Administrative affairs

The history of science can appear as inexorable progress. In truth it is littered with excursions up blind alleys. Eighteenth-century phlogiston theory is just one example: for years it distracted chemists from discovering oxygen. When the wrong deduction is made from the evidence, understanding is retarded. And in politics, too, when the wrong lessons are drawn from experience, progress is set back.

After this week's calamitous loss of child benefit data, the argument that public administration is too difficult for the public sector is once again being aired. It ignores the reality that private-sector administration goes awry as well: earlier this year Nationwide was fined for losing a laptop containing 11 million customers' confidential data. And the state often has to undertake complex tasks that companies would be reluctant to take on. All that can conclusively be argued from the latest fiasco is that good administration is hard work.

There are too many blunders in the delivery of public services, and too much low-grade inefficiency. Taxpayers rightly want value for money, breeding a political preoccupation with the latter. But when this becomes an obsession, the risk of the former increases. During the last parliament, the Treasury's Gershon review produced sweeping administrative cuts, some at the Revenue. The Conservatives did not urge caution, but proposed that these should go deeper. Neither party seemed much worried about safeguarding sound administration.

The latest Whitehall buzzword is "service transformation". The big idea is for computers to talk to each other more, so contact with the public can be minimised. On the face of it, that sounds good: it is not only wasteful but also infuriating to be repeatedly asked for the same information by the same department; it is even worse to have to deal with parallel bureaucracies to fix a single problem, such as care for an elderly parent. But more data sharing across the system seems an alarming prospect just now. The risks are heightened when - counter to best private-sector practice, which dictates the slow introduction of innovation before phasing out the old system - public-sector innovation is expected to bring about instant savings.

The loss of child benefit data is all the more damaging because of Gordon Brown's pledge to prioritise good administration over eye-catching initiatives. As the man who sanctioned the merger that produced HMRC and demanded administrative cuts, he has proved he is tough on inefficiency. But he also promised to protect the tradition of public administration, and to govern with competence. These are still the right objectives. He has a great deal of work to do to show that he can secure them.