The Paradox of Choice and the forgotten stars

In the last two days I have seen two closed-down travel agent offices in two different cities.

At first I wondered if this was down to the latest wheeze: staycations – a consequence of the credit crunch, global warming, rising fuel prices and Chris Evans (warning, contains images some may find offensive…)

Besides, I remember the last time I booked a holiday on the high street and it was over 5 years ago. Nowadays it’s all done over the Internet, isn’t it?

A bit of digging, however, shows this simply follows a merger of two of the main operators and is part of a move to reduce their high street presence by around 10 per cent. Clearly people do still go to the travel agent because, by deduction, 90 of the merged companies’ offices are remaining open, and, actually, holiday sales seem to be doing very nicely, thank you.

And maybe I should have done so too, because I’ve just booked a long weekend in Paris for October and reckon I must have spent as much time on the web researching hotels, travel and insurance as I will actually spend awake in the French capital.

Yes, I have just experienced Barry Schwartz’s Paradox of Choice – the burden of trawling through endless online guides, customer reviews and price comparison sites. It’s that nagging feeling that you’re missing out on something just a little nicer, better value for money or in a better location just a click or two away.

Despite this, I still value (genuine) customer reviews as an effective way of cutting through the marketing and sponsored links to bring the ‘hidden gems’ to the fore and I am indebted to the people who take the time to write them. But it shouldn’t be a one-way street – if you are going to use other people’s reviews, you should really return the favour – but do please remember, not everything is either brilliant or dreadful, and there are three little-used stars available between 1 and 5…

Ofcom mobile consultation

Another post inspired by Ofcom, this one to draw your attention to a consultation they have launched on the UK mobile sector

The reasons behind the consultation are now fairly well-known, but to pull out a few key statements:

• mobile has become nearly ubiquitous. 84 per cent of people aged 8 or over use, or have access to, mobile services
• mobile has become a critical input for business, with mobile communications now a vital element in an increasingly services-based economy
• the mobile sector is now larger by revenue than the fixed and broadband sectors combined
• for many, the quantity of minutes, texts and in some cases data we receive in typical service ‘bundles’ has dramatically increased. However, the benefits of this trend are unevenly distributed, with contract customers appearing to have fared better than those who rely on pay-as-you-go services.
• older people, and disabled people, each have disproportionately low levels of mobile ownership
• those without access to credit or a bank account may not be able to obtain the most favourable prices or packages.

For the public sector, this raises some interesting challenges. For example, there is now no way of providing free calls to all service users short of asking some of them to use public phone boxes - and these have been disappearing at quite a pace - a 10-minute call to an 0800 number from a mobile phone can cost as much as £4.

Worth a look for anyone working in this area

iDTV final thoughts

Managed to get hold of an article from the International Journal of Public Administration assessing whether iDTV is the future of e-government services. It is an interesting article that addressed the issue quite comprehensively and referred to three significant initiatives as evidence.

I won't attempt to paraphrase here, but merely conclude my own thoughts, which are:

• That (assuming the digital switchover achieves near universal take-up) digital television offers an attractive platform for e-government services, particularly information and some interaction services.


• That if paid-for DTV is a pre-requisite for transactional services, then this will remain applicable only for a (significant) minority of users.


• That content should be tailored to the strengths of the television platform, including audio, video, support for multiple languages (including sign language) - rather than a straightforward cut and paste from, for example, the Internet.

Some useful links:
Directgov article on existing DTV services
Directgov digital tv advert
NHS Direct digital TV

iDTV part 2.0 - better make that 1.5

OK, just read the key points again and notice that freeview is responsible for most of the increase in digital TV take-up, and the most popular means of receiving DTV in the UK, with 38% of people's main TV sets receiving freeview.

If e-government services can be either 'information', 'interaction' or 'transaction', then, as I understand it, freeview is only really capable of the first two, because it doesn't have a return path. So maybe not as significant an occasion as I first suggested.

That said, digital satellite and cable services combine to provide DTV to 47% of people's main TV sets, so there is greater potential scope there.

Will keep mulling this one over.

iDTV, mobiles and e-gov initial thoughts

Sorry - I knew I had been away a while, but didn't realise it was nearly a full month. Maybe I can justify my absence by recognising the findings of the digital dialogues research, which, unsurprisingly, found that online engagement only works when you have a clear purpose. And, for the last month at least, I don't think I have.

Anyway, hope you're still here. Or should that be there? (Hmm, not sure about that, actually - when you call me on the phone you are there and I am here. When you visit me, you are here too. But when you visit my blog, I suppose you are both here and there. Interesting. Almost)

Anyway again (rambling on a bit today), to the point (or rather not - rambling again - as this is something I want to reflect on and probably add to). I notice that Ofcom have found that take-up of Digital Television in the UK has hit 87.1%, overtaking fixed-line telephones (they had already reported that mobile phone take-up overtook fixed-lines last year)

I think that is quite significant. For some time now, people have talked about e-government services being not just PC-based, but also available through other devices, such as iDTV and mobile phones. I am happy to be flooded with examples of where this is actually happening, but I am aware of only limited developments. Maybe now we are entering the time when the rhetoric can be matched by the reality.

As I say, I want to reflect on this and maybe add to it later, but just wanted to get something down in the meantime.

Useful links with a bit of waffle

A mixed bag this, but one that, for me, reflects the magic of the web and how it leads you from one thing to another:

• Was reading Emma’s post regarding a ‘toolkit for social media’ (lot’s of helpful comments there already, nothing I can add, really) when I noticed:
  
• A comment from Paul Webster advertising a guide to Using New Media, which I really liked – a very simple guide to some of the ‘New Media’ / ‘Social Networking’ / ‘Web 2.0’ / ‘whatever’ tools that are being used at the present, with case studies and pros and cons for the enthusiastic amateur to think about and get started*. This led me on to the:
  
• ICT Hub, who host the guide, and some of the great stuff they have got, including:
  
  × a link on the homepage to yet more social media stuff,
  × monthly newsletters, such as June's Social Media edition
  × case studies, including Lasa’s experiment with the ‘web-based office’
  × articles (I should really pay attention to the one with tips for bloggers) and
  × other publications, such as How ICT is shaping the future design and delivery of public services. And at the bottom of the publications list I saw a link to the:
  
• Performance Hub, which closed in March, but still has some good stuff in their archive, including their helpful Adventures In Strategy guide – a 5-part overview of different aspects of public sector strategy

Hopefully some of this will be of interest to others, especially anyone else who is starting out and wants to get to grips with the basics before trying anything more adventurous. Or, in an effort to bring this back round full-circle, anyone who is at the initial engage / observe stage in the social media toolkit.

For anyone in that position (myself included), this helps to reassure that you are not alone – that there are a lot of good, helpful people and a lot of good, helpful information out there, now go influence / inform / interact.


*the thinking behind this post was that the guide deserved the prominence of being in a main entry, rather than a bit buried in the comments of another, but then I realised that many, many more people read Emma’s comments than my posts…

Disruptive Innovation

A couple of months ago, Public Strategist wrote a post about ‘disruptive innovation’ and how “it is very hard for dominant firms in a market to innovate radically, because by doing so they risk destroying their existing business”, using the development of computer storage to illustrate the point (and I quite like this audio format cartoon from WikiWorld).

But whereas PS concluded that “none of that has much obviously to do with public strategy”, the NHS Confederation* seem to think otherwise and have published a debate paper on exactly that subject.

Yes, the capacity for disruptive innovations to bring down public service providers is clearly limited, but they can still have a significant impact. The paper explores a range of emerging innovations, with an obvious emphasis on the health sector, but with a clear read across for other public services.

Two things stood out for me in particular:

Firstly, the suggested shift in service delivery under the ‘information-age’ paradigm (below), in which people look first to meet their own needs, for example by getting information or completing transactions online.

This is followed not by going to public organisations for advice, but to friends, family and social networks. In this model, health care professionals are seen as a last resort.



OK, so this model isn’t new – self-help websites, discussion groups and social networks have been around for some time. And it has an obvious appeal given the savings that should be realised with people helping themselves. But the opportunity here is for public services to engage at the earlier self-help network stage – to ensure that the people who need more professional support get through quickly; and to give the right help and advice to those that do not (and the guidelines for civil servants online are a good start here)

The second thing is the growing market for personal health records. Microsoft and Google already have offerings in the US that integrate with medical providers to give the patient a consolidated view of their data, and the NHS is developing something similar with HealthSpace.

But why stop at heath records? If people had access to, and control over, secure personal data records, and they could choose who to share what data with, then, say, a change of address would be a one-minute, one-stop job across government and beyond.

And if I was to add another disruptive innovation or two into the mix? Replacing in-person contacts with video calls or virtual worlds ...

*linked to Wikipedia as their site was unavailable today, although the paper is at debatepapers.org anyway.