by Bruce Ackland The European Union's e-government benchmarking
programme is a waste of money and will lead to poor implementation,
analysts' organisation Gartner warned this week.
Gartner has outlined five problem areas in the programme, which
commits EU partners to benchmarking themselves against the
deployment of 20 e-government services.
Gartner research director Andrea Di Maio said, "Governments are
spending big money on portals and Web sites that would be better
spent on improving system architectures."
The five areas of concern highlighted by Gartner are: -
1. There are no targets set for the critical e-government
objectives of encouraging increased citizen participation and
operational efficiency.
2. There is no real consideration of different priorities
between services and countries.
3. Balance and integration between different delivery
channels are not assessed.
4. Electronic service delivery does not always mean better
service.
5. There is insufficient emphasis on intermediaries.
Di Maio added, "There are a number of drawbacks to this
benchmarking exercise that will lead to significant risks in
deploying e-government strategies in different countries and
regions. Officials in each country need to focus on what their
constituents need, more than on what other countries think."
Gartner said these views are backed up by one of its own surveys,
which ascertained the e-government expectations of European
citizens across five member states.
Results showed that citizens wanted information rather than
transaction services. Less than half of respondents were interested
in accessing through a single portal and 65% felt intermediaries,
such as accountants, consultants, brokers and insurance companies,
would play an increasing role in e-government services.
Di Maio said, "Governments must assess constituents' wants and
needs to develop e-government strategies that, while capitalising
on other countries' best practices, keep the peculiarity of their
own countries and regions into account and rely on external parties
for actual service delivery."
The Gartner criticism will strike a chord with public sector IT
organisations and practitioners in the UK. Organisations like
Socitim, the local authority IT directors' umbrella group, are
warning against the rush to meet central e-government targets,
without stopping to find out what the public actually wants.