Whitehall could use some Google thinking

Billy Bob

Remind me again who Hilton is married to and where she works.

strapworld

But, Mr Forsyth. It is not just the moribund Liberal Democrats. It is also the moribund civil service with their old fashioned 'this is the way it has always been done' thinking, politicians with their tunnel vision based on narrow party lines, and never forgetting the 'leadership' or lack of it from the Prime Minister. No blue sky thinking from the present holder of that office. I would suggest that his arrogant attitude, where he only has his Eton pals and selected few around him, shows a mind incapable of a broad brush viewpoint. No 'off the wall' thinking from him or his team.

Google, I would suggest identify the best brains and place them with other intelligent people and just ask them to think the unthinkable.

The United Kingdom, in my opinion, need such a team to plan our way ahead with immediate, medium and long term plans, ready to put into place should, as many are suggesting, the debt fireball rolls into France and beyond.

There are other very intelligent people on the opposition benches that should be brought into the 'blue sky thinking room', as there are in many walks of life who, collectively, could create a blueprint for the country's future success.

Fortune favours the brave.....

daniel maris

Google Government would be disastrous.

The things government deals with: roads, rail, air traffic, welfare, health, housing are just too basic and important to people's lives to be subject to slick silicon brain storming.

There is no reason we can't have imaginative government, but that is an entirely different proposition.

Simon

@d maris

I'd say entirely the opposite is true - some proper imaginative technology thinking is exactly what Government needs, not least to stop them spending £12 billion on NHS IT Systems etc. That deliver zero benefit for the money spent.

And the other matters you mention would likewise benefit from some Googleisation, online road traffic systems, online benefit payments / claims, pretty much the whole piece really...

There isn't much in all spheres of life that has not only undergone huge change due to the invention of digital data systems but that change has long since happened and 2-3 more revolutions have since taken place.

Everything Government does is dependent upon IT systems, and the most important part of the process of making things work properly and cheaply depends on getting the technology right, and on simplifying thereby the overall delivery of whatever the service is.

Steve Hilton's Google links and his Google Instincts are good for us and bad for the entrenched vested interests, not least the cozy oligarchy of locked in Government IT Contractors!

TomTom

Fire Steve Hilton and hire Rachel Whetsone then....

James

"Google Government would be disastrous."

Yes - just imagine all those public services being run and offered in a convenient and customer-orientated manner, with employees going out of their way to do a job they enjoy turning up to. How awful, indeed!

Holly ......

A driverless car eh?
Blimey.
How many drivers will buy one of those I wonder, compared to passengers/non drivers?

Just a thought.

David Bouvier

Well, Rachel Whetstone has an impecable political policy heritage, and her mother is responsible for one of most unexpected pamphlet titles ever.

daniel maris

Google Government will be just like all that UK PLC nonsense, now more or less forgotten. The state is not a private company and it is not an internet search engine.

Good governance is based on principles of equity, rule of law, public service, free speech, representation and citizenship, underpinned by efficient systems of taxation and maintenance of national and internal security.

Forget the Google nonsense.

Foundavoice

I like this type of thinking - I think it's healthy, and too little time is given within organisations to sit back and think.

(The subsitute robot wouldn't work - it would need to cost less than the wages it earns, but if that was the case, why wouldn't the employer just buy a robot himself - as per all production innovations? Good fun).

alan campbell

Yeah, we need more blue-sky froth and out of the box buzz-words. That'll sort everything.

Leveller

Daniel M' view about good governence is correct.The remedy is still in the hands of the citizen.Demand good governance,insist on open and proper scrutiny, with real consequences for the corrupt or incompetent in government. Vote for good governance!Not 'cyber rule'.

Nicholas

We used to have an aeronautical industry with that sort of imagination and vision but it was the sort of government daniel maris describes that killed it. British innovation is still alive and beavering away but it is either alive and beavering away abroad or alive and beavering away despite the government rather than because of it - and often much hampered by tripartite government red tape.

Now the tripartite government (local, central and Brussels) concerns itself mainly with placating minorities and "markets" or pandering to political correctness. It is devoid of imagination, let alone innovation, and tied to an ever decreasing circle of tax and spend. The idea that it might actually be better getting out of the way and letting individual imagination and innovation breathe falls at the first hurdle of its "leaders" individual aspirations to fame, wealth and utopian fallacies.

Any imagination and innovation displayed in local government, in Westminster and in Brussels is directed towards increasing the power of bureaucracy, wrapping it up in "everything in the garden is lovely" pap and devising new ways to raise more tax to spend on those twin deceits. It is a fantastically wasteful, indulgent, pointless, destructive and/or impeding gargantuan, ever growing, that supports and nurtures only a narrow professional political elite.

Whilst pretending we've never had it so good when, actually, we've never had it so bad.

Sean Haffey

So much of what Daniel Maris writes above would be wonderful, but that is not the way government works in the UK (or most other democracies) today.

michael

Driverless car.... adaptive cruise control , self parking ,it's all but already out there,
and the MARKET (that's us) will decide how long it is before today's hi-tec gadget becomes tomorrow's trash.

alexsandr

not sure i want to be on a motorway with a mix of driverless cars, old cars with drivers, HGV and foreign HGV