The demand for personalised services

From Future of Local Services to the Public

From Clayton, S. and Schultz, W. (April 2008) 'Local Government Horizon Scan 2015-30'

Summary

Clayton and Schultz argue that, 'citizens will increasingly demand more immediate and personalized responses to their requirements, though not necessarily via direct interface with the government. This desire for ‘tailored government’ will heighten pressure on both central and local government to be more flexible and responsive.' They argue that the impact of this may be:

• A new wave of innovative practice e.g. individual budgets
• Increased responsiveness and local accountability to ensuring services are community-specific and transparent
• Supporting and encouraging people to collaborate with services to meet their own needs
• Increased emphasis on professional skills, autonomy and accountability
• Greater collaboration between users and service providers.

a knock-on result of this is that central government delegates greater roles to local authorities, 'on the grounds that the latter is better placed to provide flexibility and to support an increasingly diverse society' and that this has several impacts such as: 

• Greater tailoring of public services to better meet the needs of individuals and areas.
• More flexibility and responsiveness at a local level significantly enhances society’s capacity to meet challenges successfully - enhance life changes, improve the responsiveness of the economy, regulate and change behaviour and address social tensions and conflicts.
• Increased momentum for ‘e-government’ and digital access to public services
• The next two decades will witness increasing examples of on-line voting within the UK, political decisions being influenced by electronic referenda. There will be stronger links between community governance and on-line networks.
• Most towns will be echoed in cyber-space (towns will create virtual versions of themselves online to display mapping and real-time sensor data e.g. transport updates, environmental monitoring and to enable residents to meet in virtual town meetings.