Rethinking the relationships between the state, its citizens and society

Using analytics to enable many-to-many, bottom-up engagement, co-production and innovation

National and federal governments are facing some of the most staggering and complex challenges in history. Governments are being asked to do more with less, reduce waste, improve program and financial management – all while operating within constraining budget limitations and greater demands for change and accountability. Most government organizations have an overflow of valuable information to draw upon in overcoming these challenges. The key is turning this information into intelligence.

In this interview, Ian Manocha, the Managing Director of SAS UK and Ire-land, talks about the changing role of governments and provides compelling examples from the UK. A civil engineer with a military background, Manocha's business technology experience includes work on government and de-fense contracts and technology sales.

How are technology advances affecting the role of government today?
Ian Manocha: We are now in an information age driven by digital technology and data-rich networks. The possibilities afforded by new information technologies for collaboration, personalization and gains in productivity have driven much of the recent government thinking. Wikipedia, Facebook and Google are all seen as platforms for enabling many-to-many, bottom-up engagement, co-production and innovation. These platforms are rich with information about citizens' needs, and when combined with administrative data and other information collected through the many state service-delivery organizations, a compelling short- and long-term picture may be developed.

How do we balance our concerns around privacy and transparency with the demand that we harness the power of information for social and economic good?
Manocha: On the one hand, the potential of modern technology could be exploited to take advantage of personal information to improve the performance and quality of government services. On the other hand, privacy and personal data need to be secured and protected in order to prevent misuse and fraud. Without adequate policies, strategies and tools to manage increased flows of information through government, there is a risk of its intended beneficiaries. The balance must involve citizen empowerment and engagement in the information life cycle. In one example, SAS is working with law enforcement agencies to connect citizens directly, online, into the police intelligence management cycle.

I would also say that government needs to be more open in its efforts to share the information it already has at its disposal, so that citizens and businesses can influence decisions. In the UK, the coalition government has already given the public increased access to long-guarded treasury data and have promised a "right to government data" to empower citizens. Likewise, SAS is working to open that information up through the provision of publicly available analytical services.

How does the state need to adapt, in order to flourish in this new world?
Manocha: The Internet is increasingly becoming the central nervous system of our economies and societies. In this new world, the roles of citizens, business and government are shifting and the boundaries between state and society, between government departments, and even between citizen collectives and businesses, become increasingly blurred. Mobile Internet increases access and accelerates the pace of change. In such circumstances, perhaps the government is just a node in a network of actors who cooperate and collectively gather, provide and exploit necessary information for these services.

There is an opportunity to reinvent government by intensifying the interaction with civil society, but government leaders need to ask themselves some fundamental questions about how they collect, analyze and exploit data in this new world. I would contest that we are only just beginning to realize the transformative potential of analytics in enabling social and economic innovation. But I strongly feel that SAS is uniquely able not only to set out the parameters of the debate, but also to implement real projects that deliver the tangible outcomes. And in doing so, we are helping to fundamentally recast the relations between the state, citizens and wider society.

According to the European Internet Foundation, in a typical organization today, only 25 percent of retained data is structured in a way that can be used to extract knowledge, and very few workers have the extraction skills necessary to do it. How can we best utilize and share information to enable citizen-centric and efficient public services?
Manocha: Actually this challenge goes beyond just having workers with those knowledge-extraction skills and tools. Certainly, the ability to manage and extract intelligence from our ever-growing stores of data is now a prerequisite to deliver essential services in a lower-cost fashion. The key issue is no longer one of access to information alone, but the capacities of individuals and organizations to use information to solve problems and innovate. Large amounts of detailed information can be a blessing in the proactive development of new citizen-centric services when it is used to anticipate the needs of citizens and business. Intervening early and diverting spending, by using technology to surface patterns of demand and create earlier interventions that are more effective in supporting users, will also reduce demand on more critical and expensive services.

So, to the point about knowledge workers: In fact, we are heading into a more automated and real-time world where internal and external data is fused and processed in flight, leading to changes to service delivery – allowing priorities to be adjusted, schedules amended, work flows changed and communications generated with far less manual intervention. Moreover, user involvement in the design and evaluation of service delivery will be key to responsive services. This is all about using data in a predictive manner.

Can you give some examples where this is already starting to happen?
Manocha: Initiatives in the UK that tap into some of these themes are beginning to emerge at the margins of public services and democratic institutions. For example, TheyWorkforYou.com aggregates and personalizes information on the activities of parliamentarians. FixMyStreet.com enables citizens to report conditions of local amenities to the council and each other. Safeguarding 2.0 enables more effective sharing of information between users and frontline professionals in social care.

Despite these promising examples, the transformative power of information processing and analysis – though well-established in commercial, cultural and social networking spaces – remains underdeveloped in relation to the state and its interactions with citizens. As a result, we often fail to capture the genuinely radical potential of the information age to help, in Prime Minster David Cameron's words, 'reimagine the state' and 'remake society.' Crucially, realizing this potential will ultimately depend on our ability to translate the possibilities of endless information and continuous communication streams into real knowledge, and more importantly, real forward-looking intelligence. That is, of course, where SAS plays.

Finally, how is the new government in the UK changing the debate regarding the role of government and society? Manocha: During the 2010 election, the Conservative Party campaigned on the promise of creating a 'big society.' The theme of reinvigorating and revitalizing civil and civic institutions proved somewhat unwieldy on the doorsteps during electioneering, but it is now shaping into the defining message of the coalition government. Indeed, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has argued that big society fits neatly into his liberal agenda and he was talking about it as well – under the different name of 'big citizens.'

For Prime Minister David Cameron, the big society means giving 'citizens, communities and local government the power and information they need to come together, solve the problems they face and build the Britain they want.' I believe that translates into the creation of a more intelligent (albeit smaller) state that enables - rather than frustrates - a more empowered and responsible society to take care of itself.

The vision is a bold one and suggests a fundamental rethink in the nature of the relationship between state, citizens and society. SAS is working with UK policymakers, and respected policy think tanks like Demos, to bring our own ideas to the table.

 Ian Manocha, Managing Director of SAS UK and Ire-land