Efficiency by transparency

EVERY day enormous lorries arrive at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency in Swansea to deliver around 100,000 vehicle tax payments sent by post. Only half of the 46m payments made each year happen online, even though three-fourths of Britons buy their car insurance via the web. “We basically still run paper factories,” rues Francis Maude, the minister for the Cabinet Office. He is bent on changing this, as part of the coalition government’s efforts to trim and reshape the state.

Just as retailers have rebuilt their business around technology to cut costs and improve service, so too must government, goes the thinking. A powerful shove in that direction will take place on January 17th when the Cabinet Office unveils an innovative website called Transaction Explorer. This will eventually reveal the cost to the government of handling nearly all the transactions that take place between state and citizen—tallying more than a billion per year, from passport applications to requests for fishing licences. The hope is that exposing how much these interactions cost will compel officials to become more efficient, either by showing the bureaucrats where potential savings lie or by stirring public ire.

A digital transaction is generally 20 times cheaper than one by phone, 30 times cheaper than a postal transaction and 50 times cheaper than a face-to-face transaction, the Cabinet Office estimates. Yet only half of all government services are available online, which creates plenty of scope to reap savings. Switching to digital transactions could save £1.8 billion ($2.9 billion) a year, argues Richard Sargeant, the Cabinet Office’s data-analytics guru. The country is held back in part by poorly designed websites. Though Britain spends a lot of taxpayers’ money on IT services, its ranking on quality is low, coming 12th in the international league tables.

The newly-released data contain eyebrow-raising anomalies. For example, the cost of processing a student loan application on paper is about £280; the figure is ten times less for the web, where most of the 1.2m applications a year are handled. But the Rural Payments Agency spends a staggering £727 to process each of its 105,237 claims for European farm subsidies. “You kind of get a sense that this can be done better,” chirps Mr Maude.

The government is gradually moving from trying to curtail Whitehall sprawl to using technology to open the state to scrutiny and make it more efficient. Britain is emerging as a world leader in analytics. The government has released lots of useful public-sector data, partly in respect to modern democratic accountability, partly so anyone can try to build a business around the information. It funds the Open Data Institute, a unique quasi-public organisation that sponsors non-profit groups attempting to uncover insights buried in the information.

Not all are keen to participate in the new experiment. Departments that were reluctant to disclose their cost data were pressed to at least provide an official contact so the public can request more information. To shake up the really recalcitrant bureaucrats, the geeks at the Cabinet Office’s Government Digital Service helpfully provided a link that will make it easy for people to file a Freedom of Information request—and do so over a public forum so that the whole process can be watched by many eyes.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the cost differences of processing student loan applications. Sorry.