Whitehall: DIY tech to protect against public service knife

Radical public sector spending cuts could spur government into delivering services through citizen-created sites and web 2.0 technology, senior Whitehall figures have revealed.

Public service spending will need to fall by £50bn by 2020 according to Alexis Cleveland, director general for transformational government at the Cabinet Office.

The resulting drive for cheaper and more efficient services will fuel moves to put government information in the public's hands and let them design how they access public services online.

"Technology is changing all around us and we are looking at how we can exploit that more in future and empower citizens to do more for themselves," she said at the Government Computing conference this week.

Cleveland pointed to the success of sites produced by the public during last year's Show Us a Better Way contest to find a better way of organising public information. The challenge produced popular sites, including one that displays maps of schools alongside information such as catchment areas and Ofsted results.

"They cost the government nothing to produce - it was produced by members of the public who like doing data mashing with government information," Cleveland said.

She added that sites such as the MP information site theyworkforyou.com show how a publicly produced site can be better designed and more informative than its official counterpart, saying the site is used by staff within the Cabinet Office as it "provides much more useful and important information".

Sir Michael Bichard, chairman of the Design Council and the man whose 2004 report laid the foundations for the Police National Database, warned that without embracing a "radical redesign of public services" the "future is looking very bleak", in the face of "relentless cost and service reductions".

"We need to reshape and redefine our service so that they are built around [the public]," he said.

"We do not just need to consult with them, we need to work collaboratively with them, giving them the power to reshape the services.

"We have to integrate IT into that redesign so it is not just an afterthought."

But Bichard cautioned that politicians did not have a vested interest in overhauling public services because it would draw attention to the dire financial state of the country.

"There are few people who have a vested interest in dealing with this, you do not win an election by telling people that Armageddon is upon us."