Fostering better collaboration is difficult, particularly in the complex field of information technology. But the recession could give the agenda a boost, as Matthew O’Toole hears in a fascinating round table discussion

If there’s one theme that recurs in Civil Service World coverage more than any other, it’s that of collaboration among departments and agencies – or, as it’s known, ‘joining up’. It’s hard to find anyone in Whitehall who doesn’t agree with the goal of joined-up government; but it’s also hard to find agreement on the practical steps needed to realise that end.

In an effort to stimulate debate on how to encourage more collaboration, this newspaper organised a lively round table discussion, supported by Microsoft. Given the centrality of information technology to the operation of government and, increasingly, to the provision of public services, it’s unsurprising that much of the discussion centred on technological issues.

The age of smarter government

The group met just days after senior Labour ministers published the high-profile Smarter Government document on the next stages of public service reform, which places huge emphasis on computer technology.

Among its ambitious promises is the national roll-out of ‘Tell Us Once’ (a scheme whereby citizens need only inform government of a birth or death once) and other plans to move even more public services – including student loans and Jobseeker’s Allowance – to mainly online provision. These steps imply a new level of ambition on IT collaboration; but before dwelling on the challenges involved, chair Matt Ross – CSW’s editor – asked whether people could cite examples of success.

Philip French, head of the information and communications technology group at the National Offender Management Service – part of the Ministry of Justice – gave a simple but instructive example from his own realm. “An astonishing number of people with open warrants for their arrest turn out to be in prison, and they’re surprisingly hard to find,” he said.

“A very simple piece of information-sharing started a year or so ago. We now give the Metropolitan Police a daily list of who we have and where they are, so they can go and check it against the list of outstanding warrants and turn up on the doorstep when people are let out.”

David Jones, chief information officer at the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), insisted there are numerous positive IT stories to be told. “The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency’s work on the way people register and tax their vehicles online was immense, and HM Revenue & Customs is doing the same with tax – we don’t like paying it, but it’s made life far easier,” he said.

On projects with more overt collaboration and interoperability issues, he paid tribute to the effort on Civil Pages, the cross-government directory of officials, and Contactpoint, the controversial government database on all English children under 18.

Unfortunately, Jones said, the latter example exemplifies one of the major problems with cross-government IT collaboration: negative public perceptions of the growth of an Orwellian surveillance-state. “The rhetoric of the public debate is all about the negatives,” he said. “Rather than seeing what is good, people look at the press and say: ‘Well, it’s all rubbish isn’t it? I read it in the papers’.” Several panel members went on reflect that negative public perceptions tend to translate into weakened political will on cross-government IT, which then filters through Whitehall leadership and leads to fear among ordinary officials.  

Speaking as an “outsider”, Nigel Gibbons, managing director of IT firm UniTech, said most people are led to assume that “government’s always getting it wrong”, when in fact some of its technology innovations are truly “cutting edge”, and “on a scale the private sector wouldn’t even attempt”.

Akash Paun, a senior researcher at Whitehall think-tank the Institute for Government (IfG), said that much of the public scepticism surrounding Whitehall IT in general – and information-pooling schemes in particular – is a result of the government’s failure to properly articulate their benefits. Surveys illustrate that once people are told the practical benefits of shared datasets across government – such as not having to supply multiple photos for passports and driving licences – a lot of the scepticism melts away. “I think government’s failed to make that case by linking to how people’s lives will improve,” he said.

The problem of privacy

Government communication may have been poor in this area, but even good communications might not overcome what appear to be profound concerns among citizens over the privacy and security of data – and the issue emerged repeatedly in the panel’s broad discussion of IT collaboration.

Hera Miah, a senior advisor at the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), cited another controversial example; one he has encountered outside his civil service day job. He sits on the South of England public panel scrutinising the (now voluntary) ID card scheme, and reported that “there are 14 people [in the group] and only one is upbeat about voluntary ID cards”.  

Dave Coplin, national technology officer at Microsoft, argued that the answers to privacy concerns are transparency and ownership: “If citizens feel that they own the data and the system is transparent, if they can see their own data records, that will help to build trust.” And Paun of the IfG referred to moves within the French government – where, he said, they have “even more entrenched departmentalism” – to improve their own levels of technological collaboration.

One suggested French solution to worries over information-sharing, said Paun, is to develop a ‘personal strongbox’ for citizens, where data is stored in a secure electronic space over which they have control. “If different bits of the state wanted to access parts of it for whatever reason, a request would come and the citizen would say, for example: ‘Yes, I’m happy for my address to be shared between my [child’s] primary school and college’.”

However, the two panel members from the criminal justice sector poured a certain amount of cold water on the notion that the key to cross-government IT and information sharing is the individual citizen’s consent. “If everyone was a sensitive and gentle person it would be okay, but that ain’t the world we live in,” said the CPS’s Jones, while French of the MoJ pointed out that in many cases “the purposes for which the police would want your address are not the same as the subject would want to [let them access it].”

Financial drivers

However the privacy debate progresses, advocates of much faster and deeper IT collaboration between departments will be hoping that the severity of the spending climate in the years to come will help to make their case to policymakers and politicians. Dave Coplin said the IT boss at one of his major corporate clients, Tesco, is now finding it easier to make the case for technological overhauls, leading to long-term savings.

Coplin said Whitehall has been talking about the need for an IT-based overhaul for years – before even the landmark ‘Transformational Government’ strategy of 2005: “Although we’ve wanted to do this for a while, the current state of the economy gives us – for the first time – a real chance of actually making it happen.”

Hera Miah, however, sounded a note of caution, pointing out that the scale and nature of IT collaboration projects will be largely decided by the need to make savings, rather than by the urge to improve services. “Whether it will release any cashable savings will be the first thing on people’s minds; otherwise, it’s likely to be kicked into the long grass,” Miah said.

“So it should!” exclaimed David Jones, who insisted that the government has made huge investments in IT in recent years – and real savings should be expected as a result. He added that improving collaboration at the same time would only come about if departmental and agency leaders recognise opportunities to work together for the common good.

The frustrating problem of ‘silos’ raised its head once again as Mike Hepburn, a communications consultant and former chief executive of Civil Service World’s publisher Dods, expressed a worry that permanent secretaries and other senior leaders have little incentive to invest in schemes that deliver cash savings – or improve services – for other parts of government: “In the future these savings may be huge, but it could be a wider output saving than a saving in one department.”

Michael Hallsworth, another senior researcher at the IfG – currently researching IT management at the centre of government – said the issue of departmental fiefdoms is a “fundamental” stumbling block which even hinders efforts to obtain basic information to compare departments’ relative IT capabilities.

He alluded to a recent report entitled Benchmarking the Back Office, in which government chief information officer John Suffolk reflected on the problems in simply gathering reliable benchmarking data on systems and processes from across Whitehall. If getting basic data such as this is so tough, Hallsworth asked, how can the centre of government encourage departments and agencies to realise savings and overhaul public services with dramatic steps in technological collaboration?

“As John Suffolk says [in the report], the plethora and duplication of systems, services and IT infrastructure means there is substantial room for economies of scale, but you have to wonder how such a strategy will be governed,” said Hallsworth. He argued for a much stronger IT role for the centre, either in the Cabinet Office or Treasury, or though the Suffolk-led, cross-Whitehall chief information officers’ (CIO) council.

This body, he said, should even have the power to confront ministerial interests. “If there is a common good in collaboration – and ministerial priorities sometimes override that desire to collaborate – then there should be some greater power at the centre to say: ‘I know these are your priorities, but this will save a lot of money’.”

But David Jones, himself a member of the CIO council, disagreed loudly. “I don’t buy the power argument and neither does John [Suffolk],” he said, pointing out that an unhelpful tension would arise between the demands of a newly-powerful Whitehall IT boss and the pressures on permanent secretaries and agency chief executives – to whom departmental IT officers like him are ultimately accountable. Greater collaboration will only happen, Jones warned, when permanent secretaries are convinced of the benefits.

Given the recent decision by the government to reduce spending on the enormous NHS National Programme for IT, and to give local trusts much more autonomy over how they participate in the scheme, did participants think a more distributive model of IT collaboration is desirable?

Possibly, said Philip French, but it should be noted that decentralisation in the NHS context only happened once the so-called ‘spine’ had been delivered – including the system of summary care records. “Some of the core stuff on interoperability has already been delivered, and so a greater measure of local autonomy once you’ve dealt with the ‘big things’ may be easier.”  

Technological aspects

In a discussion which revolved mainly around government IT cooperation and interoperability, there was surprisingly little debate on the practical, hardware side of achieving collaboration. Perhaps this was because, as Microsoft’s director of interoperability Giampiero Nanni suggested, “the technical aspects are only one part of the story: the key is making sure the datasets held by departments are intelligible to different systems, allowing organisations to interact”.

This was a major concern for Carryl Allardice, head of knowledge and information management at the foreign office. Allardice said a team of Whitehall technology bosses have an ongoing project – virtually in their spare time – aimed at standardising data storage and quality, but they are seriously under-resourced.

“There is no resource dedicated to driving that interoperability across government,” she explained. “I think there needs probably to be more recognition of the need to resource that activity, because that is going to be the only way to truly drive collaboration.”

The stated aim of government, as recently clarified by the prime minister, is to move not just some, but the “great majority” of transactional services to the web. Added to this, the civil service has the broad and longstanding ambition of using IT to join up better – an imperative many feel has been given further impetus by the recession.

There was broad consensus around the table that if Whitehall leaders are serious about delivering on these goals, then most of these dilemmas – whether technical or cultural – will need to be overcome soon. Huge ambitions are one thing, but according to Philip French, collaboration works best when it’s a bottom-up phenomenon, led by a few officials willing to look beyond narrow departmental concerns – “and that starts with a conversation, rather than a huge policy initiative,” he said.

Keys to change: what needs to happen to drive collaboration

Carryl Allardice - Head of knowledge and information management, Foreign & Commonwealth Office
“To improve collaboration I think we really need to drive up common processes in managing information.”

Caron Atkinson - Project manager, common actions, Government Skills & Next Generation HR
“I don’t think we can continue to afford to ‘remain unique’ any more; we’ve got to collaborate.”

Dave Coplin - National technology officer, Microsoft
“The current political and economic climate provides us with a common purpose. The challenge for us all is: ‘What will we do differently?’ And, from a technology vendor’s perspective: ‘How can technology help?’”

Philip French - Head of the information and communications technology group, National Offender Management Service
“Where are we going to get success? By concentrating on shared objectives. So where might we get those encapsulated? Possibly in public service agreements.”

Nigel Gibbons - Managing director, UniTech
“Among the public, the generational evolution will mean people begin to trust more, as they see the benefits that can be realised through improved integration.”

Michael Hallsworth - Senior researcher, Institute for Government
“The role of the centre – the Cabinet Office and the Treasury – is crucial. I’m not saying the centre should extend its reach into every aspect that’s wrong, but it can add value by intervening.”

Michael Hepburn - Hepburn Communications
“Governments of either party are going to have to really put this up their agenda, put resources into it and possibly bang heads together.”

David Jones - Chief information officer, Crown Prosecution Service
“Leaders have to take responsibility for their own [departmental] boundaries, but that also means looking over those boundaries.”

Hera Miah - Senior adviser, data services group change programme, Department for Children, Schools and Families
“Collaboration needs to be prioritised and enforced from the top. We’ve heard Gus [O’Donnell] talk about how it is, but how that filters down to working practice will be interesting.”

Giampiero Nanni - Director of interoperability, Microsoft
“This will not be solved by a single company. It will be solved by industry players and government bodies, in a common effort.”

Akash Paun - Senior researcher, Institute for Government
“The fact that budgets are separated between departments and agencies means it’s difficult to pool resources. You need to build incentives to overcome narrow silo mentalities.”