Interview: Jim Knight

The minister responsible for getting public services online and delivering the government’s ‘Smarter Government’ agenda certainly lives the life. Jim Knight (pictured above) has his iPhone in hand at the beginning and end of our interview, reveals that he is a fluent user of sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and is passionate about the “revolution” in communications that social media provides.

Based in the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) and also responsible for a number of other briefs, Knight has regularly championed the need for civil servants and public officials to be able to access the world of social media websites. Such sites are increasingly important as channels of communications with the public. Unfortunately, for various reasons – including security and workforce management – departmental IT systems limit access to many of the sites that senior government figures such as Knight have been talking up as the future for public services.

Last month, at a ‘Dotgov’ conference organised by the government’s three main online portals – DirectGov, BusinessLink and NHS Choices – Knight spoke of his “frustration” that “so much is locked out because of our very low appetite for risk in this area”. Knight also revealed that he has an “ongoing struggle” with government IT, often having to resort to his iPhone when the DWP system won’t let him view a site such as video sharing provider Youtube. It is a problem, he added, that needs to be tackled “head on”.

Since Knight made those comments, he has been discussing the obstacles with senior officials within his own department, as well as those in the Cabinet Office who are responsible for the Smarter Government agenda. It is not just a matter of him getting other ministers’ backing for a relaxing of the rules, he says, because there are “important issues to be overcome” concerning the security of the government’s IT systems – particularly those parts dealing with personal data – against dangers such as hacking and viruses.

However, he adds: “The will is there. People do understand that we do need to allow people to use some of the social media sites in order to be able to do their jobs. There are some people in some functions within government who are now able to do that, so we have made some incremental progress, but the great leap forward is not yet with us.”

Making headlines
As well as security concerns, there is a political angle to consider. It is easy to predict the media coverage that would greet the news that civil servants have unfettered access to social media sites – and it wouldn’t be positive. Any freeing-up of civil servants’ access to social media would be a sitting duck for criticism. That is why, in recent weeks, shadow home affairs minister Andrew Rosindell has been asking how many people each department employs to interact with social media sites, and at what cost; and a separate round of Freedom of Information enquiries has been asking various bodies about the number of disciplinary proceedings that relate to staff use of such sites.

Knight is dismissive of these concerns. “The telephone is a form of communication, and if someone uses the telephone inappropriately then there would be disciplinary action against them,” he argues. “We need to view the internet and websites in the same sort of way. Just because you can shut things down does not mean you necessarily should do so, because you shut down creativity and invention and, fundamentally in this case, communication.”

Government is stuck in the era of email, says Knight, while out in the wider world “there are a lot of people whose main line of communication is through social media” – be it Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Bebo, or whatever. As an MP, he says, he gets a lot of his casework through Facebook. “Email is what your dad does,” he says. “If you ignore the way people talk to each other, then you’re doing a disservice to the people you are providing a service for.”

Listening, as well as talking
Embracing this new form of communication means more than just sending out press releases on Twitter as well as by email, and placing them on departmental websites. Knight wants to see departments and public bodies engaging with their audience, listening to what people have to say and then acting on the messages they receive. Indeed, on Monday the prime minister said that all new websites will have to be allow feedback from and engagement with citizens. Knight says NHS Choices is doing “some really interesting work”, with a feedback service that allows health service users to leave feedback about their GP; their comments can then be read by other patients. Some comments have even revealed problems which have had to be investigated as serious complaints. Knight says that “much of the rest of government” is still treating the web only as a way to speak to the public, rather than using it to listen to people as well – and he wants that to change.

“I think every department does need to look at how it can use the mutualism that the technology can give you to help the people that we serve better shape the service that they receive,” he says. If public bodies are more open about what they are doing, and willing to take input on what they are doing right and wrong, they will effectively “increase capacity at no extra cost to the taxpayer”, he explains. “That is an opportunity that we have just got to grasp.”

The rate at which public bodies are getting up to speed with the online agenda varies greatly. While NHS Choices invites members of the public to comment publicly on services, the Insolvency Service’s website looks as though it hasn’t been redesigned since the mid-1990s. Some might argue that this doesn’t matter too much, as long as the service underneath works well, but Knight sees it as a problem: “Perhaps people like me need to be more assertive in showing leadership and helping government adjust its thinking”, he says.

There is a push from the very top to implement the Smarter Government agenda – the prime minister’s appointment of champions such as Sir Tim Berners Lee and Martha Lane Fox shows that – but Knight admits that such enthusiasm has not permeated throughout the upper reaches of government. “Frankly ministers and permanent secretaries are not the easiest to persuade because they are not native to this technology. They’re late adopters, if at all,” he says.

Indeed, the reality is that there are some top-ranking officials who have yet to grasp emails, let alone social media; and for all the Twitter-savvy officials regularly tweeting from conferences and events, there are as many who rely on their press officers to think up their 140-character missives. Knight appears to recognise this, and says a lack of understanding of the technological and communications revolution can mean that “it is quite difficult to get people in leadership positions to get it”.

Another change that Knight believes is required is for the government and the civil service to understand that they are not always the best placed to do everything. One reason why Knight admires the work at NHS Choices is because of its work with third parties such as Patient Opinion. “There will be times when those are better channels [for the public] because they are seen to be more independent of government for people to articulate their thoughts about a service,” he explains.

Working with others
However, just a week before Knight talks to Civil Service World, there was an example of how government can clash with third parties when it attempts to move into the brave new world of online services. When HMIC, the police inspectorate, proudly announced the launch of its brand new website www.mypolice.org.uk – where members of the public can examine inspection reports and compare different police areas – the people behind the independent feedback website www.mypolice.org cried foul.

Knight says he has no idea “whether it was cock up or conspiracy” on the part of HMIC, but says it is “unfortunate” that the URLs were so similar. The result of their similarity was that HMIC got a roasting in the blogosphere, accused by one person of attempting to kill mypolice.org and its honest opinions on police performance with the more sanitised inspection reports. Another blogger charged the agency with a lack of professionalism.

A lot of these comments showed a deep scepticism about the government’s place in this sphere of online communities, and Knight says: “The onus is on government to win over the trust of that community”. He believes that as government becomes more transparent “we will win that trust; I am absolutely sure that we will. That is not to say that we won’t occasionally get the kinds of problems we saw with mypolice.

“We have just got to be really cautious,” says Knight. That is why the use of third parties is so important, he adds: “so that people don’t think we’re trying to outcompete them and kill them off, as was the charge last week, but that we’re embracing them.”

Some of the bloggers and tweeters who were so angry about mypolice argued that HMIC would have been better off releasing the data through data.gov – the site set up to allow access to thousands of government data sets, which can then be turned into tools like Fix My Street, They Work For You or Planning Alerts. Knight dodges the question of whether this would have been a better option, but instead waxes lyrical about how data.gov is a “huge leap forward” – not just because government is being more open, but because it represents a more efficient way of doing things.

“We’ll get the products we want, we’ll get the analysis we want and we won’t have had to procure it,” he says. “So we’ll get things faster and we’ll get things cheaper.” But what of the potentially unpleasant surprises? Won’t third parties get creative, and offer the public tools and products that portray the government in a bad light? Knight appears resigned to the threat – and philosophical about it.

Lifting the lid on government
Transparency has been the political imperative of the decade, and it’s a hot topic in this election, with the political parties seeking to outdo one another on the rights they would give the public to access government information. Although Labour started the ball rolling some years ago with the Freedom of Information Act, and more recently with the creation of data.gov, their reform programme has been described as “limited” by the Conservatives in their recent technology manifesto. In contrast, the opposition says, its own proposals are “radical”: the publication in full of government contracts with suppliers; of the salaries of the top 35,000 civil servants; of the names and salaries of those officials who earn more than £150,000; and of all items of central government and quango spending over £25,000.

Unsurprisingly, Knight does not agree with this distinction. He argues that there are serious flaws in the Tories’ belief that they can harness the power of the crowd – through people such as the “armchair auditors” they have often mentioned – in the running of government. First, he says, the Tories have opposed the broadband levy. “You can talk about the wisdom of crowds as much as you like, but excluding a section of that crowd that will take away your wisdom,” he argues.

What’s more, there are aspects of the Tories’ transparency platform that Knight finds “slightly naïve” because, he says, their attachment to the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ idea is such that they are at risk of doing “government by online referendum, and then there is a big danger of a digital lynch mob”. In particular, he points to their proposals for local people to have a direct input into the creation of local plans; this, he argues, would not allow for a strategic level of planning and risks creating problems for business development.

Collaboration, not a lynching
Knight believes the new order should be about collaboration between politicians, civil servants and outside experts, rather than what he describes as the Tories’ “glorious revolution where both politicians and civil servants don’t have to do anything because all we’ve got to do is poll the public and they’ll come up with the answers”.

Labour’s approach is “a more sophisticated and articulate way of tapping into what people are saying and which does still leave a role for the civil service and politicians”, he argues. “It is not about small or big government; it is about a different form of government that is much more responsive and has a much stronger relationship with the people who put them there, but without a digital lynch mob.”

And, on that note, our interview ends, the iPhone comes out and Knight strolls over to the huge computer screen mounted in the corner of his room – one with sleek, curved edges in the iPhone style, naturally – to check the display of his diary and find out what he is doing next.

Tweet tweet: the highlights of Jim Knight on Twitter
Mar 15th
is nursing a heavy head cold, having to miss DWP questions in the Commons and trying not to be too grumpy about it

Mar 14th
[In answer to the question: How similar are Chelsea to the Tories and Labour to Man U?]
Reds – champions, good in Europe, old-style Scots boss, fans hate links to US. Blues – owned by non-dom, think can buy power

Mar 11th
lot more to come in improving the [Jobcentre iPhone] app and virtual jobcentres but eyeballing jobseekers fortnightly most effective

Mar 10th
interesting Guardian article about my increasingly well known opponent [Conservative candidate for South Dorset, Richard Drax]

Mar 10th
on platform at #ndi10 [conference] listening to Stephen Timms. @marthalanefox & I are tweeting whilst Matthew Taylor monitors Twitterfall – #multitasking

Mar 9th
Oo to, oo to be, oo to be a, Gooner! 
[shortly after Arsenal beat Porto in the Champions League]