From: Dan Jellinek [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Friday, September 28, 2001 5:07 PM
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Subject: E-Government Bulletin - October 2001
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[Issue starts]
E-GOVERNMENT BULLETIN
The Email Newsletter On Electronic Government,
UK And Worldwide.
ISSUE 104, OCTOBER 2001
IN THIS ISSUE:
Section one: News
'Unsatisfactory' e-government statement councils named
- E-Government Bulletin lists the 20 authorities
Compatibility concerns over digital 'mastermap'
- Ordnance Survey's most advanced system to date
Government urged to build broadband infrastructure
- Ministers must accept responsibility, advisor says
Access to information on the rise
- requests made under the code of practice up 23 per cent
Pilot scheme for wired post offices
- 30 million pound Leicestershire pilot
Future Health Bulletin launched
- Headstar unveils new monthly email newsletter
Commonwealth online initiative underway
- web site promotes best practice in electronic governance
News in brief:
- FITLOG guides on electronic local government; UNESCO
recommendation on equal access; E-voting and electronic council tax
billing; Research assistance sought.
Section two: Focus
- US crisis: patchy online response to terror attacks
Section three: Case study
- Becta: agency spearheads drive for online education.
Section four: Analysis
- E-prescriptions: trials set to explore ways of stamping out prescription
fraud.
[End of contents]
NEWS:
'UNSATISFACTORY' E-GOVERNMENT STATEMENT COUNCILS
NAMED
The identities of the six per cent of UK local authorities whose
'implementing electronic government' statements have been deemed
unsatisfactory by the Department of Transport, Local Government and
the Regions have been discovered by E-Government Bulletin.
The councils - due to be formally notified by letter from the in the next
few days - are likely to miss out on a share of a central e-government
fund worth 350 million pounds.
For the purposes of the confidential internal exercise to vet the
documents, all IEG statements were 'scored' by the DTLR from one to
four stars. Some 20 councils obtained an 'unsatisfactory' score of one
star, namely Bath & North East Somerset unitary council; Berwick-upon-
Tweed, Bromsgrove, Chorley, Dartford, Hinckley and Bosworth,
Harrogate, East Staffordshire, Kings Lynn & West Norfolk, Maidstone,
Mid Bedfordshire, North Dorset, Ribble Valley, Rugby, South Bucks,
Tonbridge and Malling, Tunbridge Wells, Vale of White Horse and
Wealden District Councils; and Bury Metropolitan Borough Council.
Three councils have yet to submit an IEG statement at all: the Council of
the Isles of Scilly; and Epping Forest and North Dorset District Councils.
And a further 30% of councils have been asked to carry out 'further
significant work' on their statements - thought largely to involve more
detailed costing of proposals - before they can be reconsidered for a
share of the implementation fund.
Meanwhile more than 80 other councils which are debt-free could be
denied the chance to benefit from the money if it is made available in the
form of borrowing approvals, rather than cash.
Discussions are ongoing between the Treasury and the DTLR on how the
assistance will be offered. The DTLR favours cash but the Treasury
would prefer credit approvals, which spread the impact on the public
purse.
However for councils that are debt-free and have cash reserves credit
approvals are effectively worthless.
All in all, councils and government have pronounced themselves happy
with the IEG process, citing the 99% response in producing statements
and the high approval rate as proof that councils are taking charge of
their own e-government strategies and are set to hit the government's
targets for bringing public services online.
COMPATIBILITY CONCERNS OVER DIGITAL 'MASTERMAP'
As Ordnance Survey, the UK's national mapping agency, gears up for
launch of its most advanced digital mapping system to date, concerns are
emerging over its compatibility with the existing national local
government geographic database.
MasterMap (http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business/) is a 'seamless,
flexible and intelligent' topographic database covering every building,
field, and detail down to the level of a railway signal or post box. OS
says it will allow councils to join up other maps and geographical
information and create more opportunities for data sharing within local
government.
The agency has a long-standing service level agreement with all UK
local authorities to provide a range of digital data as they need it and
this
will include access to MasterMap from its release in November.
However, one leading local authority mapping expert told E-Government
Bulletin that the new system is incompatible with the main existing
system used by councils, the National Land And Property Gazetteer
(http://www.idea-infoage.gov.uk/nlapg.html) developed by the local
government Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA).
The gazetteer uses 'unique property reference numbers' to catalogue
each reference point whereas MasterMap uses more than 400 million
'unique topographic identifiers' known as TOIDs.
"The two different systems will cause problems for councils and
software suppliers in terms of data structure and aggregation", the source
said. "Ordnance Survey has produced a system based on what they see as
the real world, not what local authorities think is the real world.
Although it's generally accepted that the world and his dog will want it
I'm not sure I agree - all the land I'm interested in, we have defined
already."
Ordnance Survey says it has designed the new system to be
complementary with the old, and is working with IDeA and Powys
County Council - an early adopter of MasterMap - on the detail of
compatibility.
Beyond Powys other councils are gearing up to merge the two systems.
David Yarwood, Property and Land Applications Project Manager at the
Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea says the borough is planning
to use MasterMap.
"One of our first priorities will be linking our land and property gazetteer
to it. This has always been point-based and the hope is that MasterMap
will help us to more readily visualise and distribute information about
property."
GOVERNMENT URGED TO BUILD BROADBAND
INFRASTRUCTURE
Ministers must accept responsibility for creating a national broadband
Internet infrastructure, according to a leading member of the government
advisory Broadband Stakeholders Group (BSG), which last week
published its first official report.
Fred Perkins, Chief Executive of The Stationery Office and a member of
the BSG executive, told E-Government Bulletin: "Rather than just
grandiose longterm visions which nobody knows how to deliver, the
government need to find piecemeal approaches that will build towards
the big vision. But to identify and underpin them, they need to accept
that infrastructure has to be put in place first.
"Hence, maybe say that education and health would be key first stages.
For the latter, this would suggest a commitment that the entire health
infrastructure, from hospitals to GP surgeries and beyond, needs to be
broadband enabled. Only then will the really interesting pilots begin to
surface."
Local government needed a similar commitment from the centre to fund
the basic infastructure for broadband project, Perkins said.
"Government is pushing hard to encourage and help local authorities to
do e-things, but local authorities don't generally have the backbone IT
and telecommunications infrastructure to support decent initiatives, and
funding is generally not available for infrastructure. You can't readily
run pilots or services in isolation.
"So government needs to accept that the inevitability of ubiquity of
broadband within public sector requires commitment to build the public
sector broadband infrastructure even though specific applications aren't
there today".
The new report contains a series of other recommendations for
government action to stimulate the development of broadband content,
including the allocation of 100 million UK pounds in 'electronic learning
credits' for schools - money earmarked for the purchase of educational
broadband content, shared out as 2,000 pounds per primary school and
10,000 pounds per secondary school.
This would be "a real incentive to content creators to address the market,
and so begin the virtuous circle of demand-supply-usage-demand",
Perkins said. "It would give the choice to teachers, in contrast with a
'digital curriculum' approach dictated by the centre, with a monopoly
supplier like the BBC, which would destroy the market incentive".
In general the government's role will be vital in boosting broadband,
Perkins said. "Government will undoubtedly be a major user of
broadband itself, and a major provider of services needing broadband, so
it has both a supply and demand side involvement, and the ability to
kick-start the process".
ACCESS TO INFORMATION ON THE RISE
The number of requests made under the 1994 code of practice on access
to government information increased last year by around 23 per cent to
6,000, and levels of requests refused fell to 18 per cent from 29 per cent
the previous year, according to the Lord Chancellor's latest monitoring
report (http://www.lcd.gov.uk/foi/codprac00/).
The code obliges some 50,000 public bodies and government
departments including local councils to disclose any information they
hold to individuals or organisations who request it, wth exceptions
covering national security and advice to ministers. The data in the report
covers only those requests that make reference to the code of practice
itself or those that have been paid for.
The code is to be replaced by the Freedom of Information Act, for which
an implementation timetable is due to be published some time soon after
Parliament reconvenes in October and before a 25 November deadline.
The timetable will work towards full implementation by 2005.
A spokesperson for the Lord Chancellor's Department said new anti-
terrorism measures under consideration by the government would not
affect implementation of the act, which already has sufficient exemptions
in place to protect national security.
PILOT SCHEME FOR WIRED POST OFFICES
Post offices in Leicestershire are to be turned into online public
information centres in a 30 million UK pound pilot project funded by the
government in partnership with Consignia, the former Post Office.
Touch-screen kiosks in nearly 300 post offices in the county will offer
information sourced from nearly 100 public and private sector partners
including all local authorities in the area; the Department for Work and
Pensions, the Department for Education and Skills, Inland Revenue,
voluntary bodies like Age Concern, private sector bodies like
Upmystreet.com.
The information is not provided over the Internet but held on a self-
contained central database system hosted by ICL. If the exercise is
successful the government will decide whether to roll out a similar
scheme nationwide.
In a separate move the Ofice of Government Commerce
(http://www.ogc.gov.uk) has signed a memorandum of understanding
with Consignia committing them to work together in key business areas.
FUTURE HEALTH BULLETIN LAUNCHED
Headstar, the publisher of E-Government Bulletin, has unveiled a new
monthly email newsletter on the use of the internet and other new
technologies in the health care sector - Future Health Bulletin.
Its first issue went out this month, with coverage including a report of the
online debate Future Health Forum. The report found that the efficient
deployment of new communications technologies across the NHS is
being threatened by a failure to train staff in basic computer literacy.
For more information see:
http://www.headstar.com/futurehealth
And to receive a monthly copy of the health newsletter send a blank
email to [log in to unmask] for the HTML version or
[log in to unmask] for the plain text version.
* See also section four, this issue.
COMMONWEALTH ONLINE INITIATIVE UNDERWAY
A delayed online initiative to promote best practice in electronic
governance and e-democracy was launched last month by the
Commonwealth group of nations.
The Commonwealth Centre for Electronic Governance
(http://www.electronicgov.net) is targeted more at developing countries
than the Commonwealth 'Big Four' - Australia, New Zealand, Canada
and the US, according to the centre's chief executive Professor Tom
Riley (See E-Government Bulletin issue 87).
NEWS IN BRIEF:
FITLOG GUIDES: A new report on electronic local government and a
guide to how information technology can be used to support new local
political arrangements are due to be published on 1 October by The
Foundation for Electronic Local Government:
http://www.fitlog.com/
The UN cultural body UNESCO is to present a recommendation to its
general conference in October on common international principles of
equitable and affordable access to the Internet and online
multilingualism. It has also opened an online debate forum on these
issues:
http://www.unesco.org/webworld/mul_recom/
BILLING AND VOTING: The Department of Transport, local
Government and the Regions has published a consultation paper on
improving the council tax system, including proposals for electronic
billing:
http://www.local.dtlr.gov.uk/finance/ctax/consult/index.htm
The department also announced it is backing an Electoral Commission-
led project to research the prospects for online voting:
http://www.press.dtlr.gov.uk/0109/0400.htm
RESEARCH ASSISTANCE: Canadian consultant Dwight Herperger is
undertaking an international study of the 'governance of e-government' -
the policy, strategy and management dimensions of e-government - and
is seeking e-government practitioners or academics willing to be
interviewed for the work as well as online demonstrations of Internet-
enabled government services in any country. Email:
[log in to unmask]
[Section one ends]
SECTION TWO: FOCUS
- US CRISIS
PATCHY ONLINE RESPONSE TO TERROR ATTACKS
by Dan Jellinek [log in to unmask]
In the aftermath of the terrorist assaults on America of 11 September, the
US and UK governments attempted to use the Internet's global
communications potential to keep people informed and publish official
statements and offers of assistance.
In the UK the results were and are patchy, with good basic information
available to citizens online pretty quickly but little in the way of real
innovation and even less outside the main central government agencies.
The best presentation of official news, statements and lines of support for
British citizens on the US disasters can be found at the authoritative
Prime Ministerial web site (http://www.number-10.gov.uk).
The site's home page is news-focused and a week after the events still
dominated by a wide range of useful information on the attacks including
hotline numbers for friends and relatives of possible victims and the
Prime Minister's responses and latest statements. You can also receive
news of the latest developments by email by registering for the site's
email update service and selecting 'international' as your news
preference.
The Foreign Office web site (http://www.fco.gov.uk) - one of the first to
be developed in UK government and still one of the most innovative,
with full site customisation features - is also very strong on the latest
news and support information. This includes its famous online travel
advice, for which users can register for updates by email sent out
instantly whenver advice on travel to a particular country changes.
The main cross-government web portal UK Online handles the affair
competently, with a home page link to vital information including the
hotline number and UK and US government statements.
Beyond these three sites the offerings are thinner, however. The Ministry
of Defence site
(http://www.mod.uk) carries limited information beyond a message of
condolences to victims of the disaster and a link to a relevant speech
from the defence secretary.
At the time of writing the Home Office (http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/)
had no reference to the events on its home page, or of counter-terrorism
on its new Crime Reduction sub-site at
(http://www.crimereduction.gov.uk).
Smaller agencies which might perhaps have been expected to comment
on events from their perspectives such as the signal intelligence body
GCHQ (http://www.gchq.gov.uk) and its electronic security sub-division
CE-SG (http://www.cesg.gov.uk) also make no mention of recent events;
the CESG site, indeed, seems outdated with a copyright notice from 2000
and the last news posted in April 2001.
However GCHQ/CE-SG is one of various security bodies behind the
UNIRAS service (http://www.uniras.gov.uk), the Unified Reporting and
Alert Scheme, which issues alerts and warning about technology security
threats. UNIRAS has been kept up to date with the latest alerts relating to
hacker groups and virus threats which are suspected of being related in
any way to the terrorist attacks of 11 September.
Threats include the danger of systems in the UK being caught up, either
inadvertently or because they are perceived to have islamic extremist
links, in 'denial of service' hacker attacks launched by vigilante-style
'patriot hackers' in the west.
The home page of the Civil Aviation Authority site
(http://www.caa.co.uk) is silent on the effects of recent events on
aviation in the UK, although the BAA site (http://www.baa.co.uk/) does
have this kind of information, but is not a government body.
All in all, while the main government sites at the heart of the crisis do
provide the basic support and policy information one would expect, none
are using the Internet in more innovative ways for example by offering
email alert services for possible future security crises. In the US the FBI
(http://www.fbi.gov) does have a special site inviting people to send in
information relevant to the terrorism enquiries; plus its online version of
the famous '10 most wanted' list which includes one Usama Bin Laden
(http://www.fbi.gov/mostwant/topten/fugitives/laden.htm).
The FBI also runs an equivalent service to UNIRAS from its National
Infrastructure Protection Center (http://www.nipc.gov), which was the
first to pick up on reports of new forms of computer virus that purported
to be files with pictures or other information about the terrorist attacks.
The US federal government has a good online gateway to all its defence-
related sites at http://www.defenselink.mil and this is a good place to
start looking for the latest US military statements. For an excellent
overview of how US government sites in general responded to the
immediate aftermath of events on 11 September, see the article 'Fed sites
silent on attacks' from the publication Federal Computer Week:
http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2001/0910/web-sites-09-11-01.asp
The UK Security Service MI5 has no official response to events on its
site (http://www.mi5.gov.uk) although a tract on the threat to the UK
from terrorism, posted up well before the recent attacks, does make
interesting reading in the light of developments
(http://www.mi5.gov.uk/th1.htm).
It says that in the fight against terrorism, "In an open and democratic
society, the initial advantage is likely to lie with the terrorists. In
particular, there are limits to what can be done to prevent attacks which
are planned and launched from abroad. The Service's principal objective
is therefore, over time, to erode the capacity of terrorist groups to
initiate
and sustain campaigns against British interests and those of Britain's
allies. There have been significant successes - many of them invisible to
the public - in preventing acts of terrorism both in the UK and abroad".
* A version of this article was published first on IT-Director.com, the
news service for IT decision-makers from Bloor Research.
[Section two ends]
SECTION THREE: CASE STUDY
- BECTA
AGENCY SPEARHEADS ONLINE EDUCATION REVOLUTION
With the publication last month of figures showing more than 99 per cent
of secondary schools are now connected to the Internet (see EGB,
September 2001), the key issue for educational bodies is no longer how
to gain internet access but how to use it to pupils' best advantage.
In seeking to answer this question schools, further education and
community learning organisations are likely to turn to the British
Educational Communications and Technology Agency, more commonly
known as Becta.
The Coventry-based agency - an arm's length body with charitable status
- is not high-profile, but despite a staff of just 100 has spearheaded the
development of the National Grid for Learning, one of the largest web
portal projects in the public sector.
The grid (http://www.ngfl.gov.uk), a vast database of online resources
for teachers, parents, students and governors, is managed by Becta under
a four-year plan which comes to an end in 2002. A new phase is
currently under development.
Through its own web site (http://www.becta.org.uk) the agency provides
a wide range of information, advice and support for the education sector
on how to use new technologies including its database of educational
software (BESD), with information on thousands of packages
(http://besd.becta.org.uk/).
Another key element of its work is the Teachers Online Project
(http://top.ngfl.gov.uk), which grew out of the 1998 multimedia laptop
computers for teachers scheme whereby 4,000 schools received free
portable computers to investigate how technology could support
teaching.
This group of teachers was supported by a brief monthly email
newsletter, and when the project finished in 1999 Becta decide to
continue the newsletter and some of the other services it was providing to
the group, at the same time opening up membership to all.
The project now has around 11,000 members, mostly teachers in the UK
but also a growing number of companies and overseas teachers. The
newsletter's content has been expanded beyond coverage of Becta's own
work to general issues relating to education and technology, plus
information on educational themes relating to content on its web site -
October's is 'space', to tie in with national space week.
Becta has also for some time hosted and managed a range of online
discussion groups which are popular among teachers, on topics ranging
from special educational needs to 'ICT in Practice'. And in a new
development, the agency is planning to run a free online conference on
the Teachers Online site from 20-22 November 2001, with registration
open in October.
Schools, further education and community learning bodies are also being
invited to enter their web sites for the next annual Becta/The Guardian
educational web site awards, which has a closing date of closing date of
31 jan 2002 (see http://www.becta.org.uk/schools/websiteawards/).
"Most schools are now online, so the key issues are not around
infrastructure so much - although there will always be ongoing
sustainability and management issues to address - but how technology
can be used, and what is the best content, for teaching and learning, to
enrich the learning process and help raise standards", says Teachers
Online Project Manager Nathan Dodd.
What must always be remembered is that the Internet is not an end in
itself for learning, he says, but a means for enhancing existing teaching
and learning processes.
"The internet is a communications mechanism that puts teachers and
students in touch with real experiences and real people - if used
appropriately, it can enrich and develop the learning process for all age
groups".
[Section three ends]
SECTION FOUR: ANALYSIS
- E-PRESCRIPTIONS
WAR WAGED ON DRUGS BUREAUCRACY AND FRAUD
by Phil Cain [log in to unmask]
The paper-based drug prescription system in the UK has long been
dogged by fraud and inefficiency. Next month, three electronic
prescription trials are set to explore ways of using technology to tighten
up the system and stamp out the abuses and excessive bureaucracy seen
currently.
In March this year the Department of Health chose three projects from a
shortlist of five named in December last year. The winners were
Transcript, a consortium comprising five companies including BT,
Lloyds Pharmacy and Unichem; a scheme led by online pharmacist
Pharmacy2u; and another bringing together software giants Sema and
Microsoft, and UK chemist chain Boots.
All three use encryption to securely sign and transmit instructions
between doctor, pharmacist and Prescription Pricing Authority (PPA),
the administrative authority for prescriptions. They will all also use a
framework XML document developed by the DoH; notify the PPA when
medicines are prescribed by a doctor and when they are dispensed by the
chemist; and make a point of providing an efficient way to deal with
repeat prescriptions.
Where they differ, however, is the way in which they deal with repeat
and acute prescriptions, and way they pass on prescription requests to the
pharmacist. Whereas TranScript and Pharmacy2U send messages
directly to nominated chemists, the Sema-led consortium sends them via
an intermediary. For schematic diagrams of the proposed systems of
information exchange see http://www.ppa.org.uk/news/etp.htm
Despite the DoH's refusal to say exactly how much it has spent and plans
to spend on the project, e-prescribing is widely reckoned to be an
enormous cost saver. Some 5.6 billion UK pounds of prescription
medicines are dispensed each year, meaning that even small percentage
cost reductions will generate substantial savings.
The system may not only cut down on inefficient paperwork, but could
help reduce the level of prescription fraud, one of the most prevalent
forms of crime in the NHS. Despite the NHS's best efforts, the National
Audit Office reported in July this year that pharmacists were involved in
over a quarter of the 484 fraud cases it was investigating at the time.
In late 1998 the DoH committed itself to halving the level of prescription
charge evasion by the end of 2003. The extra level of security offered by
electronic prescriptions, which rely on electronic signatures, could help
meet this target.
As well as being one of the great strengths of any e-prescriptions system,
electronic signatures could also cause a minor hiccup. Before the trial
can proceed legislation must be passed giving consent for electronic
signatures to be used in this way. The legislation will be included in the
latest round of annual NHS Regulations, which are scheduled to be given
the all clear when Parliament reconvenes after the summer.
The DoH is currently hammering out final agreements with each of the
consortia estimating the level of savings it expects the systems to deliver.
After the trials are completed cost-benefit analyses of each will be
conducted by staff at the University of Newcastle.
Success is not guaranteed - if none of the projects hit their targets, the
department says it could conceivably result in the scrapping of all three
systems and another contest to conduct trials. With more money lost
every day under the current inefficient system, everyone involved is
hoping it will not come to this.
* This article is reproduced from the first issue of Future Health Bulletin,
a new sister publication to E-Government Bulletin covering the use of
new technologies in health care. To subscribe to the HTML version send
a blank email to [log in to unmask] or for the plain
text version email [log in to unmask]
For further information see:
http://www.headstar.com/futurehealth
[Section four ends]
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Copyright 2001 Headstar Ltd
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PERSONNEL:
Editor - Dan Jellinek [log in to unmask]
Deputy Editor - Phil Cain [log in to unmask]
Reporter - Tamara Fletcher [log in to unmask]
A searchable archive of our back-issues can be found on our web site.
[Issue ends]
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