Tom and Martha: do come and visit our call centre

This blog is dedicated to removing Directgov, a process which GDS have already started. However, to improve the public sector web, we need to get rid of the assumptions behind Directgov and get the people in charge to look for a fresh approach.

It seems strange that the Gubbins perspective is so different from that clever GDS team down there in Whitehall. I think spending some time in our call centre would do GDS a world of good. And if it turns out we're just yokels who don't understand their vision, they could use the time to talk us round.

The Tom and Martha show

Tom Loosemore of GDS and Martha Lane Fox appeared on BBC news to talk through the launch of GOV.UK. The interview starts with defending the supersite principle and moves through familiar themes - the government has too many websites (920 by Fox's reckoning back in August 2010); rationalising them all into one will reduce costs, drive people online, and improve the usability of government transactions.

By 5.07 Fox is talking about government's long term IT commitments, where the government signs long term contracts for 'hundreds of millions of pounds for services that are substandard'. In contrast, for GDS:

This is completely new way of developing. This has been a team of people, very small, very cost-effective, doing things iteratively, releasing things as they go, getting feedback; never saying, "this is what we're going to build, it's going to take us five years and it's going to cost us hundreds of millions" - quite the reverse - treating it a bit like a start-up but a start-up with the appropriate level of credibility and … gold-standard security. 

It's a seductive argument. However, we're talking about the entire public sector web here. I think some kind of plan is in order, with costs and timescales. No-one else in the public sector web has the luxury of providing services without a plan. The GDS revolution is in danger of producing more years of malaise.

The thing about 'revolutions' is that they only take place in countries with poor infrastructure and no free elections, where only a minority have a stake in the government. A revolution usually involves replacing one unelected cartel with another. Our previous regime didn't do much apart from shut down our websites.

Martha and Tom's week at Gubbins

I think a week answering the phones in our call centre would do Tom and Martha a world of good. The warriors of GDS really need to spend some time with the enemy. The people who work in actual public sector offices are likely to have a different perspective from London consultants who have a vested interest in a centralised public sector web. A 'smart answer' on GOV.UK seems just that - until you've spent days fielding calls from people who tried to find their answer and couldn't.

People in our call centres answer telephone queries which are both complicated and repetitive. Government information is demanding. Unfortunately, Gubbins use Directgov rather than a website designed around our users. Our online service is run by editors and consultants in London who have never visited our offices. GOV.UK has even less content than Directgov and no contextual pictures or branding, third-person content, and very little navigation to differentiate our service from anyone else's. So people are likely to go on phoning us rather than trying to find their answer online. 

Gubbins staff have a lot of negativity and cynicism towards that bloody awful Directgov website. No-one's told them there's a revolution going on. In between calls, Tom and Martha could show them a bit of GOV.UK and try to talk them around. It's not exactly BBC news, but Martha could even help address the digital divide, in case any of them are still using bits of paper to renew their car tax.

Serious offer. Do get in touch.

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.

Hands up who likes Directgov?

Not Gubbins, that's for sure. Back in 2007 we began the process of shutting down our own website and moving the content across to Directgov. We had our own website, just as we have our own forms, letters, marketing, call centers, IT, mailroom, lawyers, accounting, printing, reception and tea lady. We clean our own offices. None of these things are run from Whitehall. But it was deemed that our website should be.

In 2007 Directgov were already running a Product Review. direct.gov.uk was going to get new colours and layout. It was a brave new world. Directgov accepted they weren't very good and needed to change.

We didn't have anything planned for gubbins.co.uk. Everyone agreed it was fit for purpose.

We went ahead and converged anyway. There were a few tense meetings about it at Gubbins board level. One of the Gubbins board also sat on the Directgov board, although I'm sure that had nothing to do with it.

The migration of Gubbins

We turned the Gubbins web content into Directgov web content. It wasn't easy. Because of The Directgov Problem we couldn't trust our customers to navigate Directgov properly. So, we had to put everything on big pages. There are no anchor links to help people find anything. We had to make the most of it. Our service is now run from Directgov and our letters and publications were updated to send customers to direct.gov.uk/gubbins.

I work in the web team. We don't like it. As a rule of thumb, an update which took an hour now takes a day on Directgov. We can't make our own updates. We have to send everything to a Directgov editor in a word document.

We keep getting different Directgov editors to work with. When a new one starts, they don't know anything about Gubbins. They don't seem to know much about writing for the web either. When we send them something to update, they rewrite it. When we explain why we want something written a certain way, they argue. When we want a new page, they have to submit a form to the shadowy Publishing Board, who we've never met.

According to Government on the internet: progress in delivering information and services online By Great Britain: National Audit Office 2007, the UK is the only country who has tried to 'centralise content' across the public sector web. It's funny that no-one's run research to see if centralising content actually works.

Directgov gave us access to the Stellant CMS and Speedtrap analytics, but these are slow, old and tired. Chances are they haven't been replaced since 2006.

Moving to Directgov was supposed to save Gubbins money, but our costs have gone up. We have our own web infrastructure, so we haven't saved any money on hosting. We have the same number of writers and developers but they spend their time negotiating with people from Directgov.

We still run the same online services. Directgov the website doesn't really do anything. You can't book an appointment with it. To do that, you have to leave Directgov and move to gubbins.direct.gov.uk. We still run these screens but they're painted orange and have the Directgov logo painted on them.

Every time we build or fix something, we have to run it past the Directgov editors, the Directgov design team, the publishing board, and usually some other executive with a clever job title who we haven't heard of before.

'Why can't we get our website back?'

Dear me, if I had a penny for every time I was asked that.

Our directors still don't like it. One of them worked out the move cost us an extra £200K of avoidable phone calls. Half of the people who phone try finding the answer to their question on the website first.

Our call centers don't like Directgov either. They keep asking why we have to use it.

Our writers and marketing people don't like it. They keep writing 'we' when we have to say 'Gubbins'. We have a teeny Gubbins logo on our landing page of Directgov, rather than a website built by our own designers.

Our customers don't like it. When we show them a gubbins.co.uk prototype build by our own designers, they prefer it.

Our stakeholders don't like it. Even people who don't work on the web for a living know about things like local navigation, breadcrumbs and tabs. 

The product review in 2007 didn't come to anything. Or Project Austin, which came after that. Apparently everyone is excited about Betagov although Gubbins aren't so sure.

Directgov don't like Directgov

You'd think there was someone out there who liked Directgov. But Directgov the organisation don't like Directgov the website either.

You'd think there was someone out there who could say - we built Directgov. We've shown that it's improved the public sector web. The design is fit for purpose. It's as good as any website that was built by the private sector.

Such a person would be a web designer. But Directgov doesn't have any web designers. At least none that have ever visited Gubbins. It has plenty of publishing, PR and marketing people. In fact, that's all it seems to have. They outsource anything technical or anything which involves building websites.

In late 2010 Directgov paid Gubbins an actual visit. They didn't meet our web team, of course, just the board of directors. It was about the time Jayne Nickalls and the top brass all resigned or retired.

They admitted Directgov wasn't very good, just as they had in 2007. However it was 'not Directgov's fault'. Plus we'd had the benefits of cross selling from the Directgov platform. And there was a radical new Directgov on its way called Alphagov.

Let's just hope it happens this time.

Directgov Is Dead

It's ironic that this first post is a eulogy on Directgov, since thirty seconds ago when I made this blog I proclaimed it had to die. Directgov the organisation is now the Government Digital Service and Directgov the website is now due to be replaced with a revolutionary new government website -

www.alphagov.co.uk

Hang on a sec ... what's this?

Alphagov

Hello and thanks for stopping by.
This is the domain related to the Alphagov project but there is nothing here.
We will be launching our alpha in early May and we will put details up at that time.
See you then!

---

alphagov.co.uk
Internet solutions provided by Namesco Limited - Sunday 06 November, 2011

It's not www.alphagov.com - that's taken by a commercial company, as is www.betagov.com. 

Silly me. I forgot the .gov in the domain. I work with Directgov every single day in a professional capacity yet there I slipped back into my usual web browsing behaviour. I forgot that government websites have their own URL conventions. In other words, we have to make special allowances for government websites. 

I'll try - 

www.alpha.gov.co.uk

No, nothing there. 

I'll go back to the Puffbox post about Alphagov - I'm pretty sure there was a link there -

http://puffbox.com/2011/05/11/ten-things-alphagov-gets-right/

Ah there we go - 

http://alpha.gov.uk/

I'll need to finish this first post now. I'd planned to have an initial rant then make my morning coffee. But then, finding Alphagov took more time than it took me to create this Google blog. 

According to www.alphagov.co.uk's holding page it was launched a year ago today. A year seems like a long time for building a website. 

But for a Directgov, a year isn't enough time; just as £30 million a year isn't enough money.

Back soon.