Seamless, Ctzen-Orented Servce Delvery
Chapter.II
Mugelln, Pettenat, & Abou Khaled
chapter ends with some insights on future trends and open issues about seamless services delivery and enabling systems.
Introduction.
The rapid emergence and growth of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in everyday life of citizens has pushed government to transform itself into an electronic govern- ment (e-government) to serve citizens. The main limits in traditional public administration practices are mainly due to the bureaucracy complexity among the departments, excessive and time consuming duplication/multiplication of paperwork which lead to long waiting time both for citizens and for public administration officers.
Due to the complexity of administrative procedures (which is somehow necessary in order to protect and guarantee citizens’ rights) the interaction with public administration can be perceived by citizens as a complex and time consuming experience. As a consequence, traditional services and service delivery processes would benefit from a redesign and reorganization according to a more citizen-oriented approach. Government needs to take advantage of information and communication technologies and new business models to improve efficiency and effectiveness of internal processes as well as change the nature and quality of government interaction with both citizens and businesses allowing seamless service delivery. Government could take advantage of ICTs not just putting existing paper- based processes into digital form but rather starting a profound transformation of the way it provides services as well as interacts with citizens. Thanks to seamless service e-govern- ment practices, government could become more efficient, transparent, and responsive by allowing citizens to have 24-hour, 7-day interactive access to all governmental services as well as perform online transactions with governmental agencies at a distance.
This chapter outlines the main requirements for the provision of such shared services and presents a general functional model (e-government service marketplace) for seamless service delivery. It discusses the advantages and disadvantages as well as the impact of e-government service marketplace concept according to the three fundamental e-government perspectives:
social, economic, and technical. It provides a case study of e-government service marketplace concept application and eventually it provides some insights on future issues and emerging needs of seamless service delivery.
It is worth noting that privacy and security issues are beyond the scope of this chapter; as a consequence, they will not be analyzed in-depth.
Background
E-government refers to the use by government agencies of ICT to improve the way public administration interacts with citizens and businesses, and to improve the efficiency of the administrative process. Enhanced quality of service has been a major component of public
Seamless, Ctzen-Orented Servce Delvery administration reform over the past two decades, and the use of ICT in order to generate improvements in services has been a primary driver for e-government activity. In particular the use of the Internet has given a major boost to citizen-oriented, seamless services, and online services are increasingly seen as part of a broader strategy which aims to improve citizen satisfaction and interest in e-government. Online service targets have also been effective in motivating public administrations to examine the potential of the Internet and related technologies by applying them to existing services. One-stop offices, advice bureaus, information kiosks, and call centers have attempted to bring together information and services from different governmental agencies.
In order to evaluate e-government progress in some countries several stage models describing the evolution of public services have been developed (AOEMA, 2004; Persson & Goldkuhl, 2005; Suh, 2003). These models divide the development of e-government into several stages from simple information provision to more complex services (Table 1). All these models divide the development of e-government into several stages from simple information provision to more complex services. All of them start off with a stage of providing information to the public. Only the United Nations/American Society for Public Administration (UN/ASPA) model splits this stage into two distinct/separate levels: emerging and enhanced. After this, the models begin to differ from each other in a more substantial way. The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO), Swedish Agency for Administrative Development (SAFAD), and UN/ASPA continue with an interaction stage where there is increasing interaction between the agency Web site and the client.
Layne and Lee (2001) continue in their second stage, transaction, where internal systems of public administrations are integrated with the Web sites. This stage corresponds to the third stage in the ANAO and SAFAD models or the fourth stage in the UN/ASPA model. On the contrary the Capgemini model presents some differences as its fourth stage (transaction) corresponds to the third (partially) and fourth stage of ANAO or SAFAD models.
Table 1. E-government development stages
E-Government.Service.Development.Stage.Models
Service.Stages
ANAO.(ANAO,.
1999)
SAFAD.
(Statskontoret,.
2000)
Layne.&Lee.
(Layne.&.Lee,.
2001)
UN/ASPA.
(Ronaghan,.
2001)
Capgemini.
(Capgemini,.
2005) publishing
information information
catalogue
emerging
information enhanced
interactive
information interaction interactive one-way
interaction
transaction transaction transaction transaction two-way
interaction
transaction data sharing integration
vertical
integration fully integrated or seamless horizontal
integration
Mugelln, Pettenat, & Abou Khaled
It clearly appears how differences between different models are usually minor differences and that there is a common trend to classify as the last level (i.e., the level that requires the highest level of technological sophistication, transformational effort, and economical invest- ment) the one that requires a complete integration between several administrations in order to provide seamless (or integrated) transactional services. In other words despite different names of equivalent stages in different models, essentially the direction of e-government development always begins with only a presence and basic information where the technol- ogy is treated as simply another site on which to post information. Sites then move to a stage where interaction and communication between citizens, businesses, and governmental officials are developed and are the main focus. The next step is provision of real e-service delivery where the focus is on transactional service and citizens are able to accomplish complete routine tasks online. This stage requires an extensive use of technology that is not only a new way (“e-way”) of doing traditional government but has the possibility of creating new and different ways for government to serve the citizens. For the sake of clarity in the rest of the chapter (when speaking about a stage model for service provision), we will refer to the four-stage Capgemini model (Figure 1).
As Figure 1 shows, while stages 1 and 2 provide a low level of service provision which requires a low level of technological sophistication, stages 3 and 4 require a high level of technological sophistication which allows for the delivery of high level services.
To date, e-government has enjoyed a level of political support in different countries, which have seen it as a tool to modernize public administration, as a symbol of modernity, as a way of promoting the development of ICT industry, and the move to an information society.
The initial impressive results of e-government activities — the rapid appearance of several government Web sites and the development of portals — made information easy to find without requiring additional substantial funding. However after this initial enthusiastic phase, fewer efforts have been made to reach the next stages of e-service provision (stages 3 and 4 in Figure 1).
Figure 1. Capgemini four-stage model
Seamless, Ctzen-Orented Servce Delvery According to the Capgemini report (Capgemini, 2005) on online availability of public ser- vices (the survey covered 17 countries and examined 20 basic public services), the online sophistication of public service delivery in Europe is situated between one-way interaction (stage 2) and two-way interaction (stage 3) (measurement October 2004). Moreover when results are broken down into the target groups, citizens and businesses, it appears that online sophistication for governmental services are significantly higher for businesses than for citizens. The results of the survey also sketch out e-government progress: e-service improve- ments in the period 2001-2004 register an increase of six percentage points (Capgemini, 2005). This means that over the last three years, online development of public service has improved but much work still remains to reach the highest level of complete transactional public services (Halligan & Moore, 2004). There is more and more need for providing the glue interconnecting separate initiatives and efforts into a single and global approach (an integration model enabling the collaboration between participating governmental agencies and citizens).
The next stages of e-government will involve the development of hidden infrastructure, joined-up back-office systems, possible reengineering of administrative processes and more considerable funding with benefits which are likely to emerge slowly and be less evident.
However this new phase is essential for seamless service delivery becoming a reality. The logic of customer-focus, seamless, and integrated e-government and the need to work in cooperation to ensure interoperability and reduce duplication applies as much as across jurisdictions as it does across agencies at the same level of government, and involves a number of issues, including:
• Ease-of-use and user-friendliness
• Personalized and accessible services
• Support of citizen migration across different countries
• Respect of public administration autonomy
• Integration of public administration legacy system
• Private and public service integration
• Continuous improvement and evolution of e-government solutions
In the following a detailed analysis of requirements for seamless service delivery from both citizen and public administration point of view is provided.