Absolute control: why Betagov will fail

It would be a terrible shame if Betagov fails, just like Directgov failed. The people working on it have good track records and they're working on it with the best intentions. I wish them all the best. No, really.

Here are my criteria for Betagov to succeed:

1. It's launched on time
31st of January 2012, I believe.

2. Directgov is shut down on time
31st of August 2012. I'll be throwing a party to celebrate. See? No-one wants Betagov to succeed more than me.

3. Betagov achieves savings
Let's use Directgov's benchmark. For Betagov to succeed, they should publicly provide evidence that they have achieved actual savings. Let's give them, say, a year. We won't mention the £400 million again; any savings will do.

4. Betagov improves public sector web useability
Tricky one to prove. But apart from saving money, the point of giving absolute control to a team of people in London is to enforce high standards for online government services. I suppose they could create Directgov Dogs and COTA boxes for all? Let's give them a couple of years to achieve this.

5. Betagov abolishes government brands
We've seen how Directgov spent vast sums of money promoting Directgov, when they perhaps should have spent it on web services. But Betagov aims to remove all traces of Gubbins, Jobcentre, DVLA and Student Finance England from its new supersite.

What could possibly go wrong?

As I've covered in previous posts, government supersites are based on a series of easily-disproved assumptions about the way people use the internet. It has attracted disproportionate amounts of leverage and cash while producing web services which are mediocre at best. It's inevitable that pursuing the supersite dream will lead to new versions of the Directgov problem.

At the time of writing, the Betagov team is only just beginning to engage with the actual services they're supposed to represent. Sooner or later they will find out that the public want to be able to contact the passport service when their passport goes missing in the post, and no 'revolution' is going to change that.

Wow I'm really going heavy on the rhetoric in this post. What's up with me? This blog was supposed to be fun.

Again, if I'm proved wrong, I'll be the one throwing the party.