Laboratory conditions

IN THE ceiling there is a camera with a powerful zoom. There are microphones in the table. Below the personal-computer screen is a device to track eye movements. Believe it or not, this quiet room in central London, with its white walls and grey sofas, is part of the government’s plan to put citizens at ease with modern technology.

The room is in a new lab belonging to the Government Digital Service (GDS), whose job it is to improve online public services and the government’s own use and procurement of information technology. A potential user of a government website—seeking the Foreign Office’s advice about travel to Egypt, say—peruses the page while a researcher asks questions. In the next room (much smaller and hotter, thanks to whirring equipment and a lack of air-conditioning) observers note what he says, his facial expressions and where he clicks and looks. The wall is covered in Post-it notes: “Map feels out of place”; “What are ‘normal safety procedures’?”

The idea is to make online public services more useful to the public. The GDS already gets a lot of digital information remotely—how many people use the services, at what stage they give up a multi-step process. Mike Bracken, its executive director, calls the lab “the qualitative and specific add-on to a bunch of digital techniques”. Once problems are spotted, sites can be amended quickly.

In essence, the GDS is trying to bring to government the digital suppleness that occurs more naturally in the private sector. If companies have lousy websites—or ignore the digital world altogether—they may find that customers go elsewhere. The state, as a monopoly supplier of services from welfare benefits to driving licences, many of which can be administered online, must motivate itself from within.

The lab should help to make public services more human—and humane. As an example, Mr Bracken points to a letter sent to some pensioners claiming carer’s allowance, a payment of £61.35 ($102) for looking after someone, perhaps a sick relative, for more than 35 hours a week. The first sentence tells the claimant she is eligible; the next, crushingly, says it will not be paid. (Claimants may not receive the allowance if they already get more in state pension.)

Claims for carer’s allowance can already be made online: a test version is up and running. The lab will not make the benefit any more generous. But seeing real claimants use the form, designers should notice anything that causes confusion or distress. They should save money too. Britons rang government call-centres 693m times in 2010, at an average cost of £6.28. If public services are easier to use, they will have less need to phone.

Since the Conservative-led coalition came to office in 2010, it has tried to squeeze spending on IT. Rather than outsourcing everything to a few big companies it is encouraging departments also to buy from smaller suppliers—such as Decibel MS, from Wokingham in Berkshire, which built the lab. The GDS says having its own lab will save money, costing 25% less than hiring from private companies, with which some government teams have contracts. Departments have booked the lab for several months ahead.