Like Billy Bunter's postal order, the benefits of government IT investments are well overdue. Now the school tuck shop is calling in its debts. Sir Peter Gershon's review of public sector efficiency, published this week, says it is time to get some payback from the £6bn invested in IT under the 2000 and 2002 spending reviews. Throughout the efficiency review, IT and e-government crop up as the key to cutting £20bn in government spending by 2007-8.
In theory, the way to save money through e-government is to persuade citizens and businesses to do their government transactions, such as filing tax returns, electronically rather than on paper. You then cut back expenditure on paper, people to shuffle it, and the buildings in which the paper-shufflers work. This is what management consultants mean when they talk about "realising the benefits".
It's a three-stage process: build the systems, persuade people to use them, then cut out the old stuff. There's plenty of opportunity, says the review. For example, the new Customs and Revenue department should be able to cut 12,500 departmental civil servants by developing electronic transactions.
However, according to the review, up to now we have only done the first bit, building the systems.
The second bit, persuading people to use them, has hardly started. "Relatively little emphasis has been given to the efficiencies that could be delivered by realising the full benefits of these investments in seeking to migrate particular customer segments to new channels."
It suggests that departments sit down and work out what they have spent on e-government and other new channels, what benefits they are getting, and how to get more. This may mean further automation in call centres, targeting face-to-face contacts better - and improving web services so that people use them out of choice.
And there is the option of making some e-services compulsory. Or, in the efficiency review's inefficient prose: "Move certain customer segments fully to e-enabled channels." It suggests that company registration would be a good candidate.
Unfortunately for the efficiency drive, not all public services fit so neatly into this transactional model. Police and health services, for example. IT can help them do their jobs better, by cutting the time police officers need to spend at the station, and the time doctors spend chasing missing x-rays, but this doesn't in itself save money.
There's another twist. The review suggests that the agency charged with making this happen, the Cabinet Office e-government unit, will itself have to cut jobs.
If all else fails, Gershon has another proposal. Government agencies can at least get better value for money when buying IT. It commends the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency for saving £12.7m by buying IT hardware through an electronic auction.
No doubt there's a great deal of money to be saved. But in the end, it's a bit like telling Billy Bunter to buy his tuck at the Friardale Asda, rather than Jessie Mimble's tuckshop. A wise strategy, but it won't cure the Obese Owl's main problem.
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