Thought for the day<br /> A matter of strife and debt

The other morning I received a very red demand notice from those nice people at Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise, asking for a not inconsiderable sum of money to be paid immediately, or face having my chattels distrained and my children seized by an authorised person.

Naturally, I did what anyone else would do in such circumstances. I called the number of the Debt Management Unit and gave them my VAT number while explaining that I owed Her Majesty nothing and certainly not the kind of money that was scribbled in biro next to "Amount Now Due" on the letter.

I will admit that I was pleasantly surprised at how good the customer service was, so full marks for CRM to the VAT office. I told the lady I spoke to that all my payments are automated over the internet, and that my returns and payments normally arrive early, just to ensure that I don’t experience the problems I had ten years ago, when they arrived "on the dot".

"Yes," she told me, "I can see that and the figure is completely wrong. It’s the paying early part which appears to be causing the problems with our system. I will get the case officer to give you a call. Don’t worry."

But I do worry, because past experience suggests that once a letter like this is in the the system, proving that I’m not Al Capone and that I don’t owe the greater part of the national debt can be a little time consuming.

On the last occasion, it needed a personal letter from the then chancellor, Norman Lamont, to apologise for the inconvenience and let me off the debt I didn't owe.

So I’m sitting here wondering how ‘joined-up’ Customs & Excise is and whether being a good customer is going to cost me dear again, as it once did with the Inland Revenue, which also once made a mistake and spent 12 months issuing final demands.

What interests me is how an automated process ends up with a figure scribbled on to a form? Does the VAT collection system really involve someone picking up the pre-printed form with the customer details on and inserting the date and a random number with a pound sign in front of it?

Finally, as another example of joined-up local government at its best, a large London council has generously agreed to waive the two parking fines they gave me last November. I had appealed these because both fines were issued on private property and I had even collected the badge numbers of the two parking attendants who agreed this was the case. What they had not bargained with was a digital camera that proved where I was parked on each occasion.

The council tells me that they have lost all the details, my correspondence file and the accompanying e-mail copies on both these parking fines and, as a consequence, will not be pursuing payment, and that’s the end of the story. But I am tempted to send them a data access request to see if this is really the case.

What both these stories tell me is that joining up government with technology does very little to improve accountability or even responsibility, its "duty of care". It simply makes it easier for the system to pursue its relentless goal of taxation, TV licences, parking fines and other fanciful demands for payment.

Those systems that should be most efficient and most joined up and which involve punitive measures against the customer in the shape of fines, enquiries or even potential imprisonment are simply not streamlined, and are far from any sensible vision of efficiency if these two stories are any measure of our progress towards a truly joined-up public sector.

What do you think?

Has joined-up government failed you? What will it take for it to become a reality?  Tell us in an e-mail >> ComputerWeekly.com reserves the right to edit and publish answers on the website. Please state if your answer is not for publication.

Setting the world to rights with the collected thoughts and opinions of leading industry analystDr Simon Mooresof Zentelligence.

Acting globally, Zentelligence (Research) advises governments, suppliers, business and the media on the evolution, application and delivery of leading-edge technologies and specialises in the areas of eGovernment and information security.

For further information on Zentelligence and its research, presentation and analyst services visitwww.zentelligence.com