I’m in the IBM hosted session, the Smartest Link where a bunch of panellists will be responding to pre-prepared questions and the smartest of these will be the winner of the session, as per the Weakest Link. Keep refreshing for content.

13:23 IBM Promo video. [JJ's notes: Lots of stats and pretty pics set to uplifting jammy music. Predictable.] Before too long the amount of digital data in the world will double every 11 minutes.

13:26 We get to vote on the keypad in our chair for the best presentation.

13:29 Aim of this exercise is to spark new ways of thinking about civil service process.

Panellists

1. Jan Gower - leader IBM Civil Govt Industry team.
2. Terry Moran - 1st Chief Executive of Pensions Service.
3. Fiona Melthorpe - HMRC
4. Anu Kirney - IBM

Question1: How could intelligent access reduce cost of public service delivery?

Jan: Info in govt is something we al give. Could reduce costa nd then ask ppl if they are willing for us to share it. We need to think a diff way of getting govt to be effective if ppl don’t want that.

Terry: Need to reduce time spent accessing public service infrastructure. We could reduce time of staff supplorting those services. Those who don’t want to use it, will have to pay for F2F access.

Fiona: Intelligent access need to think about information flows backward and forward. There are different methods of receiving information. Managed to get 36,000 young people participating through games. Older ppl want tea and coffee.

Anu: Need to provide self-service for the citizen and access portals in supermarkets and post offices. Need to look at government employees to work from home saving travel time and cost.

Question 2: What is the one radical change in the next 12 months to get govt depts to collaborate more effectively?

Jan: Need to give ppl in dept the technology to collaborate more effectively. Currently govt depts still resistant to opening up these services. Last year Civil Service Live idea was for a directory of people but this isn’t enough.

Terry: Would like to change the funding arrangements so that instead of there being departmental funding buckets, there should be a single centralised resource for spending on tsks, because it will encourage collaboration.

Fiona: Expands on the funding model - if Treasury considered what we want to deliver, then applied a budget to that objective, it’s necessary to work across departments to achieve those ends rather than having disparities of spending that may not meet departmental needs.

Anu: Developing a government collaboration initiative that was an online and offline campus for collaboration - trainign people in effective implementation of initiatives.

Question 3: How would you make govt smarter in its dealings with citizens?

Jan: Need to start with citizens needs not what government wants.

Terry: I think we need to pose the problem and invite contributions from people in solving the problem rather than assuming we have the right answers.

Fiona: We need to join up the customer with the service providers more effectively - develop better filters for understanding who citizens need to speak to.

Anu: Already great initiatives; govt doesn’t always have to reinvent itself. Should leverage what it’s doing already and replicate these with other customer facing services.

Options from the gallery

O1: Need to get people to understand the value and operation of new technology that can be useful.

O2: Need to work more closely with the technology services providers to ensure that best practices are being deployed in govt departments.

O3: When a system has been improved in one department, the process needs to be shared across all departments. Need single standard for government IT platforms.

O4: For us to get smarter innovation has to be safe. Need to reduce failure concerns for pilot programmes.

Vote result for the smartest link? … Fiona Melthorpe