|
From: Dan Jellinek [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 11 May 2007 12:37
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: E-Government Bulletin, 11 May 2007 - Mobile technology
research; Scottish elections debacle; Oyster card and Barclays Bank;
Life under Gordon Brown.
+++E-GOVERNMENT BULLETIN
- ISSUE 238, 11 May 2007.
- A Headstar Publication
http://www.headstar.com .
IN THIS ISSUE: Mobile technology research; Scottish elections debacle;
Oyster card and Barclays Bank; Life under Gordon Brown.
Please forward this free service to others so they can subscribe - full
details at the end.
We never pass on email addresses.
++Special Notice: Geographical Information Systems (GIS) In The
Public Sector, 16 May 2007
- Royal Institute of British Architects, London
http://www.headstar-events.com/gis07/ .
A huge proportion of public sector service data has an address or
location element. Our conference offers all senior managers a broad idea
of what Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are out there; how they
could improve services; and how they could save your organisation time
and money.
Speakers at the conference, supported by the Association for Geographic
Information (AGI) include: Dr Niall Watson, Senior GI Adviser at the
Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, Graham Vowles,
Principal Consultant, Ordnance Survey, and Chris Jarvis, Freedom of
Information Manager at the Environment Agency.
Places cost 295 pounds plus VAT for public sector and 395 for private
sector delegates, with additional delegates booking at the same time
receiving a 100 pounds discount.
For more information see:
http://www.headstar-events.com/gis07 .
And for sponsorship and exhibition opportunities please contact Claire
Clinton on 01273 231291 or by email at:
[log in to unmask] .
[Special notice ends].
++Issue 238 Contents.
01: Wireless Technology Will Boost Productivity Say UK Councils
- findings of landmark report on mobile and flexible working.
02: E-Counting Technology Caught Up in Scottish Election Fiasco
- were ballot papers to blame for 140,000 lost votes?
03: Technology Could Underpin Brown's Reforms, Says Analyst
- new opportunities for public sector reform.
News in brief: 04: Twin Track - Oyster travelcard joins forces with
Barclays Bank; 05: Open Plan - Conservative Party studies Open Source
Software; 06: Big Apple Fix - New York online fault reporting site.
Section Two: Conference Report - Socitm Spring Conference '07.
07: Technology To Drive Autumn Shake-Up of Local Government?:
Public sector reform could be a central aim of the new Prime Minister,
and technology is poised to play a major part, the Society of IT
Management Spring conference heard. Dan Jellinek listened in.
Section Three: Research - Mobile Technologies.
08: Councils Mobilise For Future Challenges: Derek Parkinson summarises
some key messages from a recently published report based on the most
thorough research yet into mobile and flexible working in the public
sector.
[Contents ends]
++Special Notice - Building the Perfect Council Website
- 12 July 2007
- Olympia 2, London
http://headstar-events.com/council07/ .
Following the huge success of last year's conference, we are pleased to
present this second annual event where a wide range of experts and
practitioners will offer their view of how you can create the perfect
council website: easy to use, compelling and engaging.
A partnership between E-Government Bulletin and the Society of IT
Management's Socitm Insight Programme, the event will draw on the
collected wisdom of eight years of Socitm's annual 'Better Connected'
review of all UK council websites and feature the Better Connected
reviewers' own insights, plaudits and brickbats.
Speakers include Donna Smilie, Senior Web Accessibility Consultant,
RNIB; Dominic Tinley, Editor-In-Chief of the UK Parliament website and
Mary Reid, Mayor, Kingston upon Thames and Board Member, ICELE.
Interactive workshops will cover issues in detail including usability,
and the use of third party software. For details and to register
see:
http://headstar-events.com/council07/ .
[Special Notice ends].
++Section One: News.
+01: Wireless Technology Will Boost Productivity Say UK Councils.
Some 80 per cent of all UK councils believe that wireless technology
will help them to achieve the stringent efficiency targets widely
expected in the public sector over the next few years, according to
research published by the Mobile Data Association.
Furthermore, those councils with experience of wireless technology are
even more confident, with some 90 per cent achieving efficiency gains as
a direct result, according to 'Transformational Government, A
comprehensive report on Mobile and Flexible Working'
( http://www.themda.org/ ).
The survey defines flexible working as the use of mobile technology to
allow employers to be flexible about the time and place they do their
regular jobs, while mobile working covers the use of devices such as
personal digital assistants to carry out tasks away from the office. The
study, the first of its kind, drew responses from more than 1,200 staff
from 392 local authorities in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern
Ireland, some 83.8 per cent of the total.
The vast majority of UK local authorities are piloting or implementing
flexible and mobile working, according to the research. With flexible
working, the largest group - 45.9 per cent - are still at the pilot
stage, with 9.9 per cent having moved already to roll out or live
implementation. Nearly three in 10 - 27.7 per cent - are at the planning
stage and only 16.5 per cent have no plans, or know of no plans.
Mobile working is at a similar state of play, with 85 per cent of
respondents saying that their authority has some project under way:
24.8 per cent at the planning stage, 46.6 per cent piloting and 15.3 per
cent implementing. Just 13.4 per cent have no plans, or know of no
plans.
The research was carried out by Informed Publications, publisher of
Local Government IT in Use magazine, Michael Cross, editor of the
monthly Guardian supplement 'e-Public' and Headstar, publisher of
E-Government Bulletin. The work was commissioned by the Mobile Data
Association and supported by the Department of Trade and Industry.
NOTE: To comment on this story, or the issues it raises, please visit
E-Government Bulletin Live:
http://www.headstar.com/egblive/ .
+02: E-Counting Technology Caught Up in Scottish Election Fiasco.
New electronic counting machines were not to blame for the loss of up to
142,000 votes in elections for the Scottish Parliament last week,
according to an observer accredited by the Electoral Commission.
Spoilt ballots accounted for some 3.5 per cent of the total - in some
Glasgow constituencies rising as high as 12 per cent - in the first
Parliamentary election in the country to use electronic counting
machines. However, this may have been due to a new combined vote ballot
paper that was unfamiliar to voters, E-Government Bulletin has been told
by an observer who witnessed the poll.
The majority of the combined regional and constitutional ballot papers
were rejected because many voters had put two 'X's in the regional vote
column instead of one 'X' and no mark at all in the constituency vote
column according to James Gilmour, an accredited observer present at
several polling stations in Edinburgh during the elections and the
count.
However, there were problems with the electronic equipment, Gilmour told
E-Government Bulletin. In Edinburgh, the machines' management system was
overloaded as a result of large numbers of ballot papers sent for
'adjudication' by a returning officer. Adjudication queues were long,
which caused 'timeouts' in the computer system, he told E- Government
Bulletin. No-one had anticipated such large numbers of adjudications and
the system had never been tested under such conditions said Gilmour.
Gilmour also there were significant problems with some postal ballot
papers in that some were folded meaning they had to be re-fed through
counting machines, further delaying the process.
The Electoral Commission is to undertake an independent review of the
elections in Scotland and a group of volunteer 'election observers'
from the Open Rights Group who monitored the elections, is currently
preparing a file on their findings for a report, published in June.
NOTE: To comment on this story, or the issues it raises, please visit
E-Government Bulletin Live:
http://www.headstar.com/egblive/ .
+03: Technology Could Underpin Brown's Reforms, Says Analyst.
Technology is likely to be used as a driving factor in any reforms to UK
local government driven through by Gordon Brown in the early months of
his expected premiership, according to a leading political observer.
Assuming Brown comes to power in the summer, he will have around 100
days to decide whether to continue broadly along the same track as Tony
Blair or to implement a new slate of structural reforms to local
government, social analyst Tony Travers told the recent Society of IT
Management (Socitm) Spring conference near Coventry. And if a shake-up
is planned, then technology is likely to be used as a major enabling
factor, he said.
Possible changes could include local government restructure and changes
to the powers of regional bodies, said Travers, who is director of the
London School of Economics' 'LSE London' research unit.
Technology would be a key element in the delivery of service improvement
in the years to come, he said. "ICT has a significant potential role in
allowing many of the things government wants to reform, such as more
collaboration between counties and districts, and shared services," he
said.
And he said ICT could play an even greater role in policy implementation
if policymakers understood it better. "Politicians need to get beyond
their fear and suspicion of technology," he said. "Could IT drive
strategy? It could, if the people who drive strategy knew more about it.
They often seem to be wilfully ignorant."
NOTE: For more Socitm Spring conference coverage, see Section Two, this
issue.
News In Brief:
+04: Twin Track: Technology from Transport for London's (TfL)
Oyster travelcard is to be integrated in a credit card enabling users to
purchase items worth under 10 pounds from retailers such as newsagents
and cafes. The 'wave and pay' card will be used initially by employees
of Barclays and is an intiative of TfL, Barclaycard and Transys, the
consortium which operates Oyster:
http://fastlink.headstar.com/wave1 .
+05: Open Plan: Shadow Chancellor George Osborne has launched his
initiative to encourage wider use of open source software in the public
sector. Osborne has commissioned Mark Thompson, a lecturer in
Information Systems at Cambridge University to prepare a report on the
costs and benefits of the technology:
http://fastlink.headstar.com/mthom1.
+06: Big Apple Fix: A website is under development for New York
residents allowing them to report local faults such as broken street
lamps, graffiti, litter or dog waste online. Fix My New York, developed
by Bryan Helmkamp, has been inspired by the UK-based Neighbourhood
Fix-It site from non-profit organisation MySociety:
http://www.fixmynewyork.org .
[Section One ends].
++Section Two: Conference Report
- Socitm Spring Conference '07.
+07: Technology To Drive Autumn Shake-Up of Local Government?
by Dan Jellinek.
We will know by November if local government is to undergo radical
reforms in the hands of a Gordon Brown premiership, social analyst Tony
Travers told the recent Society of IT Management (Socitm) Spring
conference near Coventry. And if a shake-up is planned, then technology
is likely to be used as a major enabling factor, he said.
Assuming Brown takes up the reins of power in July there will be a short
window of opportunity - around three months - for a set of radical new
policies on public service reform to be introduced so Brown can make a
strong new impression, said Travers, who is director of the London
School of Economics' 'LSE London' research unit.
Under the guise of an autumn white paper on local government and the
government's official response to the recent Lyons review, these changes
could include further local government restructure; new changes to the
powers of regional bodies; and new powers for local taxation such as
add-ons to the business rate and new forms of charging for services,
Travers said.
Technology would be a key element in the delivery of service improvement
in the years to come, he said. "ICT has a significant potential role in
allowing many of the things government wants to reform, such as more
collaboration between counties and districts, and shared services," he
said.
"It is undoubtedly a way of helping bring services together, but there
is also a need to understand the psychology of colleagues elsewhere in
local government and Whitehall."
And he said ICT could play an even greater role in policy implementation
if policymakers understood it better. "Politicians need to get beyond
their fear and suspicion of technology," he said. "Could IT drive
strategy? It could, if the people who drive strategy knew more about it.
They often seem to be wilfully ignorant."
Whatever happens, local government can expect continued pressure for
public service improvement with no extra money for the foreseeable
future, he said. "The Comprehensive Spending Review will start a long
period of zero growth in real local government spending," he said.
"This will mean growth of between 0 per cent and 1 per cent for most
local government services, and maybe even cuts in some areas. And it
will go on for some time: it will be the new reality for several years,
under any political party."
Local government had already made considerable progress in service
improvement, after years of economy and efficiency drives, he said.
Recent Audit Commission Comprehensive Performance Assessment
(CPA) scores suggest that local government services have been improving
to a remarkable extent, with all councils now receiving three or four
star scores. And after 30 years of efforts to improve them, British
public services were now among the best in the world, he said.
"Town halls used to be dusty, forbidding places," he said. "But local
government is one of the most open and accessible parts of the public or
private sector these days. Just go online and look how hard councils try
to make themselves accessible: all their websites have clear information
saying 'Contact us', and so on. Then look at the website of a Whitehall
department or a large corporation - it's as if they are preventing the
public from contacting them. But even despite this, they will face
continuous and significant pressure to improve further."
Meanwhile Sir David Varney, the Chancellor's former senior adviser on
service transformation, told Socitm delegates a continuing unwillingness
or inability for public sector bodies to share citizen data is hampering
improvement of customer services.
"Everyone says they are consumer-centric, but you still have the
position where, for example, when someone suffers bereavement they have
to contact many agencies," Sir David said. "One son in our research,
when his father died he had to make 44 different contacts, and each one
asked the same details."
As well as more joining up, the public sector needs systems that respond
more quickly to people's changes in circumstances, for example when they
shift between employment and benefits and back again, Sir David said.
There was also a need to respond more quickly to the appearance of new
technologies, despite security fears that may arise.
Varney, a former chairman of mobile phone operator O2, said that when he
arrived in government he was surprised to find there was no overarching
mobile phone or wireless strategy. "People said there were security
issues, so there was no wireless. So it took ages to move a printer
around an office, as it was all wired in. But these technologies aren't
going to go away - the government needs to find a way to adapt to them."
One of the biggest potential barriers to sharing services between public
sector bodies is psychological, Sir David said. "When I was tasked with
merging HM Customs with Inland Revenue to form HM Revenue and Customs, I
was amazed at how difficult it was to bring all their systems together,
even though they were operating in the same areas."
Rehearsing the themes of his December 2006 report 'Service
transformation: A better service for citizens and businesses, a better
deal for the taxpayer', he contrasted the protectionist culture in the
UK public sector with the open culture that prevailed in the private
sector in Sweden, where he worked for several years with Shell. "We
shared our disaster recovery systems between six firms, and our staff
healthcare plans between two firms. And when we were looking at changing
our payroll system, one of our staff suggested using Volvo's payroll
because it was the cheapest."
NOTE: For full coverage of the Socitm Spring conference by E-Government
Bulletin editor Dan Jellinek commissioned for Socitm's own website, see:
http://fastlink.headstar.com/spring1 .
[Section Two ends].
++Sponsored Notice: Devon Museums embrace Imaginarium's
- Community-Generated Content Space.
Imaginarium offers innovative new software allowing national, regional
or local networks of public sector or third sector bodies to publish
websites and information under a coherent brand.
The Community Generated Content Space (cSpace), based on open source
software, has strong potential across the culture, learning, voluntary,
community, local government and related sectors. It allows each member
to promote their own events, learning opportunities, news or other
services, accessible through a comprehensive range of search and
categorisation tools.
The recently launched devonmuseums.net uses cSpace to enable more than
100 museums to punch above their weight. Each can generate and manage
their own unique web space, with a distinctive regional identity,
achieving high Google positioning. Visit our website today to explore
how your area could use this unique technology:
http://www.imaginarium.co.uk/cspace .
[Sponsored Notice ends].
++Section Three: Research
- Mobile Technologies.
+08: Councils Mobilise For Future Challenges
by Derek Parkinson.
For the first time, a comprehensive study has been made of the growing
use of mobile technologies in local authorities across the UK, looking
at the types of product in use, the service areas where they are
deployed, and how they help to deliver policy objectives. It is based on
responses from more than 1,200 staff from 392 local authorities in
England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, 83.8 per cent of the
total.
The survey addresses separately the often-confused concepts of flexible
and mobile working. It defines flexible working as the use of mobile
technology to allow employers to be flexible about the time and place
they do their regular jobs, while mobile working covers the use of
devices such as personal digital assistants to carry out tasks away from
the office, including at the point of contact with citizens.
The research was carried out by Informed Publications, publisher of
Local Government IT in Use magazine, Michael Cross, editor of the
monthly Guardian supplement 'e-Public' and Headstar, publisher of
E-Government Bulletin. The work was commissioned by the Mobile Data
Association and sponsored by Microsoft and technology company Anite.
The vast majority of UK local authorities are piloting or implementing
flexible and mobile working. With flexible working, the largest group
- 45.9 per cent - are still at the pilot stage, with 9.9 per cent having
moved already to roll out or live implementation. Nearly three in 10 -
27.7 per cent - are at the planning stage and only 16.5 per cent have no
plans, or know of no plans.
Mobile working is at a similar state of play, with 85 per cent of
respondents saying that their authority has some project under way:
24.8 per cent at the planning stage, 46.6 per cent piloting and 15.3 per
cent implementing. Just 13.4 per cent have no plans, or know of no
plans.
Most of the deployments of mobile working to date are within Revenues
and Benefits - including home visits - social services, environmental
services and building control. Flexible working appears more likely to
be piloted or applied on a corporate basis rather than department
specific. Some of these are on a very large scale - 10 per cent of live
projects involve more than 500 people and 4 per cent more than 1,000
people.
Nearly all respondents agree that both mobile and flexible working will
help authorities to improve services and operate more efficiently.
Significantly, local authorities with some experience of flexible or
mobile working are more optimistic about efficiency gains than those who
have yet to begin. Some 90 per cent of all respondents with experience
of projects found that efficiency gains through improved productivity
are a direct result. Interestingly, this is a higher level of savings
than expected by those local authorities who have yet to undertake
flexible or mobile working projects, of which just over 80 per cent
expected improved productivity.
The majority of respondents with current experience - approximately
75 per cent - also feel that flexible and mobile working will lead to
more responsive and better services for citizens. On the other hand,
only just over 50 per cent of respondents agree that mobile and flexible
working will help them design services around the citizen, suggesting
that efficiency alone is not enough to reshape processes with more
citizen focus.
The key environmental benefits flowing from both flexible and mobile
working are reduced need for office space and unnecessary journeys.
However, there is a discrepancy between environmental benefits predicted
by people before projects are implemented and by those responding after
pilots or projects are in place. In some instances, this gap is huge:
for example, before programmes are in place, 60 per cent of respondents
expect flexible working to ease transport congestion whereas,
afterwards, the figure is reduced to 12 per cent. Just 20 per cent of
respondents believe that either flexible or mobile working will result
in a reduction of staff numbers in their local authority.
Respondents who identified significant barriers to corporate adoption of
mobile and flexible working say that managing people at a distance is
more difficult than expected. Culture change and loss of personal
contact or team spirit can also pose problems. On the other hand,
technology and cost turn out to be less significant barriers than
expected.
For mobile working, lack of technology skills is an even greater
concern, ranked at 50 per cent alongside culture change, followed by
fear of technology and a loss of personal and peer group contact. With
mobile working, however, loss of personal and peer group contact turned
out to be far less of a barrier than predicted, with 72 per cent of
respondents predicting problems before implementation, and just 31 per
cent reporting them afterwards.
[Section Three ends].
++Special Notice: Place Your Advertisement Here
- Reach more than 11,000 in e-government
- Largest opt-in/requested circulation in the sector.
E-Government Bulletin is the logical choice for advertising any
e-government service, product or job. We are the only email newsletter
in our sector to receive a circulation audit from ABC Electronic (
http://www.abce.org.uk ), part of the Audit Bureau of Circulation. This
shows we have the largest opt-in/requested circulation in the sector:
http://www.abce.org.uk/search/headstar .
To find out more about advertising and sponsorship opportunities, please
email Claire Clinton on [log in to unmask] or phone her on
01273 231291.
[Special Notice ends].
++END NOTES.
+HOW TO RECEIVE E-GOVERNMENT BULLETIN.
To subscribe to this free fortnightly bulletin as an HTML attachment
email:
[log in to unmask]
or for the plain text version email:
[log in to unmask] .
To unsubscribe from the HTML version email:
[log in to unmask]
and to unsubscribe from the text version email:
[log in to unmask] .
For further information on subscription, including how to subscribe or
unsubscribe from an alternative email address and how to find out if a
particular address is subscribed, see:
http://www.headstar.com/egb/subs.html .
+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 2007 Headstar Ltd.
Regular circulation or reproduction of the bulletin by third parties is
forbidden. Properly accredited articles (always including source
details, bulletin subscription details and web address) or entire single
issues of the bulletin (including this notice) may be forwarded to
individuals or groups of people as long as it is made clear that to
receive a regular copy, people must subscribe individually. For queries
about article reproduction, syndication or other copyright issues please
email [log in to unmask] .
ISSN 1476-6310
+PERSONNEL
To contact us by email, please use our first names and add
[log in to unmask]
- EDITORIAL.
Editor - Dan Jellinek
Deputy Editor and E-Democracy Editor - Derek Parkinson Senior Reporter -
Mel Poluck Technical Advisor - Nick Apostolidis
- SPONSORSHIP AND ADVERTISING.
Marketing Executive - Claire Clinton
Marketing Assistant - Jo Knell
[Issue ends].
************************************************************************************
Distributed through Cyber-Society-Live [CSL]: CSL is a moderated discussion
list made up of people who are interested in the interdisciplinary academic
study of Cyber Society in all its manifestations.To join the list please visit:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/cyber-society-live.html
*************************************************************************************
|
