Labour’s vision for a digital state

Big visions have risks as well as benefits. As we argued in our Programme for Effective Government, parties should be wary of making promises to voters that they can’t then keep in government. Understandably civil servants are anxious about how they will turn political visions into reality – where to start with a big reform? It’s easy to be cynical, but some constructive criticism is probably useful to make sure that grand ambitions are also achievable. The analysis of the state of politics and government offered by Cruddas was pretty damning: “inadequate”, “over-centralised” and “undemocratic” were just some of the words used. Established political parties are “in danger of being past their sell by date… disconnected from society” and public services are “risk averse” and “crowd out initiative and innovation.” Policy, he argued, is still too elitist, not adaptive and responsive enough, it fails to properly involve service users. Underpinning much of this, he said, was the British state’s failure to truly embrace digital technology. For Cruddas, the more relational, local, bottom-up collaborative state that he wants to see can be enabled by digital means. His critique does neglect some of the more successful innovations in government and improvements to policy making. But I think it’s true that much of our interaction with the state feels clunky and old fashioned, despite the huge strides made through the Government Digital Service (GDS) and the reforms pushed by Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude. I’m in the middle of moving house and the bureaucracy involved in things as simple as getting a parking permit are surprising – particularly if you’re used to doing most of your life tasks through apps. The head of the GDS, Mike Bracken, argued much the same in a speech here in October. “We’re stuck with a statute book that demands wet signatures, which holds back services whether they be benefits or car registration, preventing them from being as simple as they could be”, he said. Where Cruddas takes the idea of digital transformation even further, I think, is in its potential not just to transform transactional services but to change notoriously tricky services, like helping those with multiple needs, and to empower individuals and communities. What might that look like? There are some instructive examples at a local level and attempts at digital innovation are not new in complex public services. He mentioned Patchwork, for example, a new digital tool created by the folks at futuregov and being trialled by a number of local authorities. Patchwork aims to get round a problem that’s familiar to social workers and other service professionals, how to coordinate the data and information they have about clients who are interacting with different public services. There’s a lot of testing to be done, but this sort of initiative could help create more joined up and responsive services and over time change the working culture of local areas. Scaling up this approach is, of course, much harder and Cruddas was honest about the scale and complexity of the challenge ahead. That might be OK for now – in fact I find it quite refreshing when a politician answers “I don’t know” to a question about their plans. But with only six months left until the election, Labour will need to firm up their ideas. Big visions might help parties get elected, but ultimately their legacy is how well they can deliver on those visions in power.