E-Governance and e-Government Presentation at the TCGOV 2005 in Bozen Roland Traunmüller Institute...

e-Governance and e-Government

Presentation at the TCGOV 2005 in Bozen

Roland Traunmüller

Institute of Informatics in Business and Government,

University of Linz, Austria

2nd March 2005 TCGOV 2005 2

Contents

• 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


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.


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


A Broader Focus

• 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.


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.


Background of the Treatise

• 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)


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)


The Policy Cycle

• 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 e-Transformation 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.


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 self-service) 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 ID-management.


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.


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.


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 since many years.

• .


Identity Management

• 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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• 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.


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.


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.


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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• 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.


Back Office Integration and Interoperability

• 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 on coordination.


Building Standards on Ontologies

• 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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• 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.


Multiple Obstacles for Standards

• 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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• 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.


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.


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-only-solution for advice is not the only option. In some cases invoking experts for mediated dialogs becomes necessary.


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.


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 transforming administrative culture is slow.

E-Governance and e-Government Presentation at the TCGOV 2005 in Bozen Roland Traunmüller Institute...

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