Little platoons online

9 January 2010

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Cameron’s ‘big idea’ is for a ‘Post-Bureaucratic Age’ enabled by the internet. Will it work? Peter Hoskin and Neil O’Brien aren’t sure

The future: it’s all about computers. Anyone could tell you that. But not everyone gets quite as evangelical about it as David Cameron. Put the Conservative leader in a room full of tech-heads, web freaks and assorted blue-sky thinkers, and he soon starts to preach his gospel. Computers will catalyse our political evolution, he says. Armed with only an internet connection, the public will start seizing back control from an overreaching state. Everything will be cheaper, faster, better — and we’ll all be happier to boot. Burke’s Little Platoons have just gone digital.

Yet beyond this the narrative fizzles out — and rapidly. This bright future has been saddled with a name that only a management consultant could love: ‘The Post-Bureaucratic Age’. And, worse, the Conservatives are more than a little uncertain about what it will look like. They have launched the occasional initiative here and there, but the party’s brightest policy wonks admit that it is still a work in progress. With the election fast approaching, that’s something of a problem for them.

This is the point at which most readers would switch off, taking it as proof that the Cameron agenda is essentially cosmetic. But the struggle to formulate a post-bureaucratic age takes us to the very core of today’s Conservative party. The Cameroons regard it as their Big Idea, their guiding light; just as Tony Blair had his Third Way, and Thatcher had her copy of Friedrich von Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty. Understand it, and understand how the probable next government sees itself and its role.

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Lee Bryant

January 7th, 2010 3:48pm Report this comment

You are right, of course, to suggest that these things are easier said than done; but there are a couple of sceptical points in your piece that are not entirely correct. First, transparency and open data are not simply about better choice. By opening up performance data, other experience suggests, services get better irrespective of how the public respond to the data. Also, open data is a prerequisite for civil society to fix problems and develop its own services, rather than just providing a stick to beat the state providers with. In reality, I think these are more important sources of benefit than more informed choice. Second, although the implementation of the PBA will paradoxically place more short-term demands on the bureaucratic machine, and may even require new IT projects, these will look nothing at all like the debacle that was the NHS IT project, nor will they incur such absurd costs. Indeed, there is no reason why such projects cannot pay for themselves in many cases.

Pete Hoskin

January 7th, 2010 4:02pm Report this comment

Lee: Neil and I only had limited space above, so we weren't able to touch on every facet of what is a multifaceted topic. We hope to be more thorough in a report we're writing. But, let's just say, that we don't necessarily disagree with you...

Christopher Chantrill

January 7th, 2010 6:53pm Report this comment

As the proprietor of ukpublicspending.co.uk, Britain's No.1 public spending site, I claim the £1 million prize.

But, I can tell you, Britain's public spending data is a shambles. It's decent going back to about 1995, fair going back to 1960, shambolic going back to 1950, and can only be found in scholarly books prior to World War II.

djw2009

January 7th, 2010 11:22pm Report this comment

Isn't it obvious that putting things online is Cameron's way of justifying huge bureaucracies. He will say, "look, it doesn't matter any more, as anyone can look up their budgets". But this is not the same as shutting down whole areas of government. I am sick of Cameron's constant window dressing of the state bureaucracy - all I want is to see the actual state cut back, and I don't expect Cameron to do much about that.

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