eGovernance and eGovernment Presentation at the TCGOV 2005 in Bozen

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e-Governance and e-GovernmentPresentation at
the TCGOV 2005 in Bozen
Institute of Informatics in Business and
Government, University of Linz, Austria

• Roland Traunmüller

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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

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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.

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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

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  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.

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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.

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 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 RD focus Aix, Prague,
  Zaragoza EGOV 2005 in Copenhagen
• World Information Technology Forum (jointly by
  UNESCO and IFIP) 2003 Vilnius, 2005 Gaborone
  (section on Empowerment)

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 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)

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 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.

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 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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 cntd.

• 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.

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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.

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 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.

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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.
• .

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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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cntd.

• 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.

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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.

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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.

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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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cntd.

• 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.

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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
• Interoperability of e-Government platforms
  provided by an adequate architecture.
• Semantic interoperability as a must for data
  interchange between agencies.
• Organizational interoperability where the
  requirements of decentralized agencies have to
  meet the central needs on coordination.

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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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cntd.

• 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.

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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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cntd.

• 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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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.