By Sascha O'Sullivan
If you’re struggling to heat your home, how would you feel if you just missed out on £1,467 because of a computer glitch? In May this year, Rishi Sunak was blocked from raising benefits in line with inflation. The culprit? A 40-year-old IT system unable to process more than one benefit rise a year.
Ineffective or non-existent digital services are sabotaging government policy and have, so far, been filed under the “too difficult” tray. Fixing this should be a top priority for the person in Downing Street by the end of today.
It’s not just the welfare system either, there are 3,000 existing public services which are not fully online. For those that are, one in three Britons find them inaccessible. Less than a decade ago, we were the world leader in digital public services. We set up a whole department dedicated to it. Now, we rank in the bottom third of countries for it. Less than half of the British public have confidence in online government services.
The unreliable systems still used in Whitehall drain money and time. Public sector inefficiency because of technological backwardness is costing you £14.70 in taxes every hour you spend using a government service. To people struggling to make ends meet, every penny they can save counts.
The good news is that digitalisation is easier than it sounds. It’s often not groundbreaking or experimental technology, it is investment in new systems, better-trained officials and streamlined processes. We have done it before, as have many others.
The strength that digital capacity has given Ukraine, for example, shows the value of digitalisation to solve our most pressing issues.
Ukraine’s government project Diia ended the paper-based, 40-year-old, non-digitised system of records that still takes our civil service ages to process. They came up with ePidtrimka, a digital bank card that allowed the state to issue wages and benefits online. When the Russians invaded, Ukraine’s digitisation secured a stable income for refugees, saving lives and livelihoods in the country’s darkest hour. Soldiers depend on the Diia app to track Russian movements and update civilians at risk. Ukraine’s forward thinking helped it halt a nuclear power headed by an aggressive tyrant.
If Ukraine can continue improving its technology during the most catastrophic war in Europe in almost 80 years, why can’t Britain do so too?
A digitally capable state can also be a great source of growth. In Estonia, or e-Estonia, as they call it, 99 per cent of public services are digitised along with virtually every aspect of Estonian public life. An Estonian citizen can start and register a business in 15 minutes and 33 seconds.
During the pandemic, this ease of access kept Estonia running. Digital development generated demand for electronics trading and manufacturing. Digital business registration helped Estonia — a country with a population of just 1.3 million — see 100 new startups this year alone, generating €10bn in turnover. As a result, Estonia is enjoying the strongest economic recovery from the pandemic out of all EU countries.
Meanwhile, British exporters are struggling to fill out paperwork. A digital solution a la Estonia needs to be put in place that pre-populates forms, draws data from HMRC and helps ease exports.
Digitisation isn’t just an issue for the IT crowd. In the long run, digitisation of public services can help put Britain on the path to economic recovery. In the short term, digitisation can ensure money goes to those who need it most during a period of economic hardship. But first, the next prime minister must make it a priority to rejuvenate our public services and create a 21st century state.
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