Governments and their citizens across Europe are
disillusioned with e-government. Despite 10 years of developing
electronically delivered services, less than 10% of citizens use
them regularly.
Governments face scepticism over the lack of transparency about
how they use the information gathered from people using the
systems. But independent initiatives seem more acceptable, research
by Tech4i2, a UK firm that specialises in e-government, has
revealed.
David Osimo, director of Tech4i2, said many of the present "Gov
2.0" projects gaining popularity were started by non-government
people. "Government projects need to show that they protect
people's privacy and security," he said, speaking at the European
Network and Information Security Agency (Enisa) summer school.
Front office systems
Most e-government projects are "back office" systems, which
typically support regulation, cross-agency collaboration, knowledge
management, interoperability, human resources and public
procurement. Relatively few deal with "front office" activities,
and those that do are seldom government initiatives, he said.
One such front office project in the US is Peer to Patent, a
Columbia Law School project that enables people to register novel
goods and have them peer-reviewed for originality before they are
submitted to the US Patent Office.
"The US patent system is broken," Osimo said. This is because
searches for "prior art" took so long that the office simply let
everything pass and let the patent holders dispute their rights in
court. "Peer to Patent provides a cheaper and more certain way of
registering and exploiting patentable products."
Risks and benefits
Osimo said Intellipedia, a wiki-based system that allows 16 US
intelligence agencies to share and assess intelligence reports, has
proved very effective. "There is a risk that you might share too
much, but the director of the system says the benefits outweigh the
risk."
Osimo said governments should reassess what controls they need
in the light of the application and whether it resides inside or
outside the corporate firewall.
Systems such as Intellipedia run inside the firewall. They have
strong authentication of the participants and minimal internal
control. "People are responsible for what they say," he said.
Patient Opinion,
a feedback website for NHS patients, was started by an NHS general
practitioner. It runs outside the NHS firewall. It required very
little upfront authentication, but is strongly moderated. "You
cannot have people calling a surgeon a butcher because you would be
sued," Osimo said.
In practice, comments posted to the website have been
surprisingly constructive, he said. Many people have thanked NHS
staff for services received and are polite and happy to suggest
solutions to problems they had come across, he said.
Keeping control
Osimo said governments need to accept that people will
complain.
People are already posting photographs of shoddy cleaning in
supposedly sterile hospital rooms on Flickr. "Once it's there, it's
there forever," he said. "But if you had a trusted channel for
complaints, people might use that instead of Flickr. That gives you
some control over what happens next because it can lead to a
dialogue. Flickr is a dead-end."
He said the key to e-government systems is to keep it simple to
increase the possibility of uptake. Governments need not fear
responses, he said. "Critical mass drives out the bad apples."