IfG.CC - The Potsdam eGovernment Competence Center

The UK Online 2003 annual report highlights some major future challenges and goals for the Government, and identifies some of the cornerstones to their achievement. Despite the report's statement that 66% of government services are now online, many of these eEnabled services are little more than online replicants of traditional services and add little extra value.

The challenge is not so much to put eGovernment services online, but to instil in eGovernment services a compelling value-add which makes the citizen use them rather than traditional transactions with Government. Looking to the future

The challenge for government going forward will be to capitalise on the potential of ICT to transform service delivery and achieve a step change in operational efficiency across the public sector. The report sets out five principles that are expected to shape this transformation:

• Building services around customers.
• Moving towards web-based service delivery.
• Driving out cost from service delivery.
• Using technology to free up those in the front line of service delivery.
• Automating and integrating a greater number of back office functions.

It is expected that these principles will play a significant role in shaping the outcomes of the Efficiency Review announced by the Chancellor in his Spring Budget speech. The Review is taking a radical look at the way government does its business. By 2005/06 government will be spending £320 billion on public services, with £70 billion controlled by central government. The Review aims to release major resources into frontline services that meet the public’s highest priorities out of activities that can be undertaken more efficiently through greater automation and the use of ICT. The OeE is providing significant support to the Review.

The need to reduce duplication of internet technology spend and resources becomes ever more acute. To address this, the OeE is building a central infrastructure, known as Delivering on the Promise (DotP), which is a content management framework that enables multiple websites to be hosted on a single set of infrastructure. Together with the Government Gateway, DotP will lead the way in resolving the issues outlined above, by delivering a central common infrastructure, providing economies of scale benefits through a modular 'build once, use-many' architecture.

In July this year, the OeE awarded a five-year contract, worth £83 million, to support two resilient data centres to host the central infrastructure building blocks. The objectives of the project, known as True North, are to consolidate the existing central infrastructure and provide a disaster recovery service, while underpinning with best practice industry-leading service standards. For the first time, departments have a firm planning basis for the delivery of joined-up e-government.

In 1999, only a handful of central government services were available online. e-Enablement was an integral part of the vision for public services set out in the Modernising Government White Paper published in March that year. This vision and the Paper served as the basis for the creation of the OeE, with a remit to deliver the target for making all services available electronically by 2008.

Since then:

• The target was brought forward to 2005.
• Two-thirds of central government services have been e-enabled.
• All Local Authorities now have websites and the number of transactional sites is growing.
• There has been a transformation in the provision of government information which, previously only accessible on paper, is now freely available online.
• An increasing number of transactional services are being made available electronically.
• The Government Gateway delivers world-leading integration and authentication.
• It is estimated that one in four adults have accessed government websites in the UK.
• To increase the efficiency of electronic service delivery (ESD) we have set common standards and are putting key infrastructure in place.
• On the international stage, the UK’s performance towards the vision of an e-enabled government is comparable to that of overseas governments.
• The ukonline.gov.uk portal was the fastest growing government website last year and now regularly attracts more than 500,000 users every month.
• Through its ukonline interactive service, the UK has a world lead in the provision of government information on DTV.

There still remains more to be done. The Government is now focusing on increasing the take-up of key services by increasing their customer focus, and says it is piloting an enhanced customer offering for the delivery of electronic services designed around the needs of customers, not the structure of government.

Commitments for 2003

The report sets out key commitments for future change:

• To provide support to companies in their ongoing adoption of ICT through the work of UK online for business.
• To work towards the creation of a new regulatory framework for the communications sector through the creation of OFCOM.
• To work with the broadband supply industry to facilitate an industrywide collaborative campaign to promote the benefits of broadband. To set up a new UK Broadband Taskforce.
• To seek to improve the UK’s performance against leading competitor nations in the supply and application of ICT skills.
• To continue to raise awareness of the need for information security.
• To develop a strategy for the secure, innovative introduction of m-commerce.

Related articles: UK Online annual report published (Dec 15, 2003).

Quelle: PublicTechnology, 16.12.2003