Darling’s Broadband Tax

In his pre-Budget Report, Chancellor Darling announced that a £6 per year tax will be levied on all households with a fixed phone line, in order to pay for the expansion of the UK’s super-fast broadband services into rural areas.

BT estimate that such expansion will cost £5bn, while Darling’s proposed scheme is expected to generate £170m per year. His target is to provide 90% of UK homes with super-fast broadband by 2017.

Impact for the post-bureaucratic age

The truth is that it is impossible to say what extending broadband will cost. Experts think 30% of homes will be by-passed by commercial fast broadband plans, but this figure will be market-dependent, so is very difficult to calculate accurately. Tax breaks for companies which provide rural broadband seem like a more reasonable solution. The Conservatives have said they will scrap the proposed tax if they win the election, and focus on market-driven solutions to the problem.

Broadband coverage is something of an elephant in the corner when it comes to discussing the post-bureaucratic age. Universal, fast, and reliable internet connections are absolutely fundamental to the speed and ease with which Britain can move into this new era. The government should see its provision as a necessary investment which will bring a return (by lowering the cost of public services), rather than a cost to be borne by the public.

The announcement may come as something of a boon to providers of mobile broadband, although the low £6 p.a. figure will probably not be enough to deter many consumers in favour of the higher speeds that fixed lines can bring.

See the excellent SamKnows site for more information on Digital Britain and the limits of broadband.

Ali Unwin ( @aliunwin)

One Place to rule them all

I have been encouraged by some of the government’s efforts this week to usher in the post-bureaucratic age, but the launch of One Place is misguided and ineffective.

From a bureaucratic mindset, the site’s aims are laudable:

“The Audit Commission, Care Quality Commission, HM Inspectorates of Constabulary, Prisons and Probation and Ofsted are working together to provide an independent overview of the quality of life in your area.”

These state agencies supposedly ‘provide and independent view’. Independent of what? Not the state by which they are funded, but, in fact, independent of the communities they ‘look after’. In the post-bureaucratic age it is the people who live in the area who can best provide an ‘overview of the quality of life’, and judge how their local authorities are performing. The matrices by which the various state watchdogs rate the provision of services are self-defined, opaque, and consist of the factors which the watchdogs assume matter to local people.

The second part of the short introduction is descriptive of the problems of the site itself, rather than the thinking behind it:

“You can also discover how well local public organisations, such as councils and police forces work together to meet local needs.”

This is not true: You cannot discover this on the site in any meaningful sense. Here is an example of how the site works:

I am from Suffolk, and I would like to find out “how well local public organisations, such as councils and police forces work together to meet local needs.”

I navigate to the Suffolk page, and am greeted by the following:

Suffolk has identified the following priorities for the area:

• Delivering a Vibrant and Prosperous Economy
• Learning and skills outcomes
• Greening Suffolk
• Ensuring people are safe
• Ensuring people are healthy
• Ensuring that communities are inclusive

It is fortunate that I can fund such meaningless drivel all in One Place. I was hardly under the impression that some councils were against keeping people safe and healthy.

Aside from this crap (why must the government treat its citizens like idiots?), the fabled Red and Green Flags are quite interesting: what can other councils learn from Suffolk’s experiences? However, under the current system, this information is only really relevant to other councillors.

I eagerly clicked through to my district council’s ‘Organisational Assesment‘, hoping to find budgets, expenditure, diagrams of how the various services ‘work together’, and all the rest.  Instead, I was greeted by the following enlightening information:

Forest Heath District Council

Managing performance	3 out of 4
Use of resources	3 out of 4

This suggests that the entire One Place project is nothing more than a PR exercise, designed to give the impression that local government is entering the post-bureaucratic age, when, in fact, it has merely found a new means of obscuring how the government is spending our money and managing our public services.

Conclusion

After the dynamic, open, and audacious opening of the White House’s Open Government Initiative yesterday, I had high hopes for what HM’s Government would pull out today. Yet the poverty of their ambition, and fundamental misunderstanding of what the post-bureaucratic age really means for government, has left the UK a long-distant second.

White House Open Government Initiative: Review

The exciting news in world Gov 2.0  is the launch of the White House’s Open Government Initiative.

The means of announcement was carefully chosen: the three architects of the directive, led by open gov guru Vivek Kundra, presented it to the American people via videolink on Facebook and The Sunlight Foundation. They then answered their questions, which were submitted in a live feed.

There was much criticism of the fact that the directive itself came in an unlinkable pdf form, and in true post-bureaucratic spirit, someone had soon solved the problem:

Owen Ambur I will post the directive in StratML format at http://xml.gov/stratml/index.htm#StratPlans.

This kind of activity has been supported by private enterprise volunteering its services and software on the opengov site.

USA-OK

The Americans are leagues ahead of the UK in coming to terms with the post bureaucratic age. We have just released some Ordinance Survey maps (after a battle); they are soon to release this great IT Dashboard which allows anyone to track governmental technological investments.

Also covered are Data.gov (which the UK is copying); DODTechipedia, which keeps the Department of Defense abreast of technological and scientific innovations; and regulations.gov, which allows anyone to give meaningful feedback on proposed regulations while they are being drawn up, rather than retrospectively.

Concerns

There were concerns over privacy (especially in healthcare); data comparability; cultural entrenchment; and all the usual legitimate questions about how this actually helps. There have been some concrete examples in the last few months, which are to be presented next week. I expect that, wonderful as these initiatives are for democracy and transparency, once they start saving serious money (and all the indications point to the fact that they are), sceptics will be much more convinced.

What is the post-bureaucratic state?

Will Davies has written a thoughtful piece on what the political thought behind the  post-bureaucratic state might look like. I think he is wrong on a number of points, and have written a response below.

Davies Writes:

‘The Tories now suggest we are entering a ‘post-bureaucratic age’, and promise a state suited to it. Up to now, neo-liberalism has not been so much a post-bureaucratic project, as a meta-bureaucratic one – it is a constant critique of the state, from a position of supposed neutral economic rationality.’

My response:

The ‘neutral economic rationality’ Davies’ writes of is misleading. The ‘neo-liberal critique of the state’ (which is surely ‘constant’ – how could it be interrupted?) is not only from a position of neutral economic rationality, although this is part of it. The state, for neo-liberals and many others, has functions beyond its economic function (even state non-intervention is a function of a neo-liberal critique).

Davies contends that ‘a state laid bare only to the audit of general public dissatisfaction is surely heading towards a legitimacy crisis’, since the replacement of Weberian ‘expertise’ by Hayekian ‘perspective’, will allow ‘…people to express their frustration or disappointment, but without offering dialogue or improvement at the end of it’. ‘Perspective’ and ‘expertise’ are no longer competing visions of how the state guarantees its own legitimacy; and the ‘dialogue and improvement’ Davies suggests that the post-bureaucratic state will necessarily lack, can be provided by a government which recognizes this. This is not just about ‘participation’ (as Davies suggests the Tories might be viewing the whole process), but about shoring up the state’s own legitimacy in this age.

This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what the post-bureaucratic age is ‘about’. It is not formed of ‘no auditors, no experts, no objective knowledge, no sense of the common good’, it simply asserts that all these things are better-applied from outside the central bureaucracy. They still exist, but are held in the hands of the citizenry, rather than the central (unelected) bureaucracy. The ownership, audit and strategic management of public service lying in the hands of the public is a far more legitimate type of government for our age than a rehashed Weberian model based on expertise.  There are more auditors and more experts (since the pool is so much larger and better-connected; more objective knowledge (since it can be more rigorously interrogated); and a greater sense of the public good (since it is built up from a far broader range of viewpoints).

The question of legitimacy (discussed in Davies’ narrow Weberian terms) is irrelevant; the terms of the debate have changed. Before the information revolution, it simply wasn’t possible for groups of interested and expert parties to collaborate on project –it was physically impossible (not illegitimate, unfair, undemocratic).

Even if we follow Davies’ own Weberian definition of state authority, the state can no longer know or process with the objectivity and efficiency required of it. Technological change has pushed these functions outside the bounds of the centralised state.

Ali Unwin ( @aliunwin)

‘The twenty-first century is a terrible time to be a control freak.’

Jared Cohen, author, thinker, and State Department Staffer gave an excellent keynote address to the Legatum Institute on Global Opportunities: Youth, Technology and Partnership in a Networked Century.

Youth
Jared spoke passionately about his experiences in Iran, where out of a population of 70m, 67% are under the age of 30. ‘Technology is making young people realise their value as a demographic…a demographic de facto party.’ Youth activism is not based on party, or even split by cause as NGOs tend to be.

Technology
The ‘new virtual commons that defines the world today’ was one of Jared’s central ideas. There is a
‘tsunami of change and development at hands of connection technologies’, but it is certain that ‘the tools won’t define the movements, but will enable the movements.’ He presented the ‘apathetic masses‘ as ‘game-changing’, citing examples in Moldova, India, South America, and Iran. This challenges the commonplace view that ‘slactivism’ is a hindrance to ‘real’ movements, as it only panders to the conscience of those ‘apathetic masses’. The scale of technological change is particularly striking: 4.6bn in the world have mobile phones;in Pakistan in 2000, 750 thousand had them – now the figure is 78 million.

Another key feature of technology’s impact on society is the fact that those who populate ‘civil society’ (i.e. activists, politicians, charity workers, NGOs) and those who are less interested in such things, all inhabit the same space online. ‘They hang out together’, as Jared put it. The anonymity of online activity has several advantages. First, it protects activists from oppressive regimes; second, it prevents discrimination by age (many of the post-Mumbai bombing demonstrations were orchestrated by a 14 year old boy); and finally, it allows for mass-awareness in a way that produces change, which offline activites – however well-intentioned – never could.

Partnership
Jared presented a new take on how ‘civil society’ can operate, contrasting the mass-communicating, mass-activist, interconnected world of today with the NGOs and Charities of 1989. The Berlin Wall – both a literal agent and symbol of division – has been replaced by the firewalls of authoritarian regimes around the globe. These firewalls are very difficult to maintain, and often the generational gap (in terms of technology as much as demographics) means that the authorities tend to chase rather than dominate.

Jared also championed the development of ‘more inclusive partnerships’, between NGOs, private companies, and the connected masses, as the most effective means of initiating and sustaining positive change in the world.

The Politicisation of Crowdsourcing?

Rory Cellan-Jones has written on the BBC’s dot.life technology blog, questioning the use and party-political nature of both Conservative and Labour crowdsourcing efforts.

The point, in the terms that Cellan-Jones considers it, is valid.  There is a great deal of reasonable scepticism about any new policy-gathering process, and think tanks are hardly without their critics. Crowdsourcing smacks of the worst kind of political PR stunt: Pseudo-democratic, quasi-technological, and orchestrated to attack political opponents rather than produce results. We may think of Labour’s ‘Big Conversation’ a few years back, or even the Conservative’s (slightly dubious) Stand Up, Speak Up campaign to influence their manifesto. These were not crowdsourcing attempts.

However, Cellan-Jones falls into a trap when he comes to what political parties should aim to achieve by crowdsourcing. He confuses attempts to decide policy with attempts to engage with the public via digital technology. He writes:

“Politicians in opposition and in government are latching onto the idea of using the web to engage with the wider public.”

This is, of course, true, but crowdsourcing is presented as an ‘engagement tool’, rather than a way of finding solutions. Genuine crowdsourcing examples do not call in everyone’s two cents on every issue; they wish to aggregate and cross-fertilize expertise from different but related sectors. A chemist (drawn from the crowd)  may help to tackle a physicist’s problem, and a national online network of teachers can give insights to nurses in keeping difficult patients well-behaved. But crowdsourcing is NOT an X-Factor vote on whether a bomb-disposal expert should cut the red or the green wire. Data is not made available to the public in the naive hope that 65 million suggestions will magically produce ‘the answer’.

Crowdsourcing, undertaken properly, we would expect to have political bias in politics – to deny this would be to assume that there is necessarily an objective ‘right answer’ to every policy dilemma or need for service reform. Similar thinking parts of the crowd are likely to be drawn together, and some shared assumptions are even desirable. ‘Crowdsourcing’ may itself be a misleading term to describe ‘open, lateral, problem-solving and innovative recruitment to a project’. But it is less of a mouthful.

UPDATE: The excellent William Heath has blogged on the same issue here

Australia, and a new kind of think tank?

Australia has been quietly developing its post-bureaucratic government credentials. A Government 2.0 Taskforce has been established. This is openly based upon Obama’s Transparency and Open Government Announcement, and Gordon Brown’s Power of Information Taskforce. A number of initiatives have taken place at a state level, and there are signs that the central government is keen to take up the mantle.

We may well see numerous copy-cat initiatives springing up: not so much pressure groups as quasi- think tanks. Whether they manage to push power into the post-bureaucratic arena remains to be seen.

UK Digital Economy Bill: No Teeth, No Investment

The Government’s Digital Economy Bill was announced in the Queen’s speech yesterday.

The bill is perhaps not as radical as it could have been, although it includes the power to disconnect persistent pirates in a manner akin to Lord Mandelson’s ‘three strikes’ (#threestrikes) policy. There was no mention of a broadband tax, which had been mooted earlier in the year. Other elements of the bill include a shake-up of the radio spectrum (switchover to digital due 2015) and a classification system for video games which are for children over twelve years old.

The bill is light on detail: Ofcom will be required to assess the UK’s communications infrastructure every two years, but there is no plan for encouraging mass investment in key broadband infrastructure. This will be a key feature of the Post-Bureaucratic Age, and it is the government’s duty to ensure that all citizens have access to fast, reliable broadband connections. The UK currently sits mid-table worldwide, in terms of broadband connectivity and speed. The government has resolutely ignored this crucial area, focusing instead on headline-catching (and most probably illegal under EU law) plans to disconnect illegal file-sharers.

The Open Rights Group is urging people to contact their MP to oppose the plans.

Advanced Global Collaboration: Frost & Sullivan Whitepaper

Verizon and Cisco sponsored this whitepaper by Frost & Sullivan, which charts ‘the course of advanced collaboration’.

Frost & Sullivan have boldly proposed the first model to calculate the Return on Collaboration (ROC). The main method for this model is a global-reaching survey of people who work in the IT and Communications Industry, and then subdivision into ‘basic’, ‘intermediate’, and ‘advanced’ collaborators. A basic ‘ROC Index’ stems from this research – broadly speaking a cost/benefit analysis – and shows that R & D and Sales departments make the best use of collaborative technologies. This is much more effective in larger organisations (more than 1000 employees).

The report rightly focuses on the importance of an open and collaborative culture to successful internal collaboration within a business.