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[Issue starts]
E-GOVERNMENT BULLETIN
The Email Newsletter On Electronic Government,
UK And Worldwide.
ISSUE 98, APRIL 2001
IN THIS ISSUE:
Section One: News
Gateway closed to foreign buyers? - government systems sale controversy;
Government in smart card quandary - banks fail to deliver;
Procurement office unveils online tendering;
Treasury banks on Internet savings - the new Invest to Save round;
Go configure - domain name system spring-clean;
'Beyondbricks' runs over deadline - DTI e-entrepreneur portal delayed;
Pathfinders forge ahead - council innovators selected;
News in brief: Public debate online, Age Concern e-politics; Foreign Office
award.
Section Two: Conference report
- Promoting Electronic Government
Section Three: Opinion
- Teledemocracy
Section Four: Analysis
- E-procurement
[End of contents]
GATEWAY CLOSED TO FOREIGN BUYERS?
Media reports that the UK government's 'Gateway' online transaction platform
is to be
sold abroad by private sector firms including Microsoft are being played
down by the
government, amid controversy over the use of public funds to develop a
commercial
package.
Speculation on sales of the package began with the appearance of e-Envoy
Andrew
Pinder alongside Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates at a US conference to
demonstrate the
Gateway to government leaders from across the world.
The government has so far spent 18.3 million UK pounds developing the
Gateway
platform. Because the contract is confidential it is not known exactly what
stake the
government has in the project, although it is expected to invest further
large sums as it
progresses.
A Cabinet Office spokesperson played down the controversy this week. She
told E-
Government Bulletin that although foreign sales could eventually occur,
there was a
clause in the development agreement stipulating that government approval
would be
needed.
The Gateway is based on an 'XML' system allowing information to be given
invisible
tags so it can be easily exchanged. The system has so far been used by the
Inland
Revenue to allow online payments, by the Customs & Excise to deal with VAT
and by
the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to enable farmers to claims
EU subsidies.
Other partners in the Gateway project include Dell, which supplies the
hardware, and
Cable and Wireless, which manages the servers.
GOVERNMENT IN SMART CARD QUANDARY
The government looks set to be forced into funding its own nationwide
smart-card system
to enable secure access to public services including payments online.
Ministers had
hoped to piggyback on a suitable private sector smart card system from the
high street
banks, but are now resigned to the fact that this will not occur.
The news emerged at last week's 'Promoting Electronic Government' (PEG)
conference
in Birmingham. Ian White, deputy director at the Office of the e-Envoy, said
the
government "had been waiting for banks to introduce smart cards or other
authentication
technology but they have not. We are therefore in something of a quandary -
either we
introduce such a system ourselves, perhaps starting by running trials with
public servants,
or we accept what banks accept - simple access cards protected only by a PIN
number
and a security word like a mother's maiden name."
However, White admitted that banks' higher risk thresholds meant they were
happy to
use a simpler and more accessible system like PIN numbers, and simply cover
their
losses to fraud from profits. Public sector bodies, however, could not
accept any
significant levels of risk where citizens' personal health, tax or other
sensitive data was
concerned, and would therefore have to use a more secure system such as a
smart card
system.
A government-led national smart card system will be extremely expensive to
set up, and
will have to be voluntary to avoid charges of 'big brother' style invasion
of privacy.
However, it now seems that the government will have no choice but to act if
it is to meet
its targets for online public services by 2005.
* Full PEG report: see section two, this issue.
PROCUREMENT OFFICE UNVEILS ONLINE TENDERING
The Office of Government Commerce has announced the start of the six-month
trial of an
online tendering system for public sector contracts which it hopes will
produce tax
savings of 13 million UK pounds over four years.
The announcement of the pilot, provisionally called 'OGC TenderTrust', comes
within
days of the office formally taking control of a number of previously
autonomous central
government buying units. On 1 April the former Property Advisors to the
Civil Estate
(PACE), the CCTA, and The Buying Agency - already merged into the OGC but
having
up until now retained their separate identities - ceased to exist. The last
of these has now
been re-branded 'OGCbuying.solutions'.
OGC believes the new tendering system, if it passes the pilot stage, could
reduce costs for
suppliers by 37 million, a figure which it hopes will entice more companies
into the
sector. Many economists believe a larger pool of suppliers results in lower
prices to the
buyer, which in this case would translate into tax savings.
Several other government agencies are taking part in the TenderTrust trial,
of which the
biggest is the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency (PASA), a new executive
agency of
the Department of Health (http://www.pasa.doh.gov.uk)
PASA will use part of its 2.3 billion pounds worth of directly negotiated
NHS contracts
as the testbed for the TenderTrust.
The Internet-based system will use PKI encryption and smartcard-based
digital
certificates, provided and guaranteed by the Royal Bank of Scotland
(http://www.royalbankscot.co.uk) with software company TrustMarque
(http://www.trustmarque.com).
TREASURY BANKS ON INTERNET SAVINGS
Some 67% of the government's new 'Invest to Save' budget - a Treasury-run
scheme to
fund civil service efficiency programmes - is to be spent on
Internet-related projects,
according to E-Government Bulletin research.
Of the 123 projects given funding, some 80 had a significant Internet
element, with a
total value of 41 million UK pounds. Seven of the top ten biggest recipients
had an
Internet element to their proposals. The biggest on all counts was the Home
Office which
received a total of nearly four million pounds to finance the development of
an
interlinked police portal.
Also in the top ten were five locally-led projects, including Kingston
Council in London
which was allocated 3.5 million for a public service portal. Of the budget
as a whole
locally-led projects received 16.7 million pounds, or around 40% of the
budget for
Internet projects.
Below is list of the top ten recipients with a significant Internet element
to their proposal.
For a complete list see:
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/press/2001/p28_01.html
*Home Office, 3.9 million pounds: a national internet portal for the police
*Royal Borough of Kingston, 3.5m: a single access point to public services
in South
West London
*Department of Social Security, 1,9m: services for the elderly via
interactive digital
television
*Department of the Environment, Transport & the Regions, 1.8m: an electronic
interface
for all English councils
*Department of Trade & Industry, 1.5m: online facilities to apply for export
licences
*Office of Fair Trading, 1.5m: a system to support trade regulation
*Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council, 1.3m: online support for independent
living
for older people
*Southern Derbyshire Health Authority, 1.2m: interactive website on drug use
*Liverpool City Council, 1.1m: online services for young people in need,
their parents
and support services
*Worcestershire County Council: 0.9m: online social transport planning
GO CONFIGURE
Government web site owners are being urged to participate in a new campaign
to clean
up the Internet domain name system (DNS), used by computers to route
Internet
communication to recognisable domain names.
All organisations that run their own Internet servers run a piece of
software to route
domains, but it has emerged that most of this software is incorrectly
configured. The
result can be delays to or failure of email delivery, and loopholes that
hackers could
exploit to break into sites.
Christian de Larrinaga, chairman of the Internet Society of England, the
group
spearheading the campaign, said good housekeeping on government servers is
crucial to
the government's drive to portray the UK as a new economy pioneer.
The 'DNS Spring Cleaning' campaign is at:
http://www.domainspringclean.org.uk/
'BEYONDBRICKS' RUNS OVER DEADLINE
The Department of Trade and Industry has been forced to delay the launch of
its portal
for Internet entrepreneurs by two months, E-Government Bulletin has learned.
The DTI
said the site - which should already have gone live - will now go live in
late May.
'Beyondbricks' (http://www.beyondbricks.com), which is being financed as
part of the
DTI's 5.5 million UK pound Internet Mentoring Initiative, will contain
research, news
and an entrepreneur community area. The consortium behind the development
are
venture capital networking company Venturedome (http://www.venturedome.com);
marketing company Wilson Harvey (http://www.wilsonharvey.co.uk); public
sector
grants information company J4b (http://www.j4b.com); and GroovyTrain
(http://www.groovytrain.com), an online community management software
developer.
The DTI has committed itself to investing 1.5 million UK pounds in the
project between
1 January 2001 and the start of 2003. Another three million UK pounds will
be
distributed in tranches of around 100,000 UK pounds to entrepreneurs based
in the north
of the UK. The remaining one million pounds will be paid to the Inland
Revenue in the
form of VAT.
Charlie Hoult, founder of technology incubator Metrocube
(http://www.metrocube.com/)
which is leading the site's development, said Beyondbricks will be marketed
primarily
though a roadshow tour of regional business networking organisations and was
hoping to
have a presence on the Cabinet Office's UKonline portal. Hoult also said he
hoped to co-
operate with the DTI's Small Business Service, which has ambitions to create
a portal for
entrepreneurs in all sectors.
PATHFINDERS FORGE AHEAD
The government has named the 25 successful 'pathfinder' local authority
Internet
projects, which are now eligible for a share of 25 million UK pounds to be
allocated by
the end of 2002. The projects are linked to consortia of councils and
private sector
partners, with more than 100 local authorities involved in all. The winners
were selected
from 140 projects involving 220 councils.
The hunt for pathfinders was initiated by local government minister Hilary
Armstrong in
February 2000. Projects range from e-procurement strategies in Leeds and
London to
electronic payment for public transport and college meals in Southampton and
Cornwall.
Another plan will see the reporting of potholes and faulty street lamps
online.
For more information about these projects see:
http://www.press.detr.gov.uk/0103/0164.htm
NEWS IN BRIEF:
COMMONS GOAL: A new independent virtual debating and consultation chamber
aimed at boosting public input into democracy has been proposed by the
academics Jay
Blumler and Stephen Coleman. `Realising Democracy Online: A Civic Commons in
Cyberspace' is available to download from the publications section of the
Citizens Online
site:
http://www.citizensonline.org.uk/
MATURE POLITICS: The charity Age Concern has launched an e-democracy web
site
aimed at politicising older people. See: http://www.ageaction.org.uk
BEST IN SHOW: The Foreign and Commonwealth Office was named best government
web site at the Government Internet Forum web awards. Thirty-eight sites
were
nominated. See: http://www.internetforum.gov.uk/awards.htm
[Section One ends]
SECTION TWO: CONFERENCE REPORT
- PROMOTING ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT
COLLABORATION HANGING ON PEG
By Dan Jellinek [log in to unmask]
A lack of collaboration between local authorities to create 'joined-up'
public services on
the Internet was exposed by last month's Promoting Electronic Government
(PEG)
conference in Birmingham.
PEG (http://www.peg.org.uk) is a consortium of government, local authority
and private
sector organisations partially backed by Treasury 'Invest to Save' money. It
is developing
tools and networks to help councils develop e-government strategies.
Ian White, deputy director of the e-Envoy's office
(http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk), said
there was currently a strong need for more peer-to-peer networking among
councils to
develop online services.
He said his office's first review of councils' e-government strategies, due
to be published
shortly, would expose this failure. "Sometimes one council said that it was
working with
another, but there was no mention of that in the other council's strategy!"
One option thrown up in later discussion was for regional assemblies to play
a role in
bringing councils in an area together to join up online services more.
The PEG initiative grew out of a project called 'BICIS' - 'Benchmarking in
Community
Information Services' - which originated with the former Local Government
Management Board in conjunction with the 'EIP Group' of councils (another
acronym
standing for Exchanging Information with the Public - see
http://www.eipdg.org) led by
the consultants CDW & Associates.
To this alphabet soup of acronyms some Treasury money was added and the
result was
PEG, a project which came of age in Birmingham with a strong turn-out of
people from
councils across the UK and private sector partners.
The project is working on a series of benchmarking tools to help councils
assess where
they are in developing an e-government strategy and make progress towards
moving all
their information and services online.
A core group of nine PEG councils has been formed to share best practice in
areas like
the management of one-stop call centres for council services.
Tracy Fielding, Assistant Director, Financial Support at PEG core group
member Bolton
Metropolitan Borough Council, had interesting insights to offer in this
field.
Bolton set up a centre allowing public help staff to draw on data by
switching between
six or seven different computer systems for different council services,
ranging from fairly
advanced systems to an old 'green screen' system for council tax, Fielding
said.
The service was centralised, but manned by existing customer services staff
from the
different relevant bits of the organisation. However, this was not a
success, she said: of
the staff used, less than half took to the new roles well, and the remainder
suffered from
high stress levels and failed in their work.
"In future, we would centralise but we would tell departments that we would
not be using
their staff, but recruiting new staff."
Another 'real world' lesson came from Tim Anderson, Single Point of Access
Co-
ordinator at Norfolk County Council. He pointed out that, while pilot
e-government
schemes like call centres were relatively inexpensive, full roll-out across
a council would
mean major expenditure, even if savings were to be expected in the long run.
"Now we've got four call centres, everyone wants one, and we can't deliver
that without
savings in other parts of the organisation," he said.
Another major strand of the PEG project is a re-examination of procurement
processes
for technology products and services. Richard Steel, Head of IT at Newham
Borough
Council which has used PEG to overhaul its procurement processes, said one
of the
difficulties with procuring e-government services is that "we are evaluating
'vapourware'
- it is hard to see where we will be with technology in two years' time, let
alone within a
five-year contract or a 25-year PFI deal."
He said councils could obtain a better deal from suppliers if they worked
together through
initiatives like PEG. "We turn ourselves in 400 or 500 separate markets,
whereas in
reality there is one market for e-government solutions. Suppliers also want
to sell us
piecemeal solutions, like how to pay parking tickets online, when what you
actually need
is to develop the back-room processes to pay for everything online, such as
credit
checking and authentication."
One delegate strongly agreed: "I think we are being completely and utterly
manipulated
by the IT industry".
On the other hand, councils must be careful to avoid a situation where by
grouping
together to increase buying power they exclude smaller suppliers, Steel
said. "It is also
important to encourage local suppliers."
The PEG project now plans to increase its membership from its current core
of nine to 50
councils by the end of April and a further 50-75 in September, said Roger
Wilson,
Principal Consultant at project leader CDW & Associates. So by the end of
the year more
than 100 councils should be involved, grouped in regional 'clusters', and
backed up with
web-based project support.
Another aim for PEG is to develop a 'good practice database' of e-government
case
studies, Wilson said. It had originally hoped to have this facility running
by now, but it
had proved a major task to put the studies into a standard format and it
would now be
delayed until May.
All the project's strands will be drawn together at a further conference in
March 2002.
[Section Two ends]
SECTION THREE: OPINION
-TELEDEMOCRACY
THE DAY OF THE BUREAUCRATS
By Ignace Snellen [log in to unmask]
It is a common contention that the representation of people by
parliamentarians, members
of Congress and local councillors has been a second-rate democratic
arrangement. Robert
Dahl, a well-known American thinker on democracy, once characterised
representative
democracy as "a sorry substitute for the real thing".
The common complaints over existing democratic arrangements are said to be
that
members of representative assemblies represent partisan interests under the
guise of the
general interest; that representatives tend to follow only their own partial
understanding
of what is good for their constituencies; and that they are more responsive
to the
requirements of the political party they belong to than to the citizens
whose mandate they
have received.
Since their introduction, information and communications technologies have
helped
expose the failings of the traditional representational arrangements. They
have done this
by making the distortions and misrepresentations of the preferences of the
electorate
more visible.
The growing popularity of referenda and other forms of interactive
policy-making shows
that people have a preference for direct democratic arrangements over the
existing
representative arrangements. As well as highlighting representational
democracies
shortcomings, the new technologies also show promise as a means of
delivering direct
democracy. Internet technology already allows for continuous opinion
polling, instant
referenda, teleconferencing, digital cities and discussion groups.
But technology is no panacea. The promise of direct democracy through
technology
cannot be fulfilled for two important reasons:
First, direct democracy would lead to a single-issue approach. Successive
majorities on
single issues would lead to incompatible policies within and between
sectors. The
complexities of policies require intermittent and iterative decision cycles,
which are not
feasible through referenda.
Second, most political problems cannot be reasonably tackled by asking
questions with a
simple 'yes' or 'no' answer, in the manner of opinion polls and referenda.
Unless direct
democratic mechanisms take into account the relative intensity with which
opinions are
felt they would introduce a dictatorship of successive majorities.
So just as technology-driven direct democracy offers no real solution to the
need to
legitimise representative democracy, 'technological fixes' seem unlikely to
increase
participation. It seems unlikely that people will flock to the polling
booth, just because
they are offered the opportunity to cast their vote close to the shopping
centre or their
office.
The information society depends on government agencies gaining a clearer
picture of the
everyday life of the citizens, displacing their traditional focus on
understanding
politicians.
As a result of the bureaucracy's new tack, citizens are beginning to
interact with public
servants directly, without intermediation from politicians. Politicians too
are relying more
heavily on the expertise of the technology-enabled bureaucracy. In this way,
public
servants are taking on a representative role.
Democracy as it is now being practiced is built up from two different
channels of
democratic participation: one via elected representatives, and one via
non-elected
bureaucrats. But existing theories of democracy ignore this representative
function of
bureaucracy, with the only intermediaries recognised by most formulations of
democracy
being political parties and special interest groups.
As long as formal democracy theory practically excludes discussion about the
representative potentialities and actual representative roles of
bureaucracies, unelected
officials have the potential to marginalise political representatives.
Any future formulation of democracy which takes account of the expanding
role of the
civil servant will almost certainly require that bureaucracies are
completely open about
the way in which they develop and implement policies. Untrammelled access to
data used
in the drafting of policies and the data created during their implementation
is likely to
become a cornerstone.
*Ignace Snellen is a Professor at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The
Netherlands. This
article is based on the paper 'ICTs and the future of democracy' from the
International
Journal of Communications and Law (http://www.ijclp.org)
[Section Three ends]
SECTION FOUR: ANALYSIS
- E-PROCUREMENT
CREATIVE BUSINESS MODELS AND TOUGH CHOICES
By Dan Jellinek [log in to unmask]
Public-private partnerships for the provision of e-government services are
unavoidable.
As Ian Kearns, Research Fellow in Digital Society at the Institute for
Public Policy
Research, explains: "The range of skills and expertise required to turn
national
government into digital government is enormous, and the government simply
doesn't
have all the skills in house to do the job.
"There is no shame in this. We live in an era when corporate alliances are
multiplying for
precisely the same reason: it is increasingly difficult for any organisation
to meet all its
client needs without working in close partnership with others. The crucial
issue from the
citizen's point of view is not whether partnerships should happen or not but
under what
conditions they should happen. Ultimately, the most important point is that
whoever
delivers the service to the citizen does so in a transparent and clearly
accountable way."
Major public-private partnerships for e-government can be complex affairs,
with many
elements beyond the mere provision of technology.
One innovative way councils can take the lead in stimulating a switched-on
local
economy in their area is to set up an environment through which their own
procurement
of goods and services from local businesses takes place online. This
stimulates local
businesses to expand their online activity.
Ultimately the precise shape of a public-private partnership and the
allocation of the
parties' respective roles will be determined by the way the relationship is
financed, says
David Mitchell, Head Of Regional Strategy at BT.
There may be an element of funding from the public sector body, or the
private sector
partner may put in money to develop a service which could be commercially
successful
elsewhere. Other resources could come from Europe, and each line of funding
creates a
line of control and a set of particular operating conditions.
"In a true partnership the parties share risk," Mitchell says. "The precise
rules attached to
funding elements will determine which partners rise to the top and take a
lead role. For
example, if you're talking about a partnership to tackle the digital divide,
an organisation
from the voluntary sector is likely to take the lead.
"But if you are looking at a training or knowledge transfer project,
colleges and
universities would be likely to lead. After the lead partner has emerged,
you need to look
at what is needed to put a funding bid together. The art of it is to find
creative and
innovative business models."
Even after funding has been secured from Europe, central government or
another source,
it is always time-limited, and there will therefore be a further problem to
solve of how the
project continues by becoming self-sustaining after the funding period.
"Running them during the funding period is relatively easy - but it is much
harder to fund
projects that carry on after that period," Mitchell says. "So at the outset,
you need to work
out what happens when the funding stops. Some private partners are only
there as long as
there is honey dripping from the tree, but disappear when it dries up."
One example of a complex partnership currently underway is the 'Digital
Peninsula
Network' in Cornwall (there is a web site in development for the project at
http://www.digitalpeninsula.com).
The initiative has involvement from the EU's structural fund, Cornwall
County Council,
district councils such as Penwith and Kerrier, Prosper
(http://www.prosper.co.uk) and
private sector firms including BT, Cisco Systems, Nortel and Hewlett
Packard.
The idea is to foster an 'e-community' to promote inward investment in new
media
industries and support geographically isolated small businesses by creating
an interactive
network for them.
Mitchell says the partners in the programme are looking to solve the
post-European-
funding period problem in Cornwall by setting up a not-for-profit
stakeholding
organisation to lead the partnership.
The stake-holding organisation will generate revenue through innovative
business models
which spread resources across periods of high and low funding, and use this
revenue to
stimulate and sustain activities not commercially viable under normal rates
of return or
pay-back periods.
One of the key goals of local partnerships, particularly in areas with
weaker economies
like Cornwall, is also to encourage and stimulate economic activity among
indigenous
companies, Mitchell says.
"For example, if the stake-holding organisation was looking to outsource an
aspect of the
work, it should be looking at how it could use a local company. In this way
it can leave a
legacy to the area, by nurturing local small and medium-sized businesses.
"Large private companies involved in a partnership like this, which are also
major local
employers, have a dual responsibility to juggle corporate and social
responsibilities with
commercial responsibilities to shareholders," he says.
Finally, looking at central government, there is another way that the public
sector can
benefit from close working with private sector partners to develop
e-government: by
drafting in key individuals on secondment to senior civil service posts to
inject a bit of
real-world grit into policy implementation.
Although New Labour has pursued this policy further than any other
government, with
businesspeople on secondment to key innovation and technology-related teams
like the
Performance and Innovation Unit in the Cabinet Office and the Office of
Government
Commerce in the Treasury, such arrangements do not always work out well.
"There can
be a level of suspicion and a clash of cultures which is
counter-productive," says Ian
Kearns.
"Secondments also mask a further problem which has been brought into sharp
relief by
the digital revolution. The government needs to attract more high quality
people. This
would help in technical positions to prevent some of the IT procurement
disasters of
recent years. To get the people though, the government needs to consider
paying much
more."
So it all boils down to funding - another tough choice for Tony Blair in his
second term?
[Section Four ends]
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[Issue ends]
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