Tens of thousands of public sector jobs could go in Jobcentres, benefit offices, passport centres and town halls if face-to-face transactions are scrapped in favour of cheaper and more efficient online form-filling.
On Monday the Prime Minister will announce plans that he claims could save billions of pounds over four years by making dealing with the State as easy as internet banking or shopping on Amazon. Cash will also be saved on postage stamps, telephone calls and government buildings as the switch to the internet leads to the phasing out of call centres and benefit offices.
The aim is that within a year, everybody in the country should have a personalised website through which they would be able to find out about local services and do business with the Government. A unique identifier will allow citizens to apply for a place for their child at school, book a doctor’s appointment, claim benefits, get a new passport, pay council tax or register a car from their computer at home.
Over the next three years, the secure site will be expanded to allow people to interact with their children’s teachers or ask medical advice from their doctor through a government version of Facebook.
But union leaders and privacy experts immediately warned that the Government’s record on IT projects was already catastrophic and there would be key concerns about privacy, data protection and fraud. In addition many elderly, disabled and undereducated people find it difficult to carry out transactions online.
4 comments:
And when the servers crash... chaos will reign..!
Not to mention that it contradicts blatantly the highly controversial 'three strikes' punishment, which, if implemented, would mean that any internet user caught infringing copyright could be banned from the net for up to two years or so.
The Gov. aren t know for there ability to keep online information.
It actually sounds like a good idea, but yep, I doubt the governments competency to implement it.
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