It is a misunderstanding to think that technology allows both efficiency and complexity. Perhaps in the future this will be the case, but not yet.

Despite Moore’s Law of technological advance, computer systems are still best at doing repetitive tasks infinitely, rather than managing infinite variables, not least because the data needs to be reliably supplied by human beings.

A look at successful government IT bears out the point. Number-crunching systems such as tax have been churning, largely successfully, for decades. But with policies of greater human complexity – be they tax credits, child support or benefits applications – the IT often comes unstuck.

The political aim is good: the more that services can be individually tailored, the fairer the state’s interaction will be with its citizens.

But absolute fairness means absolute complexity. In the case of the Child Support Agency, the percentage value per child is a simple calculation, but the methods used to assess the worth of the parent are very complicated – hence the huge backlog and number of unresolved cases. Incompetency in the design or implementation of the IT simply adds to an untenable situation.

Fairness is also opposed by the alternative pressure of the Gershon Review. As US president Harry Truman said: when you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship. The most efficient form of administration is one-size-fits-all and the Gershon targets take little account of the reorganisation of services to meet notions of equity and convenience.

Technology is not the paper to hide this particular crack.

The problems at Jobcentre Plus (JC+) are a case in point. The Department for Work and Pensions, which is responsible for JC+, is in clear need of streamlining. But a blunt instrument such as the efficiency review makes a blunt cut.

In a leaked letter, JC+ chief executive Lesley Strathie compares the disastrous performance of JC+ contact centres with a broadly similar, but successful, scheme at the Pensions Service. The difference, says Strathie, is that the Pensions Service ran new and old systems in parallel for a time.

JC+ can’t do this because it has to meet efficiency targets for staff cuts. And however well computers work, they cannot replace specialist staff with a detailed knowledge of the complexities of the benefits system.

Attempts to strip waste out of Whitehall should be applauded. But reforms should be smart. Democracy is not efficient, personalisation needs people as well as IT, and only more realism about IT will avoid repeated failures.

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