The recent UK Government reshuffle, announced on 12/6/2003, has not left e-government unaffected. Lord Macdonald of Tradeston, one of the Cabinet Office ministers in charge of public services reform, resigned, leaving full responsibility for the "e-transformation" of public services in the hands of Douglas Alexander, Minister of State for the Cabinet Office. Furthermore, political responsibility for key aspects of the e-government drive, such as privacy, data-sharing, data protection and freedom of information, have been transferred from the abolished Lord Chancellor's Department to the new Department for Constitutional Affairs, headed by Lord Falconer. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary given responsibility for these matters is Lord Filkin, while Christopher Leslie, another Parliamentary Under-Secretary, will overlook the new department's IT and e-government work. Mr Leslie previously was Minister for local e-government in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM), where no announcement has yet been made about which of its new ministers will take on the brief.

Another important responsibility affected is that for the National Health Service (NHS) £2.3bn (Eur 3.31bn) IT programme, which had been left without holder since Minister Lord Hunt resigned in protest at the Iraq war three-month ago. As part of the reshuffle, the Department of Health first gave new minister Lord Warner responsibility for NHS IT, then passing it on to John Hutton on 19 June 2003.

Further to this personnel change, an e-government 'policy reshuffle' may be in the pipeline according to some recent press reports. The reason advanced for this possible makeover is the persisting concern about the low uptake of e-government services by UK citizens and businesses. Possible evolutions evoked include:

• Adoption of a new approach for online services, focussing on delivery rather than on strategies, with potential alternatives to the "life events" model.
• Creation of a single access point for online services called 'Online Government Store', which would constitute a new central hub or 'one-stop shop' for e-services. It is not yet clear how this project would relate to, and differ from, the existing UK Online citizen portal and transaction engine Government Gateway, which have both been designed to provide common access points for online services across government.
• Development of new authentication methods alternative to PKI (public key infrastructure) and digital certificate technology, which is used by the Government Gateway for enhanced authentication but is increasingly perceived as unsuited for wide public use.

In the UK as elsewhere, uptake of certificates has remained far lower than expected. The Government, according to one official, is now looking at "radical ways" of solving the authentication problem. Several potential solutions are being assessed, such as using the services of "trusted organisations" like employers or banks to verify a person's identity before transacting online for services, or on the contrary using the weight of government to make certificates work by giving it a responsibility for managing universally available e-identification and authentication processes. This last solution could be achieved through issuing all British citizens and businesses with either free software-based certificates (thus following the example set by Denmark), or electronic ID or entitlement cards. The latter seems to be the solution favoured by the Home Office, but it is also the most politically sensitive. A Home Office Minister recently acknowledged that over 5,000 of the 7,000 responses to a public consultation on the issue were opposed to electronic entitlement cards.

Further details on the new approach to e-services delivery and to e-authentication are expected to be revealed later this year.

Further information:

• On the impact of the UK's government reshuffle: articles by eGov Monitor Weekly and by KableNet.com (article 1, article 2).
• On the plans for a new 'Online Government Store': articles by the eGov Monitor Weekly and the BBC.
• On the issues related to e-authentication: article by KableNet.com.
• On the results of the public consultation on electronic entitlement cards: articles by the BBC, the Register and ZDNet.

Latest eGovernment News
eGovernment News - June 2003
eGovernment News - United Kingdom
eGovernment News - Policy/Strategy