Several reasons suggest that is advisable to shift focus in political strategies across the world from production to consumption. This involves measures that rely more on markets and less on regulation in order to realize the full potential of egovernment.
For a background see “Egovernment in Perspective”, http://www.talkstandards.com/?p=2273
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With this week’s high-level EU conference and ministerial meeting, egov2009.se, just completed, there is good reason to put some of the policy issues in perspective.
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Talkstandards.com had an Open Forum on eGovernment and ICT standardization yesterday. The discussion focused on eGov policies and how eGov strategies can contribute to the development and innovation of the public sector.
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With the understanding that well-connected government can enhance efficient and effective delivery of services to citizens Governments around the world - have become increasingly interested in assuring that their ICT systems are built and maintained in a manner that results in the highest levels of interoperability, data access and interchange, and “digital sovereignty.”
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There is no debate that standards have always played an important role in the design and delivery of eGovernment systems, since the mid-1990s we have been seeing standards play critical roles in data exchange, authentication and the way that information is ultimately presented back to the user.
Early eGoverment systems represented a small revolution for many governments, providing ways to increase levels of administrative efficiency while at the same time providing services that were much more broadly available than in previous years.
However, if we turn and look specifically at agencies responsible for archiving governments information then the shift to digitally delivered services also brought some new challenges. Archiving paper is well understood, archiving digital records adds complexity that is still being worked out in many jurisdictions. Only now are we starting to see standards emerge for storage and maintenance of these digital records, over ten years after we saw the mass shift to digital by governments all over the world.
The issues will be obvious to many, governments have a decade wide void in the records that they have managed to keep, information has been simply lost as individual computers and email inboxes have been redeployed or the hardware has been recycled.
At this point in time we are witnessing a second iteration of that revolution, governments, citizens and businesses are collaboratively talking about Government 2.0 (or gov20), examining ways that they will use microblogging, social media and the publishing of massive government datasets to find new ways for government to interact with citizens and for developers to deliver a range of tools that could not be developed by government alone.
Within these gov20 conversations we are seeing more than just the digitization of government services, politicians are finding new ways of communicating directly with their electorate and senior departmental officials are finding new ways to more deeply understand the people that their services ultimately serve.
So once again we are seeing a massive shift in the technology that is being used to run the business of government, and once again we don’t yet have the standards to retain the conversations that take place over microblogging services, or the huge amount of inbound information that departments will eventually use as part of their decision making processes that they collect from an array of social networking tools.
As a standards community, in support of the ongoing evolution of eGovernment, now is the time for us to start to think about how we will solve these complex challenges. Work needs to begin on archiving standards that will retain the information that is driving decisions today and as technology plays an increasingly larger role in the business of government archiving standards needs to be a core part of systems design, not a problem that we try and solve after the fact.
As holder of the rotating presidency of the European Union, Sweden next week hosts a high-level ministerial meeting devoted to the future policies regulating and promoting eGovernment in Europe (www.egov2009.se).
This is a promising step since Sweden is particularly well positioned to take a lead in international work on eGovernment. Dispite is relative smallness it is well positioned to coordinate a common European effort to realize the great potential for improvements and development of public services based on ICT in Europe and elsewhere.
Sweden is not only one of the world´s most open economies (imports and exports account for 54% and 47% of GDP respectively according to Statistics Sweden), it is also the world´s most eGovernment ready country according to a UN ranking in 2008 (read the e-Government Survey).
Sweden, as a small open economy, has great interest in policies that facilitates international trade and specialization (and its interest in playing strategic games in international policymaking to obtain competitive advantages over other nations is limited). This provides favorable conditions for productive international collaboration in a politically sensitive area.
There are several fundamental reasons why eGovernment works well and has further potential in Sweden. One reason is of course the level of development (GDP per capita was 38,100 in PPP-adjusted USD in 2008). Access to broadband, computers and mobile phones is also widespread and citizens are generally well educated and used to ICT technology (80% had broadband Internet access in 2008 and the number of mobile phone subscriptions per 100 users is 106). These factors provide generally favorable conditions for widespread use of internet services in general and eGovernment services in particular.
There are also several factors that are specific to the public sector that are important for eGovernment development in Sweden. One historical factor that plays an important role is that Swedish citizens generally have considerable trust in the public sector. This trust stems from the fact that for many centuries the State, unlike other countries, has not been a source for oppression but rather a means for providing services in the public interest.
Furthermore, Sweden was one of the first countries with a legal right for citizens to have free access to information and it has a far reaching principle of transparency in the public sector. The right to access documents as well as information about individuals – citizens and companies – is constitutional (as expressed in the Freedom of the Press Act). Citizens as well as government agencies thus think of transparency as the rule rather than an exception.
The bureaucracy is relatively efficient and the level of corruption is relatively low (Sweden ranks number one in the 2009 Global Corruption Report from Transparency International). Most government agencies work continuously to improve productivity. Some government bodies have been quick to use ICT to improve information processing and to make information distribution to citizens better, faster and less costly. The willingness to ICT as a means to distribute individualized information and collect information from citizens has resulted in a number of very successful eGov services. For instance, the vast majority of citizens now file tax returns online or by mobile phone (SMS) (see e.g. this article in Swedish). Most parents and employees have access to information and can report parental leave or sickness online to obtain social security benefits.
The Swedish government’s approach to ICT has been in line with a general approach to make production and organizational choices based on economic considerations rather than ideology or special interests. With a large share of IP-intensive companies, the Swedish economy relies on protection and international recognition of patents, copyright and other intellectual property rights. The approach to ICT standards and software is generally pragmatic and economically rational. This has also been true when government bodies have chosen ICT systems and software; often IP-based, external and built on proprietary code.
While Sweden has been fast in using ICT for cost-effective distribution and individualization of information in the public sector, development in other areas has been considerably slower.
The use of Internet for interactivity and citizen participation – i.e. eGov 2.0 – has been relatively limited. There are few, if any, examples of user-contributed services. eGov 2.0 services are absent in essentially all areas of the public sector, including important services such as education, transportation, culture, health care and media (public service). This is probably due to a political resistance, which stems from ideas that service quality in the welfare state needs to be politically controlled to ensure “fairness” and “equity”.
The use of Internet services to improve participation in the political process, eDemocracy, is also limited. This is partly explained by a strong tradition of representative, rather than direct, democracy.
Finally, eGovernment in Sweden is limited to ICT use in the interaction between government agencies and citizens. A strategy to empower citizens as consumers of public services by enabling substitution between producers, which would contribute to competition and market integration, is lacking.
Portability and control of data by individuals is a non-existing phenomenon. For instance, Sweden does neither provide electronic health records available to patients nor electronic portfolios for students. With funding rather than production being a core public task in many sectors, including education, health care, pensions, childcare etc, a significant potential remains for new and innovative technologies in these areas.
The Swedish experience shows that a pragmatic, value-oriented and neutral approach to eGovernment and procurement of ICT and software works well when applied in an open economy with a good basic ICT infrastructure. It also shows that adoption and development works well if applied on a limited scale (Sweden has a relatively homogenous population of 9 million people).
Not surprisingly, it is relatively more easy to use ICT for rationalization of existing government services and information processes. There is significantly more resistance to use ICT for development of new and innovative services with substantial contributions from a dispersed network of citizens and external contributors. In addition, using ICT to transfer power and control over data and empowering citizens as consumers presents very difficult challenges.
Along with Open source and Open standards, we now have a new phrase; i.e. Open Government.
What does Open Government imply for standards?
Let’s take a step back. Prior to 1999, I used to work for an ERP vendor. ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) is a complex class of software that is typically intended to manage all the functions of a company (such as Accounts Payable, General Ledger, Billing and so on). Inspite of their complexity, there was a mad scramble to install ERP systems which was mainly motivated by the Y2K deadline.
My field is learning technology standardisation. And I would not be a standards man if I did not have an acronym for it. We call it LET standardisation (LET for Learning, Education and Training). For years I have been vice chair of CEN Workshop on Learning Technologies, also acting as a national expert in the ISO committee working on LET standards (SC36). For more than a year now I have been working on a European project looking into standards used for competency-based learning, in order to come up with a Reference Model, picking and choosing form the best of LET standards and specifications.
LET is an emerging domain. Everything technological is in flux. And then we have standards that are supposed to be stable. It sounds strange, and as a matter of fact, it does not make sense. In the European project I am meeting a strong respect for what is classified as a standard (related to formal standard setting bodies). And I observe a less strong respect for what is classified as specifications (often related to user communities). Having been part of the process of producing standards I know too well that you cannot analyse standards by reputation of the organisation behind it.
European eGovernment initiatives give standards boards a prominent role in the governance of standards, also LET standards. One of the instruments of governance is a standards catalogue, which is intended to guide users towards appropriate standards to implement. Again, it goes without saying. Formal standards are more likely to end up in standards catalogues than community based standards.
Together with Paul Hollins of the UK Centre for Educational Technology and Interoperability Standards I have analysed the standards catalogue approach against a horizon scan report of current standardisation projects in the sector. First, given the emergent nature of the LET domain, we are not sure that the right candidates for recommendation are put forward. Second, we also question if bad decisions or obsolete recommendations would be withdrawn from the catalogue. The process models behind these initiatives have weak feedback mechanisms, and point more or less in one direction: towards the registry. There is a growing awareness in the LET standards community that we are not good at dispensing some of our earlier, less strong ideas, i.e., putting some of our standards into the bin.
However, what is more important is the effect the standards catalogues will have on what we would call the standards discourse. There is a growing awareness in standards bodies, e.g., demonstrated recently through a number of work method seminars organised prior to standardisation meetings in CENWS-LT, of the need for a meta level discussion on “the way we do standards”. The standards catalogue approach may steer discussions in the direction of the standards that are on the list, and what level of mandation these standards are assigned.
Therefore, we suggest that eGovernment standards boards should focus on semantic, organisational, cultural, political and legal interoperability, in preference to attempting to stabilise practice around a limited number of technical interoperability standards.
In conclusion, “unstable standards” might be more in line what the LET stakeholders need than stifled standards that are not serving innovation in the domain. Then we have just to talk about standards – and give up the hidden quality denotation in keeping up the categorisation of standards vs. specifications.
Technical standards will invariably be articulated in an eGovernment strategy; but typically such standards won’t impede a government’s successful pursuit of an eGovernment strategy because useful standards are both widely available and known (and therefore generally not a challenge) and ever-evolving (and therefore not well suited to rigid lists or mandates). However, without organizational interoperability, an eGovernment strategy may become mere words on a page and a lot of money spent. Organizational interoperability means the organizational structures, business processes and personnel enable enterprise-wide and cross-enterprise information sharing, cooperation and collaboration.
The government enterprise may need to reorganize to eliminate barriers to collaboration. Enterprises may need to reform the organizational structures, management hierarchy, mission statements, rules and leadership guidance to implement changes to information management, workflow and business processes. For example, historically, business processes were designed to meet needs internal to the enterprise. Today, an enterprise must start with the service being consumed by the end user – the citizen, small business, industry or other government agency – and design business processes to provide the service most efficiently. Similarly, the enterprise may need to redesign their information management to achieve the proper degrees of information sharing and privacy protection.
Individuals, whether staff or senior managers, need to adapt. As business processes and practices are altered or eliminated – managers may have to identify new means to measure productivity, transition the old revenue streams and methodologies to new processes and organizational structure, or identify new revenue streams. Workers at any level of the administrative hierarchy may feel threatened by new interconnectedness. Trust, norms, and networks central to social capital are fluid and could be threatened by reorganization. Change in job content, loss of status or power, changes in interpersonal relationships, changes in the decision-making approach, and job insecurity are common reasons employees resist new technologies. A worker may perceive a threat to their “ownership” of information — their influence, or social stature — that may have accrued over many years of service. One method to avoid some of these problems is to include the workforce in the design of the eGovernment initiative from the outset. Their input could lead to innovations otherwise lost. Workers may not have the skills to effectively undertake the imperatives of an eGovernment strategy and do their job within a new organizational structure with new processes and systems. The government must make it a priority to develop proper training for, and achieve “buy-in” by, all who manage and work for the enterprise, these are the people who will or will not implement the eGovernment strategy.
Interoperability between ICT systems in the public sector is an important policy objective for the European Union. It is regarded an important means to solve conventional issues relating to digital communications between independent organizations and entities and enable seamless and cost-effective delivery of public services. Hopes are that is should also facilitate cross-border mobility. It is thus at the heart of the EU policy to create an integrated market and better European public services.
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