*** Democracies Online Newswire - http://www.e-democracy.org/do *** I encourage all the new DO-WIRE subscribers (we crossed the 1800 mark this week) to subscribe directly to Dan Jellinek's E-Government Bulletin. This month's bulletin includes an opinion article on teledemocracy and bureaucracy. Steven Clift Democracies Online ------- Forwarded message follows ------- From: "Dan Jellinek" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: E-Government Bulletin - April 2001 Date sent: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 14:43:39 +0100 Please forward this free service to colleagues so they can subscribe by sending a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] - full details at the end. We never pass on email addresses. For further information, an online archive and our privacy policy see: http://www.headstar.com/egbh [Issue starts] E-GOVERNMENT BULLETIN The Email Newsletter On Electronic Government, UK And Worldwide. ISSUE 98, APRIL 2001 IN THIS ISSUE: Section One: News Gateway closed to foreign buyers? - government systems sale controversy; Government in smart card quandary - banks fail to deliver; Procurement office unveils online tendering; Treasury banks on Internet savings - the new Invest to Save round; Go configure - domain name system spring-clean; 'Beyondbricks' runs over deadline - DTI e-entrepreneur portal delayed; Pathfinders forge ahead - council innovators selected; News in brief: Public debate online, Age Concern e-politics; Foreign Office award. Section Two: Conference report - Promoting Electronic Government Section Three: Opinion - Teledemocracy Section Four: Analysis - E-procurement [End of contents] GATEWAY CLOSED TO FOREIGN BUYERS? Media reports that the UK government's 'Gateway' online transaction platform is to be sold abroad by private sector firms including Microsoft are being played down by the government, amid controversy over the use of public funds to develop a commercial package. Speculation on sales of the package began with the appearance of e-Envoy Andrew Pinder alongside Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates at a US conference to demonstrate the Gateway to government leaders from across the world. The government has so far spent 18.3 million UK pounds developing the Gateway platform. Because the contract is confidential it is not known exactly what stake the government has in the project, although it is expected to invest further large sums as it progresses. A Cabinet Office spokesperson played down the controversy this week. She told E- Government Bulletin that although foreign sales could eventually occur, there was a clause in the development agreement stipulating that government approval would be needed. The Gateway is based on an 'XML' system allowing information to be given invisible tags so it can be easily exchanged. The system has so far been used by the Inland Revenue to allow online payments, by the Customs & Excise to deal with VAT and by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to enable farmers to claims EU subsidies. Other partners in the Gateway project include Dell, which supplies the hardware, and Cable and Wireless, which manages the servers. GOVERNMENT IN SMART CARD QUANDARY The government looks set to be forced into funding its own nationwide smart-card system to enable secure access to public services including payments online. Ministers had hoped to piggyback on a suitable private sector smart card system from the high street banks, but are now resigned to the fact that this will not occur. The news emerged at last week's 'Promoting Electronic Government' (PEG) conference in Birmingham. Ian White, deputy director at the Office of the e-Envoy, said the government "had been waiting for banks to introduce smart cards or other authentication technology but they have not. We are therefore in something of a quandary - either we introduce such a system ourselves, perhaps starting by running trials with public servants, or we accept what banks accept - simple access cards protected only by a PIN number and a security word like a mother's maiden name." However, White admitted that banks' higher risk thresholds meant they were happy to use a simpler and more accessible system like PIN numbers, and simply cover their losses to fraud from profits. Public sector bodies, however, could not accept any significant levels of risk where citizens' personal health, tax or other sensitive data was concerned, and would therefore have to use a more secure system such as a smart card system. A government-led national smart card system will be extremely expensive to set up, and will have to be voluntary to avoid charges of 'big brother' style invasion of privacy. However, it now seems that the government will have no choice but to act if it is to meet its targets for online public services by 2005. * Full PEG report: see section two, this issue. PROCUREMENT OFFICE UNVEILS ONLINE TENDERING The Office of Government Commerce has announced the start of the six-month trial of an online tendering system for public sector contracts which it hopes will produce tax savings of 13 million UK pounds over four years. The announcement of the pilot, provisionally called 'OGC TenderTrust', comes within days of the office formally taking control of a number of previously autonomous central government buying units. On 1 April the former Property Advisors to the Civil Estate (PACE), the CCTA, and The Buying Agency - already merged into the OGC but having up until now retained their separate identities - ceased to exist. The last of these has now been re-branded 'OGCbuying.solutions'. OGC believes the new tendering system, if it passes the pilot stage, could reduce costs for suppliers by 37 million, a figure which it hopes will entice more companies into the sector. Many economists believe a larger pool of suppliers results in lower prices to the buyer, which in this case would translate into tax savings. Several other government agencies are taking part in the TenderTrust trial, of which the biggest is the NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency (PASA), a new executive agency of the Department of Health (http://www.pasa.doh.gov.uk) PASA will use part of its 2.3 billion pounds worth of directly negotiated NHS contracts as the testbed for the TenderTrust. The Internet-based system will use PKI encryption and smartcard-based digital certificates, provided and guaranteed by the Royal Bank of Scotland (http://www.royalbankscot.co.uk) with software company TrustMarque (http://www.trustmarque.com). TREASURY BANKS ON INTERNET SAVINGS Some 67% of the government's new 'Invest to Save' budget - a Treasury-run scheme to fund civil service efficiency programmes - is to be spent on Internet-related projects, according to E-Government Bulletin research. Of the 123 projects given funding, some 80 had a significant Internet element, with a total value of 41 million UK pounds. Seven of the top ten biggest recipients had an Internet element to their proposals. The biggest on all counts was the Home Office which received a total of nearly four million pounds to finance the development of an interlinked police portal. Also in the top ten were five locally-led projects, including Kingston Council in London which was allocated 3.5 million for a public service portal. Of the budget as a whole locally-led projects received 16.7 million pounds, or around 40% of the budget for Internet projects. Below is list of the top ten recipients with a significant Internet element to their proposal. For a complete list see: http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/press/2001/p28_01.html *Home Office, 3.9 million pounds: a national internet portal for the police *Royal Borough of Kingston, 3.5m: a single access point to public services in South West London *Department of Social Security, 1,9m: services for the elderly via interactive digital television *Department of the Environment, Transport & the Regions, 1.8m: an electronic interface for all English councils *Department of Trade & Industry, 1.5m: online facilities to apply for export licences *Office of Fair Trading, 1.5m: a system to support trade regulation *Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council, 1.3m: online support for independent living for older people *Southern Derbyshire Health Authority, 1.2m: interactive website on drug use *Liverpool City Council, 1.1m: online services for young people in need, their parents and support services *Worcestershire County Council: 0.9m: online social transport planning GO CONFIGURE Government web site owners are being urged to participate in a new campaign to clean up the Internet domain name system (DNS), used by computers to route Internet communication to recognisable domain names. All organisations that run their own Internet servers run a piece of software to route domains, but it has emerged that most of this software is incorrectly configured. The result can be delays to or failure of email delivery, and loopholes that hackers could exploit to break into sites. Christian de Larrinaga, chairman of the Internet Society of England, the group spearheading the campaign, said good housekeeping on government servers is crucial to the government's drive to portray the UK as a new economy pioneer. The 'DNS Spring Cleaning' campaign is at: http://www.domainspringclean.org.uk/ 'BEYONDBRICKS' RUNS OVER DEADLINE The Department of Trade and Industry has been forced to delay the launch of its portal for Internet entrepreneurs by two months, E-Government Bulletin has learned. The DTI said the site - which should already have gone live - will now go live in late May. 'Beyondbricks' (http://www.beyondbricks.com), which is being financed as part of the DTI's 5.5 million UK pound Internet Mentoring Initiative, will contain research, news and an entrepreneur community area. The consortium behind the development are venture capital networking company Venturedome (http://www.venturedome.com); marketing company Wilson Harvey (http://www.wilsonharvey.co.uk); public sector grants information company J4b (http://www.j4b.com); and GroovyTrain (http://www.groovytrain.com), an online community management software developer. The DTI has committed itself to investing 1.5 million UK pounds in the project between 1 January 2001 and the start of 2003. Another three million UK pounds will be distributed in tranches of around 100,000 UK pounds to entrepreneurs based in the north of the UK. The remaining one million pounds will be paid to the Inland Revenue in the form of VAT. Charlie Hoult, founder of technology incubator Metrocube (http://www.metrocube.com/) which is leading the site's development, said Beyondbricks will be marketed primarily though a roadshow tour of regional business networking organisations and was hoping to have a presence on the Cabinet Office's UKonline portal. Hoult also said he hoped to co- operate with the DTI's Small Business Service, which has ambitions to create a portal for entrepreneurs in all sectors. PATHFINDERS FORGE AHEAD The government has named the 25 successful 'pathfinder' local authority Internet projects, which are now eligible for a share of 25 million UK pounds to be allocated by the end of 2002. The projects are linked to consortia of councils and private sector partners, with more than 100 local authorities involved in all. The winners were selected from 140 projects involving 220 councils. The hunt for pathfinders was initiated by local government minister Hilary Armstrong in February 2000. Projects range from e-procurement strategies in Leeds and London to electronic payment for public transport and college meals in Southampton and Cornwall. Another plan will see the reporting of potholes and faulty street lamps online. For more information about these projects see: http://www.press.detr.gov.uk/0103/0164.htm NEWS IN BRIEF: COMMONS GOAL: A new independent virtual debating and consultation chamber aimed at boosting public input into democracy has been proposed by the academics Jay Blumler and Stephen Coleman. `Realising Democracy Online: A Civic Commons in Cyberspace' is available to download from the publications section of the Citizens Online site: http://www.citizensonline.org.uk/ MATURE POLITICS: The charity Age Concern has launched an e-democracy web site aimed at politicising older people. See: http://www.ageaction.org.uk BEST IN SHOW: The Foreign and Commonwealth Office was named best government web site at the Government Internet Forum web awards. Thirty-eight sites were nominated. See: http://www.internetforum.gov.uk/awards.htm [Section One ends] SECTION TWO: CONFERENCE REPORT - PROMOTING ELECTRONIC GOVERNMENT COLLABORATION HANGING ON PEG By Dan Jellinek [EMAIL PROTECTED] A lack of collaboration between local authorities to create 'joined-up' public services on the Internet was exposed by last month's Promoting Electronic Government (PEG) conference in Birmingham. PEG (http://www.peg.org.uk) is a consortium of government, local authority and private sector organisations partially backed by Treasury 'Invest to Save' money. It is developing tools and networks to help councils develop e-government strategies. Ian White, deputy director of the e-Envoy's office (http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk), said there was currently a strong need for more peer-to-peer networking among councils to develop online services. He said his office's first review of councils' e-government strategies, due to be published shortly, would expose this failure. "Sometimes one council said that it was working with another, but there was no mention of that in the other council's strategy!" One option thrown up in later discussion was for regional assemblies to play a role in bringing councils in an area together to join up online services more. The PEG initiative grew out of a project called 'BICIS' - 'Benchmarking in Community Information Services' - which originated with the former Local Government Management Board in conjunction with the 'EIP Group' of councils (another acronym standing for Exchanging Information with the Public - see http://www.eipdg.org) led by the consultants CDW & Associates. To this alphabet soup of acronyms some Treasury money was added and the result was PEG, a project which came of age in Birmingham with a strong turn-out of people from councils across the UK and private sector partners. The project is working on a series of benchmarking tools to help councils assess where they are in developing an e-government strategy and make progress towards moving all their information and services online. A core group of nine PEG councils has been formed to share best practice in areas like the management of one-stop call centres for council services. Tracy Fielding, Assistant Director, Financial Support at PEG core group member Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council, had interesting insights to offer in this field. Bolton set up a centre allowing public help staff to draw on data by switching between six or seven different computer systems for different council services, ranging from fairly advanced systems to an old 'green screen' system for council tax, Fielding said. The service was centralised, but manned by existing customer services staff from the different relevant bits of the organisation. However, this was not a success, she said: of the staff used, less than half took to the new roles well, and the remainder suffered from high stress levels and failed in their work. "In future, we would centralise but we would tell departments that we would not be using their staff, but recruiting new staff." Another 'real world' lesson came from Tim Anderson, Single Point of Access Co- ordinator at Norfolk County Council. He pointed out that, while pilot e-government schemes like call centres were relatively inexpensive, full roll-out across a council would mean major expenditure, even if savings were to be expected in the long run. "Now we've got four call centres, everyone wants one, and we can't deliver that without savings in other parts of the organisation," he said. Another major strand of the PEG project is a re-examination of procurement processes for technology products and services. Richard Steel, Head of IT at Newham Borough Council which has used PEG to overhaul its procurement processes, said one of the difficulties with procuring e-government services is that "we are evaluating 'vapourware' - it is hard to see where we will be with technology in two years' time, let alone within a five-year contract or a 25-year PFI deal." He said councils could obtain a better deal from suppliers if they worked together through initiatives like PEG. "We turn ourselves in 400 or 500 separate markets, whereas in reality there is one market for e-government solutions. Suppliers also want to sell us piecemeal solutions, like how to pay parking tickets online, when what you actually need is to develop the back-room processes to pay for everything online, such as credit checking and authentication." One delegate strongly agreed: "I think we are being completely and utterly manipulated by the IT industry". On the other hand, councils must be careful to avoid a situation where by grouping together to increase buying power they exclude smaller suppliers, Steel said. "It is also important to encourage local suppliers." The PEG project now plans to increase its membership from its current core of nine to 50 councils by the end of April and a further 50-75 in September, said Roger Wilson, Principal Consultant at project leader CDW & Associates. So by the end of the year more than 100 councils should be involved, grouped in regional 'clusters', and backed up with web-based project support. Another aim for PEG is to develop a 'good practice database' of e-government case studies, Wilson said. It had originally hoped to have this facility running by now, but it had proved a major task to put the studies into a standard format and it would now be delayed until May. All the project's strands will be drawn together at a further conference in March 2002. [Section Two ends] SECTION THREE: OPINION -TELEDEMOCRACY THE DAY OF THE BUREAUCRATS By Ignace Snellen [EMAIL PROTECTED] It is a common contention that the representation of people by parliamentarians, members of Congress and local councillors has been a second-rate democratic arrangement. Robert Dahl, a well-known American thinker on democracy, once characterised representative democracy as "a sorry substitute for the real thing". The common complaints over existing democratic arrangements are said to be that members of representative assemblies represent partisan interests under the guise of the general interest; that representatives tend to follow only their own partial understanding of what is good for their constituencies; and that they are more responsive to the requirements of the political party they belong to than to the citizens whose mandate they have received. Since their introduction, information and communications technologies have helped expose the failings of the traditional representational arrangements. They have done this by making the distortions and misrepresentations of the preferences of the electorate more visible. The growing popularity of referenda and other forms of interactive policy-making shows that people have a preference for direct democratic arrangements over the existing representative arrangements. As well as highlighting representational democracies shortcomings, the new technologies also show promise as a means of delivering direct democracy. Internet technology already allows for continuous opinion polling, instant referenda, teleconferencing, digital cities and discussion groups. But technology is no panacea. The promise of direct democracy through technology cannot be fulfilled for two important reasons: First, direct democracy would lead to a single-issue approach. Successive majorities on single issues would lead to incompatible policies within and between sectors. The complexities of policies require intermittent and iterative decision cycles, which are not feasible through referenda. Second, most political problems cannot be reasonably tackled by asking questions with a simple 'yes' or 'no' answer, in the manner of opinion polls and referenda. Unless direct democratic mechanisms take into account the relative intensity with which opinions are felt they would introduce a dictatorship of successive majorities. So just as technology-driven direct democracy offers no real solution to the need to legitimise representative democracy, 'technological fixes' seem unlikely to increase participation. It seems unlikely that people will flock to the polling booth, just because they are offered the opportunity to cast their vote close to the shopping centre or their office. The information society depends on government agencies gaining a clearer picture of the everyday life of the citizens, displacing their traditional focus on understanding politicians. As a result of the bureaucracy's new tack, citizens are beginning to interact with public servants directly, without intermediation from politicians. Politicians too are relying more heavily on the expertise of the technology-enabled bureaucracy. In this way, public servants are taking on a representative role. Democracy as it is now being practiced is built up from two different channels of democratic participation: one via elected representatives, and one via non-elected bureaucrats. But existing theories of democracy ignore this representative function of bureaucracy, with the only intermediaries recognised by most formulations of democracy being political parties and special interest groups. As long as formal democracy theory practically excludes discussion about the representative potentialities and actual representative roles of bureaucracies, unelected officials have the potential to marginalise political representatives. Any future formulation of democracy which takes account of the expanding role of the civil servant will almost certainly require that bureaucracies are completely open about the way in which they develop and implement policies. Untrammelled access to data used in the drafting of policies and the data created during their implementation is likely to become a cornerstone. *Ignace Snellen is a Professor at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. This article is based on the paper 'ICTs and the future of democracy' from the International Journal of Communications and Law (http://www.ijclp.org) [Section Three ends] SECTION FOUR: ANALYSIS - E-PROCUREMENT CREATIVE BUSINESS MODELS AND TOUGH CHOICES By Dan Jellinek [EMAIL PROTECTED] Public-private partnerships for the provision of e-government services are unavoidable. As Ian Kearns, Research Fellow in Digital Society at the Institute for Public Policy Research, explains: "The range of skills and expertise required to turn national government into digital government is enormous, and the government simply doesn't have all the skills in house to do the job. "There is no shame in this. We live in an era when corporate alliances are multiplying for precisely the same reason: it is increasingly difficult for any organisation to meet all its client needs without working in close partnership with others. The crucial issue from the citizen's point of view is not whether partnerships should happen or not but under what conditions they should happen. Ultimately, the most important point is that whoever delivers the service to the citizen does so in a transparent and clearly accountable way." Major public-private partnerships for e-government can be complex affairs, with many elements beyond the mere provision of technology. One innovative way councils can take the lead in stimulating a switched-on local economy in their area is to set up an environment through which their own procurement of goods and services from local businesses takes place online. This stimulates local businesses to expand their online activity. Ultimately the precise shape of a public-private partnership and the allocation of the parties' respective roles will be determined by the way the relationship is financed, says David Mitchell, Head Of Regional Strategy at BT. There may be an element of funding from the public sector body, or the private sector partner may put in money to develop a service which could be commercially successful elsewhere. Other resources could come from Europe, and each line of funding creates a line of control and a set of particular operating conditions. "In a true partnership the parties share risk," Mitchell says. "The precise rules attached to funding elements will determine which partners rise to the top and take a lead role. For example, if you're talking about a partnership to tackle the digital divide, an organisation from the voluntary sector is likely to take the lead. "But if you are looking at a training or knowledge transfer project, colleges and universities would be likely to lead. After the lead partner has emerged, you need to look at what is needed to put a funding bid together. The art of it is to find creative and innovative business models." Even after funding has been secured from Europe, central government or another source, it is always time-limited, and there will therefore be a further problem to solve of how the project continues by becoming self-sustaining after the funding period. "Running them during the funding period is relatively easy - but it is much harder to fund projects that carry on after that period," Mitchell says. "So at the outset, you need to work out what happens when the funding stops. Some private partners are only there as long as there is honey dripping from the tree, but disappear when it dries up." One example of a complex partnership currently underway is the 'Digital Peninsula Network' in Cornwall (there is a web site in development for the project at http://www.digitalpeninsula.com). The initiative has involvement from the EU's structural fund, Cornwall County Council, district councils such as Penwith and Kerrier, Prosper (http://www.prosper.co.uk) and private sector firms including BT, Cisco Systems, Nortel and Hewlett Packard. The idea is to foster an 'e-community' to promote inward investment in new media industries and support geographically isolated small businesses by creating an interactive network for them. Mitchell says the partners in the programme are looking to solve the post-European- funding period problem in Cornwall by setting up a not-for-profit stakeholding organisation to lead the partnership. The stake-holding organisation will generate revenue through innovative business models which spread resources across periods of high and low funding, and use this revenue to stimulate and sustain activities not commercially viable under normal rates of return or pay-back periods. One of the key goals of local partnerships, particularly in areas with weaker economies like Cornwall, is also to encourage and stimulate economic activity among indigenous companies, Mitchell says. "For example, if the stake-holding organisation was looking to outsource an aspect of the work, it should be looking at how it could use a local company. In this way it can leave a legacy to the area, by nurturing local small and medium-sized businesses. "Large private companies involved in a partnership like this, which are also major local employers, have a dual responsibility to juggle corporate and social responsibilities with commercial responsibilities to shareholders," he says. Finally, looking at central government, there is another way that the public sector can benefit from close working with private sector partners to develop e-government: by drafting in key individuals on secondment to senior civil service posts to inject a bit of real-world grit into policy implementation. Although New Labour has pursued this policy further than any other government, with businesspeople on secondment to key innovation and technology-related teams like the Performance and Innovation Unit in the Cabinet Office and the Office of Government Commerce in the Treasury, such arrangements do not always work out well. "There can be a level of suspicion and a clash of cultures which is counter-productive," says Ian Kearns. "Secondments also mask a further problem which has been brought into sharp relief by the digital revolution. The government needs to attract more high quality people. This would help in technical positions to prevent some of the IT procurement disasters of recent years. To get the people though, the government needs to consider paying much more." So it all boils down to funding - another tough choice for Tony Blair in his second term? [Section Four ends] HOW TO RECEIVE E-GOVERNMENT BULLETIN To subscribe to this free monthly bulletin, e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please encourage your colleagues to subscribe! To unsubscribe at any time, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For further information on subscription, including how to subscribe or unsubscribe from an alternative email address and how to find out if an particular address is subscribed, see: http://www.headstar.com/egb/subs.html Please send comments on coverage or leads to Dan Jellinek at: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Copyright 2001 Headstar Ltd The Bulletin may be reproduced in full as long as all parts including this copyright notice are included. Sections of the report may be quoted as long as they are clearly sourced and our web site address (www.headstar.com/egb) is also cited. PERSONNEL: Editor - Dan Jellinek [EMAIL PROTECTED] Deputy Editor - Phil Cain [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reporter - Tamara Fletcher [EMAIL PROTECTED] A searchable archive of our back-issues can be found on our web site. [Issue ends] ------- End of forwarded message ------- ^ ^ ^ ^ Steven L. Clift - W: http://www.publicus.net Minneapolis - - - E: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Minnesota - - - - - T: +1.612.822.8667 USA - - - - - - - ICQ: 13789183 *** Please send submissions to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** To subscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** Message body: SUB DO-WIRE *** *** To unsubscribe instead, write: UNSUB DO-WIRE *** *** Please forward this post to others and encourage *** *** them to subscribe to the free DO-WIRE service. ***
