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Subject: E-Government Bulletin - 21 March 2003
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+++E-GOVERNMENT BULLETIN
- ISSUE 133, 21 March 2003.
The email newsletter on electronic government,
UK and worldwide.
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++ISSUE 133 CONTENTS.
Section one: News.
01: Move to co-ordinate interactive TV services
- three million pound national project.
02: Reports to flesh out case for open source
- National Audit Office scrutinises licensing.
03: Edinburgh first in UK to test cashless parking vouchers
- mobile phones used to pay and display.
04: Travel fears jam Foreign Office site
- web struggles to keep up with conflict.
05: Bulletin readership continues to surge
- on course to break 10,000 barrier.
News in brief: 06: New PEG - conference preview; 07: Wakefield
VIPER - video identity parades; 08: Webcasting group - user forum.
Section two: Focus - open source.
09: Pioneers hold fast - A year ago, Penwith Council and Central
Scotland Police became the first to switch to open source desktop
software for all staff. Julie Hill reports on their progress.
Section three: Insight - category lists.
10: Ordering services - There are various schemes around to categorise
all public services, which could lead to confusion. Danny Budzak finds
councils are calling for a unified system.
[Contents ends.]
+SPECIAL NOTICE: IDeA KNOWLEDGE
- E-GOVERNMENT TOOLKIT.
Daunted by the challenge of local e-government? You need the e-
government toolkit on IDeA Knowledge, the local government web
site from the Improvement and Development Agency.
The toolkit provides building blocks for the successful implementation
of e-government in local authorities. Visit it now by registering for free
at:
http://fastlink.headstar.com/idea1
[Special notice ends].
++SECTION ONE: NEWS.
+01: MOVE TO CO-ORDINATE INTERACTIVE TV SERVICES .
A plan to co-ordinate councils' fragmented attempts to develop
interactive digital television services will form part of an ambitious 3
million pound national guidance project for local government due to
start in the next few weeks, E-Government Bulletin has learned.
The project will help ensure value for money in negotiations with
commercial broadcasters by encouraging collaboration between service
providers. Commercial interests represented on the project's board will
include UpMyStreet, a local information service part-owned by Rupert
Murdoch's News Corporation; satellite broadcaster BSkyB; the BBC;
and cable companies Telewest and NTL. Talks are also underway with
Microsoft about funding of remotely-hosted software applications such
as word processing which could be accessed over some digital
television sets by public sector workers or citizens at home.
According to a government source the project, led by the Office of the
Deputy Prime Minister, also aims to develop guidance for councils on
best use of iDTV including a 'starter pack' to help councils establish a
television presence; guidance notes on how to run an interactive
service; an assessment of the medium's strengths and weaknesses; and
a local authority-led interactive television discussion forum.
The project will be managed by Steve Dodson, head of Kirklees
council's INtouch television service, which began in 2001 with funding
from the Treasury's Invest to Save budget. Other local authorities
involved include iDTV pioneers Somerset, Suffolk and Knowsley. The
London borough of Hillingdon will also be represented, having agreed
to test a set top box offering internet access alongside the free BBC-led
digital service Freeview.
Other public sector partners include the Office of the e-Envoy, which
funds central government's UK Online Interactive television service;
the local government Improvement and Development Agency; and the
Local Government Association.
The iDTV initiative was one of 30 national local e-government
projects given the go ahead at the end of last month. Others cover
customer relation management, e-procurement, smart cards and
personalised local services websites. More details are set to appear on
the local e-government web site:
http://www.localegov.gov.uk
+02: REPORTS TO FLESH OUT CASE FOR OPEN SOURCE.
A report on how effectively central government departments procure
and manage licences for software is to be published by the National
Audit Office (NAO) next month (http://fastlink.headstar.com/nao4).
Although the office declined to comment on the detail of the report, it
is likely to pave the way for greater use of open source software by
government.
The survey, the first of its kind by the audit office, will examine
whether departments hold reliable information on their software
licences and whether they are purchasing and managing their stock of
software efficiently.
It will also feature case studies based on departments found to be
performing particularly well. "Across government, the cost of software
licences amounts to a lot of money. There is a new emphasis from the
Office of Government Commerce (OGC) on value for money in
software procurement," said the NAO.
OGC, which has provided technical guidance on open source software
(http://fastlink.headstar.com/ogc1), is expected to make the business
case for open source clearer through its own set of case studies, due to
be published by the end of the month.
NOTE: See also Focus on open source, section three, this issue.
+03: EDINBURGH FIRST IN UK TO TEST CASHLESS PARKING
TICKETS.
Edinburgh council is set to become the first UK local authority to trial
a system allowing drivers to pay parking fees using their mobile phone.
The system will initially be tested on council employees, before
extending it to other road users. When it goes live later this year,
drivers will be able to pay for parking with a phone call to a number
specified on each specially adapted 'pay and display' machine. The
user can then choose to add the charge to their mobile phone or credit
card bill or transfer cash from a FastPay (http://www.fastpay.com)
account, an e-payment system from Royal Bank of Scotland. Payment
by coins will still be an option from these machines.
The system has been developed by mobile payments firm Itsmobile
(http://www.itsmobile.com), using ticket machines designed by
technology services group SchlumbergerSema
(http://www.schlumbergersema.com). It was chosen ahead of possible
smart card and credit card swipe systems following a cost comparison.
According to council estimates, set-up costs will be around 30,000
pounds compared to 140,000 pounds for credit or debit card payment
or just under 100,000 for a system using smartcards.
A similar system is already in use in Dublin, Ireland following a
successful trial last year (see E-Government Bulletin, issue 129,
Tuesday 28 January 2003). And in April last year Kingston upon Hull
City Council tested an alternative ticketless scheme using WAP
phones, though this is now suspended pending evaluation (see
http://www.hullcc.gov.uk/news/02_april/cashlessparking.php).
+04: TRAVEL FEARS JAM FOREIGN OFFICE SITE.
Demand for information on the risks of overseas travel following the
outbreak of military action in Iraq appears to have taken the Foreign
Office by surprise. During the first day of conflict, the travel advice
section of the department's web site was inaccessible because of heavy
traffic (http://fastlink.headstar.com/travel1).
The government has also moved to address public concern about the
threat of terrorism with a new 'terrorism information and advice'
section of the Home Office web site
(http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/terrorism). An FAQ section addresses
precautions, travel advice, and what to do in the event of a terrorist
attack, although information about chemical or biological weapons
incidents is limited.
"To give detailed advice in advance about how to handle every
potential threat would be misleading and unhelpful," according to the
Home Office. "We, and the emergency services, will provide
immediate information and advice in the event of a discernible threat
or a specific incident."
The Cabinet Office offers further guidance, including hints on how to
identify and handle suspect mail or packages at home and in the
workplace (http://www.ukresilience.info/terrorism.htm). The
department advises the public to be wary of envelopes that are oddly
shaped, have suspicious stains and carry poorly typed or incorrectly
spelled addresses (http://www.ukresilience.info/package.htm).
Government news on the Iraq campaign is carried on the Ministry of
Defence's 'Operation Telic' pages
(http://www.operations.mod.uk/telic) and through the Prime Minister's
site (http://www.number-10.gov.uk).
+05: BULLETIN READERSHIP CONTINUES TO SURGE.
The circulation of E-Government Bulletin grew by 31 per cent last year
to 9,021 as at November 2002, according to independent Audit Bureau
of Circulation (ABC) figures, and is set to exceed 10,000 readers by
the end of May.
Last year 'E-Government Bulletin' gained the first ever ABC audit for
an email publication, and is still the only email publication in its field
to be audited.
"We were pleased to set the benchmark last year with an audit that
spelled the arrival of email as a robust advertising medium," says EGB
editor Dan Jellinek. "One year on, this second audit proves the viral
potential of email can lead to massive annual growth in readership for
strong independent publications like E-Government Bulletin.
"Comparison with audited growth rates for the printed titles that are
our main rivals show they have enjoyed little or no growth over the
past three years. But we have experienced 30% annual growth or
higher for several years now, and I see no sign of it slowing down."
Organisations interested in advertising in the bulletin should email
[log in to unmask] .
++NEWS IN BRIEF:
+06: NEW PEG: Improving access to e-government services and
creating partnerships for service delivery are the themes for the annual
conference in Reading next week of the Promoting Electronic
Government (PEG) scheme, a collaborative project for councils.
Follow-on workshops in May at various locations will cover contact
centres, customer relationship management and e-government legal
issues:
http://www.peg.org.uk/conf2003.xalter
+07: WAKEFIELD VIPER: A 7.6 million pound centralised system to
allow identity parades to be carried out remotely was launched this
month by Home Secretary David Blunkett. The 'VIPER Bureau' in
Wakefield, West Yorkshire allows police from 13 UK forces to
download images of suspects and lookalikes which can be shown to
witnesses in their homes:
http://www.westyorkshire.police.uk/viper
+08: WEBCASTING GROUP: Ten councils which webcast their
meetings using technology provided by market leader UKCouncil are
to form a user group. The group may expand in due course to include
users of other technologies. For more details email Keith Young:
[log in to unmask]
[Section one ends].
++SPONSORED CASE STUDIES: SHARING E-GOVERNMENT
EXPERIENCE.
In this section, companies highlight e-government partnerships of
which they are proud. Readers interested in exploring these issues are
invited to participate in the Electronic Government Forum in London
on 20 May. Each study will inform a discussion group and sponsors are
offering guest places for public sector readers. For details follow the
links:
+EUROPE'S FIRST ONLINE RESOURCE FOR PROPERTY-
BASED TAX ASSESSMENT.
The Municipal Tax Office of Den Haag in The Netherlands, working
with Integraph, has made property-related information available via the
web. Citizens and businesses can check their tax liabilities against it or
challenge tax assessments:
http://www.electronic-government.com/integraph/denhaag.htm
+REAL-TIME PLANNING INFORMATION ONLINE AT
SEVENOAKS.
This ESRI case study illustrates a rapid response to a Ministerial
Directive, achieved with CAPS Solutions UNI-form Public Access e-
Government solution:
http://www.electronic-government.com/esri/sevenoaks.htm
+BOLTON COUNCIL IDENTIFIES STRATEGIC PARTNER.
How Bolton worked closely with the BSD Consultancy throughout an
FM service procurement to identify a strategic partner for the provision
of managed ICT services across the whole organisation:
http://www.electronic-government.com/bsd/bolton.htm
+HAVE YOU GOT A CASE STUDY TO SHARE? Readers from the
private sector are invited to contact us for details and insertion
costs. Public sector readers are encouraged to nominate private
sector partners who may be interested in being featured. Please
email John Webster [log in to unmask]
[Sponsored case studies end.]
++SECTION TWO: FOCUS
- OPEN SOURCE.
+09: PIONEERS HOLD FAST
by Julie Hill [log in to unmask] .
Until recently, almost every organisation has used Microsoft software
for everyday functions such as word processing and spreadsheets. It
has been hard for anyone to consider doing otherwise, as no-one wants
to use a format which others cannot access.
On the other hand, use of open source software - software which can
be customised by organisations to suit their own needs, and typically
with low or zero licensing fees - makes increasing financial sense.
With this in mind, in February last year Penwith District Council in
Cornwall and Central Scotland Police became the first public sector
organisations to adopt an open source software solution for standard
desktop software applications across their organisations.
The package selected by Penwith and Central Scotland Police,
'StarOffice' from Sun Microsystems, allows people to save and load
files in Microsoft formats. It also offers a level of support often lacking
in smaller open source solutions. Nevertheless their step was a bold
one, with uncertainty over how staff would react to using an unfamiliar
system and how an open source solution would stand up to deployment
on such a large scale.
How have the pioneers made out? One year on from their decision,
neither body regrets leaving behind the comfort of buying Microsoft,
although there have been challenges to overcome.
"At the time, StarOffice wasn't recognised by the government in their
central technology standards document the 'E-Government for
Interoperability Framework', so we were flying in the face of the
establishment," says Andrew Mann, head of IT at Penwith
(http://www.penwith.gov.uk). "But for us, StarOffice was the most
cost-effective solution to enable us to meet our e-government aims."
Mann had conducted a Best Value review of IT which recommended
that desktop functionality be made available to more than 400 staff
throughout the authority. Previously the council had around 85 shared
desktop computers using Microsoft Word and other tools. The review
recommended that desktops be made available to all employees and
that a software choice be made between Microsoft Word and
StarOffice. Following a trial of StarOffice by the corporate
management team to assess its functionality, Penwith chose the Sun
software.
"Ultimately, the choice came down to cost," says Mann. "At the time
Microsoft were charging 300 to 400 pounds per licence and StarOffice
was free. Microsoft would have cost us another 150,000 pounds in
licensing alone."
Jim Jarvie, IT manager at Central Scotland Police
(http://www.centralscotland.police.uk), tells a similar story. Although
the police authority had a number of Microsoft Office users, the degree
of functionality most people require didn't justify the expense of
rolling out the software to a wider pool of users. He points to a saving
of 245,000 pounds from using the open source solution. "Secretaries
who do lots of inter-agency communications still use Microsoft Office,
but for internal purposes the standard is StarOffice," says Jarvie. "The
word processing and spreadsheet functionality is more than adequate
for our internal needs, and the interoperability provided by StarOffice
enables us to rewrite Microsoft Office formats when we need to."
Mann concurs that file compatibility hasn't been an issue - with the
exception of PowerPoint - but suggests that high-end users are better
served by Microsoft Office. "For 90 to 95 per cent of people, the
functionality offered by Star Office will be sufficient. But if you are an
accountant doing forecasting through spreadsheets - with complex
rules and embedded formula - you are probably better off with
Microsoft Office."
Both Penwith and Central Scotland Police trained their staff in the new
desktop software. Penwith's training was provided by Sun Educational
Services as part of its partnership with Sun, which also involved an
overhaul of the council's computer hardware - sources of revenue for
Sun which help enable it to promote free software as part of a larger
package. Training was provided for a range of users - from those who
had never used computers to high-end users - in StarOffice and
internet and email.
At Central Scotland Police, training was provided by internal IT
trainers who were previously Microsoft experts. "The trainers made the
transition to StarOffice and prepared all the training materials within a
matter of weeks," says Jarvie. "For me, training is a non-issue: we
would have had to cover these costs whether we were introducing a
completely new system, such as StarOffice, or rolling out Microsoft
Office to a bigger pool of users."
There is concern in some quarters that open source software can be
unsupported, or receive a lower level of technical support than more
commercial software. For Jarvie, this concern was overcome by
adopting open source from an established vendor such as Sun. "There
are a number of companies out there selling open source products,"
says Jarvie. "The reality is that you aren't really buying a product; you
are buying the company's knowledge and expertise and their ability to
support you. More needs to be done to counter the misconception that
open source is a risky and support-free option."
Jarvie is an advocate of open source products and argues that they are
more reliable and robust than their proprietary counterparts. Central
Scotland Police is a heavy user of the Linux operating system -
probably the best-known open source system - and other open source
packages, such as HylaFAX (http://www.hylafax.org), the network-
based fax system. Open source is also helping the police authority to
meet its e-government goals. "Open source software gives us a greater
degree of flexibility to meet these goals rapidly and more effectively,"
says Jarvie.
Mann agrees: "Having the source code available means that our
developers can do necessary integration themselves. For example, if
we were introducing a complaints registration application, we could
integrate it with StarOffice, so that as soon as someone logs a
complaint, a letter created in StarOffice is automatically called up to be
sent out to the complainant." Such integration will be essential to
meeting Penwith's e-government targets.
Paul Wooding, business development manager at Sun Microsystems,
says interoperability is the primary benefit of open source. In an
attempt to demonstrate this, Sun is running 60 pilots of StarOffice
across all levels of government. Bristol City Council is running one of
these trials, although the councils declined to comment on initial
results.
So, although it is perhaps surprising that there has not yet been another
high profile StarOffice adoption to follow in the footsteps of Penwith
and Central Scotland Police, the next wave of adopters seems set to
break in 2003. "As long as there is a good level of compatibility and
you won't be isolated by using a product, open source software is a
viable alternative for the public sector," says Mann.
For more information about StarOffice, visit:
http://www.sun.com/staroffice
[Section two ends.]
++SECTION THREE: INSIGHT
- CATEGORY LISTS.
+10: ORDERING SERVICES.
by Danny Budzak [log in to unmask]
Category lists, controlled vocabularies and taxonomies - different
ways of ordering information about services in logical, structured ways
- are becoming seen as vital for the development of web services
allowing the user to find what they want quickly and easily. These
tools are related to the use of metadata, the standard way of enshrining
'data about data' within a document, web page or other information
resource.
The lists usually work in a hierarchical way, allowing users to select
headings and sub-heading to define a service area such as 'education -
examinations - GCSE' or 'nuisance - animals - barking dogs'.
Most councils working with service category lists either use the central
government designed 'Government Category List' (GCL -
http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/interoperability/gcl.asp) or the category list
created by the local government collaborative 'APLAWS' project to
develop open source web content management software
(http://www.aplaws.org.uk). And some have developed their own lists
from scratch.
At a recent Society of Public Information Networks workshop on this
topic, this unevenness of approach was notable between the 30 local
authorities present. Some were frank and said they had not yet started
to work on metadata or categorisation. Others such as Hampshire
County Council with their 'Hantsweb' site (http://www.hants.gov.uk)
have done a lot of work in this area.
One topic of debate was whether separate category lists were needed
for internet sites and intranets, or whether it would be better to modify
an existing internet category list such as the APLAWS list to cover
internal information as well.
Some councils argued that increasingly there should be less separation
between internal and external sites, and that most information used
inside the council could be made publicly available. The point was
made that if something is placed on an intranet to which 4,000 people
have access, then it is effectively in the public domain anyway.
Furthermore some internal administrative information such as that
relating to employee leave, sickness policy and flexible working
systems could be of potential interest to prospective employees, other
councils and even members of the public. Not everyone agreed that
such information should be made public, pointing to issues of
management culture to overcome.
Ultimately, it was felt it would be best to develop an integrated
category list dealing with intranets and the internet, and a clear demand
was evident for a set of national standards for everyone to work
towards.
There was some discussion about using the Digital Object Identifier
(http://www.doi.org), a global system for assigning a unique,
permanent label to pieces of content including individual web pages,
but for most councils this was a new development.
The overwhelming majority of councils expressed a preference for a
single category list designed for local government, and this suggests
use or adaptation of the APLAWS list. However questions and
concerns were raised as to who actually owns the APLAWS category
list, and what the process is for making changes to it. It was also felt
that there was a danger that lots of local modifications would be made
to the APLAWS list, leading to confusion.
The key question asked was: Where are the resources going to come
from to develop and maintain a central category list for local
government which has a clear mechanism for change and version
control? In fact, a new national project is being set up to develop some
of the work done on the APLAWS project, with Camden and West
Sussex councils among those involved. Time will tell if this project
gains the necessary funding and critical mass of use to become the
clear national standard which local government wants.
NOTE: The category list workshop, orgainsed by Lewisham Council
and sponsored by SPIN, was held on 16 Jan 2003 in London. A full
report will be available on the SPIN web site later this month at:
http://www.spin.org.uk/workshops/jan2003
[Section three ends.]
++END NOTES.
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+COPYRIGHT NOTICE.
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ISSN 1476-6310
+PERSONNEL
- 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 - Mel Poluck [log in to unmask] .
- ADVERTISING.
[log in to unmask] .
A searchable archive of our back-issues can be found on our web site:
http://www.headstar.com/egb .
[Issue ends.]
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