Imminent plans to usher in the greatest reform to voter registration in 70 years could unlock greater collaboration and efficiencies across central and local government, ministers have told The MJ.

Chloe Smith, minister for political and constitutional reform at the Cabinet Office  briefed The MJ about cross government co-operation ahead of next June's transition to Individual Electoral Registration (IER).

Ms Smith said the hard work had yet to begin on a programme set to affect 50 million people.

Unlike many major Whitehall IT projects, IER – which is designed to make elections more secure and made convenient as a service for citizens – is a success story un-bedevilled by spiralling costs and delay overruns. 

However, Ms Smith said during the transition from June 2014 to December 2015, there would be a massive volume of activity matching households to electoral records using datasets held by the Department for Work and Pensions.

Local authority Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) would be expected to trace people who are not matched by this process, and invite them to register under the new system.

To help with this, the Cabinet Office has launched a £4.2m Innovation Fund cash pot, from which councils can draw upon to canvass hard to reach residents, such as people living in social housing and young people.

 ‘This underlines just how much we need to work together with other administrators, the EROs, the Electoral Commission, with elected members, to make this a success,' she added.

In addition to being a natural progression from online government services, the initiative was also about individuals taking responsibility and having the right to be registered in their own name.

‘Traditionally, there's been this rather old-fashioned notion that the head of a household registers you.  That's not right in this day and age,' she said.

Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude, has been outspoken in his criticisms over the high £480m cost of the last ten-yearly Official Census undertaken in 2011.

And Ms Smith said the data collection questions within IER were very interesting and positive, and gave a chance to do data-matching across various datasets that both local and central government hold and make them work together for the citizen.

Separately, the Electoral Commission last week released new guidance detailing approaches and tactics EROs could use to target residents.

‘EROs will soon find out what challenges they are facing locally and where they will need to deploy resources in order to maximise the number of electors registered individually,' said Alisa Irvine, Electoral Commission head of Guidance and Performance.

‘A comprehensive annual canvass in 2013 will reduce the number of electors EROs will need to follow up and invite to register under the new system in 2014.'