From: Phil Cain [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 11 June 2002 13:13
To: egovbulletin
Subject: E-Government Bulletin - 11 June 2002
* E-GOVERNMENT BULLETIN.
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UK And Worldwide.
* ISSUE 115, TUESDAY 11 JUNE 2002.
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* CONTENTS:
Section one: News:
Mather's laws decry 'matchstick towers'
- e-Envoy's e-delivery chief speaks out.
Inland Revenue's troubles of its own devising?
- Gateway cleared.
E-voting technology responsibilities unclear
- uncertainty arises from Cabinet reshuffle.
UK libraries free to choose software filters
- literary debate seems unlikely.
Second funding round for Scotland
- round 16.5 million.
European Commission adopts action plan
- next stop Seville.
News in brief: Wrexham double winner; Information recycling in
Europe; Remote working survey.
Section two: Focus - social housing.
- Moving stories: Social housing tenants have built numerous
online communities to help people organise home exchanges. Phil
Cain finds out why they think they're better than the official
alternatives.
Section three: Technology - search engines.
- Finding solutions for local government: Posting government
information on a web site is one thing, but its no use if citizens
can't find it. Derek Parkinson investigates some of the search
software currently in use.
Section four: Debate report - gender and development.
- When people are more important than machines: Is IT able to help
alleviate the extreme rural poverty of developing countries?
Tamara Fletcher reports on an online debate that hopes to find the
answer.
[Contents ends.]
* SECTION ONE: NEWS
* MATHER'S LAWS DECRY 'MATCHSTICK TOWERS'.
The government is in danger of reproducing its over-
compartmentalised, department-based structure on the web,
according to one of the leading architects of its web policy.
Alan Mather, head of e-delivery at the Office of the e-Envoy, told
delegates at a London conference last month that the government's
current working methods resembled "lots of matchstick Eiffel
towers dotted around - they look lovely but they aren't actually
doing much.
"Now we are in danger of repeating this on the web, with already
some 2,138 '.gov.uk' sites, no sign of critical mass, no common
design, limited transactions and no customer focus."
He unveiled 'Mather's laws' of e-government which included "the
number of technical solutions implemented by departments to solve
identical problems quadruples every twelve months", and "80 per
cent of the money spent on e-government to date has been spent on
things the customer never sees".
Some good things are happening but a far greater degree of
consistency was needed across government, he said. "If you use
Microsoft products you always know where the save function is.
But across government web sites you don't know where to look to
find forms, or search functions, for example."
He said the way forward was for convergence across government
on common systems and applications, with departments co-
operating to solve problems. There was also a need for a far greater
number of compelling, citizen-focused services to drive take-up,
although "there is probably no single 'critical app' - you need more
clusters or packages of useful, transactional services, perhaps with
private services too".
Mather was speaking at Electronic Government Forum, the six-
monthly conference hosted by the publishers of E-Government
Bulletin. His presentation can be downloaded from:
http://www.electronic-government.com
* INLAND REVENUE'S TROUBLES OF ITS OWN DEVISING?
The Inland Revenue and the Cabinet Office have ruled out the
government's central 'Gateway' user identification portal
(http://www.gateway.gov.uk) as a possible cause of last month's
security scares which have shut down the IR's beleaguered online
tax return service.
Ironically, the only operational web-based tax system is now being
provided by a private firm, the financial software company Digita
(http://www.digita.com).
Digita's commercial but free tax filing service is available on its
site and has also been licensed to appear on the popular web portals
MSN, Tiscali and Yahoo! The information submitted in answer to
the online questionnaire will be sent to the Inland Revenue through
the government's own Gateway. The system is expected to gain
'recognition' from the Inland Revenue, although this will not
amount to a full guarantee that all returns submitted by this route
will be accepted, a fact which could reduce usage.
The company hopes the free service will boost sales of its other tax
products and it is also receiving some revenue from its various web
portal hosts, in exchange for the traffic the service could bring.
Digita project manager Paul Duffield said the most likely
explanation for the IR's security glitch - where users appeared to
access other peoples' tax details - was a problem with the software
which delivers the tax form online.
The EzGov (http://www.ezgov.com) software which the IR uses
has operated without incident since last year but was changed on 6
April for the new tax year. The short timescales involved may have
precipitated the mistake. The Inland Revenue has said that at this
stage, it is not apportioning blame to EzGov or EDS, the
department's main IT contractor.
* E-VOTING TECHNOLOGY RESPONSIBILITIES UNCLEAR.
It is unclear which part of government will be responsible for the
funding and procurement of electronic voting technology following
the break up of the Department of Transport, Local Government
and the Regions which followed the recent departure of its
Secretary of State Stephen Byers.
John Prescott's Office of the Deputy Prime Minister
(http://www.odpm.gov.uk) has taken over administration of local
authorities, the bodies in charge of organising national and local
ballots and recent pioneers of electronic voting. Meanwhile the
Lord Chancellor's Department (LCD - http://www.lcd.gov.uk) has
taken on responsibility for policy on electoral law, referendums and
party funding.
A spokesperson for the LCD said: "The department will liase with
local government agencies when it comes to organising elections.
But things are still bedding down: we are unsure if the LCD will
take over funding or procurement of new voting technologies."
Elsewhere, the reshuffle could help improve the government's
patchy record of technology procurement within the justice system.
Michael Wills was moved from his junior ministerial post at the
Lord Chancellor's department to an unsalaried post at the Home
Office where he will take responsibility for IT in the criminal
justice service.
Confusingly, however, the Will's appointment move comes soon
after the appointment last December of IBM Director Jo Wright as
overseer of criminal justice IT projects for the UK government who
reports to Home Office Permanent Secretary John Gieve (see E-
Government Bulletin, December 2001).
* UK LIBRARIES FREE TO CHOOSE SOFTWARE FILTERS.
Recent US courtroom battles over the compulsory use of internet
filtering software in public libraries will not be repeated in the UK,
according to library representatives here.
A US federal law requiring public libraries to install software
preventing children accessing 'unsuitable' web sites - containing
material classified as pornographic or likely to cause civil
disturbance - was recently overturned in a Pennsylvania court by
campaigners for freedom of information. In May, judges ruled that
the Children's Internet Protection Act, which required that public
libraries receiving federal funding must install the filters, violated
free speech protections in the US Constitution (see
http://www.ala.org/cipa for an American Library Association's
report).
"The situation in this country is that policies for accessing sites is
devolved to individual public library authorities by the Department
of Culture, Media and Sport", said Tim Owen, spokesperson of the
Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals
(http://www.cilip.org.uk). "It is at their discretion."
According to Owen, the UK approach is geared towards dealing
with problems at a local level as they arise, rather than applying a
blanket ban. "An obvious way of dealing with people accessing
offensive matter is to have all the screens facing an enquiry desk.
All librarians get used to having to deal with people that cause
some kind of disturbance," he said. In Owen's view, software
filters are also not very effective: "It doesn't really work. It's a
blunt instrument - screening out content like anatomical content
and works of art as well as pornography. I believe that some filters
also let pornography through," he said.
* SECOND FUNDING ROUND FOR SCOTLAND.
The Scottish Executive has awarded 16.5 million pounds to seven
new national e-government projects initiatives developing customer
relationship management systems; databases; land-use portals;
metadata frameworks; twin integrated systems for health and social
services; and smart cards.
According to the Scottish Executive, the smart card bid will be
used to extend the rollout of a 'Young Scot' card currently operating
in Angus, Argyll and Bute (http://www.youngscot.org), and
increase the services available to holders. At present the card gives
young residents access to leisure services and retail discounts.
The seven projects bidding for money from the Scottish
Modernising Government Fund came from local authority consortia
led by Clackmannanshire, Renfrewshire and Stirling councils;
COSLA (twice), Scottish Social Care and the Scottish Executive
Health department.
A further 43 projects seeking a total of 35.5 million pounds of
funding have been told that only 13.5 million pounds is available.
According to the Scottish Executive, these bidders must now form
partnerships to achieve economies of scale, seek alternative funding
or abandon their projects. For full details see:
http://fastlink.headstar.com/scot
* EUROPEAN COMMISSION ADOPTS ACTION PLAN.
The European Commission has adopted a policy setting out targets
for delivering online public services, e-government, e-learning and
e-health by 2005.
The commission will present the blueprint - 'eEurope 2005: an
information society for all' - later this month to the Seville
European Council, a gathering of heads of state of member
countries and commission president Romano Prodi.
According to Richard Howitt, MEP for the East of England region,
the plan bears Prodi's personal stamp. "Unlike eEurope 2002, much
of the new agenda has parts that were laid out in a white paper that
Prodi produced - it proposed much more involvement at a local
level in implementing policy," he said.
To view the document visit:
http://fastlink.headstar.com/ee
NEWS IN BRIEF:
* WREXHAM DOUBLE: Wrexham has won the Society of Public
Information Networks (http://www.spin.org.uk) award for best
Welsh government web site for the second year running. The
bilingual site was recognised for providing accessible information,
particularly for visually impaired users:
http://www.wrexham.gov.uk
and the Welsh version is at:
http://www.wrecsam.gov.uk
* INFORMATION RECYLING: The European Commission last
week published a proposal to form a single set of rules governing
the commercial re-use of public sector information:
http://fastlink.headstar.com/reuse
* REMOTE WORKING: Just 26 per cent of the UK's 2.2 million
teleworkers are from the public sector according to a survey of
labour market trends published by the Office of National Statistics
this month:
http://fastlink.headstar.com/telework
[Section one ends.]
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* SECTION TWO: FOCUS
- SOCIAL HOUSING.
* MOVING STORIES.
by Phil Cain [log in to unmask]
It has often been predicted that the internet will increase social
exclusion. But now, some social housing tenants are defying such
predictions by using the web to arrange house exchanges and gain
significant social benefits.
Informal networks of enthusiastic amateurs have so far led the
field, with most internet-initiated exchanges believed to have arisen
from bulletin boards and chat rooms run by unpaid volunteers.
Stephanie, one of seven volunteer moderators at the 2,600 member
Council Exchange (http://www.council-exchange.org.uk), says
there is a lot that can go wrong with an exchange, and the ability to
exchange personal requirements, images and measurements of
houses on the web is very helpful in finding a suitable partner.
The advantages of the internet over more traditional media like post
office windows or the small ads of local newspapers are even
clearer in cases where tenants have special requirements. In
Stephanie's case she needed to find accommodation suitable for
herself, her disabled husband - who requires a wheelchair lift - and
four children. To fall within the rules, houses can only be
exchanged with others with similar levels of adaptation. "It was
awful before the site," Stephanie said. "We were looking at being
stuck where we were for the next 27 years. I felt there was no way
out."
Having already completed one successful move using the internet,
Stephanie said she is now in touch with four people to organise a
complex exchange chain. As well as picking up leads from the site
she helps to maintain, Stephanie said she also regularly visits the
specialist house exchange list maintained by the Disabled Data
Link Group (http://web.ukonline.co.uk/ddlg.uk).
The government's answer to these voluntary initiatives is a
'HomeSwap' register of would-be exchange partners which went
online in October last year (http://www.homes.org.uk), managed by
the quango HOusing Mobility Exchange Services (HOMES).
According to Martin Stannells, HOMES business development
manager, more than 50,000 people are registered with the service
and 5,000 postcode searches of the register are made a day. The
site's usage is likely to increase because it also offers access to a
register of vacant properties and shared accommodation.
The precise number of successful exchanges initiated through the
HOMES web site, as with the other sites, is not known because the
exchanges themselves are arranged off site. Users of the Council
Exchange web site are rather more forthcoming with their success
stories, perhaps because as a mark of gratitude to the site's
volunteers. Plaudits are posted online at:
http://pub29.ezboard.com/fcouncilexchangefrm89
Unlike the Council Exchange, HOMES has no plans for a chat
room or bulletin board, but says it hopes to boost its popularity
through a partnership with an as yet unnamed private company.
Among new features to be added by the end of the year is the
facility to email or send text messages to potential partners with
details of a property on offer. Users will also be allowed to register
properties online rather than on paper. It is hoped that this will
boost the number of home registrations from the current 200 per
day - unchanged since the site launched.
Another innovation which may help boost the number of users will
be a facility to search for houses within a geographical radius of a
given spot, rather than having to specify a postcode area. This
could prove to be a big improvement. "A lot of the phone calls we
receive are people asking for their own post codes," says Stannells.
But the downside of these privately-funded improvements may be
that users will be asked to make a "small" contribution to the cost,
Stannells says. This may have to be very small indeed if the
commercial partnership wants to match its free rivals.
[Section two ends.]
* SPONSORED NOTICE: e-INFORMATION DELIVERY AND MANAGEMENT
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Management Symposium - 4 July, London. Visit:
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[Sponsored notice ends.]
* SECTION THREE: TECHNOLOGY
- SEARCH ENGINES.
* FINDING SOLUTIONS FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT.
by Derek Parkinson [log in to unmask]
In at least one sense, web sites are like paper-based filing systems -
near worthless if you can't find what you need. But unlike paper,
web pages can be accessed in two radically different ways -
through hypertext links or text-based searching.
The first is a quick and convenient way of accessing web pages but
offers the user no flexibility in looking for information - you either
click or you don't. By contrast, text searches allow the user to
compose their own search terms and fine-tune the results.
Additionally, links are inherently limited - you can only get so
many on a page before the user experience is degraded, so there is
an upper limit to the number of pages in a site that are navigable by
links alone. As a result, local authority web sites that started life
as
simple 'brochure-ware' - small numbers of pages with minimal
interactivity - have had to install search engines on their sites as
they have grown larger and more complex.
But the freedom offered by a poor search engine can be illusory.
Most web users are familiar with the 'all-or-nothing' response of
some engines, or an insensitivity to different combinations of
search terms displayed by others.
Many local authorities successfully use well-known, ready-made
search solutions. Around four years ago, for example, Cambridge
City Council (http://www.cambridge.gov.uk) chose the Excite
search engine for its site. Like many general purpose search
engines, Excite offers simple admin tools which insert a search
box into the host site and control which pages are indexed and
visited by the search engine. "It was free and it worked," says the
council's technology manager James Nightingale.
Others opt for an in-house solution based on technology with which
they are already familiar. Helen Audin, site manager for Shropshire
County Council (http://www.shropshire-cc.gov.uk), says: "We
based our search engine on Lotus Notes. It gives us two things: we
wanted to allow lots of editors to input content to the web site and
we were already using Lotus for email." According to Audin, the
council is keen to continue managing its own operations: "We have
quite a bit of expertise in-house and we want to keep it," she says.
But whether in-house or outsourced, local authorities have found
that a search engine cannot be simply installed, forgotten about and
expected to produce high quality results as a site grows in size,
complexity and functionality. Search engines that were adequate
just two or three years ago are now struggling. The problem is
compounded when local service providers pool information,
offering users a single window on information from government,
the health service and the voluntary sector, for example.
Cambridge will soon begin its own pooled scheme of this sort,
combining health and social services information from sites across
the local area, and is looking beyond search engines to handle this
data. "We're looking to buy a content management system. It will
give us much more control and help us to keep up to date",
Nightingale says. "Expiry dates can be set on documents with
emails sent out automatically warning when the date approaches."
This should lead to a better user experience, ensuring that content
on the site is fresh and standardising the appearance and
functionality of site navigation tools through the use of templates.
A London-based consortium of councils has taken this regional
approach a stage further. APLAWS - Accessible and Personalised
Local Authority Websites (http://www.aplaws.org.uk) - is a
government-backed council Pathfinder project that aims to develop
software platforms, metadata architecture, management tools, best
practice guidelines and accessibility standards for council web
sites.
Partners in the project include the London boroughs of Camden,
Harrow, Bromley, Lewisham and Newham; Sun Microsystems,
Oracle and ArsDigita from the private sector; national not-for-
profit organisations such as RNIB and Age Concern; and
community groups from each borough.
Broadly, the partners aim to provide a system that will help local
authorities reach minimum national standards for interoperability
and accessibility without being so prescriptive as to prevent
innovation. The system is free to other authorities to download and
implement.
Taking a slightly different approach is the recently-announced
'SeamlessUK' project (see E-Government Bulletin, March 2002)
which will look to offer seamless searching across a wide range of
public sector and community sites.
In the long run, however, such collaborations are only likely to be
as good as their constituent parts - is your information in good
searching order?
[Section three ends.]
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* SECTION FOUR: DEBATE REPORT
- GENDER AND DEVELOPMENT.
* WHEN PEOPLE ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN
MACHINES.
by Tamara Fletcher [log in to unmask]
The development of 'telecentres' offering public access to
information and communication technologies (ICTs) in remote
rural areas of the developing world often comes under fire from
critics who say that the people living in such areas, often in extreme
poverty, have far more pressing needs than access to the internet.
Stanford Mukasa, Associate Professor at Indiana University of
Pennsylvania, told an international online debate last week: "One
flawed assumption that has underpinned many ICT initiatives in
developing Africa was that somehow ICTs will make the difference
- you get all the information you need, so you develop. But
technology is not necessarily the answer.
"I once saw a picture in a development magazine a picture of a
Masai woman holding a top-of-the-range laptop. The woman was
poorly dressed, her hut was a shack which could crumble if a
hurricane came, and she looked emaciated. There was a lone cow,
equally emaciated, in the background.
"To what extent will that laptop solve all the problems that literally
surround her? To get the computer to work, she would need
electricity, a cool place to store the laptop and some knowledge on
how to operate it. She would also need an internet service provider
for an internet connection! And she will need to pay a monthly
connection fee."
"I believe new technologies can be a revolutionising element in
African development, but they need to placed in their proper
context. What is needed is a new model that equates human
socio-economic development not only with information
technologies but also with resource availability and
democratisation. The bottom line is the discussion on ICT and
development of women must be placed in the context of the
political, economic and class-based issues that impact dynamically
on such development."
The ongoing debate in which Mukasa is participating has been
organised by the innovative Internet-based group Women of
Uganda Network (WOUGNET). The debate focuses on the role of
information and communication technologies for women living in
remote rural areas, and Thembile Phute, programme officer at the
Zimbabwe Women's Resource Centre and Network, said politics
often plays a part as well.
"Rural ICT provision can only be piloted in countries with stable
political systems. African governments know the power of ICTs
and they deliberately do not want the general populace to have
access to the available information - thus they introduce legislation
which would gag the media, such as the 'Access to Information
Act' in Zimbabwe," she said.
"Since the election in Zimbabwe we have more journalists being
hauled into the courts than criminals and a lot of outreach work for
most non-government organisations has come to a standstill due to
this new legislation."
Rehmat Yazdani of the Interactive Resource Centre in Lahore,
Pakistan, added a gender perspective. "Despite the fact that women
are the pivotal point of our rural living still they are kept backward
and the decisions about them are being taken by their husbands,
fathers or brothers. Rural women need information about their
rights, their legal status, the way they can keep their children
healthy, where they can get micro credit, involvement in local
politics, basic nutrition information, methods of storing and
protecting food and grains, power distribution at homes and so on.
All this is really needed to evoke the feeling of empowerment, but
there is not a single policy available at national level to support
access to information by rural women.
Some participants suggested possible solutions. Barbara Fillip, an
international development specialist from Arlington, Virginia, said:
"What would be empowering are low cost, easy to use applications
of ICTs that really have an impact on rural women's lives. Not
every woman in rural areas needs to have a cell phone, but if there
is one cell phone in the village, community-based mechanisms can
perhaps be implemented to ensure that everyone is able to use the
cell phone for a very small fee."
Traditional forms of communication like radio still seem the most
effective in most areas due to lack of appropriate infrastructure for
more advanced forms. They are low cost and can be solar powered
in areas where there is little electricity.
Eva Rathgeber of Carleton University in Ottowa, Canada,
described her work with the International Development Research
Centre in Kenya from 1992 to 2001.
"We launched the 'Acacia Initiative', which aimed to introduce the
use of ICTs to villages in four pilot countries: Uganda, Senegal,
Mozambique and South Africa. The telecentres have been
reasonably successful, although in all of the countries women were
by far the least frequent users of telecentres. I was struck by the
fact that although we now know that it is necessary to use different
approaches to introduce women and men to new technologies, we
made the same old mistakes in setting up telecentres, i.e. making
them 'gender neutral', which in fact means 'male biased'. I don't
know of telecentres that have child care facilities, for example."
Nnenna Nwakanma, Africa regional information officer with Helen
Keller International, which tackles the causes of preventable
blindness, summarised the need for a human approach to bringing
any new technology to the developing world.
"Africans are human-oriented. Once they see someone, they know
its real. We don't know machines. We have pressing needs such as
health, food, housing, education, clothing, jobs, money, peace, land
to farm. ... If any technology can invent or help us to discover
these, then tell that technology to come. Tell the technology to
come with the face of a human being - without a beard - and we
will certainly receive her."
To register for the debate, that runs to 21 June, see:
http://www.wougnet.org/Events/iarw.html
and for an online debate archive see:
http://server1.kabissa.org/archives/iarw-conf/
[Section four ends.]
* SPONSORED NOTICE: DATA PROTECTION AND LOCAL
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Copyright 2002 Headstar Ltd
ISSN 1476-6310
The Bulletin may be reproduced in full as long as all parts
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* EDITORIAL.
Editor - Dan Jellinek [log in to unmask]
Deputy editor - Phil Cain [log in to unmask]
Features editor - Derek Parkinson [log in to unmask]
Reporter - Tamara Fletcher [log in to unmask]
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