What happened to that £400 million? Part 1

Quick history lesson. I've just read up on this stuff myself, this very morning. In December 2006 'Service transformation: A better service for citizens and businesses, a better deal for the taxpayer' was published by HM Treasury. Sir David Varney's report recommended the following:

On ‘e-services’:
19. Directgov and Businesslink.gov funding be put on a more secure basis within the 2007 CSR to develop them as fully transformed services;
20. in the 2007 CSR, the Government investigates a funding arrangement for Directgov and Businesslink.gov that puts these services on a stable financial footing, incentivises
departments to contribute to services that secure cross-government benefit and allows for
the expansion of functionality of these services;
21. sponsorship and leadership rests with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions for
Directgov and the Paymaster General for Businesslink.gov;
22. government establish a clear performance indicator for citizen and business facing website rationalisation, which focuses on establishing firm targets to reduce progressively the number of websites over a three year period. In particular rationalisation targets should include:
- a freeze on the development of new websites providing citizen or business e-services
created by departments, agencies and non departmental public bodies, unless
authorised by the Ministerial Committee on Public Services and Public Expenditure
Sub Committee on Electronic Service Delivery — PSX(E); and
- by 2011, almost all citizen and business e-services migrate to Directgov and
Businesslink.gov and all e-transactions are provided through these two primary
websites. This means that all departments will have one corporate website, utilising
shared infrastructure and all other sites will be closed;

Here's why:

2.14 The taxpayer should expect savings from the improved efficiency of government, driven by a focus on reducing inefficiency and duplication. For example:
- by the third year of the 2007 CSR, early estimated savings for face-to-face services of
at least £250-300 million per year from rationalising face-to-face provision across
central and local government estates, before taking account of the potential savings to
be made by sharing provision across central and local government and from shifting
demand to cheaper channels;
- by the third year of the 2007 CSR, savings of 25 per cent of the cost of contact centre
operation (around £400 million per year), before rationalisation options are
pursued; and
- up to £400 million saving over three years associated with e-service improvement
including website rationalisation, channel shift and shared infrastructure, if every
department rigorously applied the agreed policy.
2.15 These savings should form part of the Government’s value formoney programme being taken forward as part of the 2007 CSR.

Marvellous idea. Instead of multiple services and websites, you converge, rationalise and centralise to save money. There are well over a billion pounds of savings in those paragraphs, but the one we'll focus on is the £400 million on web hosting.

On 21 December 2006 a skeptical Michael Cross from the Guardian covered the Varney report in his Guardian article When good ideas for government sites go bad citing the £400 million figure

A new plan reckons the government could save £400m over three years by rationalising this virtual real estate. ... As usual with economy drives, the proposals are a blend of common sense and back-of-fag-packet calculations. They appear in a report by Sir David Varney, former chairman of HM Revenue and Customs, published with the pre-Budget report earlier this month. The big idea is to converge the 4,000-odd government websites into two - Directgov for citizens and Businesslink for businesses. The ambition isn't new, but Varney proposes mechanisms that might make it happen.

I haven't come across the calculations Varney used to come up with £400 million either, although I expect they're out there somewhere. 

Varney did happen, up to a point. Large public sector services such as DVLA, Jobcentre and student finance are now on the Directgov platform, although the transactions themselves often remain with these organisations. Instead of a DVLA website, information about driving licenses lives on Directgov. At the time of writing there are still large, un-converged services such as www.hmrc.gov.uk with 120,000 web pages. 

But there was always a catch. Cross' warnings go to the heart of The Directgov Problem:

Varney proposes a freeze on all new websites providing e-services unless authorised by two cabinet committees. By 2011, he reckons, "almost all citizen and business e-services" will have migrated to Directgov and Businesslink. This will leave all departments with one corporate website each, with all other sites closing down.

At a time when government says it is encouraging frontline innovation and devolution, this is centralisation gone mad. Channelling all public services through a single desk in Whitehall has long been a Treasury dream, but goes directly against the spirit of the web. There is no evidence that centralisation will do anything other than stifle innovation. By all means, let's have a strong core service. But let's also allow public servants with bright ideas to launch them locally. The potential improvements are surely worth more than a few million saved on hosting fees.

As far as innovation goes, the only change Directgov came up with in the last three years were changing the links from black to blue, and installing the ill-fated 'Comment On This Article' boxes at the foot of pages.

But let's not get off track. The main saving which comes from Web rationalisation is on hosting fees. There's no mention of reducing public sector web staff, such as myself; curiously, Varney only focuses on increasing Directgov at the expense of public sector websites.

Saving money at Gubbins

I can't speak for any other public sector organisation but for Gubbins the savings didn't happen. We already have enough web infrastructure to run a basic website to contain the Gubbins information held on Directgov. Our human resources portal, for example, is more complex as it involves actual transactions rather than pages full of text.

We still build and develop the Gubbins online service ourselves, although it's painted orange and we have to run all our decisions by a rotating cast of Directgov editors and managers, which has added to our costs.

As I've said, Varney could have recommended making savings by making people like me redundant. The Directgov editors are simply duplicating my job by writing and publishing our web content. Sadly, sitting hundreds of miles from our call centres and IT staff, they don't actually know much about our service. Creating a centralised bureaucracy hasn't improved our service or reduced my workload. So, I'm still here.

Maybe Gubbins is a unique case, and that £400 million has been saved elsewhere in the public sector web?

I'll do some more digging.