Public Administration and Information Systems: The Way to e-Government

1
Public Administration and Information Systems
The Way to e-Government
Institute of Informatics in Business and
Government Johannes Kepler University Linz,
Austria

• Roland Traunmüller

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Table of Contents

• e-Government, e-Transformation, e-Governance
• Como 2003 The State of Affaires
• From e-Government to e-Governance
• Some Caveats Government is Different
• Portals - A Leverage for Change
• Understanding Administrative Processes - A
  Chance for Standards
• Taking the Potential Seriously Knowledge
  Enhancement
• Sound Engineering and Change Management
• Political Support A Window of Opportunity

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A long way

• A long way starting some decades ago.
• In Germany 1974 the founding year
• Mostly used the term IS in Public
  Administration (e.g. IFIP WG 8.5 was founded
  1988 and re-founded 1990)
• Leading conferences, so e.g. Balatonfüred 1991,
  Vienna/Budapest 1998, Zaragoza 2000
• Now additional labels can be read.
• e-Government
• e-Transformation
• e-Governance
• Some say Drop the e and dance with the
  customer.

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e-Transformation Ingredients

• Ingredients and formula are alike in basic
  composition.
• Using tele-cooperation as prime mode of work.
• A holistic approach.
• Integrating flows of information.
• Creating innovative applications/business models.
  
• Safeguarding secure and legally binding
  transactions
• Providing a protected and trustworthy
  environment.
• Planning for change.

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 Como 2003 The e-Government Awards

• 29 Countries participated with eligible
  countries EU, Candidate and EFTA countries (32
  in total)
• 357 cases of good praxis submitted a 27
  Increase on the respective 2001 exercise
• The study was directed by Christine Leitner
  (EIPA) so for more detailed information see EIPA
  website http//www.eipa.nl and www.e-europeawards.
  org
• Three awards given (A, D, ES) 70 projects
  exhibited
• Report was presented at Como in July 2003 in two
  parts
• Statistics and analyses of good practice
• A programmatic part drawing conclusions

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  Part I Statistics and Analyses

• Three general themes for submission
• A better life for European Citizens (52 )
• The role of eGovernment in competitiveness (20 )
• European, central and local government
  cooperation (28)

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Results Public e-Services for citizens
1. Education, 2. Income tax, 3. eDemocracy
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Results Public e-Services for businesses
1.Registration of companies, 2.Corporation tax,
3. Public procurement
9
Results Types of integration, cooperation and
partnership
1.Government-private, 2. Horizontal, 3. Vertical
10
.
Results Types of levels of government
organisations
1. Local, 2. National, 3. Regional
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 Part IIA Programmatic Part

• Editor Christine Leitner
• Authors Jean-Michel Eymeri, Klaus Lenk, Morten
  Meyerhoff Nielsen, Roland Traunmüller
• Acting as a guiding vision for modernisation
• Spurring change in giving guidance for
  strategies, design, implementation and change
  management
• The programmatic part has 30 pages in the report

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Main Features of e-Government

• Four postulates are stated in Como first
• e-Government is the key to good governance in the
  information society
• e-Government is impossible without having a
  vision
• e-Government is not just about technology but a
  change in culture
• e-Government is not just about service delivery
  but a way of life

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cntd.

• e-Government surpasses the administrative reform
  policies inspired by New Public Management (NPM)
• However, e-Government goes further than earlier
  approaches to modernisation.
• It aims at fundamentally transforming the
  production processes of public services (not only
  managing them as in NPM)
• e-Government thereby transforms the entire range
  of relationships of public bodies G2C, G2B and
  G2G

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e-Governance as Goal

• With IT governments are able to improve the
  quality and the accessibility of the services
  they offer to their citizens
• e-Government is the key to good governance in the
  information society
• The outcome will be favourable and bear the marks
  of good governance such as democratisation,
  coherence, effectiveness, transparency and
  accountability.
• Building up a modern governance with such
  directions as citizen-centred, cooperative,
  seamless, polycentric.
• Good Governance is the goal, e-Government is the
  way

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Deliberating Change and Impacts

• New ways of co-operation between agencies
• Relocating agencies, staff and resources
• Outsourcing and Public-Private-Partnerships
• Improving quality and opportunities
• Promoting democratic culture

16
Government is Different Law and Negotiation

• The extraordinarily complex goal structure.
• Legal norms are a standard vehicle of
  communication between government and executive
  agencies.
• Often norms establish a framework leaving leeway
  for interpretation and situative decisions.
• Here consensus building and negotiation come in.
  Quasi as supplementary mode of work.
• Legal norms give particular meaning to
  administrative structures protecting the rights
  of citizens, procedures bound to the rules of law
  or safeguarding legal validity.
• Administration works via a complex tissue of
  cooperation of acting entities.

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Government is Different Institution-bound Forces

• Public agencies - unlike in the private field -
  are not spurred by competition.
• Administrative acts are a particular type of
  products providing licenses, decreeing
  obligations.
• Responsibility seems to be often diluted, due to
  a multitude of actions in complex networks.
• Administrative culture and historically grown
  structures may impede change.
• Inertial forces are reinforced by bureaucratic
  attitudes.
• Administrative work appears as complex and
  strange.

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Electronic Service Delivery Portals as a
Leverage for Change

• Electronic Service Delivery is the immediate
  perspective for citizens and companies.
• A new way of thinking emerged regarding the
  citizens as "customers" of the administration.
• In focus One-stop Government and Seamless
  Government.
• Innovative interaction models based on modern IT.
• Unique access point to many public services and
  info.

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Portals are in Evolution

• Progress is step by step so in the beginning
  interest put on information content and
  presentation.
• Later on several options in realisation of access
  have been discussed.
• There are many technical and organisational
  choices home-administration, citizen offices,
  multifunctional service shops, kiosk, etc.
• More advanced advice systems may clarify which
  entitlements a citizen has in a specific
  situations.
• The goal Full transactions with high security.

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Example eGOV Project

• An Integrated Platform for Realising Online
  One-Stop Government with our Institute as
  partner
• EU-Project IST-2000-28471
• 10 Partners of different type from 5 countries
  (Greece, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Finland)
• Very successful after 1 year additional partner
  want to join China, France, Italy
• Austrian System help.gv.at as conceptual
  starting point

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System architecture eGOV platform for online
one-stop Government
. . .
user
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Understanding Administrative Processes A Chance
for Standards

• Understanding the nature of administrative
  processes is essential.
• Customising IT support
• Chance for standards
• Important long-term impacts.
• Rethinking administrative work reengineering
  processes integrating demands from citizens,
  businesses and public authorities

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Different Types of Administrative Processes

• Recurrent and well structured processes
• Processing of cases individualised
  decision-making
• Negotiation and advice processes
• Weakly structured processes in the field of
  policy-making including democratic deliberation

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Administrative Standards

• The real crux domain-directed descriptions and
  standards.
• Standards are made on basis of XML and ontology
  descriptions.
• Administrative processes are more complex than
  the usual commercial ones.
• Administrative terms all too often not adequately
  defined.
• Nature of the administrative process allows some
  openness
• Dynamics and complexity in law.
• Binding of legal decisions to territories and
  subjects.
• Exemptions, vagueness and even inconsistencies.
• Discretionary power of street level bureaucrats.

25
Cross Border e-Government

• Administrative documents crossing state borders
  causes difficulties in comprehension.
• No one-to-one mapping between every pair of
  states
• Adequate meaning of terms (such as taking
  licenses, certificates and academic degrees as
  examples)
• Different connotations of terms (such as to cite
  dissimilar boundaries of professions work)
• Non-existence of counterparts (e.g. public
  honours, awards, titles)
• Changes in systems (same gender marriages).

26
Knowledge Enhanced e-Government

• IT has brought several visions and guidelines
• Example are plentiful database, document
  management, process re-engineering, ubiquitous
  computing etc.
• Managing information and distributed knowledge
• Knowledge enhancement of all activities

27
Knowledge Enhanced Portals

• Need for knowledge enhanced portals.
• What the users lack in particular is a customised
  assistance help that meets the individual
  situation and competence.
• A priority request is translating the demand for
  a service from the citizen's life-world to
  legal-administrative jargon.
• Knowledge enhancement for different tasks
• Routing, interaction, advice capability, mediated
  dialogs and trialogues

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Routing Part

• The goal is an automatically routing of citizen
  demands either to relevant knowledge
  repositories or to the agency with competencies
  in the legal sense.
• The target is different a plain data base, a
  sophisticated piece of software, a staffed
  service centre (e.g. a call centre) or an
  official in a particular agency.
• Demands of the agencies have to be considered as
  well offering access options and rights,
  indexing and profiling, providing assistance in
  tracking etc.

29
Invoking Expertise

• Giving the complexity of cases a
  software-only-solution for advice is not the only
  option. Another is bringing in the right human
  expert
• Mediating persons at the counter of public
  one-stop-service shops improve their capability
  for advice.
• Making remote expert know-how accessible when
  needed for a specific case. Such expert dialogues
  may be enabled via multimedia technology
  (dialogues become trialogues).
• With the accessed expert himself using knowledge
  repositories human and machine expertise become
  interwoven.

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Implementation Hic Rhodus, hic saltus

• OECD The inability to manage large public IT
  projects undermines most efforts (OECD PUMA
  Public Policy 8, March 2001).
• Imminent failures are hidden threats pointing at
  culprits and seeking pretexts will not help.
• Holistic approaches are claimed balancing diverse
  views.
• There is equal need for both examples of best
  practice as well as frameworks and guidelines.
• Trust and security are a must.
• Sound engineering is necessary.
• Change management is key.

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Safeguarding Trust, Security and Privacy

• Differences occur at the higher level.
• Wrong passports vs. bouncing cheques.
• An e-identity is needed in all administrative
  transactions.
• Identification of the sender of a digital
  message.
• Authenticity of a message and its verification.
• Non-repudiation of a message or a data-processing
  act.
• Avoiding risks related to the availability and
  reliability.
• Confidentiality of the existence and content of a
  message.
•  

32
Change Management is Key

• A wide range of actors concerned
• Strategic thinking and building infrastructures
• Best practice and guidelines
• Empowering staff
• Cultural change
• The road ahead is not smooth
•  

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Political Support A Window of Opportunity

• Encouraging signs of public support.
• There is a broad awareness in politics, media
  etc.
• A bounty of projects on the national and
  international level (IST).
• Intense efforts in nationwide planning.
• Best practice examples are convincing.
• e-Government evolves into a mature scientific
  discipline (conferences, networks, curricula)