.
The Government Connect programme, whose implementation is being managed by DWP, is helping address some of the key challenges. It offers a simplified, accelerated process for sending information securely. It will in due course become the technical platform for Service Transformation – allowing services like Tell Us Once genuinely to join up local and national services, taking a big step further the potential of the partnerships being developed at the moment. It will give us a secure way of transmitting customer information immediately – rather than waiting for data matching.
The work on Identity Management, being led by the Identity and Passport Service is key to self service and to Government Connect. All Departments have a role in supporting it – for example, my Department is focusing on the use of National Insurance numbers as well as improving our ability to share information effectively through the Customer Information System.
In due course, the National Identity Scheme will provide a means for remote authentication. In the meantime, all new programmes and initiatives will ensure the safety of information before involving live customers. The work of Tell Us Once with Directgov, for example, includes development of a demonstrator to test the identity of a customer as they access future government services online.
Conclusion
There are big prizes here, and vast potential. Let’s make the most of them, and my appeal is that we work closely together – central government alongside local – to ensure that we do.
Thank you.
