The real story behind eGovernment
The JBoye 08 Event in Aarhus (Denmark) organises an eGov Track at November 5 ,2008.
In one of the presentations I will explain the Dutch eCitizin Charter and the Citizen 1st! initiative. After this short introduction, I will facilite a discussion with the audience about the role of both government and citizens in e-government.
Check out the eGov Track for details.
Visiting eGov Community members receive a 25% discount, check http://jboye08.dk/sign_up.
See you in Aarhus! Erik
To what extend should a government treat citizens as its customers? That’s the general question in a thought provoking article by Steven de Jong in yesterdays NRC, a leading Dutch newspaper: A customer of the government gets angry quickly (in Dutch: Een klant van de staat wordt snel woedend or translated to English via Google Translate).
When the government treats citizen as customers, these citizens will expect to be treated as such. According to the old adage the customer is king, so citizens will expect to be treated accordingly. That’s where things go wrong since the government is there to serve the public interest and not that of individual citizens.
What do you think? Are citizens customers?
In my opinion it is imperative that this eGov community has a clear understanding about the definition of e-government. I found four examples. Can’t wait to see your comments…
Ron Zwetsloot
Cascadis
(Dutch only)
Ernst & Young probeert, in samenwerking met de Beurs Overheid & ICT en de NVVB, via een enquête te achterhalen wat de wensen en eisen van de burgers zijn aan de dienstverlening door de overheid. Hiervoor wordt een onderzoek gehouden onder burgers én onder medewerkers van Burger- Publiekszaken.
Uit een eerder onderzoek van Ernst & Young komt naar voren dat grote gemeenten moeite hebben de nodige aanpassingen door te voeren om klantgerichte digitale dienstverlening te realiseren.
De resultaten van deze nieuwe enquête moeten het mogelijk maken om gerichter te bouwen aan het verbeteren van de klantgerichtheid van gemeenten door optimaal gebruik te maken van de mogelijkheden die de huidige technologie biedt.
Alle antwoorden die in deze enquête worden gegeven zullen anoniem verwerkt worden. Het invullen van de enquête neemt minder dan 10 minuten in beslag.
Peter Blair writes about an interesting study by a UK based sustainability consultancy. They conducted a study to discover how big a contribution local governments could make to tackling climate change by encouraging local people to turn to their website for routine transactions.
The report found that not only is online service more cost efficient in staff time than the use of paper, but there are also parallel savings in terms of CO2 emissions because of the reduced number of journeys. The report shows that these carbon savings are significantly in excess of the negative impact of extra IT server capacity.
There’s a lot of great e-government material on YouTube and SlideShare! To collect all these interesting videos and presentations we’ve created groups on both communities and everyone’s invited to join and share.
Please add existing videos you run into to the YouTube group and presentations to the group on SlideShare. Or of course, upload your own!
e-Ambtenaar, Linking Pin in the e-Government
April 24, Utrecht (NL)
The eGov Community organises its 1st meeting together with CM Professionals and Cascadis. We will have a keynote, followed by a case from the Work and Income chain (UWV, CWI, cities).
The meeting concludes with 4 cases from different government organisations around PIP (Personal Internet Page). The 4th case will focus on what’s happening internationally around personal citizens pages.
This meeting is especially interesting for business owners and practitioners who deal with eGov multi-channeling and personalisation issues. The approach will be practical, and citizen centered. We expect lots of experience sharing and discussion.
Program
13.00 welcome
13.30 – 14.30 keynote
14.30 – 15.15 case 1 uwv, cwi en gemeente
15.15 – 15.30 break
15.30 – 15.40 intro pip
15.40 – 16.00 pip case a
16.00 – 16.20 pip case b
16.20 – 16.40 pip case c
16.40 – 17.00 pip case d what’s happening internationally
17.00 drinks
18.00 exit
Location
Utrecht, exact details will follow shortly.
Registration
Interested? Send an email to erik@hartman-communicatie.nl for registration or any inquiry.
With the Subtitle ‘From E-Government to Connected Governance‘, UN recently published the outcome of its annual e-Government Survey. They compared 192 countries on ‘eGovernment readiness’.
The Top 10 countries are:
1. Sweden
2. Denmark
3. Norway
4. United States
5. Netherlands
6. Republic of Korea
7. Canada
8. Australia
9. France
10. United Kingdom
The report contains more than rankings and criteria alone. There are some interesting conclusions and ideas that could inspire us.
Let’s take one: “It is worth noting that in the 2008 Survey, there are no countries in the top 35 from the African, Caribbean, Central American, Central Asian, South American and Southern Asian regions.”
Another one: “E-government can contribute significantly to the process of transformation of the government towards a leaner, more cost-effective government. (…) However, the real benefit of e-government lies not in the use of technology per se, but in its application to processes of transformation.”
Please give us your comments on the report. I think there’s a lot to discuss about.
eGovernement (eGov) is about the citizen, the citizen and no one else but the citizen. eGovernment is not about doing government things electronically, but about doing things better for citizens by using electronic means.
To make sure all eGov initiatives are citizen focused, using a charter might be a good idea. The Dutch government launched such a charter in 2005 and translated it in 10 languages. In 2006 it won the European e-Democracy Award.
This e-Citizen Charter is written from the citizens’ perspective and consists of 10 quality requirements for digital contacts. Each requirement is formulated as a right of a citizen and a corresponding duty of government.
It allows citizens to call their government to account for the quality of digital services. Government can use the charter to examine the external quality of its public performance.
The 10 requirements can be divided in four categories: the basic principle of access, information, interaction, and participation. A 2007 survey in the Netherlands concluded that from the citizens’ point of view the top three requirements were: transparency, trust, and convenience.
Please check out this e-Citizen Charter and the accompanying workbook (translated into 8 languages). Let us know if you think this instrument is useful, what your experiences are with this or any other charter and how you think we could help improving it.
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