NEWSLETTER - Breaking Barriers to eGovernment - Overcoming obstacles to improving European public services

Issue No 10. February 2007

Welcome to the tenth edition of the newsletter of the “Breaking Barriers to eGovernment” project, funded by the European Commission’s eEurope 2005 Modinis programme. In addition to the findings from the project’s good-practice case studies and other activities, the newsletter contains news, information and resources. Our overall aim is to offer expert insights and practical advice on ways of overcoming obstacles to the growth of high-quality and innovative uses of eGovernment capabilities in Europe.

Fostering Innovation in eGovernment
9th March 2007, 9.30-16.30, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya - Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona

This open workshop of the MODINIS project, Breaking Barriers to eGovernment, will focus on ways in which innovation can be and has been achieved in eGovernment to improve governance in the information age. How can the widespread diffusion of the Internet and Web enable governments to transform not only the delivery of public services but also approaches to governance? The project has already identified 7 key categories of barriers to the development of eGovernment across Europe. This workshop turns attention to approaches for overcoming these barriers to stimulate innovation. These approaches span at least four key categories: legislative, technological, citizen-centric and organizational solutions. What can the proponents of eGovernment initiatives learn from specific cases, and from theory and research on the diffusion of innovations in information and communication arenas?

• Speakers include: Professor Manuel Castells (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and University of Southern California), Ernesto Abati (Ministerio de Administraciones Públicas), Ms Marta Continente (Generalitat de Catalunya), Professor Bill Dutton (University of Oxford), Mr López Carmona (Consultancy and Registry Unit, Data Protection Agency of Madrid) and Professor Helen Margetts (University of Oxford). 

The event is free to attend although the number of places available at the workshop is limited. More details are available at: http://www.egovbarriers.org/?view=events

The European Awards in eGovernment
The European Awards in eGovernment will open their call for submissions on 1 April. More information is available at: http://ec.europa.eu/egov

Good Practice Exchange Community
The new Good Practice Exchange Community will open on 1 April. The Good Practice Framework has been the main ongoing activity of the EC in terms of exchange, and in the spring of 2007 this project merges with the eGovernment Observatory and the European Award schemes. Together they will become an integrated Good Practice Exchange Community, also extending to the professional community in eInclusion and eHealth. The merger and the greatly extended scope will yield benefits both in terms of quality, quantity and impact of the ongoing exchange. Currently, 300 cases are exchangeable online and over 1300 eGovernment practitioners and experts take part in the exchange and are registered with the portal.

Major goals for the forthcoming exchange activity are to improve the quality and interactivity, ensure all 25 Member States participate and increase the offline exchange process, workshops, face-to-face meetings, and public presentations which complement the online activity. The service will be a platform for timely and relevant discussion, advice and news to contribute to growth and jobs in Europe. The new approach will focus on:

• Ensuring the quality of cases is validated, both by users and by experts.
• Simplifying the display of cases and featuring the top 5% in particular.
• Anchoring the portal in existing communities of practice and stimulating them.
• Making use of Web 2.0 technologies and being at the forefront of innovation.

For more information see: http://ec.europa.eu/egov

Think papers on citizen-centric eGovernment: “Consumizens: Taking Ryanair to the Public Sector”
There are now seven think papers on citizen-centric eGovernment available on the Organisational change for citizen-centric eGovernment website. The most recent paper is on “Consumizens: Taking Ryanair to the Public Sector” - which explores the paradoxes between service delivery expectations from the public and private sectors, in particular examining some of the contradictions of service quality and organisational change using the low-fare airline business as a metaphor. The think papers are available at: http://www.ccegov.eu/?Page=ThinkPapers

eJustice in Europe: The Cross-border Use of Information Technology in the Justice Sector
At their informal meeting in Dresden on the 16th of January, the Ministers of Justice of the European Union have agreed to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the cross-border support of the justice sector through information and communication technology (eJustice) and to intensify cooperation in this field. More information is available at: http://www.eu2007.de/en/News/Press_Releases/January/0116BMJejustice.html

Participants wanted for user testing of new web accessibility service
The European Internet Accessibility Observatory (EIAO) is an online service which will assess websites individually, by sector and by region/country to see if they have been designed in a way that is accessible for different groups of people - in particular people who have disabilities and/or use assistive technologies such as screen readers and screen magnification.

It is now seeking the opinions of ministers, policy makers, strategists and web managers, developers, and others, on this new prototype version of the service and is therefore looking for test pilots who can have look at the Observatory and answer some questions.

The survey is open from the 14th February until 5th March 2007, and should take approximately 30 minutes. Please select the following link to access the survey: www.survey.bris.ac.uk/tiri/evaluation_of_eiao

A short article on "Positive Steps to Assessing, Monitoring and Comparing the Accessibility of Public Websites: Introducing the European Internet Accessibility Observatory" is available at: http://www.freepint.com/issues/240806.htm#issue

Background
With an academic background in Business Management and Public Policy, John’s work has spanned the public and private sectors and he has worked in the local authorities in Merseyside, West Midlands and South Yorkshire, England. His main expertise is in strategic management at the corporate level and he has specialised on the opportunities offered by Information Society developments and the changes in social organisation at the local level. John has been an eRegion Adviser to the Yorkshire and Humber Assembly for several years and is now working with Local Government Yorkshire and Humber and the Yorkshire and Humber European Office.

Local authorities and others in Yorkshire and Humber have invested heavily in eGovernment. 90% of the five million people of the region live in single-tier (all‑purpose) local authority areas and after London and Birmingham the region has the third, fourth and fifth largest local authorities (Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford) in England. This means that the authorities are generally large, with highly skilled eGovernment staff and, perhaps more important, the policy skills to deliver value from eGovernment. A major advantage is that the region’s local authorities are of a similar size (in the population range 0.25m-0.75m) and cooperation between authorities is a significant driver in the region. The local authorities have not only shown commitment to developing eGovernment internally – engagement and leadership in the UK National Projects was around twice the level which would be expected pro rata – but the local authorities are also taking a lead in the wider development of the region. So, for example, it is the local authorities which have been driving broadband development as a key infrastructure for the region and its economic health.

Short-term challenges
In the short term, the challenges being addressed are to continue to develop sub-regional activity between groups of four or five authorities and to develop shared applications and joint ownership – learning and developing solutions across the sub-groups are important, but identifying those issues where there is real benefit from doing this is vital. Partnership is hard work.

Activity is also going on to demonstrate business benefit from investment – eGovernment in the UK has been developed with a broad brush and the challenge now is to focus on those areas which give service benefit to the public/business users and which give economic/capacity benefit to the organisations.

Long-term challenges
The first long-term challenge is structural change. 85%-90% of all contact between citizens and government takes place at the local level. The application of technology means that it becomes possible to aggregate service channels, to combine back office systems and to carry out standard activities (eProcurement, tax collection etc.) almost independently of geography.  We need to consider what this means for our current organisation of local government.

The second issue is the other side of the same coin. eGovernment to date has focused on service delivery to individuals. The mechanism being used to drive change is ‘choice’, and that has meant individual choice. However, the key government services – and particularly local government services – are not specifically services to individuals. Planning is not a service to the applicant – it is a service to the community; transport management is not only a service to the car driver; education is not only a service to the child in school. In practice, people contact their local authority for individual services on surprisingly few occasions a year. Yet all are affected by planning, transport and environmental decisions. So a key issue for the future of eGovernment is to contribute to the real functions – community cohesion, locally-relevant service combinations, sustainability, community vitality, local leadership, environmental protection, democratic decision-making, local economic development, management of conflict, articulation of the local voice etc. – taking advantage of the facilities the technologies have to offer. As yet, we have scarcely started down that road.

In conclusion
This is an exciting time for eGovernment and for the development of new technologies. The approach to eGovernment has gone through a number of stages. In the first stage, government-defined activities provided the model for eGovernment and these were among the first to be enabled. So we have tax collection, driving licences, passports – all systems where the provider sets the parameters and the citizen is required to conform with the system to receive the service.  In the next phase, emphasis moved from ‘provider-led’ to ‘consumer-led’ services, with a model which sees the individual as a consumer of government services. The focus has been, and still is, on efficiency of service provision.

We are now starting the third phase, where the emphasis is on citizens and communities. This is extremely challenging for eGovernment practitioners as, largely, neither the technologies nor the organisational infrastructures yet exist to support these functions. So we see rudimentary steps to develop tools for eDemocracy, we see changes to the way information is made available to the public and increasing interest from politicians.  At the same time, there is a growth of single-issue politics, public concern and engagement at both global and neighbourhood levels, challenges to political legitimacy and a rapid increase in new communication media at both macro and micro levels.  Real eGovernment – eGovernance - is now beginning; we will not be short of challenges or opportunities.

See the full text of the interview (word doc)

• 14 - 16 March 2007, Beyond eGovernment: time for delivery, Barcelona, Spain. The Eurocities Forum on Knowledge Society, formerly known as Telecities, promotes four events every year consisting of a conference and thematic workshops (eCare, eGovernment, Broadband, eCitizenship). These events provide a platform for its member cities and business partners to share knowledge and ideas, exchange experiences and analyse common problems. The focus of this event will be the strategies and practices of cities to effectively provide integrated ICT-based services to the citizens. http://www.bcn.cat/eurocities/index_eng.htm

• 28 - 30 March 2007, I-ESA 2007, Funchal, Portugal. This event is one in a series of conferences about Interoperability for Enterprise Software and Applications. Enterprise Interoperability is the ability of a system or product to work with another system in order to produce goods and services rapidly and at lower cost, allowing both systems to be compatible. Participants are expected to include academic specialists from the interoperability research area as well as experts and development managers from industry working in the field of Enterprise Software Applications, system integrators, business and IT consultancies.  http://www.aidima.es/iesa2007/web/index.htm

• 16 - 18 April 2007, European Information Society Conference - EISCO 2007, Hämeenlinna, Finland. This event will offer a platform for local and regional authorities in Europe to discuss eGovernment and Information Society strategies, to share good practices and evaluate achievements. This year, the event wants to promote the Digital Local Agenda implementation process in Europe and highlight its potential contribution to the i2010 strategy, focusing on five areas : Citizens’ eParticipation in local decision-making processes; eCapacity building programmes of administrations to ensure digital cohesion and improved eGovernment performance at local level; Broadband infrastructure and the new wireless network solutions; Local eGovernment interoperability and eSecurity to make the creation of local networks more feasible; The new generation of municipal services in a multi-channel environment. http://www.hameenliitto.fi/eisco2007/

• 16 - 20 April 2007, eHealth Week Berlin 2007, Berlin, Germany. Conceived and organised as a European event, the eHealth week Berlin 2007 is part of the associated programme of the German EU Presidency 2007. It is a combined venue for all the leading events concerned with IT and telematics in the German health system: Telemed, eHealth Conference 2007, ITeG (International Forum for Healthcare IT) and the KIS Conference. The IHE Connectathon and other international meetings relating to eHealth will also take place during the eHealth week Berlin 2007. http://www.ehealth2007.org/

If you would like to get involved here are a few ways how:

Let us interview you!
The project is looking for senior eGovernment leaders to interview for upcoming newsletters. If you would like to express your views regarding the barriers to eGovernment (or you know someone who would), please contact Elizabeth Muller at: elizabeth.muller@gov3.net 

EC Project knowledge keeps improving
This project keeps improving and evolving. If you would like to contribute articles or web directory items our continuously updated website and newsletter, please contact: rebecca.eynon@oii.ox.ac.uk

Join the debate
Discuss your experiences of barriers to eGovernment; share ideas, good practice and case studies on our forum at http://forum.egovbarriers.org/forum11.html

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This newsletter is published under contract with the European Commission, eGovernment Unit, DG Information Society and Media. It may be copied, distributed and used for educational purposes. The views expressed may not in any circumstances be regarded as stating an official position of the European Commission. Neither the European Commission nor any person acting on its behalf is responsible for the use that might be made of the information provided.