We must put the customer first or we've failed - Chief Minister

Friday 28 March 2014

Jersey's most senior politician has given his personal backing to plans to provide dramatically more public services online.

Speaking to an audience this morning of around 130 people drawn from the digital industry, and a small group of politicians, Senator Ian Gorst strongly endorsed plans to get at least three quarters of interactions with the States, from registering a birth to booking a squash court, done online. Currently the figure stands at under 8%.

Senator Gorst said: "We have no choice but to put the customer first, otherwise we will have failed our community..It's about serving the customer in the way they want to be served. We are committed to it, we are going to put the money in." 

At the moment, 40% of applications made to the States are done face-to-face, with 22% done over the phone. The audience at the event, which was organised by Digital Jersey, heard that in order to register a "life event", such as a birth, marriage or death, it was common to have to meet someone from the States an average of six times. 

The new target is that 75% of "interactions" with the States will take place digitally by 2018. The Chief Minister told the audience that making these changes would help to make sure that the regular increases in public spending would stop, but they would also involve bringing people to the island with the right skills, in order to support and train those already working here. 

When asked by the Island's first Chief Minister, the former Senator Frank Walker, if he could achieve the cultural shift in the States needed to make the changes happen, Senator Gorst described the importance of his proposed new "hire and fire" powers which he could use to make sure the Council of Ministers supported the necessary reforms across the many States departments. 

Opening the event, the Chairman of Digital Jersey, Paul Masterton, held up a parking scratchcard, and described it as an icon of the changes which were going to made: "We are right at the start of something, which will be incredibly important for the Island."