Between a Rock and a Cyber Space

Forget the Eurozone's questionable prospects, or our conspicuously empty chair at the negotiating table. Forget class wars, or endless political wrangling. Right now the UK seem to be grappling with a more fundamental back and forth which ultimately underpins all of those debates and more.

As a nation we are currently wallowing in a purgatory of paper. I am talking about the many forms and administrative tasks we have to plough through to be a functioning citizen, and the problems of efficiency that still plague them. In the typewriter punctuated years of the past, everything from bank transfers to driving licenses was filed and administered on tidily stamped and filed papers which gave everyone a nice sense of physical reassurance (until a building fire). In the past 20-30 years however, the digital era has stormed through our paper archives and swept much stored data and newly completed form paraphernalia into a virtual repository.

I think it is fair to say measures like computerisation of Land Registry entries for our homes, and the online submission of self-assessment tax returns has benefited the computer literate portion of the population, and helped the bodies in charge of their administration to part the red sea of paper which must have existed pre-1980. The problem which we presently have however is that we are stuck in a half-way house akin to a bumbling alcoholic.

As with any transition there is always a period of time where the old system becomes redundant, potentially before the new one is up and running to take its place. Its not hard to envisage a time in the future when virtually all administration will be done through a digital medium, with the only real stumbling blocks being security and a portion of society who are adverse or unable to take their lives online.

Where we are now however is in my opinion is the "terrible teens" of the digital administration revolution. Take a UK driving license application for instance, I recently attempted to update mine (as I am being consistently chastened to do by the DVLA) to reflect my partial transition from a spotty driver at 18, to my marginally more chiselled 23-year old current self with a new address. Embracing the digital revolution I merrily proceeded to fill in 8 pages of details on the DVLA website (including 3 years of address history which caused significant head scratching). All was going swimmingly until I was unceremoniously dumped out of the DVLA website with the simple message that I could not complete my application online.

Feeling like a snubbed punter at a bar with overly zealous bouncers I retreated to the local Post office (the only one in town that facilitated DVLA based fracas) and began to fill out the form. After help and advice a-plenty from the staff I tried to work out how much I needed to pay and how to do it. "Check or postal order only Sir". With the world and his EPOS dog shunning check books and a 20% charge for postal offers I told them to shove it waited 10 days for a check-book from my bank and finally got the application off.

Now you don't have to be a PRINCE2 marvel to work out that isn't a very efficient process. It took an age and I doubt it saved anyone any time or money. Likewise why do credit-serving shops still insist on a piece of paper to prove you have a Bank Account, and Royal Mail rely on you to bring a soggy piece of red cardboard with you to retrieve your parcel from their clutches?

It all just seems a bit like we got half way towards digital Nirvana and then chickened out. A bit like watching a bungee jumper teeter to the edge and then crumple into a heap whilst a queue of eager punters forms behind them. Like a phone salesman delivering the best pitch of his life and then deciding to go back to flogging cups and string. Or perhaps like a multi-national company developing their own OS and a tablet device to put it on then, before flogging them in a bizarre firesale which makes RBS look frugal.

Its time to sort out the security that surrounds digital submission mechanisms and properly invest our faith in them, the longer we wallow in a sense of simmering distrust and misplaced faith in scraps of wood pulp, the longer we hold back efficiency gains which we sorely need to save money and time.