It’s often claimed that information technology (IT) could enable the UK’s public services to be redesigned from the ground up, providing better quality, higher value services that better meet the needs of citizens. But little progress has been made in genuinely using IT to deliver such fundamental improvements.
However, a new paper due out later this month from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation hopes to push for just such changes. Entitled “Modern Markets for All”, the paper
“…explores the case for “National E-Markets” (NEMs). These would be safe, convenient, accessible, ultra-low overhead, Internet marketplaces underpinned by facilities only government can offer. They could create paid work as well as other opportunities at the base of the economic pyramid. The private sector alone can not create these marketplaces. But they could quickly be realised using the same model that created the National Lottery.”
The paper, authored by Wingham Rowan, points out that every day in the UK some £100m+ of potential resources are wasted. These untraded resources are the spare hours when people, or their possessions, could be hired. Examples include the time of a babysitter, hire of a neighbour’s bicycle or short term loans of small amounts of cash.
There is a demonstrable demand for such assets, but no market efficient enough to trade them. And, importantly for government, these resources belong to people at the bottom of the economic pyramid.
The paper therefore looks at what would be required to create state-of-the-art marketplaces so that these diverse small scale, localised, offerings could be traded, as cheaply, instantly and safely as possible.
Wingham Rowan has also added a related and thought-provoking section to the CTPR/Ideal Government IT Strategy Competition on “Thinking big on IT and public services”. Posing the question “Is it possible the whole concept of public services could become unrecognisable because of IT developments?”, Rowan instead maps out how government has a responsibility to help initiate e-markets, establishing them as a regulated public utility, similar to the water supply, road network or national currency.
His proposal is this:
“… government should set up a special committee to look at the kinds of marketplaces now possible. It should ask: “are the British people able to trade whatever assets they might conceivably sell in the most efficient marketplace possible?” If the answer is “No”, the committee might then ask: “does government have a role in remedying that situation?”
Only when that question is answered can you really consider how public services might look ten or twenty years from now.”
The Centre for Technology Policy Research was founded partly to argue the case that IT is a fundamental lever of policy and that properly applied it will bring about beneficial and constructive improvements to the UK’s public services of a kind neither previously imagined nor delivered.
We therefore welcome Rowan’s challenge. If you’d like to join in the debate, come along to the competition wiki and add your comments on Rowan’s idea. We’re interested to know what you think – and, if you agree it’s a good idea, how we can work with government to make it work.
