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

Issue No 12. June 2007

Welcome to the twelfth 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.

Project highlights

Now available!  Breaking Barriers to eGovernment: Online Inventory of Legal and Institutional Issues that are or can become Barriers to eGovernment

The Barriers to eGovernment project team has identified seven key categories of barriers that can block or constrain progress on eGovernment and eight legal foundations that underpin these barriers. The project aims to collect further information about barriers relating to eGovernment from stakeholders. The inventory enables those interested in eGovernment to share experiences and ideas with others working in this area and ensure the research team considers all the key barriers to eGovernment within the project by contributing to the online forum. The updated inventory is available at: http://www.egovbarriers.org/?view=inventory

Now available!  Breaking Barriers to eGovernment: A Legal and Institutional Analysis of Barriers to eGovernment

“A Legal and Institutional Analysis of Barriers to eGovernment” is a progress report on the Breaking the Barriers to eGovernment project. Seven key barrier categories and their legal foundations are explored. The document is available at: http://www.egovbarriers.org/downloads/deliverables/deliverable%201b%20Dec%2006.pdf

All project outputs are available at: http://www.egovbarriers.org/?view=project_outputs

Congress on eGovernment held in Murcia from 23rd to 25th of May
This successful three day event focused on the legal challenges facing eGovernment. More information is available (in Spanish) at http://www.um.es/dereadmv/eadcongreso/. Presentations from the event are available at: http://www.sicarm.es/
 
Launch of ePractice.eu
The eGovernment Observatory, the Good Practice Framework and the European eGovernement Awards have joined forces to serve the eGovernment community with a single face. All initiatives have been fully merged on the new eGovernment Practice portal, called epractice.eu, which now provides the most complete information on eGovernment in Europe, as well as a broad range of exchange opportunities, both on- and off-line. For more details see: http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/7133/194

Over 300 submissions to the eGovernment Awards 2007
The call for the European eGovernment Awards 2007 has been very successful with more than 300 submissions received from public administrations across the local, regional, national and pan-European level. For more details see: http://www.epractice.eu/index.php?page=document&doc_id=3627&doclng=6

The Lisbon Ministerial Conference is getting closer
The fourth Ministerial eGovernment Conference, “Reaping the Benefits of eGovernment” will revolve around four main themes: better public services for growth and jobs, participation and transparency, social impact and cohesion, and effective and efficient administration. The event will provide a platform for high-level political debate and facilitate the exchange of ideas. The conference will take place on 20-21 September 2007 in Lisbon. For more details see: http://www.megovconf-lisbon.gov.pt/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

Interview with Honor Fagan
The Irish eConsultation Research Group (ECRP)
Piloting eConsultation in the Houses of the Oireachtas, the Irish parliament

Introduction
On the 6th of September, 2006, the Minister of State and the Joint Committee on Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, jointly launched a pilot eConsultation on a proposed Broadcasting Bill with the goal to revolutionise the manner in which Parliament, Government and the citizen interact.  The focus was to test the readiness of Parliament, Government and the public to use new technologies, and to facilitate and underpin efficient, genuine and transparent dialogue between them.

The eConsultation was designed to allow the public to contribute to the workings of the Joint Committee with the knowledge that the Joint Committee would listen to their views in the same non-prescriptive way the Joint Committee has considered the views of other major stakeholders.  The goal was to extend the reach of parliament and offer more extensive possibilities of interactive communication with a wide range of groups and individuals.  The use of ICT allows for new connections between parliament and citizens and provides a powerful tool for parliament to engage with and communicate directly to citizens.

From the outset it was agreed that new technologies would be used in conjunction with more traditional methods.

The strategy adopted for the pilot eConsultation included:
An extensive advertising campaign to publicise the eConsultation, including radio advertisements.
An official press launch by the Government Chief Whip and the Committee.
A specially designed website for the purposes of collecting summary comments as well as more detailed accounts from participants.
Further publicity to announce the launch of a discussion forum – together with the webcasting of Committee hearings on selected themes.

Successes
The ECRP in their evaluation pointed to the successes of the project which include:
It improved transparency in the workings of Parliament. The public got a sense that there was something going on, in this case, legislation making that would affect them. Consultees rated this transparency very highly.
It was efficient. A large number of submissions from interest groups and members of the public were received in an ordered and efficient manner, and were in a format that allowed them to be evaluated quickly and to have a significant impact on the Hearings.
It facilitated public participation. There were over 422 on-line observations made; 52 paper ones and four times as many participated online as participated through traditional means. In addition to those who are professionally engaged in broadcasting, the process did attract some members of the public who normally would not engage in a consultation of this sort.
The design of the submissions site and the subsequent Hearings facilitated interest groups and individuals to engage in a public way in a wide range of issues.
The pilot website was not optimal, but it functioned. More were satisfied than dissatisfied with the submissions site and discussion forum. Users did not require experience of sophisticated electronic communications: there was no significant difference in the computing and Internet experience of submitters and non-submitters.

Challenges
The ECRP also pointed to some of the challenges and barriers they found to the parliamentary initiative through their evaluation research. The digital divide was one challenge to the success of the project.  The female-male ratio on the first survey was 1:3.  The second survey was somewhat better with a ratio of 2:3.  The vast majority of respondents to both surveys were highly educated, over 88% of the first survey and 94% of the second survey respondents were graduates or post-graduates. This sub-section of the population comprises less than 30% of the Irish adult population

Other challenges included:
Poor coordination and a rushed timetable.
Workplace and organizational inflexibility – the working Group was voluntary based, and this work was on top of their existing workload.
Poor technical design.

Barriers
Many consultees found the technical nature of the language of the Draft Broadcasting Bill proposals difficult to follow, and would have preferred a more open discussion: perhaps earlier in the process of identifying needs to be addressed by the Bill, when there was more scope for changing it.

The pilot site had not been optimised for usability. This was a barrier to some of the people who visited the site. Over half found the submissions site too complex, one third were not satisfied with the discussion site and found it hard to locate information on it. Before further eConsultations are run, usability testing and redesign would be important.
The co-ordination of the eConsultation process was adversely affected by the timetable set at the end of the lifetime of the parliament, and the lack of personnel resources dedicated to this pilot.

Another barrier was lack of awareness.  People could not participate in the eConsultation if they had not heard of it, or have not had the benefits of participation marketed to them. The media advertisements were not effective in attracting many participants. Stakeholders were written to, requesting that they incorporate links to the eConsultation on their website and this was more successful than the media advertisements, but other web advertising was not initiated.

Results and lessons learned
The ECRP evaluation research found that the vast majority of survey respondents believed that eConsultation should be used again.  The research team recommended that lessons learned would include:
Future eConsultations will require dedicated staff or a unit. Once there is a dedicated team, it can support all the Committees.
It would be more effective to start eConsultations as early and as often as is possible and as is appropriate in the policy-making process.
The use of interactive tools on the website needs to be redesigned. This concerns both the choice of technologies to use at different consultation stages, and the usability of particular tools.
Future publicity campaigns should be broader (reaching more people) and more concentrated (exciting different stakeholders). It should reach out to where the people are: the places they visit physically, the places they visit virtually in cyberspace (e.g. Bebo, Google, specialist mailing lists), and the media (TV, radio, magazines, etc.) they pay attention to.
Parliamentary eConsultations in other jurisdictions should be continuously reviewed. Most parliaments are just starting to involve citizens electronically in their work. Everyone is learning. The Oireachtas needs to try out new things locally, and learn from other parliaments, perhaps by joining them in inter-parliamentary projects on designing the ideal parliamentary eConsultation.
Since the pilot has raised expectations, the Houses of the Oireachtas should proactively seek to meet them, by building in practical ways on this pilot.

The Houses of the Oireachtas are currently working on their response to the Evaluation by the ECRP team and on how to take the questions asked in the report forward.  See the Houses of the Oireachtas website for further developments: http://www.oireachtas.ie

More information is available at: http://www.nuim.ie/nirsa/econsult

• 21 - 22 June 2007, cce:GOV Workshop, Aarhus, Denmark. cce:GOV has its third Workshop, which is being held at Midsummer in a beachside location. The workshop is looking at real life cases and moving towards a handbook for citizen centric eGovernment. This workshop is free to attend.  For more information see: http://www.ccegov.eu/
• 1 - 5 July 2007, 16th IST Mobile and Wireless Communications Summit, Budapest, Hungary.  This event is supported by the European Commission and is organised by the participants to the IST research projects in the field of "Mobile and Wireless". Its main objective is to present and disseminate to the largest possible audience the scientific results of these projects, aiming for a large participation from outside the EU research community. The programme consists of parallel paper and poster presentations, selected through a peer review process after a call for papers, complemented with a reduced number of plenary panel sessions addressing strategic issues of interest and a number of workshops, tutorials, project and cluster meetings.  For more information see: http://www.mobilesummit2007.org/
• 5 July 2007, Workshop: ICT for Active Ageing at Work, Brussels. This workshop is a major milestone towards the definition of the Commission's future policy and research agenda in this crucial area. All the major stakeholders will participate in the workshop which will consist of a series of presentations and discussions. Participation in the workshop is by invitation only.  For more information see: http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/einclusion/events/workshop_0707/index_en.htm
• 9 - 11 July 2007, From Oracles to Dialogue: Exploring new ways to explore the future, Athens, Greece. This conference on futures methodology is about better ways to explore the future.  Four key themes are particularly important for foresight activities:
  • How can foresight methods be more robust?
  • How can we spot threats and opportunities early?
  • How can we make best use of different forecasting and modelling techniques?
  • How do researchers, decision makers and the public learn from each other about the possibilities for the future?

For more information see: http://www.costa22.org/conference/

• 19 July 2007, High-Level Round Table on Building a Knowledge Society for All, Geneva, Switzerland. The Round Table will explore the role of Science, Technology & Innovation as an enabling platform towards knowledge development, management and sharing, in order to create a favourable environment for sustainable development. In particular, it will address the dynamic tensions and synergies between global and national policy making highlighting the importance of creating Trust to foster Partnerships.  The objective of the Round Table is to contribute to the discussions on how to build and enhance the relationships between different stakeholders involved in the governance arena (public sector, private sector and civil society).  For more information see: http://egov.epfl.ch or contact gianluca.misuraca@epfl.ch

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 to our continuously updated breaking barriers 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.