The 2020 Public Services Trust Blog

This morning I awoke to Chief Inspector of Constabulary Dennis O’Connor on Radio 4’s Today Programme. He said that the police are failing to tackle anti-social behaviour – a “kind of chronic illness that causes corrosive harm” . In particular, the Chief Inspector strongly criticised the police for not keep a proper record of low level crime.  He said that over half of forces are not able to keep track of patterns of repeat anti-social behaviour, which seriously undermines public confidence in the police. 

Proper use of data and information systems is critical: “This is not a load more paper work on the officers, this is about having a smart system behind some of the best police officers in the world so that they are as intelligent they can be about the circumstances they are going into. It’s about giving them the tools so they can do the kind of job we want them to do on this…”

Hearing this was like music to my ears. For nearly twelve months, I have been working on a research project to examine the role of information and technology in driving up the quality of our public services. Previously often dismissed as a side-line, obscure policy issue, the role of data and information is coming to the political fore.

Only this morning the Conservative Party published their ‘Technology Manifesto’, promising to invest in superfast broadband, promote a culture of open data to generate and estimated £6 billion for the economy, and to bring an end to massive IT procurement projects. All of this is closely tied to talk of the ‘Post Bureaucratic Age’ (or ‘PBA’) – policy-wonk speak for open, transparent and accountable government. Several of us got excited at the thought during our lively seminar on social media and PBA on Tuesday.

That seminar is part of our year-long work-stream on information and technology in public services. We’ve been talking to social entrepreneurs, digital inclusion activists, people across the tech industry and in government. We’ve welcomed the recent sea-shift in attitudes within each of the main political parties. But we’re pushing for more, so watch this space…they don’t know the half of IT.

There’s a typically reflective piece in the FT this morning from Martin Wolf, pulling out his key themes from the World Economic Forum in Davos.  Strangely, I wasn’t invited this year, so I will have to take his word for it…

The article considers the short and the long term challenges for the global economy, and the killer question of if and when to withdraw fiscal stimulus and start cutting public spending.  The question is a global one, but is utterly relevant to our own election campaign. 

Labour accuse the Tories of wanting to ‘strangle the recovery at birth’.  The Tories accuse Labour of ignoring the ‘great bulk’ of the UK’s structural deficit.  There are risks to both strategies, but Wolf also points to the longer term challenges of financial sector reform and a rebalancing of the global economy. 

What interested me was his perspective on leadership and consensus.  An ‘impressive ability to deal with the crisis’ was shown, but now we are back to the push and pull of everyday politics, it may be much harder to generate the kind of global consensus and willingness to work together that pulled us out of the crash.    

Speaking of which, there is an interesting article in this weeks New Yorker (which can be read online) about the new Tea Party movement in the US.  Really fascinating to see how a disgust with mainstream politics (and mostly with the ‘liberal’ elite) has led to such an organised, collective set of protest movements.  This is definitely not a coalition that would make many moderates or Obama supporters (or indeed me) feel comfortable, but its fascinating to see how grass roots mobilisation is impacting on formal US politics.