Is the internet forcing Britain's two main political parties to adopt identical agendas for the modernisation of government and the state?

Despite coming at the issue from different philosophies, the Conservatives and Labour are both beginning to describe a similar vision of how the state needs to change.

Just as there was a shared economic consensus during the 1950s and '60s, known as Butskellism, and just as since 1997 there has been an agreed consensus on labour market reforms, will there now develop a cross-party consensus that enables sustained long-term reform of the way the state works, its place in society and its relationship with citizens?

It is through the prism of their technology proposals that it is possible to achieve the clearest views of how Labour and the Conservatives view the future of the state.

This is because both have seized on the internet as the new mechanism though which citizens will communicate with the government.

With the Conservative draft technology manifesto and David Cameron's latest speech on the 'post-bureaucratic age', plus the latest speech from Gordon Brown, it is now a lot clearer what kind of changes will be introduced whichever party wins power at the election.

Public involvement

By far the most significant change, and an area of emerging consensus, is that both parties see a growing role for the public in shaping policy.

Partly this must be seen as a response to the declining public trust in politicians, and partly it makes sense that if people are to personalise their services then they need to be involved in designing them in the first place.

The prime minister suggested that the internet "offers us a chance to reinvent 'deliberative democracy' for the modern age".

As Brown says, there are now "new ways of enabling people to influence and even decide public policy".

"Ultimately this can provide the basis for them to participate in deliberative processes to formulate policy - setting off a historic shift in the way public policy is made.

"This includes opening more policy development to wider scrutiny, for example through the use of e-petitions and deliberative events."

It is an aim the Conservatives share, with their pledges to introduce a 'public reading stage' for legislation and hold a £1m competition to develop "an online platform that enables us to tap into the wisdom of crowds to resolve difficult policy challenges" (although that commitment was oddly omitted from the draft manifesto).

But if one accepts that a new form of either deliberative democracy or direct democracy will develop, more needs to be done to think through the consequences for the existing system of representative democracy.

As I've written previously, I think it has significant implications, with policies being replaced by services and the democratic vote being replaced by consumer choice.

Differences remain

The philosophical differences between the parties do manifest themselves in their approaches to technology policy, albeit in rather subtle ways.

For Labour, Brown talks of the need "to make sure that the immense opportunities that Britain's digital future offers us are available to all, not just to some".

In shifting more services online, he sees a need to ensure full broadband coverage as part of Labour's wider mission on social justice.

And this role is seen as requiring an activist government, levying a small tax on broadband connections to fund the roll-out of broadband in rural areas.

For the Conservatives, the internet era is instead a means to free people from government control and encourage them to take more responsibility for themselves.

And for Cameron, the post-bureaucratic age is also about finding new ways to "encourage and influence people to do the right thing", providing an alternative to 'nanny state' solutions to public policy issues.

As he has said:

"This is exciting for the centre right because it is all about people power, not big government."

Relationships with citizens

A further policy difference, perhaps resulting from these differing underlying philosophies, may arise in the precise nature of the relationship envisaged between citizen and state.

Brown sees a new 'Mygov' service delivering personalised services and allowing citizens to interact with the state, in place of "monolithic websites broadcasting public service information".

In contrast, the Conservative technology manifesto said:

"The Conservative Party believes that government websites should not be treated like secure government offices or laboratories, where public access is to be controlled as tightly as possible. We see government websites as being more like a mixture of private building and public spaces, such as squares and parks: places where people can come together to discuss issues and solve problems."

By embracing the idea of 'government as platform', the Conservatives have moved on to seeing the infrastructure of the state as a mechanism for enabling citizen-to-citizen communication with a view to solving problems.

But Labour's vision of Mygov maintains the basic structure of citizen informing government, and government delivering services.

While Brown promises that "citizens will be in control - choosing the content relevant to them and determining their level of engagement", this remains a relationship between service user and the provider.

Similarly, the prime minister talks about civil servants no longer being the "sole authors and editors" of content, but continues the sentence by referring to plans to "unleash data and content to the community to turn into applications" – which sounds like a subtly different approach to that of the Conservatives, as data is not in itself a platform.

And Brown also says of government websites that there will be a new requirement "that each one allows feedback and engagement with citizens themselves".

But online interaction with government is just a new interface on an existing relationship. It does not create the new relationships that the Conservative proposals appear to favour.

The closest the prime minister came in his speech to adopting at least the same metaphor as the Conservatives was in a passage that spoke of "breaking down the walled garden of government". But again, this came in relation to allowing citizens greater say over the services provided by government, not in communicating and organising amongst themselves.

The outcome of that is that the Conservative proposals still have the potential to offer the most radical vision, but more detail is needed to be sure.

Delivering services

Labour has put an emphasis on the need to personalise services and now sees the internet as a key mechanism for delivering this.

Quite which services will be personalised and what that actually means in practice is hard to pin down. It may be that much of this is really about receiving personalised information rather than an actual personalised service, so more details are needed.

It is also worth stating that personalised services have been on the agenda for years and developed outside the context of any debate about the internet and technology.

Brown said that Whitehall should become "an open, interactive, responsive enabler where citizens personalise, shape and ultimately control their services". Mygov is the means to achieve this.

Cameron has also said that his aim is that "people themselves have far more power and control over their lives".

But much of the intellectual focus of modern Conservatism, however, has been on a localism, an agenda which may conflict with the personalisation of services.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the Conservative technology manifesto does not make any explicit connections between the internet and service delivery or choice.

Change to come

So what to make of these visions?

In the area of citizen engagement, both Labour and the Conservatives seem to share the same vision of encouraging a less apathetic population.

If used effectively, the internet does lower barriers to access and could make a significant difference.

If both parties are committed to making such long-term changes, then there does seem a real prospect of fundamental change in the relationship between the citizen and the state.

It does raise further questions about the political system, however.

For example, if the population is consistent in its view of how it wants particular services to be designed, what role is there for political parties and politicians in the discussion?

Or if the public favour a service option that is opposed by the party in government, then what?

The debate over these policies has barely begun.

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