The UK and eGovernment: Chapter III, eGovernment Projects

Government to Government Programmes
E-Government is “exploiting the power of information and communications technology to help transform the accessibility, quality and cost-effectiveness of public services. It can be used to revitalise the relationship between citizens and the public bodies who work on their behalf.” [1] Like other major technological inventions or social developments of the past the Internet is having a major effect on the way government perceives itself, organises itself and presents itself to society. As a result, in order to fully benefit from the transformational opportunities available from the Internet there has to be as much emphasis on improving government as improving technology, with a shift in governance to go beyond updating 20^th century public sector practices with 21^st century technology.

Like the wave of privatisations in the 1980s and 1990s fuelling the drive for New Public Management (NPM), globalisation and the growth of the Internet is fuelling the need for public service reform to counteract the rapidly increasing movement of information in all areas of daily life. However, without commitment to adapting the public sector, public policy will remain routed in conventional patterns of thinking and procedure.

There have been numerous initiatives by the UK Government to encourage the development of eGovernment. In 1999 the Government produced a white paper ‘Modernising Government’, which included a new package of reforms and targets, including that by 2002, 25 per cent of dealings by the public with Government, including local government and the NHS, should have been capable of being conducted electronically, with 100 per cent of dealings capable of electronic delivery by 2005.[2]

In 2002 the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister published the national strategy for local e-government, creating standards, expectations, infrastructure and support for local innovation. This vision required joined up services around the citizen at the local level and demonstrates the need for collaboration with local providers, including health.

The public sector is good at refining and improving existing services, such as through longer opening hours and drop in sessions. For example, at a local level, given budget constraints they can often be successful at maximising output.

However, many newer uses of ICT and eGovernment result in ‘creative destruction’, with reform hitting brick walls as a result of organisations or policymakers being unreasonable in altering their processes. Although previously effective the results of attempting to run public services along old lines of thought will look increasingly inefficient when compared to more dynamic private and public sector organisations.

Since 1997 there have been a number of national initiatives to encourage working between government departments and other public/voluntary sector agencies. While Crow and Longford consider that these reforms too close to Thatcherite neo-liberalism and capitalism[3] Wastell and Kawalek find clear ideological differences. For them, while the ‘New Right’ was firmly committed to the superior efficiency of markets and the private sector, and that the reforms of ‘New Labour’ “arguably derive from a different tradition drawing on socialist precepts.” [4] They cite Bevir and Rhodes claim that the ideology underlying current reforms is aimed at improving services through collaboration.[5] We now have a position whereby policy is geared towards strengthening social and welfare outcome but through using tools such as efficiency and public participation.

The Cabinet’s Strategic Framework for Public Services in the Information Age laid the ‘four guiding principles’ of its eGovernment initiative. These were the “building of services around citizen choices”, “making government and its services more accessible”, “social inclusion” and to “use information better.” This vision recognised that “proper management of information could not only produce corporate resources of benefit to business and the citizen, but also deliver improvements in the effectiveness and the efficiency of government.[6]

Back Office Reform

ICT and eGovernment offer substantial benefits in terms of improved speed, access and use of information within, between and from organisations; an opportunity to reduce inefficiencies such as duplication and the potential for more effective, joined up decision making. The introduction of technology and its adoption, such as sharing information through pooling ‘back office’ computing systems between government organisations has the potential to greatly improve the value for money and quality of service. However, the reforms needed to introduce such strategies are complex and require a significant amount of commitment from all stakeholders involved. Otherwise the myriad number of obstacles to success will result in wasted time, overspending or even project collapse.

Many commentators believe that the traditional ‘Silo Mentality,’ whereby organisations develop their separate policies according to their own operations and needs rather than taking in standards or the situation of neighbouring or complementary organisations will be overcome by financial necessity. [7]

‘Back Office’ reforms pool information together, enabling many processes to run efficiently in the background, increasing cost effectiveness and quality improvement, resulting in increased cost effectiveness and quality improvement of e-Government services. This is most successful when “technology has entwined with management reform, while addressing the demands of consumers.”[8].As a result, emphasising reforms through the window of e-Government and its possibilities will give as many opportunities for efficiency gains as New Public Management and Deregulation but through increased productivity and not at the expense of services.

Diagram: Reconfiguration of the inter-organisational information network with the inception of MADE as an Information Brokerage. County level providers are shown above, and district level users below. [9]

The Diagram above is an example of the process benefits of ‘Back Office’ reform. The MADE system streamlines data transfer so that organisations and councils send and receive information to and from one centre, using homogenous software and a common set of standards. This avoids the headaches of organisations having to negotiate common standards and then pool resources many times over and for administrators to constantly have to query whether or not they are permitted to divulge certain pieces of information or not.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
This sharing of information can also be extended to include geographical information and develop interoperable tools to utilise the link between ‘location’ and ‘geography’. The use of this technology has increased over the last five years, including scientific and technical links to disciplines such as environmental issues, science, engineering, computer science, health delivery, logistics, planning, resource management and electronics as a result of improved technology and greater coordination between departments.[10]

For example, Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council uses GIS as a tool for community patrol officers in order to fight crime, logging incidents on laptops in the field, enabling greater efficiency and coordination and an invaluable management of information and statistics in the area.

However, a significant problem still exists, with up to 80 percent of all government data according to some estimate not being geographically referenced or related. Much of this was not being exploited “because it was ‘not known about, not accessible, not affordable or not available’ in a form that was readily usable.”[11] Also, for users of such data that require some form of data analysis it is more difficult, as “not only have they to discover the right type of data they also need to find if that data covers their area of interest and is geographically referenced in a way that can be used in their analysis.” [12]

Delivering Services to Citizens and Business

The Internet has increased citizens and businesses expectations of service provision and value for money. Many creative businesses that have been able to create new ways of doing business, reduce costs and target consumers more effectively have thrived. Today Internet banking, online marketplaces and online transactions are flourishing as a result of offering more value compared to more traditional models. To policymakers eGovernment is more than technology or the Internet or service delivery, it is “about putting citizens at the heart of everything we do and building service access, delivery and democratic accountability around them.” [13]

eGovernment is a powerful tool to reach out and affect the government to citizen and government to business relationships. Torres considers that more information delivered in a more timely fashion to citizens is “expected to increase the transparency and accountability of governments, social inclusion, and empowerment of citizens to monitor government performance more closely. This will also contribute to maintaining citizen trust in democratic institutions and processes.”[14]

SmartGov [15] identified six factors which affected the level of use of e-Government services:

• Familiarity: if citizens are unfamiliar with services why should they adopt them overnight?
• Expectancy: Low expectations and scepticism act as a major barrier on take-up, particularly where a history of failure reinforces negative perceptions.
• Ease of Use: Complexity and poor design inhibit use – poor use of language and no incentives for interaction are typical examples
• Benefits: To boost usage, benefits need to be visible for the citizen; interaction is unlikely to be altruistic.
• Costs: Expensive access or time-consuming services are likely to depress use, particularly where bad design is the reason.
• Solemnity: Overly serious or bureaucratic communication is not likely to boost usage.

The most effective countries and cities bear the hallmarks of this thinking. For example, Canada has “articulated a service vision to redesign services, service delivery and the public service itself to achieve dramatic improvements in client satisfaction, cost savings and efficiencies, policy outcomes and accountability, and transparency.”[16] As a result of this client centric maxim it is ranked first in three of Accenture’s four areas of customer service maturity.

Its Government homepages offer a personal touch, with government interfaces being fully customisable and available in both English and French. As the UK is a multicultural country an increased catering to people with non-English first languages should result in improved levels of use as a result of higher levels of satisfaction.

One Stop Shops

Whereas areas such as ‘Back Office’ reforms and GIS are eGovernment reforms concerned predominantly with public sector reform ‘One Stop Shops’ are an opportunity for reforming the relationship that Government and the public sector has with citizens and business and targeting the improvement of customer to government interactions. Offering an electronic point of access for citizens, these websites are able to structure services around peoples needs 24/7.

‘One-Stop Shop’ government requires that all public authorities are interconnected and that all groups and individuals are able to access public services at a single point even if these services are provided by different public institutions.

Despite organisations being run independently of each other information can be presented to the website viewer in any form appropriate. This is especially useful in complex situations, such as a large city like London, with its different boroughs and a myriad of government bodies. London has previously suffered from a lack of a central access point for information, with London only being ranked 54^th in the ranking of official websites of the worlds largest cities despite the fact that more pages referring to London (37.5 million) were shown on London.[17]

Online portals such as YourLondon act as a ‘one stop shop’ to unify the websites of London into a cohesive whole. The ease of use offers an effective method of encouraging trust in e-Government, as it reduces the time spent searching for information on London services. This facility needs to be better promoted in order to maximise use and expanded upon its success. For example, in a section on YourLondon’s website residents can report information on areas such as vandalism or abandoned cars through placing a flag on a map, which would inform the correct borough without the user even being aware of which council the street was in. In the short-term this leads to an increase in spending, as it creates a parallel channel of communicating rather than replacing an old one.

If there was a website where you could find public services all in one place from car tax to council tax to local school information and congestion charging would you use it? [18]

Research from Tickbox.net (above) has shown that there is a keen interest among many in using one-stop-shops, with 74.6% saying that they would consider using such a service. [19] However, campaigns to encourage the use of online services have so far failed to stem the disinterest from many areas of the public. DirectGov is the Government’s main channel for communication, with it replacing many of the 3,000 or so websites. This one-stop shop helps to direct people effectively to the council or government service that they require.

However, it has proved difficult to market, with a £5 million campaign to persuade users to contact their local council via a central government web portal having little effect, according to an independent study. [20] The Connect to Your Council campaign targeted people via radio and press and advised people to visit www.direct.gov.uk. However, despite claims by the DCLG that more than 250 thousand people visited the website in May and that more than 40 percent of respondents thought the campaign would encourage use[21] the consultants, SocITM Insight highlighted that one area of the campaign received only a 1.25 percent increase. [22] Despite referrals from Directgov rising threefold after the campaign, fewer than 1 percent of visitors found their local authority through the site and most relied on a commercial search engine (53 percent), while 16 percent guessed the address. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London felt that the number of referrals from DirectGov had increased sevenfold in a year but that only accounted for 700 out of the 97,000 unique users that its website handled in August. [23]

Part of this is recognising that despite the ease of use of utilising the Internet and keenness from some sections of the population research has shown that people have misgivings with communicating with local government through the Internet compared to telephone. For example, globally Accenture has highlighted how in some countries 63 percent of users were found to have used the telephone to interact with government in the last 12 months compared to only 31 percent on the Internet.[24] Seeing as the UK has a world-class telecommunications structure and a powerful Internet portal in place there can be huge mutual benefits through drawing on these strengths to provide an invaluable service to citizens and increase their confidence in e-Government.

Written by Jonathan McHugh inJune 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

---

[1] E-Government Review Greater London Authority: Audit 2004-2005 (Audit Commission) 2005 p. 4

[2] E-Government Review Greater London Authority: Audit 2004-2005 (Audit Commission) 2005 p. 4

[3] B Crow and G Longford Digital restructuring: gender, class and citizenship in the information

society in Canada (Citizenship Studies) 2000

[4] D. Wastell a,_, P.r Kawalek et al Information systems and partnership in multi-agency networks: an action research project in crime reduction (Information and Organization) 2004 p. 191

[5] M Bevir and R Rhodes. Decentering British Governance: From bureaucracy to networks

(Institute of Governmental Studies) 2001

[6] Modernising government – e-government: A strategic framework for public services in the Information Age, (Cabinet Office) 2000

[7] Government Sets Sights On IT-Enabled Transformation (Computing) July 27, 2006

[8] SmartGov: Renewing Electronic Government for Improved Service Delivery Jul 2003 p59

[9] D. Wastell a, P.r Kawalek et al Information systems and partnership in multi-agency networks: an action research project in crime reduction (Information and Organization) 2004 p. 196

[10] S. Saxby Public Policy and the Development of a UK National Geographic Information Strategy (Oxford University Press) 2006

[11] An independent Review of the sustainability of a UK metadata service for geographically related information

(AGI and Ordnance Survey, November 2004) p.3

[12] An independent Review of the sustainability of a UK metadata service for geographically related information

(AGI and Ordnance Survey, November 2004) p.3

[13] E-Government Review Greater London Authority: Audit 2004-2005 (Audit Commission) 2005 p. 4

[14] L. Torres, V. Pina, and B. Acerete E-Governance Developments in European Union Cities: Reshaping Government’s Relationship with Citizens (Blackwell Publishing) 2006 p. 278

[15] SmartGov: Renewing Electronic Government for Improved Service Delivery Jul 2003 p32

[16] Accenture Leadership in Customer Service: New Expectations, New Experiences. Apr 2005 P16

[17] Cited from Connecting the Capital: Information and Communications Technology in London Jan 2004 p15

[18] DirectGov Internet Thinking (Tickbox.net) 2006

[19] DirectGov Internet Thinking (Tickbox.net) 2006

[20] £5m e-government awareness campaign flops The Guardian October 12, 2006

[21] Councils Blast Euro RSCG Take-up Campaign (Campaign) June 16, 2006

[22] £5m e-government awareness campaign flops The Guardian October 12, 2006

[23] £5m e-government awareness campaign flops The Guardian October 12, 2006

[24] Cited from Accenture Leadership in Customer Service: New Expectations, New Experiences. Apr 2005 P28