Government must act on online advice

The revolution to public sector digital services that government digital champion Martha Lane Fox called for.

coupled with the demand to make government services easier to access, really is the best of news.

Retailers and online businesses have for many years recognised and actively pursued not only the increased revenue available online, but also the efficiency gains that can be realised by using their websites to reduce operational costs.

So in the same way, smart investment in online services could be a key move in reducing government costs.

However, just adding more pages and services is only half the battle. The government needs to take a leaf out of Amazon’s book, for example, and start building websites that watch and react to a user’s actions, changing its own pages and content, in real-time, to make services more usable and accessible.

Today this technology means that these improved services can be provided without needing to rebuild the existing sites or spend millions on programmers.

Our hope is that the opportunity to save money, by delivering the same world-class online services in the government space as UK companies do in the commercial space, is not lost in a flurry of misplaced cost-cutting measures. Cutting any investments in technology could really make a difference.

Malcolm Duckett
VP Operations
Speed-Trap