Consultations are taking place to co-ordinate Government agency
approaches to putting services online.
The UK is a world leader at benchmarking progress to electronic
delivery of Government services, but is not in the premier league
of delivery, according to a new international comparison published
by the Cabinet Office this month, writes Mike Simons.
Presenting the report, Benchmarking Electronic Service Delivery,
the e-envoy, Alex Allan, said a third of UK central government
services were now online, with 70% on track for 2002. The majority
of services available are information, rather than transactional,
based and the report highlights the need to develop back-office
capability.
The Cabinet Office Central IT Unit (Citu) and the e-envoy are
trying to coordinate approaches through consultations, many of
which never seem to have made it onto the radar of public sector IT
professionals.
These consultations have led to the development of policy
frameworks in a number of areas, and it is worth IT professionals
being familiar with them.
Citu explains them as follows:
- Authentication
Effective government online and call centre services will require a
widely accepted means for citizens and businesses to authenticate
themselves for the purposes of those transactions. The policy and
guidelines establish a common approach to authentication for
Government departments, agencies and the wider public
sector
- Interoperability
The interoperability framework policy sets out the policy and
standards for achieving interoperability across all Government
departments and the wider public sector
- Metadata
Work is underway to deliver a metadata policy for Information Age
Government
- Security
The security policy represents a call for a general alignment with
best e-commerce practice. This applies across the public sector,
and extends to all service delivery channels and bodies.
Supplementary guidance on security topics will also be published,
including confidentiality and privacy, business services security
and network defence security requirements
- Smartcards
The smartcard framework policy provides a set of standards and
guidelines to facilitate interoperability. It also provides advice
on acquisition issues for public authorities; to ensure that
accessibility is an integral part of any card scheme; and to
provide guidance on data protection issues
- Privacy
The Modernising Government White Paper committed Government to
"address concerns about privacy" and to "provide a proper and
lawful basis for data sharing where this is desirable." This paper
outlines the key topics of privacy relating to Information Age
Government. Data sharing is at the heart of the Modernising
Government agenda
- Electronic records management
The framework on electronic records management provides guidelines
to support greater commonality and inter-departmental working in
electronic document and records management, and in the sharing and
exchange of electronic records across the Government Secure
Intranet.