TELECITIES
CONFERENCE, VIENNA
19TH
& 20TH JUNE 2000
TELEMATICS
IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION; E-GOVERNMENT & E-COMMERCE
The conference focussed on the development of the
public administration services in Vienna and particularly Vienna on-line
(Weinonline). The site, which is the
major public information and democratic dialogue system in Vienna (and in
Austria) was developed as a public private partnership between the City Council
and key partner companies such as Microsoft, Compaq, Oracle, IMB etc. The site represents excellence practice in
public information services and demonstrates an interesting use of GIS as a
medium for defining information services.
This could be an opportunity for a
regional GIS based public information service modelled on Vienna on-line with
services such as bespoke travel plans, tourist maps, tourist walk throughs
linked to residents or citizens information
sites.
As with the previous telecities conference on
public/private partnership it was clear that very few cities had successfully
implemented public/private partnerships, ie had used the best of the public
sector linked to the income generating opportunities from the private sector to
create services which were beyond those which could be afforded by cities. However, all participants agreed that public
services could not fund substantial new infrastructure and information services
without recourse to the resources of the private sector.
Smart
Government
Smart
Government 2005-2010
In July in 2000 the Commission will launch a new
strand of IST (FP5) funding entitled Smart Government. This is an opportunity for local
administrations to engage with research partners in limited future gazing
regarding the ways in which public information will be disseminated and the
mechanisms whereby government of the people will take place. The funding round is, to a large extent,
speculative and may therefore be seen as “not the business of local
government”.
Information about the call can be found at **********.
The next information site regarding future governments
models can be found at **********.
The core document from this site can be read by
clicking **********.
Smart
Government Working Group
The Working Group initially focussed on the funding
opportunities above, however, it was felt that more benefit would be obtained
by establishing a discussion site for members which enabled cities and their
partners to paste ideas and opportunities that they were testing in their own
localities. The discussion site can be
accessed on the Telecities website utilising my password which is **********.
Three ideas for Smart Government proposals were
discussed amongst the Group and I have volunteered to start a discussion paper
on the process of re-engineering public services to meet the opportunities of
electronic government and the needs of citizens (life event services). The other ideas discussed were Smart-cards
as an enabler of individualised services and portals based at the city or a
more local level. The chair of the
Group was moving towards a view that all three ideas, that based around my
draft paper, should be merged in to a single Smart Government proposal which
could be built on the web on the same discussion site.
Smart
Tourist Services
Birmingham City Council have been discussing with
Antwerp and Niece the opportunities for a very speculative proposal to develop
bespoke tourist services using the technology of third generation mobile (GSM)
and fourth generation mobile (UML?).
Antwerp and Niece have progressed this discussion substantially over the
last year but have agreed to re-invite Birmingham (and the West Midlands) into
the consortium to bid into the next round of 10 telecom funds. A demonstration of the approach to be
adopted in the project can be found at ********** and the discussion paper on
which the proposal will be based will be available, in English, on this site;
once it is made available.
There is
a key opportunity here for us to develop, through this project, a range of
services to existing residents, business visitors and tourists which will link
GIS to multi-layered and thematic experiences for visitors, eg the cultural
visitor, the business visitor seeking leisure entertainment, the carp
fisherman!
This working group focused on the key issues associated with e-commerce
within public administrations, between public administrations and between public
administrations and national government.
As the diagram below indicates, the thinking was done within the context
of changes in the labour market, including new ways of working and new ways of
delivering services to that labour market.
A paper from Tony Kinder was tabled
and I agreed to become a member of the Dissemination Group, focusing on
deploying Tony Kinder’s PACE research within the West Midlands and more
widely. Further papers can be found at ***********
Mike Basterman the Strategic IT Director for Leeds City Council, gave a
presentation on Leeds’ experience in implementing a Call Centre as part of an
integrated Customer Services Strategy.
Mike agreed to share the Customer Services Strategy with us and this can
be found at **********. Additionally, Mike volunteered to visit
the West Midlands to discuss his experiences directly with colleagues; the
meeting will take place the TheXchange, Aston Science Park on Thursday 20th July 2000 from 9.30 am. Key messages from Leeds are:
Any Call Centre or CRM Integration must be based on a clear and
negotiated customer service strategy.
Any strategy must address:
·
Consistent and well-trained staff
·
A range of access points (including partner sites)
·
Full front to back office integration
·
A stable Internet configured for use by the public
·
Access from anywhere at any time.
Clearly, implicit in this is that any information that is being
developed by a Public Administration must be customer focused and not
configured to meet the needs of the professionals within the organisation.
Cost savings from the effective implementation of the Call Centre can be
substantial and Leeds cites the experience of Brisbane in Australia, where
savings of between 10-20% in overall service costs have been achieved. Call Centre operations can provide very high
excellence ratings and overall, with the one million calls so far answered, an
excellence rating of 88% has been achieved in Leeds. The advantages are being derived from configuring service in
relation to the following figure:
(Diagram)
The model is clearly based on dealing with low complexity and frequently
used Information Services through low cost and low personalisation methods,
such as Internet access terminals.
Data Protection was seen as being one of the most significant barriers to the effective introduction of the Call Centre; however the dialogue with the Data Protection Registrar has resulted in a very positive interpretation of the approvals given for data utilisation, such that Benefits and Community Charge information were being used as core information tags for customers.
Moving beyond the current implementation project, a number of key issues
need to be addressed, most notably:
·
Integration
·
Other agencies on a life event basis
·
Similar integration with the private sector
·
Integration with Police information has been experienced as a concern by
most service users
·
Best Value impacts, particularly around service fragmentation
·
Getting not only 25% of service on line, but access by 25% of citizens
·
Enabling users to move from one mode of access to another
KPMG reported to the conference on their experience of supporting the
major EU project Infoville, based in the region of Valencia, Spain. The project was supported by KPMG UK Office
and, as part of the implementation, explored mechanisms of paying for Public
Portals. The presentation gave little
detail; however it mentioned opportunities for charging such as:
·
charging for visits to company websites (in line with Amazon and Yahoo)
·
charging for click-throughs to the end-recipient
·
payments for direct marketing services, such as web-hosting
A more detailed analysis of the model will be available shortly here ****************
Of significance in the presentation was the research evidence that 70%
of transactions with government are currently done at a local level, with only
9% at a national level and less than 1% at an EU level. This research suggests that portals based in
localities are likely to be most often used, although a local portal could be
populated with sub-regional Information Services. An example of good practice in portal arrangements can be found
on the Manitoba site in California *************
Also, good practice models can be found on the Institute for Electronic
Government site ***********
E-Government United States site ***************
Cities and regions of Europe have been invited to comment on the
Information Society Work Programme for 2001.
Only one proposal will be accepted from each city and these will be
amalgamated by Telecities office as a synopsis for consideration by the
EU. Key themes within the IST Work
Programme for 2001 are:
·
Re-engineering administrations
·
On-line disputes settlements
·
Youth and democracy
·
Social inclusion
A cross-cutting theme will be Design for All, ie accessibility of
user-interfaces. A discussion of the
West Midlands response will take place as part of the WMTG meeting on the 12th
July at TheXchange. The documents for
reading beforehand can be found at *****************
Members of WMTG will have been e-mailed prior to the event.
The next meeting of Telecities will be held in Leipzig on the 25th
and 26th October and will focus on employment in the Information
Society. Details of the event can be
found at ****************
Graham Beaumont
6 July 2000