Transcript Kein Folientitel - Free University of Bozen

Institute of Informatics
in Business and Government,
University of Linz, Austria
e-Governance and e-Government
Presentation at the TCGOV 2005 in Bozen
Roland Traunmüller
Contents
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High expectations
Key profile and inherent features
Governance and the policy cycle
e-Participation is key
e-Inclusion is essential
Improvements in legal drafting
Online one stop government
Back-office integration, interoperability and
standardisation
Knowledge enhanced government
Change management as crux
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e-Government has a History
• Concepts on Government and IT have changed.
• Awareness emerged three decades ago starting with the
term Data Processing in Public Administration (1974).
• This was followed by Information Systems in Public
Administration (name of the rspv. IFIP Working Group 8.5
founded 1990)
• With New Public Management a pronounced organisation
focus came in at the same time.
• End-nineties e-Government came in usage.
• Further concepts have emerged: some replacing “e” with
“m” or “k”; others such as “drop the e” as a radical view
• In the last years has emerged the notion of e-Governance.
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High Expectations
• Living under good governance is a common goal; its main
traits are broadly favoured: democratisation, coherence,
accountability, transparency, effectiveness.
• These ideals have to be mirrored in the way Government is
built. Thus the idea of good governance leads to good
Government with four key marks:
• Citizen-centric in attitude
• Cooperative in nature
• Seamless and joined up seen from the clients
• Multilevel and polycentric in composition
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A Broader Focus
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This development shows that a broader focus is necessary.
Questions arise such as:
How will these impact the role of the citizen/ business/
governments and its relation with democracy and
administration?
What are the foreseeable needs / demands for new
services ?
What are the major challenges ahead and which
opportunities and obstacles that can be envisaged?
Now, e-Governance is such a broader focus.
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Intrinsic Features Slow Progress
• The goal structure has an extraordinary complexity.
• Public agencies are not spurred by competition; on the
other hand they have to serve everybody.
• Legal norms are dominant; consensus building and
negotiation are supplementary mode of work:
• A high fragmentation of the Public Sector. In contrary to
the private field a big number of actors gets involved.
• Administrative culture and historically grown structures
may impede change.
• Inertial forces are reinforced by bureaucratic attitudes.
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Background of the Treatise
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Como 2003 - eEurope Awards: The study involved 357
cases and a report drawing conclusions from the study. cf.
http://www.eipa.nl and www.e-europeawards.org.
Seville 2004: Workshop of the EU Joint Research Centre
in Seville on e-Government in the EU in the next decade.
Annual EGOV conferences have become the biggest
European conference with R&D focus: Aix, Prague,
Zaragoza; EGOV 2005 in Copenhagen
World Information Technology Forum (jointly by
UNESCO and IFIP): 2003 Vilnius, 2005 Gaborone
(section on Empowerment)
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The Broad Focus: Zones of Regard
• Grossly, governance can be seen covering three
zones.
• Inner: The machinery of government – the
administration
• Middle: The policy cycle
• Outer: The shifting balance of public and private;
also the role of new actors (intermediaries,
NGOs) and new means (PPPs)
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The Policy Cycle
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The whole policy cycle is regarded: agenda setting, policy
analysis, formulation, implementation and evaluation.
So governance takes a broader view on modernisation of
administrations including their environment as well.
There is also an ideological component according to
Lenk. One is a co-evolution of public governance and eTransformation another the stimulation by the corporate
governance discussion.
In some way ideas from the Sixties are recalled (e.g.
political cybernetics with Luhmann etc).
There is an actual interest on policy spurred by rankings.
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e-Participation and e-Voting
• Taking governance serious leads to e-Democracy.
It intends to improve democratic decision
making by stressing citizen participation.
• Also public information (often via client selfservice) has become increasingly common in the
public sector and has made information available.
• This leads to more insights into how government
works (and fosters transparency).
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Democratic processes improving the interaction between
individuals and organizations are evolving. e-Participation
means assisting democratic deliberation with IT.
Multiform are technical ways: establishing mailing lists,
building fora, blogging, videoconferences, etc.
There are also numerous projects on e-Voting – yet
restricted mainly to bodies of a lesser sensitivity (student
association, working groups etc) Cf. later foil on IDmanagement.
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e-Inclusion
• Thus e-Inclusion is key. It starts with possibility of access:
some initiatives install free internet access in public
buildings.
• Examples are post offices in France, parish churches in
Portugal and tobacco shops in Austria.
• Policies has to go in two directions, counterbalancing
deficiencies and starting promotions for special groups.
• Special promotions concentrating on individual groups of
addressees: rural areas, traditionally under-served
communities, the young in disadvantaged districts, ethnic
minorities, persons with special needs.
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Access in Rural Areas
• Access in rural areas is a high priority.
• It is a special topic in developing countries.
• The availability of physical access to internet and
cost therefore are big obstacles.
• An example is a proposed project in Botswana on
Community User Information System kiosks that
empower people in rural areas.
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Legal Modelling Assisting
Legislation
• In e-Government the legal modelling grows in importance
- for some applications it even becomes a must.
• One argument for the growing importance is based in the
domain itself; the quasi ubiquity of legal norms, the
quantity of rules, the diversity of regulations in various
realms, such as international, European, national and local.
• Another basic reason is in semantic interoperability. It
becomes necessary that data carry along their specific
legal-administrative context.
• A third point is the use for drafting regulations. Here the
POWER project is a good example. Several issues are
similar to those that have been tackled in legal expert
systems
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Identity Management
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In administrative matters an e-identity is needed in most
transactions.
Differences in urgency appear between sectors: wrong
passports may be more severe than a credit card misuse.
Applications comprise different areas with different
importance and sensitivity.
An annotation: privacy regulations claim for separated
domains.
E.g. some city cards are less sensitive – also tax
declaration that often are managed by a password only
solutions.
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cntd.
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Applications comprise different areas with different
importance and sensitivity.
e-Identity for passports and visa and e-Voting are
particular sensitive realms.
For theses applications technical problems are rather high.
For e-Voting it is the demand on anonymity is extreme.
For passports and visa further requests come in: e.g. a
broad reading capability (in several countries); durability
and validity; lamination of chips on paper.
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e-Government - Vision and a
Construction Site
• e-Government goes further than earlier approaches to
modernisation surpassing the administrative reform
policies inspired by New Public Management.
• It aims at fundamentally transforming the production
processes of services (not only managing as in NPM).
• e-Government thereby transforms the entire range of
relationships of public bodies and their partners/clients.
• e-Government is the key to good governance in the
information society.
• e-Government is not just about technology but a change in
culture.
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Online One-stop Government and
Process Rebuilding
• Without doubt, services are in focus. Online One-stop
Government acts as major driver.
• A lot of application run – yet the picture is equivocal. Low
take up of public e-Services is a problem.
• Requests include a multi-channel access mix with a
diversity of contact points: home and mobile as prime
choice, in addition kiosk, citizen office as well as
multifunctional service shops.
• A single-window access for all services regardless of
government level and agency and the establishment of a
high level of service integration are expected.
• Also customisation and personalisation is on the agenda.
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Service Orientation and Process
Rebuilding
• It starts with thinking in service categories; then
understanding the nature of an administrative process is
essential; later rebuilding comes in.
• Rebuilding has to integrate divers demands from citizens,
businesses and public authorities.
• Processes in Government are very particular, often they
cut across different government levels – local, regional or
national - and different types of agencies
• Cooperation joins up different branches and levels needing
close and pertinent contact among all actors involved.
• Public administrations work via a complex tissue of
cooperation involving quite many acting entities.
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cntd.
• A restructuring of administrative processes needs a
broad perspective including vertical and horizontal
cooperation as well as external partners.
• BPR in administrations has its limitations with
particular functions of actors and boundaries
involved.
• Ensuring procedures are bound to the rules of law.
• Protecting the rights of citizens.
• Safeguarding privacy and legal validity.
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Back Office Integration and
Interoperability
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Online One-stop Government demands for back-office
integration and interoperability. Both are necessary, partly
they are supplementary, partly aside yet connected.
• Both bringing tangible increases in effectiveness.
• Interoperability touches several levels such as technology,
organisation, legal and political matters. Three issues are:
i. Interoperability of e-Government platforms provided by
an adequate architecture.
ii. Semantic interoperability as a must for data interchange
between agencies.
iii. Organizational interoperability where the requirements
of decentralized agencies have to meet the central needs
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on coordination.
Building Standards on Ontologies
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Legal and administrative semantics of data need to be
represented carefully.
Data have to carry along their legal-administrative
context. Only this will allow global use of local data.
Taking as an example the life situation of civil marriage.
In a systemic view it is a rather simple case that will
comprise initiation by citizens, proof of legal grounds,
proclamation.
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cntd.
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Yet in any concrete case a variety of transactions and repositories is
concerned. In the life situation of civil marriage a lot of transactions
and number of repositories are involved - data are brought together
from diverse data sources and disseminated to several repositories
So before the event documents located in different agencies have to
be checked; afterwards many updates on documents have to be made
(change of name, civil status, common domicile etc.)
XML and RDF: Current interest is in exchange features such as
extensible mark up languages together with resource description
facilities. With them it is possible to build standards for rather
complex structured concepts.
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Multiple Obstacles for Standards
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Basic are a lack in common domain ontologies as well as
the organisational challenge in formulating and deploying
standards.
Even if the use of ontologies is widespread - their variety
pose a mutual translation problem of representations.
This is necessary caused by the diversity of projects
covering mostly particular restricted areas only.
There are obstacles of the legal/administrative realm as
well such as: the nature of the administrative process
allows some openness; discretionary power of street level
bureaucrats; terms all too often not adequately defined,
exemptions, vagueness and even inconsistencies exist.
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cntd.
• Cross border data interchange becomes the rule.
So automatic translation of meaning is necessary.
• It is different to find adequate meaning of terms
such as taking licenses, certificates and academic
degrees.
• Non-existence of counterparts poses problems:
public honours, awards, titles.
• A recent example is same gender marriage.
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Knowledge Enhanced e-Government
• Now administrative action as is seen as knowledge work.
• After a decade that was preoccupied with processes a
contrasting view has taken over: No more is reengineering
towards low costs/skills the objective.
• Quite the opposite has become the motto: fostering and
cultivating expertise. A new conviction spreads: work in
agencies is expert work and depends on knowledge
available there.
• In some aspect, this regained focus on decisions is going
back to roots. It connects to cybernetic thinking which in
the Sixties has been widely used for explaining control in
the governmental realm.
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Knowledge Enhancement of
Processes
• Besides a general need for knowledge enhancement, in
portals the users often lack customised assistance – help
that meets the individual situation and competence.
• One priority request is translating the demand for a service
from the citizen's life-world to legal-administrative jargon.
• Knowledge enhancement is possible for different tasks:
routing requests, improving advice capability with agents.
• Giving the complexity of cases, often a software-onlysolution for advice is not the only option. In some cases
invoking experts for mediated dialogs becomes necessary.
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Collaboration via Multi Media
• Up to now multi media is underrated due to a pronounced
attention on operational processes of the workflow.
• At higher order modes of work this will change.
• Here collaboration and knowledge become decisive. Multi
media is needed for negotiation, consensus finding,
planning and policy formulation.
• Examples are: meeting via video techniques, scenarios of
policy implementation, discussion with remote experts.
• Also service provision comprises collaborative steps such
as giving advice or discussing claims. Mediators and
experts may be accessed via multi media.
• Human and “machine” expertise become interwoven.
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Still a Crux: Change Management
• Speaking on results - one can see encouraging signs.
• Public support and awareness in politics and media are
growing; e-Government legislation and master plans have
become common; a bounty of successful projects.
• Yet- change management is still a weak point.
• An obstacle is that strong leadership and commitment at
the political level can not be taken for granted.
• A problem arises where on has “to sell” investing in
infrastructures and qualifying of staff.
• Also joining up the branches and levels of Government is
slow in pace.
• Further bureaucratic attitudes are curbing progress and
progress in transformingTCGOV
administrative
culture is slow. 29
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