Overzealous data sharing rules may be an obstacle to improving public services, the PM's policy reviews suggests.
Laws and procedures that prevent different public services from sharing their customers' personal details should be reviewed to bring customer care in the public sector up to the best private sector standards.
Members of a citizens' panel will be asked whether they would be in favour of relaxing current privacy procedures so they don't have to repeat personal information to several different public bodies, particularly at times of great stress such as the death of a loved one.
Their views will inform work across government looking at how to make data sharing easier across government so citizens get a better deal from the public services they use.
The public have increasingly high expectations of services in both the public and private sector - 81 percent agree that 'Britain's public services need to start treating users and the public as customers' (MORI). There is a widespread view that public services need to be more light-footed and flexible - delivering what people need, when they need it.
But it is difficult for services to anticipate or deal with these problems quickly and sensitively when there are barriers around the sharing of information between different public services.
John Hutton, who is leading the review of customer care standards across public services as part of the Prime Minister's policy review, said:
"Public services must increasingly be based around the need of customers. A lot of progress has been made to tailor our services accordingly but current privacy procedures and working practices can sometimes still force people to have to convey the same information multiple times to different agencies.
"The socially excluded - those with the most needs - are often hit the hardest. Some individuals can regularly deal with as many as 30 different agencies, none of whom share information on that individual.
"So we need to ask whether people would be in favour of relaxing current privacy procedures and data sharing laws if it would mean improved public service, particularly at points of greatest stress?
"Whether we need to develop our understanding of the key moments when people most need public services? And what people feel about the overall support they have got from public services at those critical points?"
Too often it may be legally forbidden to use information other than for a single purpose. At other times services may assume there is a legal barrier when there is none. And sometimes it is the traditional culture of separate Government departments, divisions between different agencies or even separate parts of a single local authority that contribute to delays and barriers.
This often impacts on those most disadvantaged, who have the most complex, multiple needs.
Particularly critical are contacts with public services at times of personal crisis or around important transitions in life. These 'critical' or 'fateful' moments include births and deaths; major personal events such as illness, loss of employment, or contact with criminal justice system.
And many are complex and inter-related, such as the decision to return to full time work when your children are all in education, or changes in benefit entitlements around major life events.
Research from the private sector that will be looked at on Monday will show how services respond around these fateful moments has a major impact both on outcomes and on perceptions of the service the public receive.
Some examples of this include a family who had a total of 44 contacts with government over 180 days trying to make the necessary arrangements after a family member died in a road accident. Upon his death the individuals and his widow were in receipt of a retirement pension, disability living allowance, counctil tax benefit and housing benefit. The majority of the 44 contacts concerned amending these benefits and nearly half involved the family having to contact government regarding the same issue rather than government contcating them. The family encountered many examples of a disjointed public service including the widow receiving unexplained payments and two separate letters on the same day providing conflicting information about entitlements and the family having to contact the local authority multiple times regarding the life insurance payment before it was taken into account for
And for the socially excluded, adults with multiple problems such as mental health, homelessness, alcohol and drug problems, one of the greatest frustrations in trying to deal with their problems was having to tell the same story over and over again to agency after agency. Some individuals can regularly deal with as many as 30 different agencies, none of whom share information on that individual.
The public will be asked about the level of customer care they expect from public services, to discuss the "trade-offs" needed, and what they expect services to do on their behalf to provide them with personalised, seamless services.
For example, this type of joined up service delivery - both joined up across services and across citizens lives - implies the linking of information for make citizens lives easier. How much information do the public already assume is shared between different agencies? How much are they willing to allow? Should it be that the joining up of service provision is triggered by the individual citizen's request (unless direct harms to the public are involved)? To what extent do we want public services to anticipate our needs and come to us, versus for them to wait for us to call?
These are the kind of questions that we are wrestling with in government, and that we will be putting to 100 members of the public to debate in the deliberative forum that we are launching on Monday 15th, and that will be reporting back to Cabinet in early March.