This then leads to the concept of eGovernance, which is central to the development and implementation of eGovernment. The Federal Government's eGovernment Benefits Study (2003, vii) stated that “the most obvious benefit of eGovernment is to improve service to people.
Indirect Benefits of eGovernment / eGovernance
Costs of eGovernment and eGovernance projects
In most cases where costs are noted, the primary focus is on the financial costs associated with an e-government implementation. Costs associated with eGovernment / eGovernance projects were muted in the literature with an implicit assumption that there are little or no costs involved in this type of project.
BARRIERS AND ENABLERS OF EGOVERNMENT / EGOVERNANCE PROJECTS Just as there are costs and benefits associated with eGovernment / eGovernance projects,
Barriers to implementation of eGovernment / eGovernance
Major security issues around authentication of users and safeguarding the integrity of messages and data, confidentiality and privacy related to the transmission of the information. Benefits of better use of evaluation in e-government include: better frameworks to compare projects within and between agencies, development of metrics that will increase transparency in decision-making, better understanding of drivers for successful e-government projects, better understanding of the users / beneficiaries, and a positive contribution to the evaluation of efficiency and.
Enablers to implementation of eGovernment / eGovernance
To some extent there is a synergy, the e-government ICT platform has facilitated some of the major changes in public sector service delivery in Australia, notably the Jobs Network (Rama and Carey, 2003) and. ICT systems supported these major changes – the reach of the policies in terms of use and application was enhanced through the various web-based delivery of services.
Key elements of eGovernment / eGovernance initiatives
Evaluation should include financial benefits to the public sector, benefits to users and the public, social benefits and whole of government benefits such as increased transparency (OECD, 2007). Building on new relationships and partnerships – e-government allows for intra- and inter-organizational partnerships to build on for the development of new projects that provide benefits to the public sector and stakeholders.
SUMMARY OF ANTICIPATED ISSUES
- Summary of Benefits
- Summary of Costs
- Summary of Barriers
- Summary of Enablers
Public services, they have to have scale, they have the capacity to adopt, data and services have to be coherent across agencies. Objectives and evaluation – E-projects must have a clear set of objectives linked to benefits for the public sector and its stakeholders. Continuous modification and development – E-projects require continuous modification and development in light of operational problems, technological developments and new opportunities for applications from the same platform.
For example, partnerships between the federal government and the private and public sectors have been developed by connecting organizations affiliated with the Jobs Network.
METHODOLOGY
SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS
The names of the individual councils interviewed were also withheld, with common findings generally reported on the size of the councils.
POLICY DOCUMENTS
CONTENT ANALYSIS
RRIF PROGRAM OVERVIEW
The Council of Mayors as the highest level of governance within the program was unique in that it formed a unified body that had agreed to implement a range of initiatives for the SEQ region. Under this, the CoM Monitoring Groups were also formed to provide direction and focus to each of the initiatives that made up the RIFF programme. These governing bodies are designed to bridge the gap between the Council of Mayors, the project team, the project implementers and the ultimate users of the system.
These projects were designed to reduce red tape in the areas of development assessment, environmental health and regulations and compliance, with the overall vision of enabling clients to interact more transparently with councils by standardizing how councils operate through various project initiatives. Planning and Development Local Government Web Toolkit YES Tracking Customer Facing Information Online Customer Service Design Schema Scripting.
PROJECTS CONDUCTED UNDER RRIF
- Local Government Toolbox
- DA Tracking (DAT) – Property and Application Enquiry
- Planning Scheme Online
- RiskSmart
- Conclusion
The Property and Application Inquiry initiative is designed to allow customers to firstly view property information and secondly track the progress of development applications online. Its purpose is to provide basic property and map information to planners, developers and members of the community to assist in their preparation of a development application based on property information provided. The second component of the application tracks the progress of applications from submission to decision, identifies the current status of an application, tasks performed as part of the assessment process and estimated assessment timeframes.
Transparency in the application process was intended to increase the accountability of council staff and speed up the application approval process with the ability to track this process. The Planning Scheme Online (PSO) initiative has been developed to provide more accessible, accurate and timely planning information to planners, developers and community members about what levels of assessment and development control apply to specific properties. This, in turn, ensures that the municipality's application process is more transparent and the municipality's clients can submit their application more easily, as they are aware of the necessary documentation needed to complete the application.
RiskSmart is summarized in Figure 10, while a screenshot of the risksmart website (Eidsvold Shire) follows Figure 11.
DISCUSSION AND FINDINGS
FINDINGS
Enablers
Enablers are those elements, initiatives or resources that support the implementation of a RRIF project. While the drive for efficiency was identified in the literature review (Reige and Lindsay 2006), many councils did not mention it as a driver or enabler of the RRIF program. This is a feature of the RRIF project that has actually contributed to the success of the initiative.
However, in this case study, existing ICT initiatives also proved to be an enabler of the RRIF project in a number of ways. Another interesting and key element in the successful implementation of the RRIF project was the decision to purchase an off-the-shelf product for the DA tracking element of the program for use by all councils. However, the perceived success of the RRIF project is not entirely due to the already existing initiatives in the councils.
In particular, in addition to project coordination, two activities undertaken by the RRIF team seem important to the realization of project initiatives: advertising and securing resources.
Barriers
Another problem was that some of the systems in place in local councils were quite old by ICT standards - some more than 20 years old. We need to make sure that what is scanned is what you want the public to see in terms of the public document. Once those benefits were understood, about halfway through the Project, all the Councils became more accepting of the project and became better engaged.
However, one of the most important future developments involved improvements to the Integrated Planning Act, particularly for the issue of electronic submission of applications. Anything that's in the generic part of the toolbox has been signed off by 19 councils, they've all agreed to it. One of the obstacles that is unique to parts of Australia at the moment is the lack of professionals within the council to assist with the assessment processes – particularly town planners and engineers.
Smaller councils felt that they might not experience real benefits from the project in the short to medium term, as they mainly have one-time users of the DA systems.
Benefits
That's exactly what happened and one of the smart things to do. we made sure we were ahead of schedule so when it came to that period we could actually execute it. However, some of the drivers behind the RRIF project and its predecessors came from stakeholder engagement: Both the OECD (2003) and Huang et al. (2002) argue that increased access to services and information is one of the likely outcomes of e-government initiatives.
A special element of the Planning and Development Online project was that it enabled greater participation in the research and commentary of DA projects. If it is an impact-accessible application, this council has made the submissions available online, including the names and addresses of the applicants. What was surprising in the study was that online information provision created great pressure within municipalities to ensure that their information was up to date.
We really focused on the needs of the region rather than the individual and we were very supportive.
Costs
There were resource implications, it's not easy to take a DA planner who is approaching the level of competence of a senior planner on a team, get them off the line and have them on the project. Capati-Caruso and Valle (2006) point out that for many e-Government projects there are costs involved in providing services to new users of the system. This may be due to the investment already undertaken by councils in the area of ICT infrastructure, or the resources provided by RRIF projects.
The idea that a particular e-government initiative would not benefit participating municipalities was not mentioned in the literature. To implement RRIF we had to duplicate the data, so we have a lot of information that is duplicated, which is not the best. Our online scheduling plan was considered one of the best in the state.
We were criticized because the visual look and feel of our scheduling scheme is not as impressive as our previous version.
External Factors
TOP ENABLERS MENTIONED
Top enablers were identified in the interviews
Top barriers to implementation
Top benefits of the project Table 16 - Summary of benefits
Main costs of implementing the project Table 17 - Summary of costs
Other factors
WITHIN CASE ANALYSIS – BETWEEN DIFFERENT TYPES OF COUNCILS What the comparative analysis of the items enables is a within case analysis of the data in
Comparisons across councils
What is interesting from this analysis is that it confirms the qualitative analysis of the data. First, the smaller councils identified fewer enablers than other councils on average, but they also experienced fewer barriers than other councils. Finally, large councils identified fewer enablers but the same level of barriers as medium councils.
This 'quantization' of the qualitative data confirms the sentiment of the interviews when compared across the councils.
Comparison across councils
Comparison across councils
LIMITATIONS
FUTURE RESEARCH
CONCLUSION
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2002 Empirical research into e-government acceptance among Australian citizens: some unexpected findings The Journal of Computer Information Systems. Online.http://www.rrifseq.toolbox.net.au/wps/wcm/connect/rrifseq/RRIF+SEQ/RRIFSEQHome /Content/RRIFSEQInitiatives/Property+and+Application+Enquiry/ (accessed 20 July 2007) Regulation Reduction Incentive Fund (RRIF) SEQ Program (C). -government services in the context of local government: an Australian case study Business Process Management Journal Offshoring Call Centres: the view from Wall Street.
2004) The Impact of Public Sector Reform Initiatives on Performance Measurement: The Estonian Local Government Perspective.
