Why Is A Single View Of The Citizen Imperative To 21st Century Society?
Once upon a time, Britain was run on pieces of paper. Scattered throughout dusty offices across the country, a vast array of departments from tax offices to housing associations held mission-specific information on citizens in files that, if put together in a single place, would combine to create a comprehensive view of each individual’s relationship with the state.
The problem was that nobody ever put them together – leading to a scenario where anything from fraud to serious service failings could go unnoticed simply because the right hand didn’t know what the left was doing.
Fast forward to the digital age
While those individual files might now be stored in electronic format, there has been little progress in linking the data together to form a single, unified view of the citizen. Despite increasing pressure to cut budgets and improve services, on any given day multiple agencies are working with and spending resources on individuals without being aware of each other’s efforts, and this lack of joined-up, integrated action is unnecessarily wasting money on a daily basis.
Why is a single view of the citizen important?
Because if you look at virtually any state/citizen interaction, there is a strong chance that it could be much more safely and efficiently dealt with if every involved stakeholder knows everything relevant there is to know.
Take the example of a stereotypical troubled family: Dad’s in jail. Eldest son has addiction problems. Mum has health and benefits issues and the younger children are regularly missing school.
Such a scenario could involve any number of agencies including Probation Services, The Department of Work and Pensions, Housing, Social Work and Education. Each of these are striving towards the same aim, but if unable to work fluidly together, cannot be proactive in managing the case.
As things stand, each of those caseworkers is likely to be operating with only a narrow, departmental based view of the situation on the ground. If they were able to share data between agencies then the Probation Service could tell Housing when father is due to be released, Social Services might be alerted in anticipation of problems and all other relevant stakeholders could be primed to take appropriate action.
If data sharing were already a working reality, we could vastly reduce the number of scenarios where a vital component of the civic support structure fails to act proactively because it was not informed of some pertinent detail. Physical meetings between agencies would not be required and the chances of a satisfactory resolution would be greatly increased alongside significant savings in time and resources – creating a situation where, for once, everybody wins.
This is how a single view of the citizen could deliver tangible benefits and improvements to frontline services while reducing waste.
This is not pie-in-the-sky futurespeak, but a very real and practicable possibilty when information is stored and shared via a secure Cloud service. Using the secure platform SMEs and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs can get involved with innovative services, open data standards amplify opportunities for collaboration and different parts of the government can combine to approach issues with a smooth, practical approach to joint operations.
Clearly, not all data held on the citizen would be suitable for sharing, but by using some of the interagency collaboration tools already establishing themselves on the market, stakeholders can choose what they put into the Cloud, sharing only information that has been approved for joint departmental use and effectively preserving both the rights and sensitivities of the individual.
Some commentators in the popular press might choose to paint a single view of the citizen as an oppressive example of state intervention, but in reality this is not a dystopian, Big Brother-like scenario. It is about the effective and timely resolution of issues and ensuring that vulnerable people get help where and when they need it – not until it is too late to do anything except sweep up the pieces.
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- Shared Data Will Revolutionise Public Services
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- Am I Ready For Cloud?
- SCC Finalist For Security Innovation Of The Year At UK IT Industry Awards 2012
- Changes To The Government’s Information Assurance Will Help G-Cloud Bridge The Security Gap
Posted in
Education, Fire & Police, Healthcare, SMEs
Tags: collaboration, data sharing, g-cloud, gcloud, isvs, open data standards, paper based office
Tags: collaboration, data sharing, g-cloud, gcloud, isvs, open data standards, paper based office
