Socitm’s assessment of the main political parties’ manifestos
Socitm has prepared a 7-point plan – its hopes for a new Government after the General Election. This is our assessment of the main parties’ manifestos (Conservative, Green, Labour and Liberal-Democrat) in relation the aspirations expressed in our plan.
Renew locally determined and delivered public services, empowered by information and technology
Each manifesto sets out a case, to a greater or lesser degree, for locally determined and delivered public services, underpinned by transparency and accountability to strengthened local communities.
All of the parties make propositions for decentralising and delivering public services through radically different organisational models. These approaches align well with Socitm's thinking. All parties would need to address how people (as public sector staff, as consumers of public services and as citizens with rights and responsibilities), how information and how technology can be brought together to achieve better value for money through this decentralised, locally accountable and transparent service delivery.
A significant gap in all of the manifestos is the lack of attention to central government service delivery and how its redesign will fit with attempts to decentralise decision-making and delivery of public services.
Aspirations such as the Conservatives' notion of 'The Big Society' - a society built on principles of self-help, social responsibility and community self development - represent a major cultural shift that will require the mobilisation of people and the groups to which they belong, including professional groupings, such as Socitm.
Infrastructure to support decentralised public services is addressed solely in terms of the exhortations by Labour and Conservatives to deliver near-universal superfast broadband. However, neither addresses the key issue of how they will ensure the reach and funding of superfast broadband into, for example, deprived rural communities.
The Greens advocate cessation of PFI and other privatisation initiatives, which would have implications for current and future models of IT delivery.
Re-align IT governance
The management of information and technology assets and their re-use will become ever more critical as financial austerity bites. This issue is addressed directly by the Conservatives in their Technology Manifesto, where they outline a stronger role for the government chief information officer (CIO) with new powers to implement open standards, open data and other IT policies across government departments.
The other parties support similar principles but without going into detail about how these arrangements will be implemented or governed.
Focus on public services outcomes
All of the parties employ the rhetoric of better value for money and radically improved service outcomes, driven to varying degrees by a belief in local action and third sector engagement.
The view that the third sector could become a major delivery agent for niche, targeted public services is widely canvassed. What is not clear is how, in its various guises, the third sector could become a trusted partner, sharing sensitive, personal information over government networks in order to deliver value for money public services.
Ring-fenced protection of service areas such as the NHS, education, childcare and policing, suggested by Conservatives and Labour is unlikely, on its own, to deliver better service outcomes and could actually mitigate against them in a local, whole-place approach to determining and delivering public services in the most effective and efficient manner.
Re-think public service design
All of the manifestos talk about greater citizen/consumer engagement in determining what services to provide. What remains unclear is how citizens and consumers of public services can help to shape, target and deliver more and better public services at significantly lower cost.
The future of digital public services delivery is addressed by the Prime Minister in his speech on 22 March. The Liberal Democrats align with similar thinking about a digitally inclusive society, while the Conservatives emphasise a technology-driven economy.
All of the parties advocate opening up government data, with the implied opportunities this brings for new services to be built. The Conservatives take this further with a 'right to government data' and the creation of a small IT development team in government - a 'government skunkworks' - to develop low cost IT applications in-house and advise on the procurement of large projects.
None of the parties considers how new social networking technologies and the semantic web could transform the landscape (and cost) of government IT, although there are some implied references to increased opportunities for democratic participation.
Assure information
A number of the parties intend to scrap ID cards and close down Contact Point. Whilst this may be attractive politically and economically, alternative models, such as federated trust and identity are not addressed in the manifestos, nor do they address the question of how public services can collaborate effectively and efficiently to deliver services that are easy for the citizen to access, while offering protection to the vulnerable. Paradoxically, the Conservatives talk about the improvements in policing that are achievable with better, more joined-up use of information.
Procure intelligently
The Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Greens all take issue with current IT procurement arrangements that they say tend to favour large scale contracts and few suppliers. The Conservatives offer commitments to a level playing field for open source software in government procurements and a presumption against IT contracts worth more than £100million.
Continue to build IT professionalism
This theme stems from the programme of work developed by the CIO Council and the Cabinet Office. It is implicit in the Conservative's Technology Manifesto, with its proposals to strengthen the role of the government CIO and programme/project management, and is implied in education and skills aspects of other manifestos.
Concluding comment
Whatever is the outcome of the General Election, it is clear that Socitm can play a significant role in helping to shape how implementation of the new government's policies can be underpinned locally by better information handling and technology deployment.