The Devil's Advocate: Do it online – or else...

Hardened cynic though I am, it is still possible to amaze me. Maybe it is a joke or maybe it is only there to provoke. Whatever the reason, the Work Foundation (formerly the Industrial Society) has produced a report suggesting that we should be compelled to use e-government facilities.

They point out that uptake of online services has been sluggish. Reasonably enough, they are sceptical about the idea that all government services should go online, rather than picking those that are most wanted. But controversially, they put the view that government is somehow subsidising people who have internet access, yet insist on submitting old-fashioned forms.

The authors of the report, Noah Curthoys and James Crabtree, seem to be attributing an unexpected cussedness to digital sophisticates. While those of us that have easy access to the online world could interface with government electronically, we are perversely choosing to fill in paper forms, put them in envelopes and take them round to the post.

Speaking as someone who is years behind on conventional correspondence, and barely manages to keep pace with email, I find this ludicrous. Given a choice, I will always complete a transaction online. My banking is online, our weekly grocery shopping is online, I buy train tickets and much else online and so on.

Indeed I was all ready to submit my tax return online, especially with the added bonus of a £10 discount. The reasons for not doing so are probably well known to most of you. The procedure was tortuous in the extreme, and by the time I was ready to submit, had been withdrawn altogether. There is doubt over whether the returns were secure or whether one could be certain the Inland Revenue had received them. At least recorded delivery provides proof of delivery that is hard to challenge.

Plainly there should be cost advantages to government from electronic transactions. The savings can be shared with citizens as an incentive. The primary reason people will use online services, though, is because it is easier and more reliable. If government cannot achieve these values, then compulsion is an absurd response.

Now the authors do have a more subtle point to make. They advocate electronic systems as a way to reform government services, many of which are provided by local authorities. Yet this idea seems no more plausible than the idea that uptake of electronic services should be achieved by force.

It reflects a problem that often besets IT, but is endemic in the whole of our technological society. It is the confusion between means and ends. Improving the interaction between citizens and government through the internet is merely tinkering with means. It fails to challenge the nature of the interaction and the purposes it serves.

For example, instead of seeking ways to achieve electronic submission of tax returns, we could be asking more stridently why so many more people are paying tax now than in earlier times. We could be asking why the information required has to be so complex and whether it could be gathered in better ways. Or could the information flows be completely different from how they are now?

The real questions are about the nature of government services. Why are they needed and how are they best provided? What ought to be the relationship between the individual citizen and each branch of government? Fiddling with the details of delivery mechanisms takes attention from the issues that matter. IT may be an enabler, but it does not tell us what should be enabled.