Copyright Ian Pearson, BT Futurologist

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The future of … government

Feb 1999

In this, the first of a series of articles on future technology impact, it is appropriate to start at the top, looking at the future of government. Democratic government has many responsibilities. Trying to fairly resolve the differing and sometimes conflicting needs of various groups, it must also provide an administration and services to serve the whole community, such as health and education, provide defence against hostile forces and maintain law and order. It must collect and manage the resources to pay for these services, and allow people to express their wishes on their preferences, including choice of their governors. These responsibilities will remain, but all of them will be subject to change brought about by new technology in the near future.

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Governments have traditionally had sharp teeth to enforce their decisions, but the spread of the Internet and the imminent arrival of global superhighways will remove geographical constraints from many activities such as work and play. Their limited jurisdiction is becoming obvious. It is conspicuously hard to police network access to undesirable material located in foreign countries, and appears that censorship is only feasible at the machine where the information is read, either by voluntary software or hardware use, or access limitation of capable machines. Governments are just discovering that taxation is more difficult for international transactions using the net. Software may easily be obtained VAT-free over the network, but attracts VAT if delivered on disks from the high street. Sometimes, software may be distributed free on CD-ROMs, with only a purchased password required to activate it. As we move into an information economy, with the entire produce of some companies being information, these problems will worsen. Pure information companies will not ultimately need a physical base, and may move their operations round the world continuously, refusing to pay corporation tax to any geographically based government. Part of their employees’ remuneration may be in kind, with free information, education or entertainment avoiding the tax man. Taxing bit transmission has already been dismissed in Brussels.

As people increasingly work and play with people in other countries, we may see political power structures become less geographical, with cybernations made of many people who share common ideals, (e.g. environmentalism or feminism) rather than a common physical location, linked by networks rather than by land. Cybernations may wield the weapon of economic sanctions without fear of reprisal since their membership can be anonymous, but mobilised instantaneously by a single e-mail from the leadership. The impact of feminism would have been more rapid with instant communication.

However, we will still have geographic government, and communication between government and citizen may improve. In the recent Government Direct paper, it was suggested that soon we could have a single point of contact for all departments of the Civil Service, with all their databases linked together. This could make life easier when you move house, or claim a benefit, but we must ensure that the implied cross referencing and consequent ability to centrally monitor all aspects of our lives is not also a slippery slope towards 1984, with no privacy, total surveillance and control. We must also protect from access to too much information by any individuals who may be corrupt. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath-water. I believe we could go further still. If we wanted, we could allow each citizen to have their preferences on important issues stored in a database, an electronic shadow, suitably anonymous to everyone else of course. Government would then know all the time what the electorate want. Referenda could be instant, and lazy voters could select party defaults for all issues instead of deciding on each. Lobbying could be made easier too, and we will see internal as well as global cybernations. We could have absolute instead of representational democracy, or just treat the databases as a continuous opinion poll.

Elections will become electronic in due course. Surely we will not be far into the next millennium before we throw away the ballot box and several hours of paper counting in favour of instant results via computers.

Finally, it is clear that many future benefits still depend on being able to verify individual identity. As technology makes this routine for banking, shopping and the like, governments might be unable to resist using advanced identification technology for welfare claims, health care, employment and travel. Talk of identity cards with all our information on them misses the point. If a simple biometric scan can identify us, our details can be obtained from a database held anywhere. We may forget our ID card, but not our eyeballs or fingerprints.

So the future will bring about many changes for government. In future articles, I will consider the future of society, the economy, business, leisure and many other areas. Some government-related issues will undoubtedly resurface from time to time.