The savings to be expected from digital-by-default – a clarification

You thought you knew what savings are?

You thought you knew the point of digital-by-default?

Francis Maude said in his Foreword to the Government Digital Strategy that: "By going digital by default, the government could save between £1.7 and £1.8 billion each year ...".

Then in yesterday's Autumn Statement ("AS2012") the Chancellor said: "The recently published Digital Efficiency Report sets out how departments could save approximately £1.2 billion over the remainder of the current spending review period by continuing to move their transactional services online and become ‘digital by default’ ...".

So which is it? 1.2, 1.7 or 1.8? And are we talking about annual figures or the cumulative total over a period of years?

Time for some clarification.

We have tackled this matter before in Cutting costs/making savings, and GDS's fantasy strategy, where we made it clear that the £1.7/1.8 billion of estimated savings ...

• represent annual figures,
• exclude the cost of introducing digitisation (which might amount to £several billion),
• exclude additional savings which could be made (or not), and
• will be largely retained by the government (£1.1/1.3 billiion) ...
• ... so don't go running away with the notion that tax rates might be reduced.

So what's the £1.2 billion? Where did that figure come from?

That's the amount that could be saved by digitisation "during the current spending review period" ("SR2010"), i.e. the five years 2010-11 to 2015-16. That's what the Government Digital Service (GDS) tell us in the Digital Efficiency Report, (p.2). They then promptly confuse the matter again by telling us on p.4 that the £1.7/1.8 billion figures quoted include savings that have already been made by digitisation – it's not all new money.

At which point you may start to feel that you're never going to see any of these savings even if they do materialise. But that's not the half of it. Even more savings you never get the benefit of could be made if only "legislative blockers" were swept away (p.3), those pesky laws of the land/cultural barriers/myths that stand between us and the new world of frictionless data-sharing, please see Alan Travis – Whitehall, the Guardian newspaper and Lord Leveson.

Digitisation has been going on in Whitehall for decades. Despite which, public spending rose by 59% in real terms between 2000-01 (£443.7 billion) and 2009-10 (£705.6 billion). Saving the odd billion by introducing a bit more digitisation is neither here nor there and it certainly isn't worth losing the wisdom of the anti-data-sharing laws which we currently have on the statute book for our protection.

As things stand, with those fusty old laws still in place, GDS reckon that Whitehall can get rid of about 40,000 public servants once digital-by-default is up and running (p.19). That's based on the example of the Driving Standards Agency (p.14) who have gone from 400 staff booking driving tests in 2003 to just 75 in 2012. And on the example of HMRC (p.15) who have got rid of 2,700 staff over the past five years as so many of us have taken to submitting our VAT returns et al on-line.

Has this mass redundancy programme been cleared with the unions?

And while we're waiting for an answer to that, how long do GDS intend to take over this digital-by-default project? The magic figure they're looking at is 82%.

That's the percentage of transactions with the state undertaken by people and companies digitally. And they reckon it could take 11 years or so to get there, long enough for several changes of permanent secretary, Cabinet Office Minister and government.

And if GDS have burned their way through billions by then and there are still no savings trickling down to the public, what then?

And if all our data gets hacked in cyberspace, what then?

The Minister is accountable to parliament. Not the officials. Not GDS.

The savings to be expected from digital-by-default – a clarification

You thought you knew what savings are?

You thought you knew the point of digital-by-default?

Francis Maude said in his Foreword to the Government Digital Strategy that: "By going digital by default, the government could save between £1.7 and £1.8 billion each year ...".

Then in yesterday's Autumn Statement ("AS2012") the Chancellor said: "The recently published Digital Efficiency Report sets out how departments could save approximately £1.2 billion over the remainder of the current spending review period by continuing to move their transactional services online and become ‘digital by default’ ...".

So which is it? 1.2, 1.7 or 1.8? And are we talking about annual figures or the cumulative total over a period of years?

Time for some clarification.

Ooh, wow! GDS and The Interpretation of Tweets (Die Tweetdeutung)

What an awful job IDAP is.

No wonder the subject wishes he were somewhere –

or someone –

else.

Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams (Die Tramdeutung) in 1900 and laid bare for all to see the precise workings of the psyche.

What would Freud have made of tweets? If only he had written it, what secrets of public administration would have been revealed by Die Tweetdeutung?

No need to guess, here are the answers.

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The cleaning lady tells me that this tweet indicates that the subject prefers not to engage with anyone who disagrees with him. I cannot believe this.

The subject is chief executive of the Government Digital Service (GDS) and senior responsible officer owner for the UK government's Identity Assurance Programme (IDAP). He is a dedicated public servant who is clearly intent on forging a strong and pure national cultural identity.

And they say that just anyone could practise psychoanalysis, even a cleaning lady – ha!.

No. The clue lies in the food. What do trolls eat? Where do they buy it? How much of it do they need? More research needed. It is perfectly clear that the subject wishes to conserve supplies of this resource for the greater good of the nation.

---

One minute (19 July) the subject is the severe public servant conserving national resources (troll food).

Next minute (17 November) he is the exuberant champion of all that is modern and best (multi-coloured interactive graphics) for his parishioners (including context-sensitive advertisements for flats and houses to rent and buy).

The coltish excitement of that "Wow!" – truly a man of 140 characters!

Mapumental is an application that displays the geographical area from which it is possible to travel to a specified destination, by public transport, in a specified time. Monumental!

But will the subject's enthusiasm be reciprocated by an ungrateful public? No. When I click on the Hire us button, I find: "Mapumental's main funder was the – sadly now defunct – 4iP project, from Channel 4".

---

Strangely, this tweet, which was not even created by the subject, and which was merely re-tweeted by him, has given me the most pause for thought. The link takes the browser to 18 photographs of the opening ceremony of the Estonian consulate in Liverpool, mainly a lot of public officials in suits standing round a table with the statue of a bull on it.

It is always sad to see someone who feels out of place and wishes he were somewhere else. It is rare for that other place to be Estonia. (No disrespect to that no doubt fine country.)

---

Here we are, back again with the exuberant subject, "Ooh" look, another multi-coloured must-have?

No.

This is altogether darker than the 17 November "Wow!" tweet.

The subject has once again been attracted by a colourful icon. But this time he is luring his readers into signing up with AccountChooser, a service which invites you to log on to all of your suppliers and each time stores the log-on details in one "convenient" place so that you can effortlessly choose who you want to be on any given occasion.

Inadvisable. GDS's "identity providers" should be avoided. I may be only a psychoanalyst but it seems to me that on the web and in Estonia, and even in real life here on terror firmer, handing over the keys to your identity, to parties unknown, is imprudent. Beware.

And the subject? He's just doing his IDAP job when he recommends that people relinquish control of their own identity. His super-ego must be in overdrive, manufacturing guilt in industrial quantities. What an awful job IDAP is. No wonder the subject wishes he were somewhere – or someone – else.

S Freud (translated)

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Updated 14 December 2013:

'Remember, our forefathers came on foot. A very long journey, a hard one over the mountains, and taking a very long time. But, as we all know, it was worth it. It gave them all time to reflect and organize. But, above all, it gave them time to cleanse themselves of Yakawow.' He was using a shorthand, derisive term, which encapsulated for us all the empty hedonism of the Others: even at the time of the Exodus, they had reduced their reactions to whatever they encountered to either a simple reflex negative or positive response: 'Yuck' or 'Wow' – Yakawow.

That's Susan Greenfield in 2121: A Tale From the Next Century (1 July 2013, not recommended) pursuing her idea that the excessive use of computers stops the large networks of neurons which characterise the adult brain from forming. The derivation of "Yakawow" and its early history are interesting, to a certain sort of mind at least ...

... just as maps appeal to a certain sort of mind, see Mapumental above. See also Tim Harford on maps in the second series of his Pop-Up Ideas on BBC Radio 4.

Ooh, wow! GDS and The Interpretation of Tweets (Die Tweetdeutung)

What an awful job IDAP is.

No wonder the subject wishes he were somewhere –

or someone –

else.

Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams (Die Tramdeutung) in 1900 and laid bare for all to see the precise workings of the psyche.

What would Freud have made of tweets? If only he had written it, what secrets of public administration would have been revealed by Die Tweetdeutung?

No need to guess, here are the answers.

Alan Travis – Whitehall, the Guardian newspaper and Lord Leveson

The 25 April 2012 L Notice issued by the Cabinet Office complains about an article in the Guardian newspaper published the day before. A little detective work reveals that the article they are talking about is Government revives plan for greater data-sharing between agencies by Alan Travis, home affairs editor.

That article refers to a "recent speech" made by Francis Maude, Cabinet Office Minister. Neither the Guardian nor the Cabinet Office identifies the speech. A little detective work suggests that it is Mr Maude's keynote speech given to the Information Commissioner's Conference on 6 March 2012. That, at least, is the assumption on which we proceed here.

If the Leveson Rules are to look like anything more than the whimsical exercise of power by the Executive then perhaps we could see a few guidelines on identifying the evidence in disputes more precisely.

In his speech, Mr Maude says:

In May we will publish proposals that will make data sharing easier ... It’s my mission to get Whitehall sharing data much more effectively ... The National Fraud Authority and Cabinet Office will shortly set out the design for a counter fraud checking service as the first step to improving our intelligence sharing architecture ... the Fraud, Error and Debt Taskforce is committed to continuing to remove barriers to sharing information ... Sharing data is a key enabler in our ambition to see public services provided digitally by default ...the census is another area where I want to bust the myths around the complexities of data sharing ... we aim to find effective ways of using and sharing data for the good of everyone ...

It follows that the claim made in the L Notice that "this is not a question of increasing the volume of data-sharing that takes place across government" is simply untenable – the Guardian didn't misrepresent Whitehall's policy.

The L Notice states that because the coalition government "scrapped ID cards" they can't be accused of attempting to legislate for a "database state". That doesn't follow. Mr Maude's proposal to remove the legal barriers to data-sharing – also referred to as "old-fashioned assumptions", "cultural barriers", "complexities" and "muddled myths" – would precisely result in a database state. As Mr Maude says:

... the technology has moved on and so can we. There is now an option to share data momentarily allowing us to check for matches – with no Big Brother database in sight ... In a world of dispersed data sets, we can bring fragments together instantaneously and momentarily to corroborate – without ever creating a central database ... It’s about bringing together the data at a point in time - to provide the necessary confidence - and then disaggregating it again. At no point does information need be held on the same server to be correlated ...

Same effect. A database state.

The L Notice is entitled Digital public services: putting the citizen in charge, not the state. It is not clear why. Mr Maude's speech provides no support whatever for that contention – nothing in the speech suggests that citizens will be put in charge.

Examination of the evidence suggests that the Guardian misreported nothing and that the L Notice is simply wrong.

Sometimes, though, you need to stand back, otherwise you can't see the wood for the trees, the issues need to be judged on principle, and all things considered, particularly the need for the Guardian to keep its Leveson Publication Licence, the ineluctable conclusion must be that the case stated in the L Notice is upheld and triumphantly vindicated, and Mr Travis should perhaps undergo a brief and voluntary period of re-education to assist him in his stated desire to practise his chosen profession respectfully and humbly.

Alan Travis – Whitehall, the Guardian newspaper and Lord Leveson

The 25 April 2012 L Notice issued by the Cabinet Office complains about an article in the Guardian newspaper published the day before. A little detective work reveals that the article they are talking about is Government revives plan for greater data-sharing between agencies by Alan Travis, home affairs editor.

That article refers to a "recent speech" made by Francis Maude, Cabinet Office Minister. Neither the Guardian nor the Cabinet Office identifies the speech. A little detective work suggests that it is Mr Maude's keynote speech given to the Information Commissioner's Conference on 6 March 2012. That, at least, is the assumption on which we proceed here.

If the Leveson Rules are to look like anything more than the whimsical exercise of power by the Executive then perhaps we could see a few guidelines on identifying the evidence in disputes more precisely.

Francis Maude – Whitehall, the Guardian newspaper and Lord Leveson

The accusation against the Guardian is that it misrepresented Whitehall's policy on digital public services. Explanations later, but let's get straight to the nub of the matter now – Francis Maude says in the Cabinet Office L notice:

This is not a question of increasing the volume of data-sharing that takes place across government, but ensuring an appropriate framework is in place so that government can deliver more effective, joined-up and personalised public services, through effective data-linking.

Even to a reader who knows nothing about Cabinet Office frameworks for appropriately effective, joined-up and personalised digital public services, it should be clear that the Guardian allegedly wrongly described data-linking as "data-sharing".

If the distinction eludes you, you'll just have to take Francis Maude's word for it that data-linking is Whitehall policy and a good thing, whereas data-sharing is a disgraceful slur on him personally and a bad thing, and the two should never be confused by any newspaper hoping to hold on to its publication licence.

The preceding paragraphs in the L Notice provide the background:

• This dispute is all something to do with the previous government's failed ID cards scheme which Mr Maude is proud to have terminated, he is the friend of civil liberties and the friend of many other friends of civil liberties such as Which? magazine.
• What Mr Maude is trying to achieve – and what the Guardian culpably misunderstood – is "the citizen in charge". Citizens need a way to identify themselves on-line so that they can apply for disabled parking permits using Mr Maude's "quick, easy and secure" digital public services. No new legislation is envisaged, it's all going to be voluntary and stakeholders will be consulted proactively.

Data-linking is the method chosen by Mr Maude, libertarian, to put the citizen in charge, and not data-sharing. That is now so clear that, come to think of it, it is impossible to understand how the Guardian made its reprehensible mistake.

Francis Maude – Whitehall, the Guardian newspaper and Lord Leveson

The accusation against the Guardian is that it misrepresented Whitehall's policy on digital public services. Explanations later, but let's get straight to the nub of the matter now – Francis Maude says in the Cabinet Office L notice:

This is not a question of increasing the volume of data-sharing that takes place across government, but ensuring an appropriate framework is in place so that government can deliver more effective, joined-up and personalised public services, through effective data-linking.

Even to a reader who knows nothing about Cabinet Office frameworks for appropriately effective, joined-up and personalised digital public services, it should be clear that the Guardian allegedly wrongly described data-linking as "data-sharing".

If the distinction eludes you, you'll just have to take Francis Maude's word for it that data-linking is Whitehall policy and a good thing, whereas data-sharing is a disgraceful slur on him personally and a bad thing, and the two should never be confused by any newspaper hoping to hold on to its publication licence.

Introduction – Whitehall, the Guardian newspaper and Lord Leveson

It is our intention in this report of our findings on the affaire Guardian to follow the example of the Guardian themselves. Now rehabilitated after their contretemps with the Leveson Rules, following some months of intensive re-education, they say of Lord Leveson's report that:

The press should treat it with respect – and not a little humility.

There speaks the voice of a truly free press. We humbly and respectfully agree.

That is the principle but what about the practice? What does it mean to report with respectful humility? How do you do it?

By way of response, the Guardian have just this to say:

The press urgently needs to find a substantial figure above the immediate fray who can approach Leveson's proposals with something like an objective eye and who can make convincing responses on merit. Nothing else, at this late hour, will command respect from the party leaders, who have embarked on a cross-party endeavour to avoid a damaging clash between politics and press.

And there is nothing more to say.

They're right.

Aristotle would agree (see Nicomachean Ethics).

We shall abide by the high standards of journalism enshrined in the Leveson Rules most definitively exemplified by today's greatest political philosopher in his colossal contributions to Twitter:



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Updated 10.4.14

Senior David Cameron aide 'threatened' Daily Telegraph over Maria Miller expenses Tony Gallagher, the former editor of The Daily Telegraph, has said that David Cameron’s director of communications “threatened” the newspaper over Maria Miller’s expenses claims. Mr Gallagher said that Craig Oliver, one of Mr Cameron’s most senior aides, phoned him to say that Mrs Miller was “looking at Leveson” after The Telegraph made inquiries about the Culture Secretary’s expenses. Mrs Miller is the Cabinet minister responsible for the future of press regulation and the response to the Leveson inquiry into press standards ... “Maria Miller's special adviser rang one of the reporters concerned - Holly Watt - and said to her that Maria has obviously been having quite a lot of meetings around Leveson, I'm just going to flag up that connection for you to think about and you may wish to talk to people higher up your organisation. “The special adviser in question, Joanna Hindley, rang a senior executive at the Telegraph to make precisely that point. I then got a third call from [David Cameron's director of communication] Craig Oliver pointing out that she's looking at Leveson and implying the call was badly timed... “When you get phone calls from a special adviser flagging up a connection to Leveson and saying you should take this up with people higher up the organisation, it can hardly be construed as anything other than a threat.” He added: “Bear in mind this story came to light just after the Leveson inquiry was published, and bear in mind the menacing way the minister, her special advisor and Downing Street reacted to that story, and threatened me, the newspaper and the reporter in question. "It's actually a clear example of why MPs and politicians in general should have no locus over a free press. Ironically you would know nothing about this story were it not for a free press." Mr Oliver said Mr Gallagher’s comments were “utterly false” ...

Introduction – Whitehall, the Guardian newspaper and Lord Leveson

It is our intention in this report of our findings on the affaire Guardian to follow the example of the Guardian themselves. Now rehabilitated after their contretemps with the Leveson Rules, following some months of intensive re-education, they say of Lord Leveson's report that:

The press should treat it with respect – and not a little humility.

There speaks the voice of a truly free press. We humbly and respectfully agree.

That is the principle but what about the practice? What does it mean to report with respectful humility? How do you do it?