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From: Dan Jellinek
To: egb-html
Sent: 17/05/2004 15:48
Subject: SP? E-Government Bulletin - May 17 2004
E-Government Bulletin, HTML version:
Please click on the attachment to read.
See below for plain text version.
+++E-GOVERNMENT BULLETIN
- ISSUE 161, 17 May 2004.
http://www.headstar.com/egb .
Please forward this free service to colleagues
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++SPECIAL NOTICE: The UK's Most Comprehensive
Independent E-Government Review and Primer
- From the Team behind E-Government Bulletin.
'E-Government Outlook 2004-05: Key issues for better services' is E-
Government Bulletin's second comprehensive, independent survey of a
year in UK e-government. The 160-page report includes in-depth
analysis of the current situation and predictions and tips for the
future.
It examines in detail the key issues that everyone involved in e-
government projects will have to master in the year to come.
Interviewees include European Commissioner Erkki Liikanen; Oxford
Professor of E-Democracy Stephen Coleman; and Society of IT
Management President Chris Guest. Full results of a new survey of UK
e-government practitioners are included, covering topics from Freedom
of Information implementation to what people view as their biggest e-
government challenges.
In a special pre-publication offer, orders received by midnight on 28
May attract a discount of 50 pounds, with the discounted price at 195
pounds for public sector and 295 pounds for private sector readers. For
more information and to place a discounted order, see:
http://www.headstar.com/egb/news.html .
[Special notice ends].
++ISSUE 161 CONTENTS.
01: Doubts over impact of 'Directgov' portal
- reader survey signals problems for flagship project.
02: Scottish Executive pilots TV service
- interactive housing, health and council information.
03: Testbed created for Europe-wide ID system
- commission funds 12 million euro research project.
04: Boost for online council marketplace
- central and local agencies join forces for e-procurement.
News in brief: 05: List slippage - Accenture survey; 06: Chilean guide
- Spanish resource; 07: Teacher's pet - Scottish StarOffice licence.
Section two: focus - Connexions smartcards.
08: Points mean prizes: Julie Hill on the most significant use of
citizen
smartcards by a UK central government body - the Department for
Education and Skills - as students gain rewards for achieving learning
goals.
Section three: EGB seminar report - transformation.
09: Time for a change: business process re-engineering is moving
centre stage as organisations begin to look at last beyond the
technological aspects of e-government. Derek Parkinson reports.
[Contents ends].
++SECTION ONE:
+01: DOUBTS OVER IMPACT OF 'DIRECTGOV' PORTAL.
Almost two-thirds of people working in the UK e-government sector
(59%) do not believe the government's new flagship website
'Directgov' will have any more impact than UK online, the service it
replaces, an E-Government Bulletin survey has found.
Some 40 per cent of public sector staff are not yet even aware of the
existence of Directgov, according to the survey of our UK public
sector readers.
The Directgov site (http://www.direct.gov.uk) aims to pull in content
from across the public sector, becoming a destination site for most
visitors rather than a mere gateway to the web sites of other bodies. At
its launch, the government's outgoing e-Envoy Andrew Pinder said
that the motivation behind Directgov was flagging public interest in the
UK online portal (see E-Government Bulletin, issue 156, 05 March
2004).
When asked to identify the major challenges they face in implementing
e-government projects over the next 12 months, almost a third of
survey respondents (28.7 per cent) expressed concern about lack of
time and resources; 19 per cent mentioned culture and business
change; and 15.4 per cent identified systems integration problems.
Other concerns centred on user take-up; support from senior managers
and politicians; and accessibility.
Free text responses to this question included "embracing and meeting
all the associated standards, frameworks and guidance", "inconsistent
legislation", and "conflicting corporate, departmental and national
government priorities". For one misanthropic reader, who has perhaps
been reading Sartre, the main problem was simply: "other people".
When asked about their greatest successes in the past 12 months,
almost 32 per cent of respondents identified the launch or improvement
of online services, while 4.8 per cent mentioned work to combat social
exclusion, and 3.2 per cent cited online services and laptops for
councillors.
NOTE: Full results of our reader survey are due to be published at the
end of the month in our yearbook 'E-Government Outlook 2004-05:
Key issues for better services.' For more information plus a pre-
publication discount offer see:
http://www.headstar.com/egb/news.html .
+02: SCOTTISH EXECUTIVE PILOTS TV SERVICE.
Satellite television viewers in Scotland can access advice and
information on housing, health and council services following the
launch last week of a pilot interactive TV project by the Scottish
Executive.
Sky TV subscribers are able to take part in online polls about local
services, learn about services for young people, and find information
and guidance on health issues such as back pain and smoking, for
example.
The service delivers interactive content from six partner organisations:
the Scottish Executive (http://www.scotland.gov.uk), West Lothian
Council (http://www.westlothian.gov.uk), Dumfries and Galloway
Council (http://www.dumgal.gov.uk), the youth information service
YoungScot (http://www.youngscot.org), the Scottish NHS
(http://www.hebs.scot.nhs.uk), and public information charity
StartHere (http://www.starthere.org).
The total cost of the project is estimated at 375,000 pounds, covering
design and build, hosting, access to the Sky platform, broadcast
bandwidth, a content management system, creation and management of
an interactive database and an in-depth research study. A full service
will launch in June and will run initially for 12 months.
According to the Scottish Executive, 41 per cent of Scottish
households have access to digital television while only 25 per cent of
Scots have a home computer with internet access.
+03: TESTBED CREATED FOR EUROPE-WIDE ID SYSTEM.
The European Commission has launched an ambitious 12 million euro
research project to develop a standard citizen identification and
authentication architecture for e-government services across Europe.
Twenty-three companies and academic institutions across 13 countries
are involved in the GUIDE (Government User IDentity for Europe)
project (http://www.guide-project.org), funded by the commission with
the Swiss government.
The project will explore a range of identification technologies
including public key infrastructure, biometrics and smartcards, and will
consider the social, economic and legal issues involved in creating a
European-wide solution. Its vision is to "enable Europe to become the
global leader of e-government services through the creation of an open
architecture for identity authentication."
The lack of a robust way of authenticating citizens and businesses'
identity online is seen by the commission as a major obstacle to the
take-up of e-government services. In November 2003, it called for
projects that would "evaluate obstacles and solutions" and "explore
interoperable European solutions for authentication for e-government
in the internal market, in order to facilitate mobility in Europe and
provide cross-border services online."
As Europe becomes increasingly interconnected, many observers
consider the creation of a European platform for identification to be
increasingly important. "While citizens will principally see the benefit
of authentication on a domestic level, there is the potential for cross-
border applications," says Hugo Bottelier, vice-president, payment
services and channel development at Visa (http://www.visaeu.com),
one of the partners involved in the consortium. "For example, a UK
citizen with a second property in Spain might want to authenticate
themselves to the Spanish authorities to deal with their affairs
online."
Other partners involved in the project include Siemens Switzerland
(http://www.siemens.ch) and BT Global Services
(http://www.btglobalservices.com). The consortium is currently
reviewing possible pilots for the project, and these are likely to start
towards the end of June.
+04: BOOST FOR ONLINE COUNCIL MARKETPLACE.
OGCbuying.solutions (http://www.ogcbuyingsolutions.gov.uk), the
procurement policy arm of the UK's Office of Government Commerce
(OGC - http://www.ogc.gov.uk), has joined forces with the local
government Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA -
http://www.idea.gov.uk) in an effort to boost e-procurement among
local authorities.
The two public sector agencies have signed a partnership agreement
that will result in contracts negotiated centrally by
OGCbuying.solutions - currently used largely only by central
government agencies - being made available through
'IDeA:marketplace' (http://www.idea.gov.uk/marketplace), IDeA's
online marketplace for local authorities. It is hoped that the move will
boost the take-up of centrally-negotiated deals among local authorities
and provide them with a quicker and more cost-effective procurement
method.
"The use of centrally-negotiated deals has been limited among local
authorities to date," says Ian Busby, chief executive of eGS Group
(http://www.egsgroup.com), the technology company that has
developed IDeA: marketplace for IDeA. "The new agreement will put
these contracts within easy reach of local authorities, giving them
comfort that they are taking advantage of the most competitive deals
and generating substantial savings in the unit cost of procurement."
IDeA:marketplace was launched in 2003 and is currently being used by
25 local authorities and education providers. It is envisaged that the
partnership with the OGC will boost the numbers of local government
organisations participating in the marketplace to between 150 and 200
by the end of 2004. The new version, incorporating the OGC contracts,
will go live in the summer.
It is hoped that the joint initiative will also contribute to the
savings
envisaged by Sir Peter Gershon, former head of the OGC, in his
Efficiency Review. "This is a great example of public sector
organisations reducing duplication of effort and using a common
backbone for support services," says Busby. "As an early move to meet
targets for shared services, it could provide an operational and
commercial model for the future."
++News in Brief:
+05: LIST SLIPPAGE: The UK has slipped down one place in this
year's annual list of global e-government maturity from business
service firm Accenture, coming in at joint ninth place with the
Netherlands. Some 22 countries were evaluated, with Canada topping
the list for the fourth year in a row. Countries were judged on several
categories including service breadth, service depth and customer
relationship management:
http://fastlink.headstar.com/accent2 .
+06: CHILEAN GUIDE: The Chilean government has published its
first guide for the development of public sector web sites, based on the
experiences of other governments. The Spanish-language guide, a
response to a call by President Ricardo Lagos, contains a directory of
useful resources:
http://www.guiaweb.gob.cl .
+07: TEACHER'S PET: Almost 3,000 schools in Scotland have been
offered a licence to use the open source desktop software suite
StarOffice free of charge, following a deal between Sun Microsytems
and the Scottish Executive. The Scottish executive is one of 24
national education ministries or agencies to have licensed the software,
which is also available to local authorities:
http://fastlink.headstar.com/sun1 .
[Section one ends]
++SPONSORED NOTICE: Boost Your Website's Readability.
Councils and government departments who want to make their website
content more readable can now access writing expertise from
Emphasis, the specialist company used by Socitm to assess content
readability for its recent survey of local-government websites, 'Better
Connected 2004'. Emphasis now runs bespoke and public courses in
all aspects of written communication - including website content.
For more details of the courses run by Emphasis - including feedback
on courses for The Environment Agency, The Royal College of
Nursing, the RNID and the NHS - go to:
http://www.writing-skills.com
or email [log in to unmask] .
A free knowledge bank of writing factsheets is also available on our
website.
[Sponsored notice ends].
++SPECIAL NOTICE: EGB May Seminar
- e-Learning: the Future of Training in the Public Sector
- 19 May, Globe Theatre, London.
E-Government Bulletin presents 'E-learning - the future of training in
the public sector', a one-day seminar on 19 May at Shakespeare's
Globe Theatre, London:
http://www.electronic-government.com/elearning.htm .
Speakers include Professor Diana Laurillard, head of e-Learning
Strategy, Department for Education and Skills; and Richard Grice,
Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA).
Places cost 295 pounds plus VAT for public sector and 395 for private
sector delegates. Additional delegates booking at the same time receive
a 100 pound discount.
[Special notice ends].
++SECTION TWO: FOCUS
- CONNEXIONS SMARTCARDS.
+08: POINTS MEAN PRIZES.
by Derek Parkinson
The 'Connexions' smartcard scheme run by the Department for
Education and Skills (DfES) is aimed at combating exclusion and
promoting good citizenship, and in the process is demonstrating how
smartcards can be used to join up central and local government
services.
The card (http://www.connexionscard.com), which is currently
available to all 16- to 19-year-olds in England, offers incentives and
support for young people to take up training and education
opportunities. The card-holder is awarded points for achieving learning
goals that can be redeemed for items approved by the DfES such as
clothes, music and driving lessons.
The scheme has seen impressive take-up since launching in early 2002,
with around 1,200 learning centres actively using the card, representing
more than a quarter of all post-16 educational establishments in
England. The majority of people earning points are doing so via a
school, college or work-based trainer. According to the DfES, more
than 420,000 cards have been issued to young people, of which around
276,000 are receiving formal learning points. These young people have
claimed more than 135,000 rewards. The DfES hopes that around 1
million young people will eventually carry a card.
A seven-year contract was signed in July 2001 to deliver the card in
partnership with service provider Capita (http://www.capita.co.uk).
According to the DfES, a private sector partner brings a number of
benefits, including access to expertise in data management and
customer service operations, and developing the commercial and other
relationships that bring rewards and discounts into the system.
The department says there is scope for building on the card's initial
success, with the possibility of encouraging good citizenship as well as
education and training. To explore these possibilities DfES is working
with a number of local Connexions partners to tailor incentives more
specifically to cardholders. Following evaluation, a staged roll out of
discretionary points began in September 2003, with all partnerships
invited to award discretionary points from January 2004.
Although the Connexions Card was not designed as an ID card, it was
approved to carry the British Retail Consortium's Proof of Age
Standards Scheme (PASS) hologram in 2003. This means it could
become widely accepted by retailers as a proof-of-age card. Currently
many local authority trading standards teams are promoting the
Connexions Card as their recognised proof-of-age-card.
More work will continue on providing discounts on travel. The DfES is
working with Devon County Council (http://www.devon.gov.uk) to
provide free travel twice a day to Connexions Card holders and
discounted travel for all other journeys in the area. Card holders can
also access discounted journeys on transport providers Arriva Southern
Counties, Arriva Northumberland, National Express, Stagecoach East
Kent and c2c Rail in Essex. Work is currently underway to extend
these discounts to transport providers across the whole of England.
The developers of the Connexions Card scheme are also working with
the local e-government national smartcard project
(http://www.nationalsmartcardproject.org.uk) to help demonstrate that
a national card supported by central government can work as a
platform to carry a variety of local government applications. The
potential cost saving in reducing the issuing of duplicate cards across
central and local government is significant, and the reduced
bureaucracy for citizens is a further benefit of such joint working.
Within the national project, the DfES is leading on identifying relevant
national and local government initiatives with existing or potential
links to smartcards. This includes the development of additional
applications for the Connexions Card, such as access to leisure, library
and copying services and an electronic purse facility.
It is piloting these initiatives in local areas and will produce a
"lessons
learned" guide to deploying local smart card applications, based on a
pilot project at North Doncaster Technical College. Results obtained
by the DfES will feed into a CD-ROM summarising the project that
will be distributed free of charge to every local authority in 2004.
NOTE: Research by Julie Hill. This article is extracted from E-
Government Outlook 2004-05, our second comprehensive yearbook of
independent analysis of e-government policy in the UK and
worldwide. For pre-publication discount ordering information see:
http://www.headstar.com/egb/news.html .
[Section two ends].
++Sponsored Notice: Free E-Bulletin Aids Canadian Municipalities
The MuniMall Newsletter is a free, biweekly e-bulletin helping
Canadian municipal administrators stay on top of the latest local
government developments across the vast reaches of their country.
Published alternate Thursdays by the University of Alberta, the
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interest to local government officials. It delivers an entertainingly
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links to all the full-text articles. Free email subscriptions and a
sampling of the latest editions are available at:
http://www.munimall.net/newsletter/index.nclk .
[Sponsored notice ends].
++SECTION THREE: EGB SEMINAR REPORT
- TRANSFORMATION.
+09: TIME FOR A CHANGE
by Derek Parkinson.
Transformation of an organisation's internal business processes and
culture is essential to reaping the rewards of public sector
modernisation, an E-Government Bulletin seminar heard last week
(http://www.electronic-government.com/transform.htm). Hurdles such
as improving service take-up and maximising efficiency can be crossed
only if public sector bodies overhaul their processes and win staff
confidence in new ways of working, delegates heard.
Around 500 million pounds a year is spent on running government web
sites, many of which carry the same information, presenting users with
baffling choices, said Alan Mather, head of e-delivery at the Office of
the e-Envoy (http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk). Unlike the best examples in
the private sector, too many online services from government carry the
stamp of departmental bureaucracy, rather than awareness of public
needs. "If you do a search on "Disability living allowance", restricted
to '.gov.uk' sites, you get 14,700 results. How is that serving the
public?" asked Mather.
Government departments have jealously guarded their own territories,
but this has made life unnecessarily difficult for the public, he said.
"There are multiple definitions in government of what an adult is. For
some departments it's aged 16, others 18. Why not one?" he asked.
According to Mather, the merger of the tax agency Inland Revenue
with HM Customs and Excise is a watershed move, laying down a
challenge that the whole of central government must take seriously.
If public sector bodies are serious about changing, they must pay closer
attention to their internal processes, and not simply to the technology
they are using, said Ron Brown, technical director at Computer
Sciences Corporation (http://www.csc.com). "Processes are the DNA
of an organisation. They define what you do, when, why, and how
well," he said. According to Brown, in the past many IT projects failed
to deliver good value because the focus on processes gets lost. "As a
result, one of the companies that did best out of business process re-
engineering is MFI - they sold the shelves needed for all the books
written about it," he said.
According to Brown, a common pitfall is to assume that business
process re-engineering is simply a matter of buying an off-the-shelf IT
product to automate a process. In fact, many processes are unsuited to
this approach because of their complexity and strategic importance.
Systematic analysis is needed to determine which processes can be
automated; and which can be outsourced and which retained in-house,
he said.
According to Fred Perkins, former chief executive at the Stationery
Office and chief executive of InformationTV
(http://www.information.tv), there is a risk that process re-engineering
will be largely overlooked by government. "Changes to technology
have been funded, but not changes to processes. In some cases, we
might be better off with new processes and old technology, rather than
old processes and new technology," Perkins said.
Transforming an organisation affects people as well as processes,
consultant Karen Simmons told delegates. According to Simmons, any
process of major change within an organisation has an intermediate
stage that is often overlooked. Between the ending of old ways of
working and acceptance of new practices, many people find
themselves in a 'neutral zone', characterised by a drop in
effectiveness,
reappearance of old weaknesses, absenteeism, and rifts opening up
between supporters of old and new practices.
According to Simmons, life in the neutral zone needs to be managed if
change is to be implemented successfully. In particular, staff need to
be
reminded why old ways of working should be left behind. "Sell the
problem as much as the solution," she said. To accept change, staff
need a purpose, a picture, a plan and a part to play, she said.
Organisational transformation has a vital part to play in boosting take-
up of services, said consultant David Fellows
(http://www.fellowscs.co.uk). "Putting the goods on the shelf is just
not enough," he said. According to Fellows, if information was shared
more effectively, government agencies would have more complete
pictures of citizens' needs, opening the way for services to be
accurately and actively targeted, possibly with the help of partners
such
as the voluntary and community sector.
Transformation is about sharing infrastructure, as well as information,
said Steve Pennant, chief executive of London Connects
(http://www.londonconnects.org.uk), the umbrella organisation for e-
government in the capital. By next year, all London boroughs will have
access to NHS networks he said. Instead of negotiating these links
individually, a few boroughs will put high capacity secure connections
in place, while the others "piggyback" on these links. This will pave
the way for closer working between social services and the NHS, a
vital foundation for joined up services for children, for example.
For some, the rising profile of transformation is a timely reminder of
why e-government seemed a good idea in the first place. "E-
government is about outcomes and effects, not ticking boxes and
technology for technology's sake," said Fred Perkins.
[Section three ends].
++SPECIAL NOTICE: TEST YOUR SITE'S ACCESSIBILITY.
The accessibility of public sector web sites - ensuring all can access
e-
government services as far as is reasonably possible - is a moral and
legal imperative for UK public bodies. But the area can seem complex
and technical.
Now Headstar, the publishers of E-Government Bulletin and its sister
publication E-Access Bulletin, is offering a range of independent,
expert assessment packages to ensure your web services comply with
best practice and the law. We can provide you with a clear, detailed
report on the current access status of your site, and a list of tasks
you
will need to carry out to ensure compliance with government
requirements.
Reports also include results from general quality assurance tests such
as link-checking. Taking accessibility action benefits all users, will
make your site easier to maintain, and can improve your search-engine
rating!
For more information please email:
[log in to unmask] .
[Special notice ends].
++END NOTES.
+HOW TO RECEIVE E-GOVERNMENT BULLETIN.
To subscribe to this free fortnightly bulletin as an HTML attachment
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+TEN STANDARD: This newsletter conforms to the accessible Text
Email Newsletter (TEN) Standard, developed by our sister newsletter
E-Access Bulletin. For details see:
http://www.headstar.com/ten .
+COPYRIGHT NOTICE.
- Copyright 2004 Headstar Ltd.
Regular circulation or reproduction of the bulletin by third parties is
forbidden. Properly accredited articles (always including source
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ISSN 1476-6310
+PERSONNEL
- EDITORIAL.
Editor - Dan Jellinek [log in to unmask]
Deputy editor - Derek Parkinson [log in to unmask]
Senior Reporter - Mel Poluck [log in to unmask]
News Reporter - Julie Hill [log in to unmask]
Technician - Pete Hall [log in to unmask]
Correspondent - Phil Cain [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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