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

Issue No 5. March 2006

Welcome to the fifth edition of the newsletter of the 'Breaking the Barriers to eGovernment' project, funded by the European Commission’s e-Europe 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.

Case study of the month – Child Benefit Service in Ireland

The e-Enabled child benefit service in Ireland supports the automatic and proactive allocation of a child’s Personal Public Service (PPS) Number and the initiation of the child benefit claim after the registration of the birth of a child. This eliminates the need for customers to furnish a birth certificate to authenticate their claim and, for many, also eliminates the need to complete an application form. Births are registered in a two-stage process. Following the birth the hospital or midwife notifies the local Registrar of Births of the relevant details. This is done by completing a Birth Notification Form and sending it to the local Registrar or, in the case of some maternity hospitals, via an electronic interface between the hospital computer system and the civil registration computer system. For validation of this information, the parent is then required to attend the Registrar’s Office to register the birth. On completion of the registration process the details are sent electronically, via the Inter-Agency Messaging Service (IAMS), to the Department of Social and Family Affairs (DSFA) where a Personal Public Service (PPS) Number is automatically allocated to the child and the relevant details are passed, electronically, to the Department’s child benefit computer system. Where the child is the first born a pre-filled claim form is sent to the parents for validation, signature and payment (bank/post office) details. In the case of second and subsequent children the claim is processed automatically and payment issued to the mother without any manual intervention.

This case represents an interesting and innovative use of zero-touch technologies (ZTT) to overcome co-ordination problems and to deliver social security benefits in an effective and efficient way. This project involved confronting major issues of co-ordination, both from front office to back office and across micro local, local and national tiers of government. It has also involved tackling issues of authentication and identification.

Co-ordination problems seem to have been surmounted in an innovative way, with clear benefits to efficiency, productivity and quality of service. Interoperability (IOP) has been achieved by integrating within and across front and back offices, using Technical IOP, Syntactic IOP and Semantic IOP. Organisational IOP was required between the authorities along the sequential organised child benefit service. The case shows a clear model of standardised workflows between the several involved stages with some centralisation aspects (e.g. the central civil registration database).

The innovative triggering of child benefit claims has involved ‘joined up’ authentication, starting from the electronic child registration process at the hospital via local and national registration offices to the child benefit section. This has been supported by the inter-agency linkage and messaging system (IAMS) securely linking various agencies and the DISC securely linking back offices to the DSFA. The infrastructure is now being used for other e-enabled services, allowing the possibility of overcoming co-ordination and authentication issues in other areas.

The web address of the initiative is http://www.welfare.ie.

The information on which this discussion is based is contained in the Good Practice Framework database. For more details please see http://www.egov-goodpractice.org/

Recent project highlights:

Europe-wide Good Practice Framework for eGovernment
The European Commission, DG Information Society & Media, has launched a series of measures to support the creation of comprehensive eGovernment services across all levels of the European Union. The eGovernment Good Practice Framework (GPF) is a centrepiece in this strategy, contributing to the i2010 Information Society initiative of the European Commission.

The main objectives of the GPF are:

• To collect examples for well-defined eGovernment cases,
• To make the examples available for those involved in eGovernment by means of an intelligent knowledge database,
• To inform on related news, events and links,
• To offer expert know-how on general or special eGovernment features,
• To support the sustainable transfer of good practices and learning experiences in an easy and helpful way. 

The portal has received much attention from those involved in eGovernment in Europe. At present 703 experts and members are registered on the GPF, and 148 cases have been submitted. Users find not only detailed information about good practice cases but the contact details of each user are made available – this facilitates the transfer of knowledge.

We encourage you to visit the GPF portal, inform yourself about the possibilities it offers and register as an expert or a member to be able to use all of its functionalities. By doing so you will contribute to strengthening the visibility of e-Governance practice and help to boost eGovernment throughout Europe.

Other relevant activities:

Since the last newsletter, there have been several relevant developments with regard to eGovernment in the international / European community:

• An eGov Summit took place on 7-8 March 2006, in London, UK.  The eGov Summit brought together the UK's leading eGovernment professionals to learn, network and do business.  The conference concentrated on the following topics:
  • Security - Defending against electronic attack
  • Customer Centric Services - Working with the public and engaging the user
  • Data Management - Protecting, storing and sharing information
  • Mobile Working - Integrating wireless and mobile applications
  • e-Delivery - Accessing and exploiting the channels available
  • Broadband - Ensuring availability and take up
  • e-Payments - Bringing transactional capabilities alive
  • e-Cooperation - Working with Government and business
  • People - Training and developing operators and users

More information is available on the event website: http://www.egov.worldtradeco.com

• The Third Workshop of the eGovernment Economics Project (eGEP) Third Workshop took place on 8 February 2006, Vienna, Austria.  The focus was on 'Getting full Impact of eGovernment - launching a European Measurement Framework.'  The framework included a report on the state of play of eGovernment performance measurement, a measurement framework model and indicators, and a measurement implementation methodology.  For more information, visit the event website: http://217.59.60.50/eGEP/Static/E_FWorkshop_III.asp?ST=0&page=1

• An international high-level seminar 'eGovernment for all Europeans' took place on 10 February 2006, in Vienna, Austria.  The conference explored key issues relating to the development and deployment of sustainable and user-centred pan-European eServices. For more information please see the event website: http://www.eu2006.at/en/Meetings_Calendar/Dates/February/1002eGovernmentforall.html

For your diary:

The 2nd International Conference eGovInterop 2006, Interoperability of eGovernment Services, will take place in Bordeaux, France on 22-24 March 2006. It is co-located and co-organised with I-ESA 2006 conference, and brings together European eGovernment researchers and practitioners.  It aims to confront the progress of the various European initiatives on Interoperability of eGovernment Services.  For more information please see: www.egovinterop.net

The workshop ‘eGovernment – The Way Ahead’ takes place within ICTTA’06 (International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies: from Theory to Applications), 24-28 April, 2006, Omayyad Palace, Damascus, Syria. For details of this and other workshops please see http://www.iwv.jku.at

The 6th European Conference on eGovernment will be held at Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany, 27-28 April, 2006.  The conference will focus on applications of eGovernment, e-Voting, e-Democracy, Measuring / Economics of Government and Innovative Organisational Change. Further details of the conference can be obtained from the conference website at: http://www.academic-conferences.org/eceg/eceg2006/eceg06-home.htm

The First International Conference on Legal, Security and Privacy Issues in IT will be held in Hotel Elysee, Hamburg, Germany from April 30- May 2, 2006. The conference will focus on all legal issues related to IT/ Internet including IPR. All the accepted papers for presentation will be published in Complex Book Series 2006 (http://www.jus.uio.no/iri/english/law/complex_eng/) and other international law journals such as the Computer Law & Security Report (Oxford-Elsevier). Further information about the LSPI Conference is available at: http://www.kierkegaard.co.uk/

The 7th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research is a forum for the presentation and discussion of interdisciplinary research on digital government. Interested participants are invited to submit research papers, system demonstrations, posters, and proposals for tutorials and workshops for dg.o2006 which will take place in San Diego, California, 21-24 May, 2006.  Please see http://www.dgrc.org/dgo2006/ for more details.

The Fourth Annual Information Rights Conference for the Public Sector in the UK - FOI Live 2006 - takes place on 25 May, 2006 at the Millennium Conference Centre, Kensington, London, UK. The conference is organised by the Constitution Unit, Department of Constitutional Affairs and Information Commissioner's Office. For more information about the conference and to reserve your place, please visit http://www.foilive.com

The date of the EGOV 06 Conference (within DEXA) is 4-8 September, 2006 in Krakow, Poland. Please see http://www.dexa.org/drupal/?q=node for more details.

Get involved!

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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.