eGovernment – Page 8

Category: eGovernment

Europe’s Future

Commission Press Room: The European Commission has sent out a communication on the role of eGovernment for Europe’s future. The communication is available in the main languages.

Key actions proposed:
access to public services for all via multiple platforms (PC, TV, mobile terminals);
new services via broadband development;
trust and confidence building measures;
swift adoption and transposition of directive on re-use of public sector documents;
three-year action plan on electronic public procurement by 2004;
development of pan-European services;
interoperability framework to be adopted by end of 2003;
new approaches to benchmarking needed;
one-stop shop for eGovernment related activities of the EU.

Bill Gates: Government in the Digital Decade:
So realizing e-government; it’s a process. It’s a process that will roll out over the years ahead. I’d expect that virtually all of you over the next year will have very exciting projects in this area. We want to be a partner to help you on those things, we want to show you how the cost for doing those things can actually be kept surprisingly low by using the latest in software and hardware technology. And we want to make sure that as these systems roll out the security audits, the review to make sure that these systems are fully accessible to everyone in your country, that all of those things are done in the right way so that e-government really is a benefit to everyone.

Microsoft’s Digital Decade Vision is being rolled out with the forthcoming Office 2003. If the rumours Phil Windley and others hear, that Microsoft is considering using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for their file formats, perhaps Mr Gates should come clean and start talking about his Digital Millennium Vision …

As the recent Cyberinsecurity report suggests, there are serious issues with monocultures (Windley and Jon Udell have more on this). Sean Gallagher has a good metaphor: Windows is the potato of the Internet age.

It’s a bit ironic that just this week the Chief Security Officer of Microsoft Denmark, wrote in the Danish Computerworld, that “investments in security can be exaggerated.”

The imperative

Edwin, Joanna, and the other good people at PUMA in OECD have published The E-Government Imperative. A central quote:

E-Government is more about government than about ‘e’…

The term “e-government”, as used by the OECD E-Government Project, applies to the use of ICT as a tool to achieve better government. E-government is not about business as usual, but has a focus on using ICT to transform the structures, operations, and, most importantly, the culture of government. Modernising government structures, governance frameworks and processes to meet the e-government imperative will have fundamental impacts on how services are delivered, how policies are developed and how public administrations operate. As the impacts of e-government becomes more profound, government will have to strike equilibrium between protecting citizens
rights and better meeting their needs with moreefficient, integrated services and policy engagement processes. What starts as a technical exercise aimed at developing more responsive programs and services becomes an exercise in governance.

The report, which is available in PDF, is a good read, and recommended for anyone concerned with the future of government. I know the report has been on its way for a while, so some of the many case stories are a bit outdated, but still worth reading.

Business portal

Today, our “business” ministers Bendt Bendtsen, Claus Hjort Frederiksen and Svend Erik Hovmand opened a new portal for businesses, Virk.dk. The portal offers a number of services, specially aimed at small businesses’ administrative work.

It is now possible to get rid of a number of paper based forms when small businesses deal with the public authorities and their staff. Should be an incentive for more businesses to use digital signatures.

Renewal, a sequal? eDay

This week, the Danish Government revised their 2001 Government platform which was called “Growth, welfare ï¿½ renewal”. The new/supplemental platform is called “Growth, welfare ï¿½ renewal II”. Isn’t it strange how politics goes through a Hollywoodification, with a name like that? In geAnyway. The link goes to the Danish version, which was published promptly as the PM’s had his press conference, so that’s all good. Alas, I can’t find it in English, and note that the PM’s English website was last updated on 13 June 2003. I assume there will be an official translation out soon.

In general, Danish news in English is an under-developed area, so non-Danish speaking observers have a hard time. I Googled around a bit to see what I could find about “Growth, welfare ï¿½ renewal II”, and it wasn’t much I found. The only decent coverage I found was at Denmark.dk (not permalink, I think, but should work for a few days).

The platform is an ideological programme with 191 new initiatives covering all major policy areas with social welfare being one of the key issues. Personally, I’m having problems swallowing many of the most ideological (ultra-Liberal-Conservative) initiatives. As one opposition leader said: A “hardline Rambo style”.

The Government’s mission is set on defeating consequencelessness in society, they say. Parole: Award those who can and who do; Help those who canï¿½t, but want to; and Punish those who can, but won’t. (my translation).

The section called A Modern, Living (?) and User-friendly Public Sector (En moderne, levende og brugervenlig offentlig sektor) lists a number of initiatives, the Government is planning.

Freedom of choice is the big issue, but also issues like transparency, openness, results-quality, expectations-engagement, etc. A few new commissions of inquery and such, and an upcoming programme or two as well as a few bills.

Citizens should be empowered with regard to government systems. Digitalisation gives us new possibilities. The Government will give citizens better access to follow own cases and data.
…
Contacting public authorities must be easy for the citizens, and information about government services must be easy to access. The Government will put forward a proposition about how the electronic possibilities can be used, so that citizens can communicate easily with the public authorities. Citizens and businesses must get the right to correspond with public authorities using a digital signature.
…
Others’ time and resources should be respected. Citizens who don’t show up for appointments with public authorities are wasting the personnel’s time and presents an undue burden on public resources. This is seen in, for example, the health sector and the legal system. The Government will present a bill about the introduction of “no show”-fees to citizens who don’t show up for scheduled appointments, within the areas where it is fair and achievable to implement. (my rather poor attempt at a literal translation of selected paragraphs).

To theorise a bit on this (I work for these guys …), I find it interesting that “IT”/”e-government” doesn’t occur once in the platform, but at the same time, we have a platform that actually sets some very ambitious targets for IT and e-government, and should be somewhat of a job guarantee for people like me. “Citizens and businesses must get the right to correspond with public authorities using a digital signature” will be very hard to implement, but we’re getting there step by step. The first big step we take on Monday!

Monday is eDay
The Danish government and representatives of the regional and local government authorities have jointly decided to make September 1, 2003 the official “eDay“.
eDay

After eDay all public authorities have a general right to communicate electronically with each other, unless the documents are specifically excluded for security or other reasons. Specifically, the eDay initiative includes the right to send documents electronically and the right to demand that documents from other authorities be sent electronically.

The initiative aims at promoting the use of e-mail in the public sector and reorganise work processes towards paperless administration, making government more efficient.

LogOn

I’m chairing and speaking at an eGovWorkshop at the LogOn Web Day Copenhagen 2003 on 18 September. I’ve entitled the workshop Architecting e-government. From the programme:

The workshop will have an international and strategic perspective on challenges and best practices in the e-government domain. Themes covered:

The Citizen’s Intelligence Agency

MIT’s Open Government Information Awareness suite of software tools acts as a framework for US citizens to construct and analyze a comprehensive database on our government. Modeled on recent government programs designed to consolidate information on individuals into massive databases, our system does the opposite, allowing you to scrutinize those in government. Citizens are able to explore data, track events, find patterns, and build risk profiles, all in an effort to encourage and motivate action. We like to think of it as a Citizen’s Intelligence Agency, giving people similar tools and technologies to those held by their government.

CNN reports.

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Stepping stones

There’s an interesting article in Enterprise Architect: Three Stepping-Stones to Strategic Architecture by Chris Barlow.

Barlow wants us to define a series of stepping-stones that “both pay for themselves with near-term business impact and lead you toward your enterprise architecture vision”. Hmmmkey. How? We must make each stepping-stone a “stable business platform”, that is, a “series of completed IT and business-process projects where you can pause and reassess the next stepping-stone”. OK, stable and completed. Good. But how? Patterns? Principles? Practices? (hey, three P’s!)

Barlow suggests three stepping-stones:

1. Get to basic architecture. A basic architecture is one that supports the current business processes and is characterized by very few duplicate applications, has separation between transactional and archival data, and has a consolidated infrastructure. Also associated with it is an architecture development and management council that defines application, data, and infrastructure standards and checks for compliance against these standards. You know you have a basic architecture in place if you don’t have three e-mail systems, two financial reporting systems, some Unix desktops, some NT desktops, and 15 different company Web sites, all of which look different.

2. Get to streamlined architecture. A streamlined architecture is one where the business processes and corresponding applications and infrastructure have been tuned such that there are no redundant steps and no choke points that degrade performance. Pick one or two business areas to tune business processes. … Consider an example of trade-offs: do I build a single, consolidated database where all data is in one place and managing and updating data requires doing it in one place? Or do I build a tiered database where the different levels can be optimized for different business needs? …do I use an off-the-shelf enterprise architecture framework? Or do I need to build proprietary connections between applications?

3. Get to strategic architecture. A strategic architecture is one where your architecture is truly your competitive differentiator. At this point you have examined your application portfolio, differentiated between value-add and nonvalue-add applications/systems, outsourced nonvalue-add applications/systems, streamlined the rest, and defined a portfolio of new investments that will deliver new capabilities and help the business move the needle to value-added differentiators.

Basic, Streamlined, Strategic. Sure, why not. Good point. It sure sticks to the keep it simple principle.
Illustration from Three Stepping-Stones to Strategic Architecture. See article for larger version

Architects and princes

On Friday, we launched our White Paper on Enterprise/IT Architecture. The translator is working hard on the English version, which should be available soon. I have put together an article with the main findings and conclusions from the White Paper and a bit of context about our XML-work.

On related issues, David Fletcher blogged about EA yesterday, with some good pointers. Barbara Haven read one of these, the Industry Advisory Council‘s Succeeding with Component Based Architecture in e-Government and found the Machiavelli quote from The Prince that I mentioned earlier, and which I appearently misquoted a bit then. I think it goes like this (via online-literature.com above):

…there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.

We should have used this quote in the White Paper, because it says a lot about architecture.

Dave also pointed to META Group’s Dale Kutnick and Tim Westbrock who talks about Managing Change Through Holistic Enterprise Architecture. Holistic EA? What they mean is that EA is not just about technology. Did I mention that our White Paper is very inspired by Meta Group’s thinking?

We are now continuing the architecure programme, and I will have a busy summer and autumn. I wonder if anyone is also interested in e-government architecture, and would like to spend some time together, talking and writing? I have a lot of old air-miles to burn, and can go basically anywhere. I need to spend some holiday time too, so it should be somewhere nice, so I can spend some time off there too. It wouldn’t hurt if you had a summer house or something 😉 Drop me a mail!