by Poul J. Hebsgaard on Apr.15, 2011, under Digital government, e-government, enterprise 2.0, government 2.0, innovation, Paperless administration, Paperless government, software for the knowledge worker
Danish Ministries awarded the prize for digitizing all work processes and implementing the solution in a very short time frame resulting in significant efficiency gains.
- Nomination called “little beauty” by Journalist Peter Mogensen when he summarized the winning project.
The Danish Ministry of Climate and Energy and the Ministry of Transportation have received the Digitalization Award 2011 for their implementation of a new IT-system, called “cBrain F2”, that facilitates the elimination of paper-based work processing, collaboration and record management and incorporates social media tools (chat, stick-on notes,..) in the execution of governmental case management.
This is the first true government 2.0 solution that incorporates all work done within a governmental department entirely eliminating the use of paper to transfer information.
Now all personnel groups work digitally, from the youngest employee to the Permanent Secretary. Paper is no longer used to move and process governmental data and work information as governmental knowledge workers carries out their duties. All case management processing, knowledge sharing, collaboration as well as archiving and journalizing (record management), is managed within the cBrain F2 system.
The Ministries were presented the award by the Danish Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation, Charlotte Sahl-Madsen, at a yearly digitalization conference in April 2011 arranged by the national IT and Telecom Agency under the Ministry.
The digital approach has led to significant efficiency gains, increased security as well as higher employee satisfaction. Reports from the Danish Ministries includes an average reduction of case processing time by 1/3, time savings of 30-45 minutes per employees per day and a user survey reporting that 37% of employees are now happier for their work.
At the award ceremony it was stated:
- “The Ministries have shown how we can still achieve major efficiency within the area of public administration. Their new integrated case processing and document management solution is ground-breaking in the way it connects and integrates political case processing and traditional journalizing practices. As an example, now registration and journalizing is “just” a fully automated side effect of sending an email and NOT a separate activity.
- It is also pioneering thinking that the solution offers built-in social media technologies where any document is tightly integrated with Chat functionality.
- Furthermore, it is outstanding how fast the Ministries have been able to implement and roll-out their new system. The complete project took only six months at the Ministry of Transportation followed by only 8 weeks at the Ministry of Climate and Energy.”
Permanent Secretary Thomas Egebo, the Ministry of Climate and Energy:
- “If I put a mark on the F2 system and the implementation process we have been through there is no doubt that this is a straight A.”
- “I expect that I personally have saved more than half an hour every day as a result of implementing the cBrain F2 solution. And 2.5 hours extra Permanent-Secretary-time a week… that is a lot!”
Permanent Secretary Jacob Heinsen, the Ministry of Transportation:
- “The F2 solution is a solution that has helped us improve our productivity significantly and it has moved our organization into the 21st century.”
- “You would think it was a lie… but employees say they are actually happier at work now after the introduction of the new IT-system. This may be the first time in world history that a large number of employees are happier for their work 2 months after the introduction of a new Case Processing and Document Management system”.
About cBrain and the F2 solution:
cBrain is a software company listed on NASDAQ-OMX. cBrain challenges the traditional IT approach by applying an innovative design and development methodology, where the solution is designed with business processes as the starting point and built from cBrain’s software component library of SOA modules.
The cBrain F2 solution is a comprehensive and fully integrated case management platform for all governmental knowledge workers, from the youngest employee to the head of the Ministry.
cBrain F2 replaces existing stand-alone applications by integrating the necessary work functionality into an all-in-one application, supporting both PC/net-based users as well as mobile users, and it enables organizations to work “paperless” using digital workflows.
cBrain F2 is not only a great new government 2.0 work tool that automates and eliminates many routine tasks. It might also change governmental work culture and transform how future public leaders will lead and manage their organizations in order to serve the public, politicians and the political environment.
For more information, contact
At cBrain we have been involved in the development of a new “all-in-one software solution for paperless governmental departments” as we describe it. For white paper on this solution click here.
The following is a translation of a news release from the Danish Ministry of Transport – click here.
The 4th of January 2010, the central department within the Ministry of Transport implemented a complete digitization of internal workflows. Already – after nearly three months – there is reason for saying that the project has been a success.
The full digitization involves casework, knowledge sharing, communication and archiving/journalizing done electronically in a single system, the electronic document and records management system, cBrain F2.
cBrain F2 was developed in collaboration between the IT company cBrain and the Ministry of Social Affairs, but the central Department within the Ministry of Transport is the first place where cBrain F2 is implemented throughout the entire organization.
Head of the Department, Jacob Heinsen explains it this way: “We have – like most others – through a number of years had an electronic document management system, but it was just not generating the desired benefits because the system was not integrated, and because the cases were still moving around the house on paper. With the new system, we have not banned the use of paper in the proceedings, but paper has simply been outperformed. The employees are experiencing that it now is easier to handle cases and submit them to management electronically. They will no longer need to make a lot of paper copies, and they can also continuously follow how the cases progresses in F2. With the new system electronic document and records management is no longer an additional task, but a real reduction in work.”
A user survey conducted after two months of operation confirm this impression. By switching from the existing electronic document and records management system to cBrain F2, employee satisfaction with the system went from “poor” to “satisfactory”. “You would think it was a lie, but employees say they were actually excited about work after the introduction of the new IT system,” says Jacob Heinsen.
Project leader Thomas Ginnerup-Nielsen says about his experiences with the project: “It’s been hard work, but actually we have not had any crises in the process. It is in itself unusual for a government IT project. But the ultimate test is, of course, the results living up to – well, actually exceeding – the objectives of the project.”
See a showcase of user survey and results here.
Questions can be directed to contacts mentioned in the news release.
What if employees in a government ministry were not allowed to move information on paper between desks any more, but were only allowed to move documents in digital form.
Well, this is happening in Europe where Denmark and Spain seem to be leading the way.
It has been a long time coming with many legal and bureaucratic barriers to be removed, i.e. requirements of formal signature, filling out of paper-based forms, etc.
Since January 2002 all Danish ministries have analyzed thousands of laws and regulations for barriers to e-government and a 2002/2003 analysis revealed 453 necessary changes in legislation and regulations. A deadline of the summer 2003 was established for the removal of these barriers and for the most part this was achieved successfully.
Obviously this was a major cultural change in the way governmental knowledge workers perform their jobs and a number of initiatives were started and new guidelines issued.
Since September 1, 2003 all government authorities have had the right to send documents to other authorities electronically and the right to demand that documents from other authorities be sent electronically.
The 2003 initiative aimed at promoting the use of e-mail and Internet communication in the public sector and reorganize work processes towards paperless administration, making government more efficient.
A major next step was that from February 1, 2005 all government authorities had the right to send documents containing personal and sensitive information electronically and the right to demand that the same documents from other authorities be sent electronically using secure e-mail (digital signature).
From the same date citizens and business had the opportunity to communicate with the public sector using secure e-mail (digital signature).
This was made possible by providing citizen and businesses with tools and extensive instructive information to make the transition easier.
• Free digital signature to all Danish citizens.
• Legally binding signature for all interactions on the Internet.
• Authenticity – certainty of the identity of citizens, businesses and government authorities.
• Integrity – certainty that the contents of the message have not been changed.
• Privacy – no-one can listen in on the communication.
Obviously culture changes of this nature – well, indeed major behavioral modifications in how “white collar” work is performed – are not easy for people to make.
However the Danish government is pushing forward towards the goal of “full electronic communication by 2012”.
The Ministry of the Interior and Social Affairs as one of the leaders in this drive towards paperless public administration has piloted the “cBrain F2” case management system since June 2009 with success.
In the coming weeks I will be covering aspects of the cBrain F2 system and discuss some of the implications of this new integrated concept where social media tools are combined with case management, record management, archiving and more.
Further information in English about the Danish Governments drive towards paperless administration is available here:
• http://www.modernisering.dk/da/english — including a summary of the Danish Government’s plan for digital administration (e-Government Strategy) 2007 – 2010.
• http://www.virk.dk/English;jsessionid=ED260572073B396430E739F06924A5A2 – Central government to business portal for everything digital.
• http://english.ism.dk/Further-development/digitalisation/Sider/Start.aspx — The Ministry of the Interior and Social Affairs is one of the leading advocates for the move towards paperless administration by 2012.
During the last few weeks I have been talking to a number of people from within governmental organizations and different business segments about white collar productivity.
Actually the discussions have often been around the new buzzwords “Enterprise 2.0” and “Government 2.0” and what these two buzzwords entail. It boils down to trying to define/apply/govern/restrict the use of the emerging bunch of new social media tools (similar to WEB 2.0 tools – Facebook, Twitter, etc… BUT inside the firewall!) within a corporate or public agency environment.
WEB 2.0 tools just showed up in the work place and people began using them as collaboration tools to get their work done (AND you could at the same time communicate with your “friends”). In other words the tools helped people be more productive and gave them an easier way of sharing information than current corporate legacy systems and “sanctioned” office productivity tools.
It reminds me of when the IBM PC showed up in the workplace in the mid-1980s to the horror of and without the approval/control of the IT department. The IBM PC fulfilled a need for getting the work done more efficiently, i.e. they increased productivity and created a whole new industry.
The IBM PC was an integral part of what happened next with legacy software systems going from rigid mainframe systems towards more “flexible” client/server systems with the IBM PC providing the user interface. It became an interactive process instead of the old batch approach to entering data and retrieving information. It was more inviting and easier to use.
During the 1990s Integration began driving a paradigm shift from free standing best-of-breed accounting systems (G/L. A/R, A/P, Order Entry, Purchasing, Inventory, Distribution, etc…) towards integrated systems that became known as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems.
The value of system integration and information context won out. Your Accounts Receivable (A/R) system was in sync with your A/R assets account in your Balance Sheet. The same integration to the General Ledger applied to Accounts Payable, Inventory, Purchasing, Billing, etc…
For project based organizations the recording of time sheets and expenses towards projects provided similar integration to the financial system and gave good overview of Work-in-Progress and now you were getting closer to managing the business in real time, at least from a financial point of view.
This has evolved into specialized ERP system for different industries – ERP for Services, ERP for Wholesale Distribution, ERP for manufacturing, etc…
I was involved as a vendor of ERP systems for the service industry in the 1990s and to me ERP meant blue collar productivity improvements by optimizing the processing of structured information and we often showed the advantages of ERP as illustrated below:
As ERP systems from SAP, ORACLE, PeopleSoft, Maconomy, Navision and many others improved their functionality and usability during the 1990s, overall attention turned towards managing the unstructured information that flows along a project timeline.
Many firms in the service segment (consulting, advertising, engineering, etc…) where I spent most of my time realized that they could get the billing rate up with ERP systems to maybe 70% (100% less vacation time, sick time, education, presale, non-billable,..) but that was where they maxed out.
These firms knew that they made money or lost money depending on their ability to manage scope creep on key projects and give project leaders, their supervisors and the PMO office the tools to align the scope definition with the contract appendix detailing the service to be delivered.
The scope of a project most often changed during the execution of the project but often that did not result in an amendment to the contractual service definition. Furthermore this change often resulted in modifications of project timelines, milestones and deadlines as well as resource allocations – people and material.
Most of the corporate silos of finance, legal, human resource and specialized practice departments should have been involved in this effort but are often notified after the fact or when the project is in a serious crisis.
Part of the problem was that the tools simply were not available.
This is where I think Enterprise 2.0 and Government 2.0 enter the scene. These emerging technologies simply fill a need for helping knowledge workers share information in the context of the project or process to which the knowledge belongs.
I think we will see a rapid evolution of these tools towards integrated and specialized solutions dramatically improving white collar (knowledge worker) productivity and this might parallel what happened with ERP systems in the 1990s for blue collar productivity – reference the figure below:
At cBrain we have named this integrated solution the “Knowledge Worker Desktop” and I will cover this concept in some more detail in coming blog entries but will close with a few highlights:
• The Knowledge Worker Desktop works within an automated archiving system that automatically, based on context assigns classification and META data. Archiving and record management is a by-product of the work performed and not a separate work process.
• Give up on most user-based classification (cynical me! It never works!) and automate as far as possible the process of assigning classification and other META data based on context – you already know the entity (customer, vendor, employee, location, case, project, business process, deadline/milestone, next step approval/review, etc.) you are working with or you generate it as part of your work, SO the system will automate classification and META data!
• Regulatory compliance is facilitated.
• The system includes search and presentation facilities for necessary work overview.
I will cover other aspects of the concept for the Knowledge Worker Desktop in coming posts.
Any comments are welcome!
Why is it that knowledge workers in government as well as private enterprises are fighting a culture of control driven by management focused on FRCP, Sarbanes-Oxley, eDiscovery and other regulatory compliance requirements?
The social media tools like Facebook, Myspace and Twitter are already being used by teams in many governmental agencies and private firms because they help knowledge workers “get the job done”.
However these tools are often a nightmare for the Chief Security Officer (if such a “C” level position exists). Regulatory compliance continues to be the main driver for security spending in most industry segments and a substantial financial burden for governmental agencies.
Sarbanes-Oxley for the USA came about after the Enron scandal and with the current financial meltdown for sure new regulations will emerge. Current US regulation is a patchwork of local, state and federal regulation.
The complexity of all the existing US regulations is such that it hinders small and medium sized businesses’ expansion into national or even multi-national market coverage even if that is exactly what the internet offers smaller businesses – the ability to source and operate like big multinational.
Most regulations deal with privacy and accountability. Sarbanes-Oxley for publicly traded firms is the big accountability regulation but smaller firms often trade with publicly traded companies and therefore indirectly will be required to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley.
Privacy is a hodgepodge of regional, national and industry segment specific laws. Obviously you cannot pretend these regulations don’t exist or hope they go away. Non-compliance may present a very real legal and financial risk to your organization.
Every bit of information exchange within the organization and with outside stakeholders must be auditable, i.e. there must be an audit trail and the kitchen sink approach to archiving of all information exchange and subsequent use of fancy search tools to retrieve information deemed to be material in a lawsuit will not work or at least be very, very expensive.
Often organizations are opting not to go to court and instead just settle because litigation is becoming too expensive. Settlements are still expensive.
In the USA the Better Business Bureau shows 34 federal privacy laws that apply to business – industry specific, consumer protection, etc. Add the EU, Canada and the Far East and you are looking at 100+ privacy laws that could affect a company doing business globally.
Social media tools as we know them today do not provide an audit trail of information exchange with an easy way to access it. If you are ever the subject of an eDiscovery audit from a lawsuit, you may need to produce reports on hundreds or thousands of document transactions and other information exchanges from social media tools like Facebook and Twitter.
Enterprise 2.0 tools emerging as “social media tools for the enterprise” are as far as I can see not addressing these issues.
For the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston this coming week – June 22-25, 2009 – I see very few, if any reference to the issue of regulatory compliance! I see no mentioning of FRCP, Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, eDiscovery, etc. or discussion of audit trails and archiving of information exchanges or “record management” in the context of a business process.
These are issues we deal with when implementing process applications like our Knowledge Worker Desktop for government or private enterprises.
I will be at the conference next week trying to find out how all these powerful emerging enterprise 2.0 tools could provide synergy to our process applications.
I believe in the future we will see a movement toward self-supported definition and ownership of processes by business stakeholders and project teams. Simple interconnected utilities (enterprise 2.0+) rather than comprehensive suites (SharePoint, OpenText, etc…) will emerge.
This will help to improve the orchestration of teams, people, content and collaboration, BUT someone must be the driving process engine.
I look forward to the Enterprise 2.0 conference!
I am trying to get my head into all the buzz around enterprise 2.0 as coined by Andrew McAfee from Harvard University not too long ago and “re-defined” by him less than a month ago.
Leading up to the Enterprise 2.0 exposition here in Boston on June 22-25, 2009, Andrew has published an interesting take on Enterprise 2.0 – “Toward a Pattern Language for Enterprise 2.0” – seen from an “academic language view” – he is at Harvard after all.
So is Enterprise 2.0 “just” another definition (buzzword) of an attempt to improve the orchestration of teams, people, content and collaboration?
I think the new 2.0 tools (enterprise 2.0 or government 2.0) are supporting a movement toward self-supported definition and ownership of processes by business (or governmental) stakeholders and project teams and we will see the emergence of simple process utilities rather than comprehensive E2.0 suites – “simple meaning easy-to-use/intuitive/inviting”.
As others have suggested maybe we should use the term knowledge media tools instead of social media tools for business and government. What is clear is that the knowledge worker is front and center in this drive towards simple support for getting the knowledge work done.
Jack Vinson has an interesting take on Culture and KM. The organizational culture need to change/adapt to supporting the knowledge workers in new ways and provide the tools and training they need to “let them get rolling”.
Too often knowledge workers are fighting a culture of control by management focused on FRCP, Sarbanes-Oxley, eDiscovery, HIPAA and other compliance requirements.
BUT can you blame management? – Very few of the new 2.0 tools are addressing these concerns. At cBrain we are trying to produce solutions where these concerns are embedded and transparent to the knowledge worker and I will discuss this approach in several future posts, so stay tuned.
To get back to Andrew McAfee’s pattern language, I find it a very refreshing way to look at knowledge work 2.0 – here is his original take on pattern language related to enterprise 2.0 work – see his post for more details:
Patterns Where 2.0 Should Replace 1.0
|Technology appears to have been designed for the user||Technology appears to have been designed for someone other than the user — the developer, the boss, a lawyer, etc.|
|Only small amounts of time and training are required to become familiar with a technology||It takes significant time and training in order to become minimally competent with a technology|
|Few steps are required to accomplish basic tasks; technology-based work is ‘frictionless’||Many steps are required to execute basic tasks; technology-based work has a great deal of friction|
|Devices delight, pleasing the eye and the hand||Devices exist to accomplish tasks and are designed only for function, not form|
|Delays and latency are low; technology responds instantly||Delays (especially at startup) can be long and latency can be high|
|Crashes are no big deal and are easy to recover from||Crashes are time-consuming and costly / catastrophic|
|Relevant data is in the cloud, so it doesn’t matter which device the user employs||Relevant data is stored locally at many devices, so it matters which device(s) the user has access to|
|Users navigate via search||Users navigate via menus and directories|
|Work is accomplished via the browser||Work is accomplished via many discrete applications|
|Technology accurately guesses what users want, is forgiving, and makes users feel smart||Users have to guess what the technology wants. The technology is unforgiving and makes users feel stupid|
|It takes virtually no time to author (to contribute online content) and few if any approval loops exist||It’s laborious to author, and many approval loops exist|
|At its best, technology is welcoming and empowering||At its worst, technology is alienating, isolating, and frustrating|
Patterns Where 2.0 is an Alternative to 1.0
|Technology is used to execute spontaneous collaborative work||Technology is used to execute planned / predefined business processes|
|Technology is used to share work and conclusions with others||Technology is used to generate or analyze information individually|
|Technology is used to broadcast information publicly to people both known and unknown||Technology is used to transmit information privately to known people|
|Technology is used to ask questions and solicit information and help from people both known and unknown||Technology is used to ask questions and solicit information and help from a small group of already-identified people|
|Online content is the start of group-level work; it is work in progress||Online content is the end point of group-level work; it is finished goods|
|Online content is generated by many people||Online content is generated by a few approved sources|
|A person finds new colleagues by examining the online content they’ve generated and assessing its quality||A person finds new colleagues by asking around an looking through official directories|
|Information sources give good answers to the questions users thought they were asking||Information sources provide complete answers to perfectly phrased questions|
|Technology is used to create and diffuse new knowledge||Technology is used to encode previously-generated knowledge|
Andrew is asking for feedback and I am sure we will see this concept evolve with a knowledge work focus rather than a technology focus.
Just a few years ago when the term e-government was coined it covered the concept of making more information about government available to the citizens. Self-service portals and one-way information sites almost created a faceless interface between government and citizens, void of human interaction.
Government 2.0 changes all that. Now government employees become a valued asset and facilitator of communication between all stakeholders – citizens, politicians, grass-roots associations, business associations, lobbyists and finally within the governmental hierarchy.
In other words government employees will in the future be challenged to become true knowledge workers doing more non-trivial work and often in teams in order to serve the citizens. The most valuable skill set in the future isn’t necessarily knowledge, experience or training (although important attributes), but rather the degree to which the new knowledge worker looks for, expects and is prepared to deal with and successfully initiates actions to deal with the unexpected.
This has the potential of fostering a new trusted relationship between government and citizens that can be mutually beneficial but it could also become a serious challenge if the governmental employees are not provided the tools needed to deliver on the service levels citizens have been promised.
The European Commission is stating the following:
“While promoting the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in society as a whole through the i2010 strategy, the Commission intends to lead by example by applying to its own administration the European information society policy in e-government.
Modern on-line public administrations are an essential element of the information society and contribute to achieving the Lisbon goals of increased growth and competitiveness.
The e-Commission aims to deliver better quality and more transparent services, guaranteeing security of information including the protection of personal data, to the benefit of its own staff and of everyone having contact with it i.e. administrations, businesses and citizens. The Commission is thus following an ambitious strategy to become a front-runner in the domain of e-administration.”
In this blog we have previously covered some of the Obama Administration’s initiatives towards a more open and transparent government.
The latest initiative invites citizens to participate in improving the existing site where regulations are published – www.regulations.gov/exchange.
People are invited to give input to design and features from May 21, 2009 until July 21, 2009 and the response has been impressive so far.
I believe the human factor will become the single most important factor to deal with in this transformation of government. Expectations are certainly raised to what seems like almost unreasonable levels and one can certainly hope that the governmental employees are being empowered with the proper tools to deliver on the promise.
It would seem that the timing of releasing our “Knowledge Worker Desktop” product could not have been better. We will cover the “Knowledge Worker Desktop” in more details in future posting on this blog.
Government agility is one of the headlines that caught my attention concerning the government information forum to be held in Hong Kong on August 19-21, 2009.
It is a conference with an IT focus but many of the sections are very relevant for senior governmental executives wanting to get an understanding of new opportunities for improvements in how government and citizens interact.
Most of the speakers are from Asia – China, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia among others.
Bill Schrier, the CTO from the City of Seattle is the only speaker not from the ASIA region. He is widely regarded as a thought leader in the use of social media and other tools to create a translucent government. His blog http://schrier.wordpress.com/ is worth a read.
I like his recent quote: “Making government “transparent” is in vogue in 2009, whether by doing map mashups of crimes or twittering by Mayors and public agencies. But I often wonder if we’re exposing the trees, without showing the forest or illuminating the true ecosystems of governing.” And he goes on ” So I’d say we’re starting to get adept at exposing the trees – or maybe the branches, twigs, leaves, owls, squirrels, nuts and bark of government operations. But what does all this data mean, and how can it influence government behavior, budgeting and public policy choices?”
Seattle is at the forefront of making the public aware of the goings-on in government and I assume that is why he was invited to speak.
Other topics covered at the Hong Kong conference – to name a few that caught my eye:
NOT AN OXYMORON: GOVERNMENT & BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE.
• Responsive, agile policy-making calls for real time insight into the operations of the government machine. In a data rich environment, public sector is well placed to see a quick return from tools that deliver actionable intelligence to government decision-makers.
VIP Address – TRANSFORMING GOVERNMENT OPERATION THROUGH INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
• Exploring the networks and internet technologies for the delivery of government information, services and processes
• Using technology to provide user-centered information and services and achieve joint outcomes
BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT FOR OPERATIONAL BEST PRACTICE
Mapped and monitored processes drive effective BPM strategies, enabling public sector organizations to embrace operational best practice.
• Compliance & improvement initiatives driving public sector BPM
• More than workflow automation: process-centric government
• Process visibility enables process agility
So often at these events the focus is on technical stuff like portals and databases and not so much on better tools for the governmental knowledge worker. This conference seems different in the topics it covers.
Government transformation requires that citizens, politicians and senior governmental knowledge workers (or as Gartner calls them “Officer 2.0”) work towards a common goal.
It seems to me that too often the governmental employees’ pivotal role in this transformation is ignored and better tools are not addressed – it is refreshing to see a change of attitude coming from ASIA.
The Obama administration has embarked on several bold initiatives in how it interacts with the public.
Less than a week ago it launched data.gov described this way: “The purpose of www.data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable data sets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.
What seems unique to the approach is to ask the public to participate in the development of the site and engage in the evolution of the site – in other words launching a governmental site that will be very dynamic in nature and acknowledging that not all information is available from day one – see the tutorial here.
Terms such as “Government 2.0” and “Context-driven Governmental Services” has been introduced by the administration using layman’s term and with refreshingly straight forward guidelines and tutorials.
Another initiative is http://usaspending.gov (a re-launch of www.fedspending.org) which is described as allowing citizen to verify “when, with whom, and on what the US Government is spending taxpayer funds”. Data will be made available in such a way that users will be able to “combine them into different data sets, conduct analysis and research, or power new information-based products and businesses”.
The third one is www.recovery.gov, which applies the same principles as usaspending.gov to the tracking of funds coming from the Stimulus Package.
The White House document issued together with FY 2010 budget request says that “the Federal IT agenda is focused on helping agencies use developing technologies to inform the work of Government” and “Agencies will be called upon to take creative action in developing new approaches to citizen involvement, including the utilization of social and visual technologies, such as Web 2.0 tools”.
Very little information has been revealed about the tools available to the governmental white collar workers. They will need superior tools to help them live up to the public service expectations created.
We believe that our proven “Knowledge Worker Desktop” concept could be a big help in delivering that public service. We believe our concept can empower the governmental employees to be at the center of this government transformation and make them an active part of the innovation process needed.
Stay tuned for more information about this in future postings on this blog.
In my last post I mentioned that over the last four short months the Obama Administration has attracted a lot of attention through a number of WEB initiatives embracing “Government 2.0” as a concept for providing better two-way communication with the public. All this is explained by the Obama Administration in fairly easy to understand layman’s terms.
Europe’s initiatives are a bit more difficult to decipher and clearly written by bureaucrats with a mix of bureaucratic speak and IT speak.
Nevertheless it is worth a read and it will clearly affect e-government initiatives for all countries within the European Union. Below are selected excerpts from several sources.
The European initiatives seem to still be focused on coordinating standards between countries rather than any bold initiatives from the EU commission for a centralized approach for how to improve servicing the public and provide a two-way communication with the private sector and ordinary citizens.
Some European countries are certainly looking into how to optimize their IT infrastructure across agencies and departments. Denmark is often singled out by several analysts as having the boldest approach, driven by the Danish Ministry of Finance.
From 2005-2009 the European Commission have funded a program called IDABC.
IDABC stands for Interoperable Delivery of European eGovernment Services to public Administrations, Business and Citizens.
It was formed to take advantage of the opportunities offered by information and communication technologies:
- to encourage and support the delivery of cross-border public sector services to citizens and enterprises in Europe,
- to improve efficiency and collaboration between European public administrations and,
- to contribute to making Europe an attractive place to live, work and invest.
To achieve its objectives, IDABC issues recommendations, develops solutions and provides services that enable national and European administrations to communicate electronically while offering modern public services to businesses and citizens in Europe.
The program also provides financing to projects addressing European policy requirements, thus improving cooperation between administrations across Europe.
National public sector policy-makers are represented in the IDABC program’s management committee and in many expert groups. This makes the program a unique forum for the coordination of national e-government policies.
On 30 April 2009, the European Commission adopted the sixth revision of the IDABC Work Program. The IDABC work program is scheduled to come to an end on 31 December 2009.
As one of the outcomes of this effort the European Commission in Sept. 2008 published a Draft Document as the basis for the European Interoperability Framework Version 2. This document, which was debated extensively by EU member states, introduced a number of concepts that complement the interoperability framework, such as the interoperability strategy, the interoperability architectural guidelines and the European Infrastructure Interoperability Services (or EIIS).
On 29 September 2008, the European Commission approved a proposal for a decision of the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers on a new program for the period 2010–15 “Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations”, to be known as ISA.
This program is the follow-on of IDABC which will come to an end on 31 December 2009.
The ISA program is focusing on back-office solutions supporting the interaction between European public administrations and the implementation of Community policies and activities.
The adopted text is available here in Part 2 from p.280 to 293.
The Council of Ministers is expected to vote on the compromise proposal in June 2009.