Category: taxation
-
What can politicians learn from Universal Credit?
The unfortunate saga of Universal Credit is a powerful reminder of the repeated failure to successfully integrate policy making with technology. A failure that comes with profound human consequences and suffering, not just a financial cost. Universal Credit (UC) aimed to deliver a radically better approach to welfare benefits, one that would provide: “A dramatically…
-
Payday loans and the missed opportunity?
In our book Digitizing Government: understanding and implementing new digital business models, there’s a table illustrating how often grand announcements have been made around the anticipated impact of technology on improving our public services: (I guess I should update it with various similar pronouncements since 2013 tirelessly recycling the same sentiments.) Despite some good work…
-
Online citizen accounts
The idea of an online government account where we can see everything in one place has been kicking around since the late 1990s and the “me.gov” all-in-one portal. Despite several generations of government portals over the last 21 years (GIS, UKonline, Directgov, and now GOV.UK) we still don’t seem to be any closer to fulfilling…
-
Digital leaders TV discussion
BBC Click’s Kate Russell hosted myself, Mark Thompson and Alan Brown on a recent episode of Digital Leaders TV. Our topic? How to understand and implement new digital business models in the public sector, with questions and interventions both from Kate and from submitted questions from those tuning in to the broadcast Hangout. The discussion centred on…
-
20 years of “online government” 101. Part 3: approaches to identity
This is part 3 in my occasional blog summarising the past 20 years or so of UK efforts to move government online. The previous parts provided summaries on progress towards a single online presence and a similar high-level summary of the overall architectural thinking. In this one, I’m going to run through some of the key policies…
-
IT, tax avoidance and the total cost of ownership
The recent interest in “off payroll” taxation of individuals looks like it’s about to be trumped by the much more significant issue of “offshore” company taxation. The Sunday Times ran a piece last weekend stating that: “Apple and Google are avoiding up to £800m a year in tax in Britain despite sales here worth billions of…
new tech observations from the UK (ntouk) 