From: Dan Jellinek [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 06 May 2009 14:17
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: E-Government Bulletin, 06 May 2009: Accessibility and procurement; Crunch time for e-democracy in Scotland.
+++E-GOVERNMENT BULLETIN
- ISSUE 287, 06 May 2009.
- A Headstar Publication
http://www.headstar.com .
IN THIS ISSUE: Accessibility in IT procurement; Crunch time for e-democracy in Scotland; Outsourcing on the rise.
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++Special Notice: GIS '09 - Transforming Public Services
- The market leading Geographical Information Systems event for the public sector
- 19 May 2009, Mayfair Conference Centre, London.
http://www.headstar-events.com/GIS09/ .
GIS'09 will enable managers from across the public sector to share best practice on the collection, management and use of geospatial data and hear about the latest innovations from companies offering solutions to the sector.
Now in its fourth year, Headstar's flagship GIS event coincides with the implementation of the European INSPIRE Directive which provides a legislative framework that promotes best practice with respect to geographical data sharing, both in relation to data standards and policy. For more details on our innovative programme of discussion groups, and to book your place, see:
http://www.headstar-events.com/GIS09/
[Special notice ends].
++Issue 287 Contents.
Section One: News.
01: Accessibility 'Not Fringe Issue' for IT Purchasing, Expert Warns
- Public bodies should exercise purchasing power for good.
02: Analyst Predicts 'Major Move To Outsourcing' In Recession.
- Councils may also be forced into joint service provision.
03: Website Owners 'Should Not Fear' New Access Guidelines.
- WCAG 2.0 should be embraced by all, says consortium.
04: Political Matchmaker - Voter profiling tool; 05: Great E- mancipator - service delivery survey; 06: Serious Savings -IT spending cuts.
Section Two: Special Report - E-democracy in Scotland.
+07: Crunch Time For CyberNats - And The Future Of Politics:
When the devolved Scottish Parliament was founded 10 years ago, it became a global pioneer of e-democracy. Recently, levels of engagement have dropped: but this summer, a vital debate about independence could relight the online torch. Navraj Singh Ghaleigh reports.
[Contents ends]
++Special Notice: Building Perfect Council Websites '09
An E-Government Bulletin/Socitm Insight Conference Portals, Task Management, Future Visions http://www.headstar-events.com/councilwebsites09/
In a period of economic upheaval it is more vital than ever to ensure your council's website works well as an efficient and effective provider of information and services to citizens. Building Perfect Council Websites, now in its fifth year, is the major annual meeting for local authority web professionals - around 300 attended last year - to find out the secrets of creating easy to use, compelling and engaging web sites.
A partnership between E-Government Bulletin and the Socitm Insight Programme, this unique event draws on the collected wisdom of ten years of Socitm's annual 'Better Connected' review of all UK council websites. This year's event looks at best practice now, and predicts future trends. Have a look at our website today to see the latest programme details, and book your place:
http://www.headstar-events.com/councilwebsites09/
[Special notice ends].
++Section One: News.
+01: Accessibility 'Not Fringe Issue' for IT Purchasing, Expert Warns.
Accessibility to people with disabilities should be a primary factor driving IT purchasing decisions within the public sector, a leading expert in the field told Headstar's e-Access 09 conference ( http://www.headstar-events.com/eaccess09/ ).
Sean Smith, who leads on accessibility policy within HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), told delegates last month: "Disability is not just a fringe issue. What we have now is going to be here for many years to come, so we've got to work hard at making sure that what we buy is accessible."
In a large organisation with thousands of staff and providing hundreds of online services, it is far cheaper to ensure systems are accessible at the outset than to make changes later, Smith said. "Cost is an increasingly important facet. We have a large number of staff, around 170,000 pages of content and 100-200 online services, so whenever we have to make a change, it's expensive and we have to make sure we get our priorities right."
Smith said procurement should be used as a method of bringing about change in the IT industry, by influencing suppliers to make their products more accessible. HMRC chairs the Business Taskforce on Accessible Technology (BTAT), an organisation formed by the influential body representing both public and private sector organisations, the Employers' Forum on Disability. "We are, fundamentally, just a buyer of software, but.within the business taskforce we can use our combined commercial power to influence the industry to make more accessible products."
As well as compliance with the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), there are genuine business and financial gains to be had from incorporating an accessible approach to IT, such as better retention of staff and more efficient service provision, Smith said. "Yes of course we want to be DDA compliant, but there's a lot more to it than that.
We also see, fundamentally, that there's an absolutely solid business case in making systems accessible and usable."
And you can comment on this story now, on EGB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/egblive/?p=216
+02: Analyst Predicts 'Major Move To Outsourcing' In Recession.
A "major move to outsourcing" of services by UK councils in a bid to save money has been predicted by local government analyst Tony Travers.
Travers, director of the London School of Economics Greater London Group, told delegates at the local government Society of IT Management (Socitm) national conference that outsourcing "may be the only way to release significant resources to avoid cuts". He also said that there will be moves towards joint service provision from many councils, potentially joining with other public service providers.
These new methods of service provision and monitoring will eventually become the norm, he said, with encouragement from central government increasing.
As well as creating a tougher economic climate, the recession will create increased demand for public services, adding to the pressures on councils, he said. Costs are also likely to increase across the sector, with little increase in funding from grants or fees to support the added demands. When these factors are combined, public sector finances are shown to be in "poor condition", said Travers.
For copies of this and other presentations from the event, see:
http://fastlink.headstar.com/so7 .
The conference also saw confirmation of the appointment of London Borough of Hillingdon Chief Information Officer Steve Palmer as Socitm's new President. Palmer, who takes over the role from Newham CIO Richard Steel, will hold his new position for one year.
Comment on this story now on EGB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/egblive/?p=217
+03: Website Owners 'Should Not Fear' New Access Guidelines.
Website owners and developers seeking to make their sites accessible to people with disabilities must not be deterred by the complexity of recently released new international accessibility guidelines, delegates heard at e-Access '09 ( http://www.headstar-events.com/eaccess09/ ).
The new version 2.0 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
(WCAG) was released last December by the co-operative global body that oversees web standards, the World Wide Web Consortium.
Shadi Abou-Zahra, activity lead of the consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI - http://www.w3c.org/WAI), acknowledged the new standard was complex, but said a family of supporting documents was designed to help people understand what was new and how to apply it.
"There's always a tension between trying to write an easy-to-read text and having a technically precise standard. You will need to get your head around some of the concepts, but please don't be scared of it, and please start using it", he said.
Abou-Zahra said the WCAG 2.0 system features major design improvements over its predecessor. These included greater testability for compliance, a crucial development: "If you don't know whether you have met the requirements during testing, this is something that really hinders accessibility", he said.
The new guidelines have also been designed to accommodate the rapid development of new website features, by making provision for multimedia content, and new interactive web applications and technologies.
Comment on this story now on EGB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/egblive/?p=218
++News in Brief:
+04: Political Matchmaker: Voters in the June 2009 European
Parliament elections can find out which political parties have policies that most closely match their desires and beliefs, thanks to an online tool. The EU Profiler asks visitors for their level of agreement with 30 political statements, before suggesting which national and European parties sit closest to the views expressed:
http://www.euprofiler.eu/
+05 Great E-mancipator: A survey on how UK councils measure e-
government delivery is being revised by local government IT manager and de Montfort University research student Mick Phythian, around a year after he first launched the exercise in the pages of this newsletter (see issue 262, 28 April 2008). The Great E-mancipator survey (named after Abraham Lincoln) runs alongside a blog, and all results will be fed back to local authorities:
http://greatemancipator.com/
+06: Serious Savings: There is potential to save £3.2 billion on public
sector IT spending, according to a report from the Treasury's 'Operational Efficiency Programme'. The IT section of the report was drawn up by former Logica Chief Executive Martin Read:
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/vfm_operational_efficiency.htm .
[Section One ends].
++Special Notice: PEP-NET
- The Pan-European Network on E-Participation
The Pan European eParticipation Network (PEP-NET), the most dynamic network in Europe focused on e-participation by citizens and e-democracy, is seeking new members.
Launched in May 2008 to build up an active network of solution providers, public administrations, citizen organisations and researchers in the field of e-participation, the network has since grown to 34 member organisations.
Potential new members and innovative thinkers in the field of e- participation are now being sought to broaden our activity and deliver more value to our members. If you think your organisation could benefit from being involved - currently, at no cost - please contact us via the details at:
http://pep-net.eu/wordpress/?page_id=8 .
[Special Notice ends].
++Section Two: Special Report
- E-democracy in Scotland.
+07: Crunch Time For CyberNats - And The Future Of Politics.
by Navraj Singh Ghaleigh.
E-democracy, like all parts of the democratic process, should be judged against high standards. And no measure is more demanding than its capacity to combat that most troubling feature of contemporary democracy - the process of mutual withdrawal that looms over modern politics.
Whether we consider voter turnout, party membership, identification with political parties or other traditional measures, citizens in almost all established democracies are - despite the odd blip of hope - steadily withdrawing from participating in politics. Academics have also identified a corollary of this trend: the withdrawal of political elites from citizens.
As the Irish political scientist Peter Mair wrote in the New Left Review (issue 46, 2006): "Citizens retreat into private life or more specialised and often ad hoc forms of representation, while party leaderships retreat into institutions, drawing their terms of reference ever more readily from their roles as governors or public-office holders. The traditional world of party democracy-as a zone of engagement in which citizens interacted with their political leaders-is being evacuated.Citizens turn from being participants into spectators, while the elites gain more space in which to pursue their own shared interests."
One practical instance of this trend can be seen in our system of funding political parties. Whereas mass member political parties might once have drawn on their large memberships (or their proxies such as trade unions or companies) to raise funds, nowadays fewer of our citizens are due-paying party members and hence reluctant to donate to parties. Similarly, political elites wonder why they should trouble 5,000 Average Joes for £10, when a single plutocratic friend can provide £50,000 (or much more) in one go, on the basis of a simple, private, chat.
Can e-democracy alter this? Does it challenge or perhaps even reinforce these trends?
The Scottish picture is instructive. The 'new' institutions of Scottish devolution are celebrating their 10th anniversary this year. Among the Holyrood Parliament's most distinct achievements has been its commitment to e-democracy, understood as the use of ICTs to enable citizens to hold politicians to account for their actions.
The Parliament has from the first had a website that offers text and video content covering all aspects of its process, committees and floor activities. Most notably, it has a much-praised system of petitions which, unlike the Downing Street version, gives due consideration to all petitions submitted by a Public Petitions Committee ( http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/s3/committees/petitions/ ). The Governance of Britain White Paper of May 2008 suggests that this crucial institutional back-up should now be replicated in Westminster - praise indeed.
But how do we judge the system? According to the Petition Committee's own data, the overwhelming majority of its users are 55- year-old, university-educated white men. Nothing wrong with that. But this is exactly the demographic that engages heavily in the electoral and political process already. Is the petitions systems effectively doubling their representation? (And that is without getting into the merits of the system itself - what are its substantive, legislative achievements and outputs?) Further, the Petitions system, like the Scottish Parliament's website, is a creature of the early 2000s. The latter is looking increasingly creaky, and rather web 1.0. The former, even at its highest, is no more than a modest, if innovative, addition to a new institution. How has this early success been built on, or followed? The suspicion is that, having scored a major global success early on, Scottish e-dem has become rather complacent.
In 2007, with colleagues at the e-Democracy Centre at the University of Zurich, I ran a project ( http://www.c2d.ch/holyrood2007/Scotlandnew/ ) that sought to provide and measure the use of e-democracy tools in the Holyrood elections of that year.
The platform provided a series of tools, allowing both candidates and citizens to campaign, participate in debates and seek information about policy and process.
Tools on offer included a 'Virtual Ballot Paper' that allowed users to enter their postcode and be presented with a mock ballot paper that showed them all their candidates in the two races (constituency and region). This was the most visited page on the site, with around 20,000 hits. Given the debacle over the elections - including an unprecedently high rate of spoiled ballot papers - this seems to indicate that there is an appetite for online information to help citizens navigate the political system.
All candidates were invited to upload their own YouTube videos to the site. To say that politicians 'don't get it' is to understate the point somewhat. Almost all efforts had the feel of traditional party election broadcasts, poorly done. The ingenuity and wit of Web 2.0 had not hit Scottish politics by May 2007 - and judging by the Prime Minister's recent near-suicidal YouTube appearances, this continues to be true nationally.
Tellingly, survey data (with a sample of 1,200) revealed that 20 per cent of users of the Holyrood2007 website had an educational level of no higher than secondary school, which is a very different profile from typical users of political websites, and indeed, the general online community in Scotland. Furthermore, 17 per cent of users stated that they had no or very little interest in politics. Both these findings seem to suggest that new technologies can reach 'homo apoliticus' in ways that traditional techniques cannot.
In the event, the Scottish Parliament elections of 2007 saw a breakthrough victory for the pro-independence Scottish National Party.
Key among the SNP government's policies is independence, to which end it initiated a 'National Conversation', a process to engage the Scottish public in a public debate about Scottish Independence, in the lead up to a referendum in 2010. The online part of this project is at:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/topics/a-national-conversation .
With colleagues at Edinburgh University, negotiations to allow access to website usage data for the National Conversation took place with senior government officials in June 2008. To date however, no access has been granted and the National Conversation itself seems to have stalled somewhat. A new minister, Michael Russell, became responsible for the National Conversation in spring 2009 and the indications are that the process will be re-energised this summer.
In the absence of any usage data it is notable that there has been some attempt to mix plain, informational features with interactive ones (video, forums, ministerial blogs and so on). Interestingly, parts of the site are available in eight or more languages, an attempt at cultural inclusiveness in what might have been essentially an ethnic/nationalist project. One might note that the Quebec referendums of 1990s made no such attempts, and succeeded in alienating the non-Franco/Anglo portions of that province's community.
Overall, a notable feature of Scottish e-democracy is that the Nationalists - 'or Nats' - have, up to now, dominated the field. They arrived in cyberspace first, and in numbers. All the other parties remain marginal in the Scottish blogosphere. However, there is a very notable absence of civility between the so-called CyberNats and their online opponents. Any suggestion that the ideals of deliberative democracy are being played out are pretty far off the mark.
We seem to be largely in the realm of echo chambers - people hear people like themselves, and think that that's the sound of the world agreeing with them. A real challenge now for Scottish e-democracy in general, and the National Conversation in particular, will be to overcome this tendency.
So can Scotland's 'lead' in e-democracy be sustained in the years to come, and generate the sort of popular re-engagement that many technological determinists assume it can? The National Conversation provides an occasion to observe whether or not this will happen, and whether the passionate issue of independence can combine with interactive technologies to undermine long-established social and political trends.
The alternative - that the mutual disengagement of the people and politicians will grow inexorably greater - is depressing to contemplate.
NOTE: Navraj Singh Ghaleigh is Lecturer in Public Law, University of Edinburgh.
NOTE: Comment on this story now, on EGB Live:
http://www.headstar.com/egblive/?p=219
[Section Two ends].
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+PERSONNEL
Editor: Dan Jellinek.
Reporter: Tristan Parker.
Associate Editors - Derek Parkinson, Mel Poluck.
[Issue 287 ends].
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