EISCO 2005 Fourth Plenary Session Crossborder and PanEuropean Services: The Challenges Ahead

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EISCO 2005Fourth Plenary Session Cross-border
and Pan-European ServicesThe Challenges Ahead
Institute for Informatics in Business and
Government, University of Linz, Austria

• Roland Traunmüller

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 Background of the Treatise

• Como 2003 - eEurope Awards The study involved
  357 cases. A report drawing conclusions from the
  study co-authored by the presenter, cf.
  http//www.eipa.nl .
• 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
  (The presenter in charge of Section 8 on
  Empowerment)

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The Starting Point 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.
• The idea of good governance leads to good
  government.

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Marks of Government

• Good government has four key marks
• Citizen-centric in attitude
• Cooperative in nature
• Seamless and joined up seen from the clients
• Multilevel and polycentric in composition
• e-Government is a driver for realizing modern
  and efficient government.

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e-Government as Vision and as a Construction Site

• e-Government is one way to improve government.
• e-Government goes further than earlier approaches
  to modernisation (e.g. New Public Management).
• 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 to clients and
  partners.
• e-Government is a vision and a construction site
  as well

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Services Provision is Focal

• Without doubt, services are in focus.
• A lot of application run yet the picture is
  equivocal.
• Low take up of public eServices is the big
  problem.
• There is low acceptance as services are not
  convincing.
• Access, usability and having important services
  become a prime concern.
• Main problem the level of service integration is
  not sufficient.
• For Pan-European services hindrances are even
  higher.

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Key Demands to be met

• To achieve acceptance key demands have to be met.
• A single-window access for all services
  regardless of government level and agency.
• This means a high level of service integration!
• Further, a multi-channel access mix with a
  diversity of contact points home and mobile as
  prime choice, then kiosk, citizen office and
  multifunctional service shops.
• Design has to consider all stages of service
  provision information, intention, contracting,
  settlement, aftercare.
• Usability becomes prime, personalisation is
  preferable, multi-lingual functions become
  crucial.

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Service the Aim - G2G the Basis

• Most applications cut across different government
  levels and different types of agencies.
• Generally, cooperation joins up different
  branches and levels so needing close contact
  among all actors involved
• To local, regional and national levels the
  European level is added for cross border
  applications a necessary condition!
• The fragmentation is inherent public
  administrations - in contrary to the private
  sector - work via a complex tissue of cooperation
  involving quite many acting entities.
• Outsourcing means cooperation with the private
  sector.
• This urges a smooth bi-directional transition
  between the public and private realm.

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Cross Border and Pan-European Services Exist

• Encouraging best practice examples exist.
• A particular valuable source are the competitions
  of the eEurope Awards. Already 2003 about 12
  of the applications received dealt with
  pan-European issues (see presentation Christine
  Leitner).
• Portals of cities, regions etc.
• Employment
• Taxes
• Tendering
• Transport
• Management of land and environment

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Challenge I It Pays Putting Focus on the User

• Usability is of paramount importance - meagre
  usability causes low take up of a service.
• Several ways have been gone for improvement.
  Common is customising to special user groups a
  step further goes personalising the portal to the
  individual users.
• Using knowledge based technologies adds
  intelligence.
• It needs innovative ideas in handling a core
  problem bridging the gap between customer
  language and the legal-administrative jargon of
  public administration.
• Multi-lingual portals a must for Pan-European
  services.

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Challenge II Integrated Platforms for One-stop
Government

• Electronic Service Delivery is the immediate
  perspective for customers of the Administration.
  So integrated platforms for realising One-stop
  Government are needed.
• Online One-stop Government needs a lot of
  automatic data interchange. Data involved in a
  specific decision are dispersed over many
  locations, under the competencies of diverse
  agencies and residing on several systems.
• Integration is more than mere data integration
  comprising
• Technology, organisation and users
• Processes and knowledge
• Legal social, political and environmental aspects

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Challenge III Semantic Standards for Cross
Border Data Interchange

• Building semantic standards is a necessary
  condition for Electronic Data Interchange. It
  allows a global use of data locally collected
  given that their legal and administrative
  semantics is represented carefully.
• Modelling semantic of data with different means
  (XML-languages. ontology) has become a top
  research issue.
• In the EU Cross Border Data Interchange will
  become the rule thus achieving semantic
  standards is a must.
• There are many obstacles sometimes it is
  different to find adequate meaning of terms,
  different connotations may occur and even a
  non-existence of counterparts.
• Standards are a technical and organisational
  problem.

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Challenge IV Knowledge Enhancement

• Government has to keep up with the knowledge
  society needing self-reflection as intelligence
  organization.
• Knowledge management has a very broad scope
  sustaining political decisions, drafting
  legislation, organisational learning and
  enhancement of processes.
• Just to give an example translating the demand
  for a service from real life into the
  administrative language.
• Multiple means are already available such as
  databases, software agents etc.
• Expert knowledge is part of it, such as
  multimedia access with invoking remote experts.
  Thus human and machine expertise become
  interwoven.

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Challenge V Change Management

• Not an easy task as a wide range of actors
  concerned.
• Administrative culture and historically grown
  structures may impede change.
• Inertial forces are reinforced by bureaucratic
  attitudes.
• Change has to start at the top with political and
  administrative leadership and strategic thinking.
  
• As many goals are long range a strong commitment
  is necessary one has to sell investing in
  infrastructures and qualifying of staff.
• Best practice examples, guidelines and master
  plans exist, but implementation is always a
  unique endeavour the road ahead is not smooth.