According to Ben Gummer, Brexit means “government at your service”. Speaking to the Reform think tank last year, the minister for the Cabinet Office said the referendum vote was, in part, a cry from citizens over "the state of government and their relationship with it”. As a result, government now needs to deliver new ways of working for public servants, embracing technology to deliver tailored, personalised, accessible services to citizens.
This ambition recognises that demands on services are fast-changing. Cybercrime and fraud account for an estimated 5.2 million cases of crime in the year to September 2016, compared to 6.2 million traditional crimes, such as burglary. In a world where 80% of people bank online, policymakers should be perplexed that just 7% of people book GP services over the internet.
Any upgrade in services must start with the workforce – which accounts for 50% of day-to-day spend in the public sector. Reform research published today finds that 250,000 administrator roles can be automated. Replacing GP receptionists with online triage, as is being piloted in north London, and using chat bots instead of call centres are just two clear ways to do this.
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And 130,000 of these roles can come from Whitehall. This will be disruptive and must be handled with sensitivity by managers, but follows recent approaches: the private sector has automated 50% of its administrative roles by some calculations.
This should not be a salami-slicing activity, however. Ministers have too often taken tactical approaches to workforce change by freezing wages or removing jobs to save money, only to rehire staff – a practice the Department of Health has recently been accused of.
The aim should be to build a workforce around people’s needs. Taking a proactive approach to answering frequently asked questions is a positive start. GOV.UK Notify aims to do this by automatically updating people, through text messages or emails, about the progress of anything from passport applications to benefits claims. This can be used by more departments. More radically, public ledgers such as blockchain offer a new way to automatically execute transactions, such as benefits payments or corporate taxation, in a secure fashion.
A new approach should be underpinned by a new mentality: a culture of innovation. Public-sector workers are more highly educated than their private-sector counterparts. Freeing talented staff to meet citizens’ needs through team-based, self-management models can allow public servants to design policies that meet under needs in innovative ways. The Government Digital Service used this model to build GOV.UK in just 12 weeks. Reform has identified at least eight bodies, from the Crown Commercial Service to the National Crime Agency, which could explore these models.
This builds on a new mentality signalled by Ben Gummer – one that moves from a focus on cost-cutting measures to designing sustainable services that work for citizens. A new culture is also a better offer for public servants, who are there to serve the public.