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From e-Government to e-Governance – Using new technologies to strengthen relationships with citizens

Accenture, has just published a report, From e-Government to e-Governance, recommending ways in which Goverment might enahnce its services to the public.

A key recommendation in the report is for public sector organisations not to build everything from scratch themselves, but to capitalise on the popularity of outside websites, including ones set up for social networking and communities.

According to the report “These sites present public managers with a range of opportunities for soliciting real-time citizen feedback, engaging constituents and improving accessibility to government information,”

Using external websites is a cost effective and very quick way to interact with the public, however the report does concede that there are some signifigant risks,such as the danger that public sector organisations will not be able to control the content.

However it is a shame that public sector organisations are reluctant to see negative comments and content posted on websites; the report focuses on the need for public sector organisations to encourage opinions: “Front-office employees should value customer feedback and view it as an essential means of gaining insights that will help them improve the customer experience and overall service delivery.”

Download the report (2.5 mb .pdf)

Visit site

Here is an excerpt from the foreword by Robert Ainger, Corporate Director, Orange Business

One of the key findings within this research is the tension that distinctions between purely personal and professional life are becoming increasingly blurred and that this is particularly the case with younger employees. The report identifies the rise of the ‘network citizen’ who relies more on their network for career opportunities than on their employers. This new dimension adds an extra level of complexity for businesses trying to recruit and
retain the best employees while also managing their reputation and intellectual capital.In fact, this report identifies both the ups and the downs of
networking. It challenges the concept that networking will only engender creativity, innovation and freedom while reducing costs by highlighting a potential ‘dark-side’. Networks blur the boundaries between formal hierarchies and informal structures in a company, and between our personal and professional lives.
Networks can create a tension between employees and employers where traditional ideas of loyalty or ownership of ideas and contacts become difficult. Networking can be exclusive and the rise in online networking may exacerbate it. ‘It’s not what you know but who you know’ may be an age-old adage: should business success today be based on contacts made through networking or purely on merit? In the current economic climate, it might be easy to ignore networking as something to concentrate on when there’s more time for lighter, less business-critical activities. The report points out that the value of networking within an economic downturn is perhaps more important than ever and I believe it could, in fact, mean the difference between a business collapsing or capitalising on the tricky conditions.

http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/networkcitizens

The federal government has released the report of the Review of the National Innovation System  Venturous Australia, which details recommendations for remodeling the nation’s innovation system.

Among 72 key recommendations was a call for an advisory committee of Web 2.0 practitioners to be established to propose and help steer governments as they experiment with Web 2.0 technologies and ideas.

“…exciting new possibilities are now emerging for government from the collaborative use of Internet technologies and platforms otherwise known as Web 2.0”, the report read, offering the example of crime being tracked in US neighbourhoods using Google’s online maps…

…“The possibilities [of Web 2.0 technologies] here are so substantial, so full of promise (and sometimes so challenging to existing cultures) that it is neither possible nor desirable for this report to spell out comprehensively what might or should occur,” the report, released on Tuesday, said….

…However, it did indicate that there are a number of principles with which we may be able to make progress:

“The most fundamental principle is that governments should be as open as possible to experiments with Web 2.0 approaches. Importantly, they should seek to learn from those that are successful but should expect, and educate the public to expect, that many initiatives will not fully succeed.”

The review also recommended making information about the full range of Australian state and territory government innovation programs available through a Web portal…

…Other ICT related recommendations include the suggestion that all practicable information, research and content funded by Australian governments should be made freely available over the Internet as part of a global public commons.

“This should be done whilst the Australian government encourages other countries to reciprocate by making their own contributions to the global digital public commons,” the report said…

The Review of the National Innovation System Venturous Australia can be viewed in full here

http://www.innovation.gov.au/innovationreview/Documents/NIS-review-web.pdf

What price happiness? The question is of course rhetorical. How can you put a price on something so intangible, or calculate the cause and effect of wealth to well-being? How can you, in short, quantify the unquantifiable? But that’s exactly what UK online centres have set out to explore in new research. What price, then, digital inclusion?

When such a question moves from the poetic to the practical, the next questions it inevitably begs are Who pays? followed eventually by Who benefits? We can be fairly certain that, on the whole, technology adds value to our lives and to the economy. How much value it can add is the focus of the research, written by FreshMinds, and due to launch at the end of April. It attempts to break down the benefits and associated costs of digital inclusion for five core groups – individual people, private sector organisations, the government, society and the wider economy.

The flipside of our increasing reliance on ICT – in public, economic and social life – is that the digitally excluded, by default, also become excluded from public services, modern working life and society itself. Digital inclusion is at the heart of the debate not just around skills and the knowledge economy, but around social justice and personal well-being. The new research is a continuation of UK online centres work in this area, and stems from a previous report which examined the links between digital and social exclusion. It found 75% of those counted as being socially excluded were also digitally excluded*. Those already at a social, educational or financial disadvantage are therefore three times more likely to be off-line, and missing out on the potential benefits, conveniences, opportunities and savings computers and the internet can provide….

Full article on eGoV Monitor

Link to the research report

The report notes the importance and benefits of strong government leadership and vision in identifying the importance of ICT for government and governance in Denmark.

“Denmark, in particular, has benefited from very effective government e-leadership, reflected in early liberalization of the telecommunications sector, a first-rate regulatory framework and large availability of e-government services.”

The Report features four thematic parts.

Part 1 includes the findings of the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) 2007–2008, together with a number of insightful essays on selected issues of networked readiness, with a specific focus on how it can foster innovation.Topics covered stretch from the link between innovation and ICT to recent trends in innovation (such as Unified Communications) and e-skills and telecommunications regulation in emerging markets.

Part 2 focuses on country/regional case studies showcasing best policies and practices in fostering networked readiness.This year, Singapore, Qatar, and EU cases are analyzed in depth.

Part 3 provides detailed profiles for each of the 127 economies covered in the Report, presenting a comprehensive snapshot of each economy’s current networked readiness status and allowing for international and historical comparison on specific variables or components of the NRI.

Lastly, Part 4 provides detailed data tables for each of the 68 variables composing the NRI this year, with global rankings.

The NRI rankings for 2007–2008 confirm Denmark as the most networked economy in the world for the second year consecutively, as a culmination of an upward trend observed since 2003.The other Nordic countries also continue to show their prowess in leveraging ICT for increased competitiveness, with Sweden, Finland, Iceland, and Norway at 2nd, 6th, 8th, and 10th position, respectively. Among the top 20, Switzerland is up two places, at 3rd position, continuing last year’s notable upward trend, while the United States improves three ranks to 4th place. Korea, at 9th, realizes one of the most impressive improvements (10 places) from last year among the 127 economies covered by the Report.

The Networked Readiness Index
2007-2008 rankings (top 50 of 127) download full ranking.

Click here to view and download the report

The UN E-Government Survey 2008: From E-Government to Connected Governance assesses the e-government readiness of the 192 Member States of the UN according to a quantitative composite index of e-readiness based on website assessment, telecommunication infrastructure, and human resource endowment. ICTs can help reinvent government in such a way that existing institutional arrangements can be restructured and new innovative arrangements can flourish, paving the way for a transformed government.

The focus of the report this year, in Part II, is e-government initiatives directed at improving operational efficiency through the integration of back-office functions. Whilst such initiatives, if successful, will deliver benefits to citizens, the primary purpose is to improve the effectiveness of government and governmental agencies. Models of back-office integration, irrespective of the delivery mode, fall into three broad categories: single function integration, cross functional integration, and back-office to front-office integration. The level of complexity, expressed in terms of the number of functions within the scope and number of organizations involved, is the primary factor influencing a successful outcome – with a tendency amongst the more ambitious projects to fail to deliver the full anticipated benefits. The key variables involved in the delivery of back-office integration are the people, processes and technology required.

Here are some excerpts from the report:

E-Consultation

The Survey clearly indicates that few countries are implementing e-consultation applications and tools. Only 7 per cent of the countries surveyed received a score of more than 50 per cent. One way to improve these results is for governments to implement online applications to engage and include citizens in a dialogue.Web 2.0 has generated a class of online individuals and groups that want to share their views through blogs and/or online community networks such as MySpace, YouTube,Facebook and LinkedIn to name a few. As of October 2007, the blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 108.6 million blogs. This recent explosion in online blogging and publishing tools underscores a significant interest of web users in creating and consuming user-generated content. A few governments are beginning to acknowledge this phenomenon.

Countries that Use an Open Web Forum for Discussing Topics

Bhutan, Botswana, Brazil, Cameroon, Congo, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia,France, Ghana, Hungary, Japan, Lebanon, Mauritania, Mexico, Mongolia,Mozambique, New Zealand, Norway, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, Singapore, Sweden, Ukraine, and United States of America.

E-Decision-Making
E-decision-making evaluates the extent of a government’s commitment to eparticipation,as evidenced by the definitive acknowledgement of an individual citizen’s input and by a stated commitment to take it into account when making decisions. The Republic of Korea is the leader in this assessment, followed by Denmark and France. With a number similar to e-consultation, approximately 66 per cent of the countries surveyed received a score in this section. To balance the heavily quantitative scoring, a few qualitative questions were still included to allow researchers to rate the general edecision-making performance. Only 11 per cent of countries surveyed committed themselves to incorporating the
results of e-participation into the decision-making process. This figure clearly indicates that the majority of not in position to directly involve citizens into the decision making process.

Governments that Publish Findings/Results of Citizen Opinions,including e-Opinions, on Websites

Australia, Bhutan, Canada, Cape Verde, China, Denmark, Estonia, France, Israel,Japan, Latvia, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Mozambique, Netherlands, New Zealand,Republic of Korea, Thailand, Ukraine, United Kingdom,United States of America and Viet Nam.

Of Interest to Irish Readers

Ireland ranked 19 (out of 35) in the e-government readiness index and 17th out of 35 for web measurement assessment.

The web measurement assessment looks at how governments are providing egovernment policies, applications and tools to meet the growing needs of their citizens or more e-information, e-services and e-tools. It measures the online presence of national websites, along with those of the ministries of health, education, welfare, labour and finance of each Member State.

One Irish Government project was identified as a Regional best practice, this was the Etenders website: http://www.etenders.gov.ie/

“Ireland has implemented a single portal to centralize government procurement. As a one-stop shop for businesses to work together with the Irish Government, this portal handles tender submissions and vendor registration. The portal provides businesses with a simple two-page set of instructions in its “Suppliers-Getting Started page. Subscribers to this website receive e-mail alerts as new opportunities are published, access to business opportunities with the public sector, and clear and concise information on working with the government.”

Also on a positive point, Ireland listed as 1 of only 20 countries that use RSS to update and involve citizens, the total list included was:
Australia, Austria, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, ElSalvador, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Republic of Korea, Switzerland, Thailand, Togo, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.

Download the full report here:

http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/unpan028607.pdf

In 2008, upcoming next-generation technologies, such as Web 2.0, virtualisation, mobile technologies and biometrics, will take centre stage.

Other top predictions presented and analysed in the study are:

• Infrastructure optimisation and IT resource re-purposing will pick up steam with virtualisation and consolidation strategies;

• “Gov 2.0” will replace “e-Gov” as governments seek to gain additional value from citizen interaction and business transactions;

• Governments will extend ICTs to strengthen national security while striving to ensure the privacy of citizen data. Technologies for disaster recovery efforts, citizenry surveillance and biometrics will still be key

Link to Cio Asia Blog Entry

($1,295.00 USD) …so unfortunately I won’t be reading it but Joe McKendrick at the Fastforward Blog has…

A new report out of Saugatuck Research, for example, declares that “SaaS is now beyond the ‘tipping point .’” The firm’s latest survey of 250 IT executives shows that not only have more than 26 percent of companies installed at least one SaaS application, representing nearly 150 percent year-over-year growth, but resistance has plunged dramatically, in terms of firms that are not planning to deploy SaaS.”…

…Saugatuck calculates that on average, the typical large enterprise now taps into at least three SaaS applications, with one in seven having greater than 10 SaaS applications.”

Read Joe’s full blog entry here:
http://www.fastforwardblog.com/2007/04/03/software-as-a-service-passes-the-tipping-point/

The Report is available for purchase here:
http://www.saugatech.com/342order.htm

The Blurb:

Semantic Wave 2008 Report: Industry Roadmap to Web 3.0 and Multibillion Dollar Market Opportunities. It is the first comprehensive industry study of the next stage of internet evolution — Web 3.0. This landmark 400-page report is written for executives, developers, designers, entrepreneurs, investors, and others who want to better understand semantic technologies, the business opportunities they present, and the ways Web 3.0 will change how we use and experience the internet.

The executive summary (27 pages- the full report is 400 pages long) is available for download from the Project 10x website (you need to register for free to download the summary)

The semantic wave embraces four stages of internet growth. The first stage, Web 1.0, was about connecting information and getting on the net. Web 2.0 is about connecting people — putting the “I” in user interface, and the “we” into Webs of social participation. The next stage, Web 3.0, is starting now. It is about representing meanings, connecting knowledge, and putting these to work in ways that make our experience of internet more relevant, useful, and enjoyable. Web 4.0 will come later. It is about connecting intelligences in a ubiquitous Web where both people and things reason and communicate together.

Project10X’s Semantic Wave 2008 Report tells the story of Web 3.0. Over the next decade, Web 3.0 will spawn multi-billion dollar technology markets that will drive trillion dollar global economic expansions to transform industries as well as our experience of the internet. The Semantic Wave 2008 report examines drivers and market forces for adoption of semantic technologies in Web 3.0 and maps opportunities for investors, technology developers, and public and private enterprises.

http://project10x.com/