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

Issue No 6. June 2006

Welcome to the sixth edition of the newsletter of the “Breaking the 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.

The system developed by the Internal Revenue Service (Servicio de Impuestos Internos) in Chile for Income Declaration (Operación Renta) in Chile has attracted worldwide attention, because of the high filing rates achieved. In 2005, more than 95 per cent of taxpayers declared income and taxes on-line. The system was first introduced in 1999 with basic functionality and has been substantially developed from that time.

What were the barriers?

Initially, there were clear barriers to development of the system, as accountants and many taxpayers were reluctant to change from the traditional paper system to the new electronic one. There was even more reluctance when the IRS first decreed that all private companies in the country were compelled to make an electronic declaration, letting the individual taxpayers choose between either paper or electronic channels. However, from  initial complaint, users moved into a general acknowledgement of the advantages of the system, reaching the extraordinary usability rate noted above.

Benefits of the system

The introduction of the electronic declaration has generated important reductions in transaction costs, a significant increase in government efficiency and increased compliance, with a reduction of tax evasion rates. IRS personnel costs and other resources involved in the process have decreased as well.

For citizens and businesses, there have also been substantive benefits, with process time and complexity greatly reduced. Most citizens no longer have to hire an accountant (as was common before the electronic system was introduced) for calculating the taxes they will have to pay or how much they will get back.

Currently, the on-line income declaration system offers a predefined (pre-populated) proposal declaration to over 50 per cent of all taxpayers and the user is able to accept, modify or refuse the given proposal. In 2005, 34.6 per cent of these taxpayers accepted the on-line income declaration proposal made by IRS systems, a further 12.1 per cent modified and complemented it and a further 35.6 per cent used the provided on-line forms and its incorporated arithmetic tools. The remainder of taxpayers use authorized software, SMS services via mobile phone network or partially completed forms provided by the IRS.

How were barriers overcome?

The key ways in which the IRS has overcome barriers seem to be:

The technical advantages provided by the on-line tool, particularly pre-population of forms. The extent to which the analysis is done by the system itself means that the impact for taxpayers has been huge, because process time and complexity have been reduced to just clicking to accept the proposal.

Appropriate incentivization for electronic filing, such as early mandation for businesses. This mandation of electronic filing for businesses was early compared with most other countries; in the UK, for example, electronic filing for businesses will not be compulsory for all businesses until 2012, but it could be that the early mandation had good pay-offs after the initial complaints. For individuals, the IRS offers additional incentives for those who complete these  processes through the Internet, such as the extension of deadlines and earlier refunds of tax surplus.

Most importantly, public provision of internet access specifically for tax filing. The IRS established a national public-private network of more than 880 centres, providing up to 3,000 connectivity points. Taxpayers were able to do their on-line income declaration from these centres either free of charge or at a symbolic cost, with the help of trained staff.

Internal Revenue Service Website: http://www.sii.cl

The project team launched an online survey that aimed to identify key obstacles to achieving the potential benefits of eGovernment. Almost 1000 responses were recieived and these will be analysed to help inform the development of initiatives aimed at ensuring ICTs like the Internet are used to meet the needs of citizens, businesses, governments and other stakeholders in the EU. The findings from the survey will be available on the project website in July.

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The third project workshop, “Learning from Experience in eGovernment: Why Projects Fail and Why They Succeed” was held on the 26 June 2006 at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. Presentaions at the event included:

• Jerry Fishenden from Microsoft, myGovernment.com: government the way you want it, who looked at how new technologies, the emergence of Web 2.0 and the citizen/consumer as creator enables a whole new model of government services and interactions, with the citizen at their centre.
• Stephen Coleman from the University of Leeds, consulting the public online - opportunities, barriers and policy options, who considered how the public regards opportunities for online consultation and some policy options which take into account existing barriers and opportunities.

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

• The European Commission, together with the Latvian Government and the Austrian Presidency of the EU, organized a high-level conference on the theme "ICT for an inclusive society". Practitioners, representatives of civil society, representative groups and industry, and Ministers from all EU Member States met to set the eInclusion policy agenda for the coming years. The conference included a ministerial meeting (see summary below) and was accompanied by an exhibition which showcased a number of research projects demonstrating how ICTs can contribute to an inclusive society. For more information, visit the event website: http://europa.eu.int/information_society/events/ict_riga_2006/index_en.htm

• EU ministers commit to an inclusive and barrier-free information society: a pan-European drive to use information and communication technologies to help people to overcome economic, social, educational, territorial or disability-related disadvantages was endorsed by ministers of 34 European countries in Riga (Latvia) on 12 June. "eInclusion" targets include halving the gap in internet usage by groups at risk of exclusion, boosting broadband coverage in Europe to at least 90%, and making all public web sites accessible by 2010. The Riga Ministerial Declaration, signed on 12 June by ministers from EU Member States, accession and candidate countries, and EFTA/EEA countries, sets out the following specific targets:
  • halve the gap in internet usage by 2010 for groups at risk of exclusion, such as older people, people with disabilities, and unemployed persons,
  • increase broadband coverage (i.e. the availability of broadband infrastructure) in Europe to at least 90% by 2010. In 2005, broadband was available to about 60% of businesses and households in the remote and rural areas of the EU15 and to more than 90% in the urban areas; see IP/06/340),
  • ensure that all public websites are accessible by 2010,
  • by 2008, put in place actions in the field of digital literacy and skills to reduce gaps for groups at risk of exclusion by half in 2010,
  • by 2007, make recommendations on accessibility standards and common approaches, which could become mandatory in public procurement by 2010, and
  • assess the necessity for legislative measures in the field of e-Accessibility, and take account of accessibility requirements in the review of the electronic communications regulatory framework beginning in June 2006.

Full press release available at:
http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/06/769&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

A strategy for a secure information society – “Dialogue, partnership and empowerment” was published on 30 May 2006.  Full document available at: http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/doc/com2006251.pdf

The 3rd local Modinis Workshop on Good Practice on Interoperability at Local and Regional Level will take place on 12 July 2006, in Rome, Italy.  The workshop will feature case studies of regional and inter-regional shared eGovernment.  This workshop, which is the third in a series of four that is organized within the Modinis “Study on Interoperability at Local and Regional Level” project, targets the following objectives:

• To provide an opportunity for dissemination, exchange and learning between Consortium, Champions and Interested Parties
• To use this process for the assessment of stakeholder information needs and to improve the match between the case descriptions, the study and these information needs
• To arouse interested parties for participating in evaluating the status of Interoperability in Member States
• To build networks for further exchange of experiences and dissemination activities
• To increase the feedback on and enable unbiased reviews of the Interoperability Study

The workshop’s program will accordingly include various presentations by European speakers, such as:

• Experiences from conducting a European eGovernment Interoperability Study at Local and Regional Level
• Intellectual Property rights and eGovernment Interoperability in Europe
• ICAR, a project on Interoperability and cooperation within 17 autonomous regions in Italy
• eBourgogne – regional shared eGovernment, the example of the regional eGovernment platform (France, topic still to be confirmed)

For more information, see the event website:
http://www.egov-goodpractice.org/event_details.php?&eventid=119#documents

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The EURO mGOV 2006 conference will take place from 30 August - 1 September 2006, in Brighton, United Kingdom.  The theme is “New opportunities for eGovernment: adapting to mobile and ubiquitous business”.  Recent reports on eGovernment point out various challenges in making eGovernment a success in practice. Some of these challenges are related to the pressures coming from advances in technology and some are related to the adoption of new business practices using such technology. Mobility and mobile business is an important example of such a trend influencing every aspect of eGovernment practice and research. Mobile government therefore emerges, and constitutes the next generation of eGovernment evolution.
 
The Euro mGOV conference series aims to establish a forum and provide a showcase for the developments on the public administration and mobile Internet technologies, services and business models, and tie them to the existing and future mGovernment applications and government business models. The conference will present evidences of applications and trends in mobile government implementations from various parts of the world.

For more information, see the event website: http://www.icmg.mgovernment.org/

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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.

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