Public service goes eBay

Martin Evans: 19 March 2009 in Government

Last week, the Government issued a report intended to map out a major new approach to public services. Against the background of economic crisis, Working together: public services on your side signals a shift from the New Labour commitment to improved public services based on consumer choice. Instead it emphasizes greater power to the service users, personalized services, more local control.

What is striking is the importance it gives to an 'information revolution' as a driver of change 'so that people can exercise control and shape their services. This includes open-source, real-time data on the performance of services. It also means having the ability to feed back to services and share comments on issues with other patients, parents and local residents.'

There is a rousing foreword by the Prime Minister. Whether it acts like a half-time team talk from Sir Alex Ferguson or the captain's address to the crew of the Titanic - time will tell. In the meantime it will be setting a context for the activities of government departments and public services from now until the next general election.

The model at work here is clearly 'web 2.0' - the social internet. It is the world of Facebook and Twitter; of reader reviews on Amazon, reputation points on Ebay. How well will that translate to the provision of social services, or healthcare, or policing?

There are some intriguing questions. How can effective online forums for all this feedback and discussion be designed and delivered? What will be the quality of the comment that fills them, and how much weight will people be prepared to put on it? How will people balance the subjective assessments of service users with the proposed 'open-source, real-time data on performance'? If the data becomes influential (league tables?) how do you prevent it from distorting the priorities of the providers?

Challenges here for politicians, public servants and (hopefully) information designers. Expect big consultancy contracts.