Over £6 billion has been invested in ICT and eGovernment projects over the last couple of years to raise the productivity and service delivery of government. However, the uniqueness of each project as a result of differing needs throws up the need for a flexible approach to planning, with no one successful model emerging. Due to budgetary constraints and the increasing maturity of eGovernment the spending on such future projects is likely to be constrained in the next few years, so it is important to highlight the successes and failures of government initiatives in order to encourage further development of the eGovernment project.
Successful projects, such as Liverpool integrating its new and old council systems, including HR, payroll systems, employees secondments, benefits provision and call centre operations and unifying them in one support structure has enabled the borough to make significant savings and an improved level of service.
There needs to be more groups that can act as a forum and mediator between stakeholders for eGovernment projects. A successful example of this is London Connects, a pan-London group that fosters the spirit of discussion and cooperation to share expertise, experience and costs in medium and large scale projects. This is very useful, as smaller organisations and boroughs are unlikely to benefit from the scale necessary to justify large project expenditures.
The UK Government needs to create a more positive infrastructure for collaborative projects, through putting a greater emphasis on cooperative funding mechanisms, such as coordinated bids for new initiatives and the pooling of resources. Recently the Government has launched the Digital Challenge, involving a £6 million grant for one region and £200 thousand each to nine others. It has helped to create a unique incentive for a region, city or smaller sized area to introduce joined-up technology reforms to meet the needs of their local community and individual citizens. This major investment goes further then fostering best practice for ‘eGovernment champions’, as the structure of the grants should help to encourage the Digital Challenge finalists and the winner to work together and with central government to pool practices in order to tackle social exclusion and be exemplars in their field.
More modern and integrated systems and processes allow collaboration “more effectively across agencies to address complex , shared problems.” This allows local and social contexts to be better understood, “without which the effective governance of multi-agency networks would not be feasible.” For example, the use of MADE data has enabled one town to identify that the top two wards for crime were also the top two for fire and ambulance incidents, with a similar pattern being replicated across all districts. This resulted in a multi agency ‘vulnerability index’ being created using a variety of indicators previously unavailable. This has permitted a greater understanding of local regions and better informed policymaking decisions.
There have been a number of assertions by the media of the waste and inefficiencies of the UK’s eGovernment project, with some sources going so far as to suggest that over 70% of ICT projects fail. For example, the Computer Government Survey claimed that £1.5 billion has been ‘wasted’ in government IT projects since 1997. However, a lot of these projects are associated with reform of public policy as well as infrastructure. These reforms can increase implementation and support costs, as well as the risk of project failure. Despite this the benefits in the long-run will outweigh the short-term costs. For example, once groups get through the initial change involved in introducing CRM, 66 percent of council IT managers surveyed now use the technology. Three-quarters of them consider the CRM has helped to improve efficiency levels in their authority.
Many departments are unwilling to reform their department’s information systems and often ignore the benefits from overcoming current ‘Back Office’ inefficiencies. The current framework is based on the old assumption that agencies work alone. This has led to numerous processes that may increase individual agency efficiencies but at the expense of greater cross agency benefits.
The over ambition of policymakers can easily blind their decision-making, resulting in overspending on grand projects which fail to live up to their expectations. Swansea Council’s £84 million ICT project failed, with its expectations of £50 million savings very quickly scaled back to £26 million. Even then only £7.4 million has been identified so far.
Whereas councils such as Hertfordshire Council who recently signed a £25 million deal agreed a more ‘finely diced’ deal, Swansea was complacent in having defined goals for its contractor. Swansea’s emphasis on outsourcing rather than forming a partnership opened it to a greater level of risk.
Eventually the plans had to be split into two parts and reduced in scale. The second part, which had included the modern call centre which could handle 80 per cent of all inquiries in its first call was reduced to a face to face centre and email system.
A current project concern is the largest ICT development in the world, the development of the NHS’s IT systems. The developers have struggled to create a secure and effective system to support 60 percent of Britain’s GP practices and hospital trusts on time. A recent review highlighted that 13 out of 39 matters relating to Lorenzo, the company in charge of the project as ‘red’, meaning that they required immediate work.
A concern with policymakers is the choice of platform to introduce and build upon. For example, the use of smartcards in London is at a crossroads. There is talk of building on the success of the Oyster cards, which are used to take public transport and can benefit transport policymakers, as it can highlight transport trends of its users so that more joined-up transport links can be initiated. For example, it could be used to deliver payment services for the 2012 Olympic Games or as a unified access card for services across London. However, many sceptics question the smartcard’s value, especially considering the level of data pooling and cleansing involved. Some consider it would be far more practical to use a single sign on password system to access council services.
Concerns have been raised over the public sector’s enthusiasm for data sharing. It is felt by some that “public trust and confidence may well be jeopardised with any wholesale or unrestrained sharing of personal information." For instance, the Serious Crime Bill would allow public and private sector anti-fraud agencies to access personal financial information, including pay, tax, pension and benefit records held across the public sector. This is as a result of the overturning of the principle that personal information provided to a government department for one purpose should, in general, not be used for another. Now government officials “will be able to assume that data can be shared unless there are reasons not to disclose it.” If the public was to consider the level of data sharing to be an intrusion into personal privacy then it would be seriously counter productive to the project.
Despite the major difficulties involved the UK must press ahead in its reforms to the public sector, built around the utility of technology and the demands of citizens. However, it must adopt a more careful approach to reform than previously.
Criteria for Success
Given the aforementioned difficulties in complex eGovernment projects, the adaptation of new technological advancements “requires a careful investigation into the philosophy, structure and productive processes of the public organisations participating in eGovernment.” Such a holistic view requires consistently considering public administration “as a socio-technical system and, as such, as a unit of: individual citizens, employees of authorities and governments, groups and society, technical and information systems, norms and laws, social and cultural practices, moral and ethics and natural environmental issues.”
Diagram: eGovernment Application Layers
To create a successful vision and strategies it is important to involve all stakeholders and ensure that the leadership is participating in the decision making powers and that they are committed to cooperating and relaying decisions to all areas of their organisation. Regular meetings between policymakers helps to acknowledge and deal with the strain created as a result of difficult reforms. A project website, where project information can be shared and ideas explored is highly recommended to aid policymaking.
During meetings to establish a common information platform or to pool information it is important to define user requirements, highlighting what information partners require, when they need it and to explore product design issues. To speed up the process it is beneficial to divide people into ‘syndicated groups’ to consider questions regarding datasets more time effective. Timetabling when structures are to be put in place and when information available is useful at focusing policymakers.
One of the major stumbling blocks to such processes is the intellectual inability of many participating members to recognise the utility of data to support collaborative decision-making, compounded by the low level of human resource available for analytic work. These weaknesses and ‘organisational shame’ can be masked by an unwillingness to share data or make major concessions. For instance, the demands to create a data sharing protocol or issues over data protection may be deliberate attempts to disrupt reciprocity between organisations.
When looking into the practicalities for introducing the project it is important to have defined goals with every contractor. For example, Swansea Council’s emphasis on outsourcing rather than forming a partnership opened it up to a greater level of risk. A successful example of a partnership was the joint venture between Liverpool City Council and BT for five years. The success of BT running the council’s call centre, revenues and benefits, HR and IT services resulted in the contract being extended until 2017, as a result of achieved savings and stability.
This system helped to avoid the animosity between management and council employees, as the staff were still under the control of the council. In Swansea the renegotiation of the contract for the council staff to work for the company Capgemini resulted in an eighteen month strike by its IT staff, the largest in Welsh history. Clear HRM policies should allow for “flexible remuneration and working conditions, for the development of teams, for performance management in the context of virtual and/or cross organisational teams for flexible working laws to deal with demand peaks and/or cross organisational teams for flexible working hours to deal with demand peaks and for job redesign to cover a broad range of customer need and government programmes.”
The choice of software application is important to the final success of a project. There is little use introducing a powerful but complex information platform if conservative users are adverse to use it or exploit its full potential. Any attempt to use standard software tools such as Excel or include pre-packaged functionalities such as ward histograms is likely to be optimum, unless there is agreement over the utility of more expensive packages.
It is highly important that the risks of any project are laid out in advance so that they can be effectively addressed should the project run into difficulties. A framework for assessment should be used to evaluate the efficiency of any work. This can include qualitative as well as quantitative results, as the uniqueness of government means that social benefits can be equally important at justifying an initiative.
Modern Telephone System
Preferred Media for Communicating with Government,
Despite the benefits of the Internet and keenness from some groups of the population research from the Oxford Internet Survey has confirmed the conservative nature of government communication. More traditional forms such as writing letters and face to face contact were chosen over email. This is backed up by a survey from Tickbox.net which values public sector websites as users most valuable between 9.6 percent (The South West) and 14.6% (London).
In the short to medium term there will be limits to the amount of people who will use the Internet to access government services. One way of building on the one-stop shop platform is to integrate it with a telephone directory in order to reach out to citizens and business and be more time efficient and cost effective compared to person-to-person contact centres.
Even though people feel more secure using more traditional forms of contact the cost of supporting face-to-face centres and replying via letter is expensive. This financial benefit means that it is important to wean citizens into using more modern forms of communication, whether by email or telephone, using the SmartGov six factors cited earlier for increasing eGovernment use.
Which of the following types of website is most invaluable to your life?
A concern with this level of investment is that people tend to prefer traditional methods and have not been offered enough incentives to develop a trust towards more interactive methods which they have very limited experience with. For example, reports suggest that only 70,000 people have used the Inland Revenue’s online assessment form and only 41 percent of UK residents have used e-Government. For example, Accenture found that there was only mild agreement that e-Government made government “more efficient, effective and accountable, saved money, and provided easier access and better service.” This is almost certainly a reflection of the government’s emphasis on providing access to services online rather than promoting its use. For the time being these expensive projects aren’t being used effectively enough.
Borough Out of Hours Call Handling Service
In London despite the availability of daytime centres, online information, email and face to face arrangements there are still between 20 and 25 thousand out of hour telephone calls a year for each borough. This costs each borough £260 thousand annually to handle these enquiries. These out of hour operations tend to provide access to a limited number of services and the cost per caller is higher as a result of a lower volume of callers.
Through combining the local authorities out of hours telephone services there are significant savings and the opportunity to improve the quality of service as a consequence of longer hours and a broader range of services offered. The project, which is about to be introduced is expected to cost between £50 and £75 thousand a year per borough but is expected to generate savings of £100 to £200 thousand each year for each borough. It will be working in anticipation of the forthcoming 101 for London Programme.
101 for London Programme
The new 101 for London Programme is part of a nationwide DCLG/ Home Office initiative to provide a single number for non-emergency calls. It will cover core services such as vandalism and graffiti; noise pollution; intimidation and harassment; abandoned vehicles; fly tipping; drunkenness and rowdiness; drug related anti-social behaviour and street lighting issues. This system is being planned to integrate easily with the standards set by the forthcoming out of hours call handling service.
This is partly a response to the number of non-critical calls that the 999 service handles, with some statistics suggesting that 70 per cent are non-critical However, this new service will help improve accessibility and increase demand by up to 30 per cent.
mGovernment
As mobile communications becomes more popular over time there will be a movement from eGovernment, which is built upon the wired networks of interactive and relatively intelligent web design to mGovernment, where information can be shared via mobile phones, and computers connected to Wifi ports located in public spaces.
Norfolk has invested over £1.1 million on transmitters fixed on lamps throughout Norwich and shortly some villages to give the public and public servants wireless Internet (Wifi).
Devon county has created the Devon in Touch Mobile Information System (DORIS), a van equipped with a satellite connection and computers. This will be used for events and as a support unit during emergencies, allowing emergency services to get access to their internal IT systems via the Internet.
General system architecture of the eGOV online one-stop Government platform.,
Digital Television
While attention has been focused on the Internet as a platform for public service delivery, digital television may have a role in increasing contact. Television’s wider penetration familiarity may result it in being a useful tool for people with lack of access or confident with the Internet, or no interest.
The Office of the eEnvoy claims that “some of the social and demographic groups that have been slowest in Internet uptake are among those sectors of society Government most wishes to reach through remote public service access.” This includes older people, the disabled and those from minority communities.
However, there are barriers to the take-up and utilisation of this type of service. For example, digital interactive television systems have been rated as lacking in user friendliness by expert analysis and in feedback from users themselves.
UK Provision of eGovernment Services
The UK is relatively successful in terms of E-Government provision. The Government’s efforts to put as many government services online have resulted in the UK being ranked third in the UN’s report of E-Government readiness, behind the United States and Denmark, ranking second, behind the United States on its willingness and ability to employ ICT for the provision of basic services and behind the United States on the amount of online transactions.
However, Accenture has raised a number of concerns in regards to the development of UK eGovernment. For example, despite having a large Internet penetration of 61%, it had a relatively low percentage of eGovernment users (41%), placing the UK in the category of developing eGovernment users.
This is partly because there has not been enough emphasis on moving from the ‘billboard’ stage, where governments merely put up information on the Internet to an integrated stage where there is full participation between citizens, businesses and government and between government agencies. Apart from 24/7 access, the benefit of having information online is huge, as a result of drawing information together. For example, a computer can be programmed to request information online from users, retrieve records, process them, make decisions, inform citizens and make a transparent record of what has happened. However, the UK’s limited interaction means that in many cases forms can be accessed and printed but not filled in online.
As a result the UK has underperformed in many international rankings, such as only being ranked 40th by the UN on encouraging citizen participation, 19th on allowing feedback on policies and 10th on providing online consultation facilities. Accenture agrees with these criticisms, citing the UK as being 12th on overall maturity scores as a result of poor service maturity breadth and depth (see bar chart 1 below), taking into account citizen-centred, cross-governmental and multi channel interactions, as well as proactive communications and education. It is also ranked 16th when including overall customer service maturity. This was felt to be as a result of a below average ranking framework in cross governmental interactions.
However, despite Accenture’s criticism, it does acknowledge the recent development of some of its many high profile programs would not have made a significant enough impact on its report as the time of writing.
Bar Chart A: 2005 Overall Maturity Scores
The Four Elements of Customer Service Maturity
Internet Penetration and eGovernment Use
Regional Provision
City councils are critical of the effective level of eGovernment, as they are usually the tier of government nearest to the citizen and spend around 28% of Europe’s gross domestic product in providing their wide range of services. Many UK cities are seen as being highly successful at providing eGovernment services.
A recent report (see table below) considered that UK cities were some of Europe’s most successful cities in terms of e-Governance, ranked Birmingham 1st, London 4th, Glasgow 5th, Edinburgh 5th and Sheffield 9th.
The first principle category is eService, which includes the range of services (EsR) and the eService stage (esS) (such as Billboard, one way information, two way information and transactional). The second principle category, eDemocracy includes the political dimension (PD), the level of citizen dialogue (CD), the level of financial accountability (FA) and web maturity (WM). eGovernance is an amalgamation of all the factors.
Birmingham and Sheffield were associated as being part of the interact and transact category as a result of having an eService score greater than 35% because of the level of services that they provided through the Internet.
London, Glasgow and Edinburgh were put in the second class as their eService score was between 26% and 35%. Despite having a considerable amount of information online the majority of it was still either at the ‘billboard stage’ or ‘one way stage’.
Leeds and Belfast were ranked in the third and fourth categories, as they had little interaction and provided only a limited amount of information on their websites. These websites were considered late adopters which required major overhauls to improve their ability to communicate and most importantly interact with their citizens.
Both EU and UK Local governments are seen as using their Web sites mainly as a way to disseminate reports, rules, procedures, and other information about government decisions. This use of e-democracy facilities is quite similar to the billboard stage of e-service. It is an advance but it fails to take advantage of ICT’s potential for the transformation of the ways in which governments relate to citizens. Even the most successful cities were seen as being on the first rungs of development.
L. Torres, V. Pina and B. Acerete’s report highlights that Anglo Saxon and Nordic public administration styles are better suited to this style compared to the bureaucratic style of German and southern European styles. This is because “they are more concerned with customer needs than in the EU continental styles based on administrative laws and legal procedures.”
However, there appears to be no apparent trends between public administration styles and eService developments (see bar chart below). The results show that Germanic and southern European cities are predominant in the first group of eService scores but also the last, whereas Anglo-Saxon cities plus Amsterdam are spread throughout the first three groups. This leads them to conclude that eService initiatives “fit well into any kind of public administration, especially at the billboard or interact – downloading stages, because they do not entail substantial changes in the style of the government-to-citizen (G2C) relationship.”
Their final conclusion is that despite the claims at modernisation, most local governments are merely concerned with the “image of modernisation and responsiveness rather than with the introduction of real changes in the way in which public administrations interact with citizens.”
The low interactivity of UK websites creates the impression that policymakers consider the public to be passive, unwilling to engage them and reluctant to allow them to influence policy and information. This may help to account for the lower eGovernment usage scores relative to the Internet user population. National and local governments cannot ignore these warnings. To deal with these shortcomings there needs to be a concrete idea over how government departments should operate and how they should interact with the public. It is clear that there needs to be an active change in order to reverse this trend and make the UK a trendsetter in eGovernment.
Written by Jonathan McHugh in June 2007.
Part of Electronic Horizon: An Examination of the Importance of eGovernment and the UK Governments Approach to ICT, the Internet and its Impact on Modern Government
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