1.2 - B. Integrating government services

The second presentation by Mr. Stephen Braim, Government Programmes Executive for IBM Asia Pacific, focused on open computing, integration and privacy challenges faced by e-government. He defined "ondemand e-government" as a government whose business processes – integrated end-to-end across the government departments and with key partners, suppliers and citizens – could respond with speed and agility to any citizen demand, changing political or economic dynamic, or external threat. Mr. Braim said the biggest challenge to e-government was providing a single integrated portal across all levels of government. Integration focused on speed, agility, responsiveness to customer and supplier needs and demands. Integration was only one element, however, also necessary were vision, leadership, and skills. Integrated e-government needed to be:

1. Responsive in real time;
2. Moved from fixed to variable cost structure, i.e. on-demand fashion;
3. Focused on what was core to governing; and
4. Resilient around the world, around the clock – 24-hour government.

Integration of internal government services allowed government to focus on the core goals of governing. Access to government content and transactions should be through an integrated gateway, which enabled the users' view to depend upon the function required. Further, operational functions could be integrated to drive increased efficiencies.

Mr. Braim said each department did not need an accounts arm or human resources arm; those could be centralized in one portal (Figure 2 [PDF 111KB | 1 page]). The key to integration was the portal. The portal provided a single service window across government. That integration challenge was one of the most difficult challenges that faced government.

There were five key building blocks for integration, namely: lines of business, enterprise, platform, people and process. Integration built upon the vision, strategy and roadmap. The platform block provided integrated access to government services through a consistent and coherent foundation, which included:

• Infrastructure – IT was not a core critical success factor, but in the integration phase it was the driving ability for content management and content integrated across departments
• Content and content management
• Privacy and security – no one would access a government service if they thought government departments shared their information without permission or consent
• Channels and portals

Government integration involved not just applying technology – the major challenges were also organizational. To meet the challenges, government needed to re-educate management and staff. The enablers of integration included technology, people, other governments, the private sector and political awareness. The barriers were independent programmes, islands of autonomy, lack of integration, resistance to change and outdated legislation. For egovernment to be successful, Mr. Braim said it needed to start small, with small programmes housed in individual departments. That, however, ran the risk of strengthening islands of autonomy and lack of integration, therefore, it was essential to ensure there was an independent body overseeing integration.

Mr. Braim discussed open standards policy approaches that could provide support to e-government service integration. He stated that open computing was an approach that applied to hardware and software and emphasized modularity, interoperability, interconnectivity and system flexibility. It was largely based on industry standardized interfaces. When governments applied open standards, open source was enabled. Open source software could assist governments in the integration process by:

• Reducing costs
• Easing integration and interoperability
• Increasing freedom of choice/flexibility
• Running on multiple platforms
• Tailoring to specific needs
• Stability, scalability, security
• National IT Strategy/Economic Development
• Low Risk Implementation/Ease of Migration

Security and privacy were also major issues in moving towards egovernment. Privacy was the right of individuals to determine for themselves when, how and to what extent, information about them was communicated to others. Privacy required effective security, but effective security did not guarantee effective privacy. The privacy principles of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) expressed the concepts that underpinned most privacy legislation and fair practices around the world. Those included the following:

• Purpose specification
• Collection limitation
• Use limitation
• Accountability
• Security safeguards
• Openness
• Individual participation

If any of the above expectations were not met, a loss of trust would occur. The customer needed a high level of assurance that the above principles would be upheld. The challenge, therefore, was to build an integrated environment where an individual’s concern for privacy could be respected and protected while allowing information-based enterprises to thrive.

In the plenary discussion, Mr. Braim was asked how best to achieve integration if a regulatory infrastructure was not already in place. He replied that if the infrastructure was not already present, then governments should start there. E-government did not have to be put on hold however to achieve that. It could run in parallel with the building of infrastructure, with one driving the other. The impact of outsourcing on government was also raised. Mr. Braim agreed that there needed to be a considered review of what could and could not be outsourced and when it should be done. However, he said it should be based on industry capabilities.

More detailed information was asked on the Common Service Delivery Architecture developed in Australia. That system was a tool for infrastructure integration. A government committee called the Chief Information Officer Committee (CIO Committee) was established as a cross-agency committee to coordinate investment needs across government. That core coordinating government agency, said Mr. Braim, was an important component of successful e– government. He directed participants to the Committee's web site at www.agimo.gov.au*. The web site provided information on Australia's investment strategy and its strategic framework for the information economy, as well as details on the integrating of government services.

* This link takes you outside the ADBI website.

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