Making UK Government Effective and Accountable

The UK is small consisting of a bit of Eire that we ought to give back since it is just a complication in terms of managing the country. 

This article ignores Scotland and Wales as well though it would make sense to include them if their regional status could be reversed.

In England we have (according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_government_in_England#Principal_authorities)

• 27 counties
• 32 London Boroughs
• 36 Metropolitan Districts
• 55 Unitary Authorities
• nine “government offices of the regions” (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_assembly_%28England%29#The_regional_assemblies)
• 122 separate authorities for education (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_education_authority#List_of_local_authorities_responsible_for_education_by_region)
• 152 health trusts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Primary_Care_Trusts_in_England)
• and 47 police authorities (47 http://www.apa.police.uk/the-apa/who-we-are)

All these bodies might have different outlooks on life and performance targets but they are essentially the web by which tax and borrowing is turned into services and every single body will have standard business systems as well as some more specialised applications designed to deliver their outcomes.

The Cabinet Office has been talking about a Government Cloud containing all UK public sector information and delivering applications via the web. I do hope some thought has been given to abolishing all the administrative and political boundaries that will get in the way.

England is far too small to justify so many administrative bodies and running them costs a fortune as all the standard functions are duplicated.

If the bodies are not abolished then perhaps they might be forced to use shared services by removing the whole IT budget of every one of them and investing it in cloud application services.

Centralisation not only has economic benefits but makes uniform security easier, simplifies authentication across the whole public sector and might help even out the standard of services across the country