So who is e-government for and why?

Let me throw in a fundamental question, as maybe we should start at the beginning.

I’m a familiar user of the web. I did the family Tesco order at about 8.30 this morning before going to work. Took 15 minutes, spent £165 (£11/minute—terrifying). I use tesco.com about every two weeks. I used amazon.co.uk and amazon.com once each last week: the UK order’s arrived and the US order is on its way.

In the past year I’ve probably spent £1,000 with Amazon and £2,000-£3,000 with Tesco. In addition there’s Eurostar, Easyjet, Ryanair, Thetrainline, some cinema and theatre tickets and so on. These all have one thing in common—I’m a frequent user, from once every week or so to at least several times a year.

And the Government? Or local government? The only contact I can think of was my income tax in Jan, which was submitted electronically by my accountant, and a request for a passport renewal form around the same time. And I voted in the June elections, by post. Yes, of course, we pay council tax and we have our bins emptied, and our kids go to school so there are letters from the heads and so on. We’re a family of five, with three school-age children.

For many many people the government, national or local, is just not a big part in our lives. Yes, it takes money in the form of taxes, and most of those we mostly support; but in terms of time that we have to spend in doing government business, well it’s trivial. Civil servants and local govt people need to take account of this.

Yes, we’re fortunate. But if our tranactions with the government are so rare how do we ever get to the position of being a frequent user rather than a novice every time, so where can any savings ever be?

And is there any benefit for someone who has a bigger involvement with welfare/social services and so on in using electronic government at all? Why should they?

Published by Alan Burkitt-Gray on 25/09/04 at 10:50am

Comments

Alan makes a great point here, but it actually highlights an opportunity more than a problem. The people that have the most frequent interactions with government are those with problems. Chronic ill-health, unemployment, pensions--being in prison, even. So the emergence of e-government has, if you will, created a new ‘problem’ for these people--lack of electronic access to the agencies that deal with their problems. Now, the UK is actually doing a fair amount of credible work in creating systems to deal with the other problems, by working (yes, slowly) towards joined up justice, a connected NHS, etc. But the problem remaining is that of getting the people hooked up. If you map the one-third of the UK population that doesn’t have (or use) the Internet, it would correspond very well with those who use government services as often as Alan (and I) shop online.

Er, as it happens, the peripatetic Lucio Stanca of Italy’s Ministry of Innovation and Technology has just expanded a programme that was providing subsidies to students for the purchase of computers. The programme now includes households, teachers and maybe more. Participating retailers have a sticker on their shop window, and the government pays part of the price. A similar programme might not be inappropriate here.

If such a programme were supplemented by subsidised broadband access…

Reply by on 09/25/04 at 12:35 pm
I would go further even than Alan. I think the new government CIO should be concentrating on reforming business processes within an e-enabled government, and reaping the huge cost savings that are seen in the private sector from that activity. I’m sure the vast majority of the public would prefer tax cuts to yet another way to file a tax return.

Let departments develop communication channels with their customers in a slower, bottom-up way—and as Louise says, make sure they take account of existing best practice inside *and* outside of the public sector.

Reply by Ian Brown on 09/25/04 at 1:04 pm
Let’s throw up another idea that I’ve been mulling over for a bit. Tom’s comment that “the people that have the most frequent interactions with government are those with problems. Chronic ill-health ... “ revived it.

If I had chronic ill-health, the sort that doesn’t require admission to hospital, which would be acute ill-heath, then normally I would have—to borrow the jargon—a joined-up means of service delivery: my GP. The GP would provide much of the care I’d need but would also be able to refer me to consultants, the local hospital for an X-ray or whatever, a clinic and a range of other activities.

Is this a parallel that the public sector culd look at. How about everyone having their own public services practitioner, allocated just as my parents in 1947 would have got their first NHS GP? (And actually in somethingn more akin to the health centres that Nye Bevan wanted rather than one- or two-GP practices.) He or she, maybe in a town hall or JobCentre or similar building, would be the main point of contact for all—I mean all—government services, whether delivered by borough, county, or country. Passport, tax, planning permission, school selection, unemployment benefit, pensions. We could meet them with or without appointments. They could handle most subjects but would refer more complex questions to specialists. But there would always be a central point of contact.

Even if this were too big a step for Whitehall and town halls, maybe a CIO could start by thinking of this model and working from there?

Reply by on 09/27/04 at 1:21 pm
I wrote in the top posting “In the past year I’ve probably spent £1,000 with Amazon and £2,000-£3,000 with Tesco. In addition there’s Eurostar, Easyjet, Ryanair, Thetrainline, some cinema and theatre tickets and so on. These all have one thing in common—I’m a frequent user, from once every week or so to at least several times a year.”

They also have something else in common: a nice reward, in the sense of a book I want, some food for the family, a trip to Naples or whatever. And government sites without exception don’t provide such a sugarlump.

Reply by on 09/27/04 at 1:29 pm
It shouldn’t really surprise us that as people get higher up the socio-economic ladder that they tend to have less and less involvement with government. Government’s primary self-ascribed purpose has for a long time been to create the blank canvas on which healthy, developed individuals can shape their lives in a manner which they see fit, free from the disadvantages of poverty, illness and so on. There are only a handful of exceptions to this, notably where the public consensus approves of funding of the arts, the BBC and so on. But even when added together spending on these are tiny when compared to the creation and maintainance of this blank canvas.

The role of the net here then is probably rather different for different types of citizen. Some will need incredibly easy to use interfaces which join up lots of services which affect them (think of the number of different services an impoverishsed single mother might require from the state, for example). Others will need interfaces that accept the fact that the huge infrastructure of government is most irrelevent to them, Alan here for example. The need for these strikingly different interfaces shows up what’s still wrong with the government’s portal strategy Direct Gov.

Reply by Tom Steinberg on 09/28/04 at 10:56 am
We’re still skirting around the fundamental question of what e-government really is, or should be.

Before we can enjoy the benefits that would certainly come from good e-government (like some of the examples quoted elsewhere) we first have to build e-ENABLED government. Use the technology to reform the underlying processes. Only then move on to the next stage and involve citizens in transaction-oriented e-government!

The frustrations, high costs and ineffciencies which we all complain about in government can be fixed, more easily than ever before, using the technology we already have. Doing that would require a real commitment to change - which the public sector does, understandably, find difficult. But benefits would accrue very quickly even in traditional citizen transaction interfaces, even before the interface itself was e-enabled.

An example: Motor vehicle taxation...one of life’s most irritating government-citizen transactions. Assuming it’s not really about raising tax (it’s woefully inefficient and expensive at doing so, and if that was the purpose, a lot cheaper to add a little more on fuel), but is about ensuring vehicles are identified with their owner, roadworthy, and insured, then a “brown paper” exercise will quickly demonstrate that technology can transform the current process into one that easily and effectively links the different data sets (insurance, MOT, vehicle registration). The party with the single biggest interest in ensuring the whole process works is the insurance industry, who would be more than willing to support (or even run) the process. The end result would be vastly fewer uninsured or unroadworthy vehicles, and all vehicles capable of immediate verification of status (even the traffic wardens could have a barcode reader to check!)

For years, various groups have suggested this as an example of an “easy win” in e-government. Cost savings for government could be enormous, coupled with dramatic improvement in the transaction for the citizen.

Why hasn’t it been done? Because the changes required are uncomfortable. Because vested interests of the various departments (and the Post Office!) don’t want to face the “problem” of what to do about the thousands of workers who would be “saved” by such a simple, but radical, reform. Because it would involve a battle between Departments as to ownership of the process. Because there is nobody in a position (or who is willing) to champion such a change.

That’s just one example of many, many processes, which themselves need reform, BEFORE we even start to ask whether citizens would welcome the e-government transaction involved.

Sadly, many of the e-government transactional processes already existing are nothing other than technology overlayed on a flawed process. And all the e-approach brings in such cases is even more visible evidence of how flawed the processes actually are.

There is an underlying willingness to change and adapt. But, I suggest, there isn’t much in the way of leadership prepared to really go fot it in a big way.

Reply by Fred Perkins on 10/01/04 at 9:22 am
Often e-government is used as shorthand for using the Internet to interact with citizens.

It seems to me that most of this discussion is rightly taking a wider view - something like the OECD definition of “The use of ICTs, and particularly the Internet, as a tool to achieve better government”

My feeling is that generalising further and defining e-Government as “The use of ICTs as a tool to achieve better government” is broadening too much. Although it recognises a reality - that the Internet is just one step in a much more complex picture, and the most dififcult issues have little to do with the internet. But on the other hand losing focus on the communication interface leaves our scope very diffuse, and can only muddy the waters.

The idea that e-government is just to do with the “citizen” is definitely to be avoided.

Firstly it ignores the hugh amount of government-to-business activity, and secondly (as many comments point out) most of the time citizen interactions with government are already carried out by intermediaries - employers, solicitors, accountants, carers, doctors, schools....

Embracing and widening all the different channels of communication is something to be encouraged.

Reply by on 10/01/04 at 12:28 pm
The real challenge for public services is the rebalancing of resources from administration to essential face to face roles, nurses, doctors, teachers,…

Rebalancing is an imperative driven by the growing need to care for the elderly.

e-government is not primarily about choice. It’s about reducing government costs. The web pushes cost to the customer, they find what they want, do the data entry and make the payment. The opportunity is that as well as reducing cost for government, e-government can make processes easier and more convenient for citizens.

Don’t let’s get carried away, transition to the e-channel takes time. Take the banking sector as an example, of the 116 million current accounts in the UK, 11% are web based, 27% telephone based and 62% branch based.

The transition is important; however, the Office of the e-Envoy ignored it. Government gateway was designed as one dimensional, just the web channel, ignoring the fact that major departments were moving to engage citizens via call centres.

The e-government unit should focus on the transition not just the web, for example, common authenticatiion across the web, call centres and face to face.

Reply by on 10/02/04 at 9:46 am

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.

Next entry: Once in a lifetime?

Previous entry: Offer accepted! We have a deadline!

Ideal Government

Let's say what we want from e-enabled government. Let's observe government first-hand. Let's say "Wouldn't It Be Better If" (WIBBI). Become an ethnographer of bureaucracy today! It beats getting frustrated with public services.

Comment

Anyone is free to comment. Or mail with an article if you want to be an author. I'll post it up and send you a password. This whole thing is supported by Kable.

Authors

Member List

Sign up for new articles

So who is e-government for and why?

Comments

Ideal Government

Categories

Comment

Authors

Sign up for new articles

Copyright

Designed by...

Statistics

So who is e-government for and why?

Comments

Ideal Government

Categories

Comment

Sponsor

Authors

Sign up for new articles

Copyright

Designed by...

Statistics