Administration-centric e-governance Bo Sundgren 2013-09-15
Branches and levels of authority Governance in a democracy is typically divided between different branches of authority, for example:
a legislative branch, typically a parliament, whose members are elected by the citizens; the legislative branch may create new laws and change existing laws
an executive branch, typically a president, elected directly or indirectly by the citizens, and/or a cabinet of ministers, led by a prime minister, approved by the parliament; the executive branch, often called “the government”, operationalises the laws into more detailed and concrete regulations, ordinances, and instructions; the government often delegates to administrative agencies to implement laws and regulations vis-à-vis citizens and organisations
a judicial branch, consisting of courts, having the task to interpret the law in concrete cases, thus making judgments about how the laws should be interpreted, how disputes should be resolved, and how law-breakers should be punished
Governance is also typically divided into hierarchically related levels of authority, for example:
central governance, the level of a state or a country regional governance, the level of a region, e.g. a county local governance, the level of a local community, e.g. a municipality
There may be more levels of authority. For example, in a federation there will be a federal level. In an international context, for example the United Nations or the European Union, international authorities and organs may have more or less power (advisory or binding) over countries and their authorities and organs. Different types of tasks typically belong to different levels of authority. For example, the central level will typically be responsible for legislation, whereas the administration of different sectors of society may be divided between several levels of authority. For example, the central level may have an overall responsibility for a certain sector, such as education, thus ensuring a certain uniformity and quality of services within this sector in all parts of the country, whereas a lot of concrete decisions and activities may be delegated to the regional and/or local level.
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The universe of discourse of governance and government administrations The universe of discourse of governance and government administrations is the system of entities or objects that is governed by the “governors”, that is, the politicians and civil servants.
Object systems The universe of discourse of governance may be modelled as a system of interacting objects. The objects may be classified into
active objects, “actors”, “subjects” such as persons and organisations, and passive objects, “things” and “utilities”, such as physical objects and material and immaterial resources
The active objects interact with each other and with passive object in different kinds of
interactions, such as activities, events, and relationships, for example business activities, trade transactions, crimes and convictions, traffic accidents, marriages, employments, births and deaths
The interactions may also be regarded as (complex or secondary) objects in the system of discourse of governance, in the sense that they are observed and analysed in information systems about the universe of discourse, and, at least some of them, acted upon by the governors. Different sectors of society, and different subject matter areas of governance, are concerned with, and focused on, different subsystems of the universe of discourse. Some examples:
Labour market governance: focused on businesses and organisations employing persons, employment and unemployment, etc Housing governance: focused on dwellings, persons and families living in dwellings, construction companies creating dwellings, etc Production governance: focused on businesses and organisations producing commodities and services, using different kinds of material and immaterial resources, etc Trade governance: focused on persons, businesses, and organisations interacting in different kinds of trade transactions, involving material and immaterial resources, associated with certain volumes and values, etc Education governance: focused on students and teachers and their engagements in courses, education programs, education institutions, funding agencies, etc
The subjects, (passive) objects, and interactions constitute the structure of the universe of discourse. But governance is also about quantities and qualities associated with the objects, for example the volumes and values associated with trade transactions, the sex, education, and yearly income of persons, the size of a dwelling, and the length of a university education program.
Information systems In order to govern, the governors are dependent on information and information systems about the subject matter areas (universes of discourse, object systems) for which they are responsible. They 2
need different kinds of information for different kinds of governance activities. For example, they need
operative information, information about individual objects, for making decisions about individual cases, concerning individual persons or organisations directive or analytical information, statistical information about collective of objects, for developing policies, strategies, and plans
In a modern society many problems are complex and interrelated with each other. As a consequence of this, it is important that different sectors of policy-making and administration use models of their respective subsystems of the universe of discourse that are coherent (compatible, comparable, consistent) with one another. If the models are coherent, it is also possible to create information systems for the different sectors that are coherent, so that information about different areas of society can be integrated, combined, and compared. Some policy areas, for example financial politics and budgets, cover by their very nature and purpose, society as a whole. For such policy areas it is of particular importance that the supporting information systems are holistic and well integrated. One of the missions of official statistics, produced by national and international statistical agencies, is to produce such statistics. In a complex modern society governors and government administrations are extremely dependent on objective, accurate, coherent, timely, and easily accessible information about society as a whole and its different parts in terms of subjects, (passive) objects, and interactions, both operative information about individual objects and statistical information about collectives of objects. This requires advanced and well integrated information systems of good quality. Those information systems, and the information obtainable from them, are also extremely important for all other participants in democratic processes, which often involve complex analyses, arguments, and decision-making, for example journalists, experts, lobbyists, non-government organisations, and ordinary citizens.
Major tasks of government administrations in e-society In a modern e-society, like in more traditional societies, government agencies and administrations have a lot of concrete, day-to-day tasks, implementing decisions by the legislative and executive branches of authority. Although many administrative tasks in a modern society are quite complex and interrelated with each other, government administrations are still typically organised in sectors, corresponding to ministries in the cabinet of ministers. This type of organisation is sometimes called a stovepipe organisation. In a complex modern society this kind of organisation involves obvious risks of contradictions, conflicts, and lack of coordination, and it may lead to suboptimal decisions. On the central level there are typically ministries for sectors like foreign affairs, military defence, labour market, health and social care, agriculture, industry, trade, and communications. There may be a few ministries with cross-sectional responsibilities, most notably the ministry of budget and economy; sometimes there may also be a ministry for infrastructure. But otherwise special interministry groups have to be created for managing issues that span over the responsibilities of several departments. 3
On lower levels of government administrations, for example in regions and municipalities, the tasks are different, but the stovepipe organisation is basically the same, with different departments being responsible for tasks belonging to different sectors of society, for example children care, education, health care, social care, elderly care, roads and transport, physical planning, etc.
Ongoing “Planning → Operation and Monitoring → Evaluation” cycles Given a certain task, a government administration (on any level) will have to manage the following ongoing, iterative process:
Planning → Operation and Monitoring → Evaluation (→ Replanning etc)
The Planning subprocess contains design and construction of the process for the task, including design and construction of information systems. The Operation subprocess contains the daily operations belonging to the task, for example providing a certain type of service to citizens or organisations. The Operation subprocess is supervised by a Monitoring subprocess in order to discover possible errors and problems. The monitoring of a process requires a systematic and efficient exchange of information between operators and supervisors of the process. The Operation subprocess includes the management of complaints. The Evaluation subprocess evaluates the performance and functioning of the Operation subprocess. The evaluation is an analytical process based on operational data, including performance data, quality data, and customer satisfaction data, generated by the operations, so-called paradata. The evaluation subprocess typically includes more or less advanced statistical analyses and visualisations, sometimes called Business Intelligence (BI).
Information management Both Monitoring and Evaluation is based on feedback information from Operation. However, there is a difference. Monitoring leads to immediate actions and modifications of the process within the same cycle of operations, whereas the purpose of Evaluation is to provide a basis for more fundamental changes of future iterations of the process. Thus the Evaluation subprocess may lead to a decision to replan and redesign the process. All subprocesses in the “Planning → Operation/Monitoring → Evaluation” cycle are based on data, often provided by databases and computer-supported information systems. All subprocesses should also produce data, often stored in the same computer-supported databases and information systems. Today many government agencies will have some kind of corporate Data Warehouse for the storage and retrieval of these data. A corporate database or data warehouse should be regarded and designed as an asset for the organisation/agency as a whole, not just serving one sectorial department/stovepipe. It should contain both the data as such and metadata defining and describing the contents and physical storage of the data. The operation subprocess typically uses and produces so-called operational data, data about individual cases. The evaluation process, on the other hand, typically uses and produces analytical data, summarising data based on aggregations and statistical processing of operational data. Different branches of government and government administrations, on different levels, have a wide range of tasks in a well functioning, modern society. Some of these tasks will not change 4
dramatically, at least not in principle, by the introduction of electronic technology, but there will be many new tasks, and tasks that need to be done in other ways than before.
Tasks and duties of particular importance in e-society Political organs and government administrations have many duties towards all actors in society: citizens and businesses/organisations, and even themselves and other administrations. There are some tasks of particular importance in an e-society, and there are task that have to be done in different ways than before, taking the availability of the new technology into account. Some examples:
Providing relevant, fair, and well functioning legal frameworks (laws, regulations, and administrative procedures) o Freedom of speech, freedom of information, and freedom of knowledge o Non-corrupt public procurements o Needs for new and adapted legislation in e-society Providing well functioning infrastructures o Hard and soft infrastructures o Organising and managing registers, databases, and information systems o Developing and managing strategic tools and procedures, e.g. e-identification Enabling citizens and organisations to make their voices heard in constructive ways o Providing methods, tools, and procedures for e-democracy and e-participation Providing and enabling relevant and useful e-services Enabling and encouraging innovative development o Education and research o Entrepreneurship, e.g. development of innovative e-services Organising and managing a non-corrupt and efficient public sector o Objectivity, quality, coordination, and efficiency
Providing relevant, fair, and well functioning legal frameworks A good society is a society based on laws and objective procedures, where everyone is treated alike, and where corruption and arbitrariness is absent. This is particularly important for ordinary citizens and small businesses, but it is also important for the efficiency of society as a whole, including powerful citizens and organisations, public and private. The rule of law is fundamental for good governance and a good society. The legal framework must balance conflicting goals and interests, for example goals concerning freedom, security, and efficiency. Furthermore it needs to be in harmony with international legislation. The legislators must ensure that the laws have broad acceptance among all actors in society. The legal framework must be felt by the citizens and businesses to be relevant and fair. In a modern information society there are many needs for modifications and changes in the legal frameworks and administrative procedures. Some traditional procedures are becoming inefficient 5
and obsolete, for example procedures based on paper documents – modified procedures based entirely on electronic documents and procedures have to be developed and implemented. At the same time, it must be taken into account – for a foreseeable future – that some citizens will still not be able to use computers in their daily lives, and some small businesses will still not be able to take full advantage of modern technology in their daily operations, and these citizens and businesses are entitled to get good services from society, too. The modern information society is associated with the introduction of so-called disruptive technologies, technologies that drastically change certain basic conditions for both citizens and businesses. If the laws are not properly adapted to the radical changes, this may cause distrust in the rule of law. A well-known example is the issue of pirating, caused by the ease, inexpensiveness, and perfection of copying digital material, such as texts, photographs, and music. These issues have to be solved in constructive and innovative ways, not by more repressive laws and procedures. Government agencies and private consultants may help businesses cope with the new challenges, for example by providing examples and advice concerning new, viable business models. Political organs and legislators also have to do some rethinking concerning intellectual property rights, and modernise the legislation in this area, ensuring legitimate interests of both authors and consumers of digital work, while at the same time decreasing the power of intermediaries, such as publishers, whose services may not be needed to the same extent as before, or at least can be organised in new ways, for example by the authors and consumers themselves, in cooperation. Political organs and administrative agencies also have a role to organise society so as to be able to cope with new types of crimes, so-called cybercrimes, and new types of vulnerability due to the growing dependence on complex, computerised systems.
Freedom of speech, freedom of information, and freedom of knowledge Good governance is closely associated with respect for basic human rights. Freedom of speech is necessary for empowering all actors in society to make their voices heard through democratic processes and participative decision-making. However freedom of speech is not enough for having real influence in arguments, discussions, and debates in society. Ideally those activities should be based on facts and avoid prejudice and myths. This requires freedom of information, so that all participants in public discussions have access to access to relevant facts, even facts which may be uncomfortable for those in power. It is also important that journalists and others are able to investigate and criticise actions and decisions by political organs and administrations, having full access to information created and used by such institutions in their planning and decision-making. Openness is vital for a well functioning democracy. The new technologies introduced in e-societies have a potential to revolutionise the meaning and impact of freedom of information and freedom of knowledge. This has already happened to a great extent, not least to the new, Internet-based communication methods and tools, which enable the exchange of all kinds of information almost instantaneously between almost all people all over the world. This development will no doubt continue – with effects and implication that we can only speculate at this stage.
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Freedom of knowledge – in the sense of open and free access to scientific knowledge, research results, and education materials – is just about to add a new dimension to freedom of speech and freedom of information. Everyone, poor or rich, living in a poor or rich country, will soon have the possibility to get access to the best education materials, the best courses, and the best teachers without having to spend a fortune. And the students may carry out their studies almost independently of time and space by means of self-studies and net-based education/learning activities, led by live or recorded teachers, using social communities for interaction with teachers and fellow students, synchronously or asynchronously. The new technologies available in e-society have also added new dimensions to openness: open data, open innovation, open source software – to mention just a few examples. At this stage, it may be appropriate to make a somewhat critical reflection. Even if all citizens in our future e-societies will have all these excellent opportunities to access this wealth of information and knowledge that is made available to us via the Internet, will we all be able to take advantage of this, and participate actively and constructively in democratic processes and decision-making concerning big and small issues? And do we all want to be these active and constructive participants? Certainly, When citizens choose to participate actively in democratic processes, they should feel that it is meaningful, and that their participation has a real chance to make a difference. On the other hand, citizens should not feel forced to participate in all such processes, and ideally they should not loose by choosing not to participate actively. Here is a delicate trade-off in a democracy between those who are very active, and those who are not. For a further discussion of freedom of speech, freedom of information, and freedom of knowledge, the reader is referred to Sundgren (2013b), where the following topics are treated in some depth: Freedom of speech, freedom of information, and freedom of knowledge:
Freedom of speech o Relationship to other rights o Censorship, copyright laws, dissent, and truth o Relation to the concept of democracy o Limitations to the freedom of speech o Freedom of speech internationally and country by country International law: The United Nations The Council of Europe The European Union Freedom of information o Freedom of information laws Government bodies Private bodies o Principles of publicity o Freedom of information as a tool for protecting other important interests Freedom of information for protecting the interests of consumers Freedom of information for protecting the interests of investors Free speech and freedom of information on the Internet o Internet censorship o The information society and freedom of expression o The EU Public Sector Information (PSI) directive Open data 7
o An overview of the concept of open data o Open data in government o Arguments for and against open data o Relations to other open activities o Funders’ mandates o Closed data Freedom of knowledge o Open Access (OA) What is Open Access? Open Access overview Why make your research available through Open Access? How do I give free access to my results? o Open data in science o Net-based learning and self-learning Open Educational Resources (OER) Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) Self-learning Application Higher education Corporate and professional o Open research and open science Open peer reviewing Net-based research o Open innovation o Open source software Conclusion: trends towards openness and transparency in e-society
Non-corrupt public procurements Openness and e-based public processes are powerful tools against corruption and arbitrariness. Public procurement is an area where many countries have seen the potential of those tools, both as a weapon against corruption and nepotism, and as an instrument for lowering the costs in the public sector, especially when government agencies and administration use outsourcing and subcontracting instead of recruiting and managing their own staff to perform certain tasks. Public procurements are surrounded by strict laws and procedures on all levels of administration, from the international level (for example within the European Union) to national and local levels. These procedures have no doubt done a lot for decreased corruption and nepotism, not least on the local levels (municipalities), and they have also lowered the costs. But there are some problems that need to be tackled, for example:
The call for tenders and the selection criteria may focus too much on costs, partly because they are easy to measure. This has sometimes led to quality problems, for example in social care. Quality criteria are often difficult to formalise and measure.
The tendering processes are often felt to be bureaucratic and resource-consuming, especially for small businesses, who want to compete.
Because of these and other problems it has become clear that the legal frameworks and administrative procedures involved in public procurements need to be improved. In order to come to 8
grips with the bureaucracy problems, the legal framework may have to be changed, but when it comes to secure the quality of the procured services, it is a matter for the public agencies and administrations to come up with better methods and criteria for measuring and comparing quality, and to give more weight to important quality criteria in the tendering processes. What is public procurement? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_procurement http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/publicprocurement/index_en.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-procurement Government procurement, also called public tendering or public procurement, is the procurement of goods and services on behalf of a public authority, such as a government agency. With 10 to 15% of GDP in developed countries, and up to 20% in developing countries, government procurement accounts for a substantial part of the global economy. To prevent fraud, waste, corruption or local protectionism, the law of most countries regulates government procurement more or less closely. It usually requires the procuring authority to issue public tenders if the value of the procurement exceeds a certain threshold. Government procurement is also the subject of the Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA), a plurilateral international treaty under the auspices of the WTO. Government procurement regulations normally cover all public works, services and supply contracts entered into by a public authority. However, there may be exceptions. These may notably cover military acquisitions, which account for large parts of government expenditures. The GPA and EU procurement law do not apply where public tendering would violate a country's essential security interests. Additionally, certain politically or economically sensitive sectors of government spending, such as public health, energy supply or public transport, may also be treated differently. E-procurement E-procurement (electronic procurement) is the business-to-business or business-toconsumer or business-to-government purchase and sale of supplies, work, and services through the Internet as well as other information and networking systems, such as electronic data interchange and enterprise resource planning. Elements of e-procurement include request for information, request for proposal, request for quotation, RFx (the previous three together), and eRFx (software for managing RFx projects). Public sector organisations use e-procurement for contracts to achieve benefits such as increased efficiency and cost savings (faster and cheaper) in government procurement and improved transparency and trust (to reduce corruption) in procurement services. E-procurement in the public sector has seen rapid growth in recent years. This field is populated by two types of software solutions and vendors: big enterprise resource planning (ERP) providers which offer e-procurement as one of their services, and the more affordable services focused specifically of e-procurement. 9
An e-procurement system manages tenders through a web site. This can be accessed anywhere globally and has greatly improved the accessibility of tenders.
Production and financing of public services The modern society is characterised by an increasing demand for more and better public services in areas like children care, education, health care, and elderly care. By tradition, in many societies, these services have been produced by public monopolists and financed via taxes. Many societies are now doing some creative rethinking, trying new models for producing and financing public services, characterised by more citizen freedom to choose between different, competing alternatives, both public and private, and more co-operation between public and private actors. Public services may be financed
entirely via taxes, entirely by charging the customers/clients of the services, or by means of some combination of these sources.
Note that a public service may be produced, in whole or partly, by private actors, while at the same time being financed, in whole or partly, via taxes. The financing of infrastructure is a special issue of great importance. Infrastructure investments should normally be financed via government budgets, that is via taxes. Only the operation costs should be recovered directly from the users of the infrastructure. Sometimes so-called Public-Private-Partnerships (PPP) are used for financing infrastructure investments: private businesses provides the necessary financing and gets some kind of monopolistic rights in return for a certain time period. There are other forms of public-private cooperation in the development and operation of public services, for example education, health, and public transport. One common form of cooperation is outsourcing or subcontracting of different subprocesses to private actors, whereas the overall responsibility, including the financing, remains with public organs.
Conclusion: trends of openness, transparency, and freedom of choice between competing alternatives in e-society Transparency and openness seems to be an ever more often prescribed recipe for good governance and trust, improved participation and democracy, and – not least – increased efficiency and economic and social progress in many areas and dimensions of the modern e-society. Increased freedom of choice for the citizens between different, competing public and private alternative seems to be another development trend in modern societies.
Needs for new and adapted legislation in e-society It is rather obvious, and not very surprising, that the disruptive changes caused by the technological developments enabled by such phenomena as computers, computer-supported information systems, 10
and the Internet, have made it necessary to update existing laws and regulations, and even to introduce completely new legislation. Unfortunately, legislators and judicial experts in ministries, courts, and administrations have been very slow, and even reluctant to respond adequately to these needs. Maybe there is a natural ambition among legislators and judicial experts to try to avoid new legislation by trying to reinterpret existing concepts and laws, so as to cover new phenomena such as computer-supported processes, digital data and data processing, and Internet-enabled communication. However, there are numerous examples where this strategy has not been successful, and where it has taken much to long for new legal practices to establish themselves within the old legal frameworks. For example, the Swedish “principle of publicity”, “offentlighetsprincipen”, becomes rather toothless, when it remains sufficient for public agencies to make their data public by means of paper documents only, when journalists and others would need them in digital form in order to fulfil their tasks in an efficient way. New types of crimes: cybercrimes Wikipedia: “Computer crime”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_crime Wikipedia: ”Cybercrime and countermeasures”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybercrime_and_countermeasures New legislation and administrative procedures are necessary to fight new types of crimes that have developed in e-society. These crimes are referred to as computer crimes, net crimes, and cybercrimes. See More (2005), Warren et al (2002), Mann&Sutton (2011), Halder&Jaishankar (2011), Ophardt (2010). According to these sources, computer crime refers to any crime that involves a computer and a network. The computer may have been used in the commission of a crime, or it may be the target. Netcrime refers to criminal exploitation of the Internet. Halder (2011) defines Cybercrimes as: "Offences that are committed against individuals or groups of individuals with a criminal motive to intentionally harm the reputation of the victim or cause physical or mental harm to the victim directly or indirectly, using modern telecommunication networks such as Internet (Chat rooms, emails, notice boards and groups) and mobile phones (SMS/MMS)". Such crimes may threaten a nation’s security and financial health. Issues surrounding this type of crime have become high-profile, particularly those surrounding hacking, cracking, identity theft, copyright infringement, child pornography, and child grooming. There are also problems of privacy when confidential information is lost or intercepted, lawfully or otherwise. Internationally, both governmental and non-state actors engage in cybercrimes, including espionage, financial theft, and other cross-border crimes. Activity crossing international borders and involving the interests of at least one nation state is sometimes referred to as cyber warfare. The international legal system is attempting to hold actors accountable for their actions through the International Criminal Court. Authors’ rights and copyright legislation: needs for rethinking Some of the new crimes in e-society are really new in the sense that they did not exist at all before the era of computers and computer-enabled networks like the Internet. Other crimes are not entirely 11
new, but because of the new, powerful technology, they have undergone considerable changes in different ways. It is especially the speed, perfection, and inexpensiveness of the new, computerbased technologies and services that have changed the situation in several directions. We may take copyright infringements as an interesting example. Traditionally it has been accepted that anyone may make copies for personal use of artistic and other artifacts, for example music recordings. It was also accepted that people shared such products, for example books, between themselves, by lending and borrowing them, for example through book clubs. However, when the artifacts became digitalised, it became in a way “too easy” and “too cheap” to copy and share the artefacts, even for personal use, and the copies became “too perfect”. People in general, and especially young people who had grown up with computers and the Internet, saw this as a great step forward, and so did many authors, since it did marketing and distribution of their work so much easier and more efficient, enabling them to skip costly intermediaries such as publishers. However, the publishers, of course, saw the new possibilities as a threat to their own profits and even to their raison d’être and existence. Since the intermediaries were economically much stronger and influential than both their customers and the authors they were supposed to serve, they started to fight so-called “pirating” by means of private anti-pirate organisations, taking over much of what should normally be police work. They launched lobbying campaigns aimed at politicians, demanding much stricter and more repressive interpretations of existing copyright laws, and to a great extent they have been successful in the sense that the politicians have by and large given in to their demands by creating much more repressive laws with unproportional punishments both on national and international levels. It has been debated how wise it is for publishers and others to fight new business conditions caused by disruptive technologies with repressive measures, rather than being more pro-active and constructive by redefining business roles and business models. To what extent have the high-profile campaigns and the new repressive laws had even a short-term effect on declining businesses cause by obsolete business models? And what will the long-term effects be for publishers and others who have declared a war against their customers and a whole generation of Internet users. The militant actions of the anti-pirates have already had very tragic consequences for individual persons, as illustrated by the case of Aaron Swartz. Aaron Swartz (born 1986, dead by suicide 2013) was an American computer programmer, writer, political organiser and Internet activist. In 2010, he became a research fellow at Harvard University. He founded the online group Demand Progress, known for its campaign against the Stop Online Piracy Act. On January 6, 2011, Swartz was arrested for having downloaded copyright-protected academic journal articles. Federal prosecutors later charged him with two counts of wire fraud and 11 violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines and 35 years in prison. On January 11, 2013, two years after his initial arrest, Swartz was found dead in his Crown Heights, Brooklyn apartment, where he had hanged himself. For more information and links about Aaron Swartz, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz Recent developments have also demonstrated that existing copyright laws are not even very helpful for the authors, those whose interests and rights are supposed to be protected by the legislation. In 12
practice, most authors have a weak position in relations to intermediaries like publishers, who are supposed to help them in marketing and distributing their work. An author typically has to sign a contract with a publisher, where he or she transfers the authors’ rights to the publisher, not only for a limited period, but for ever. The author is not allowed to reuse the work, in whole or in parts, without permission by the publisher. With the possibilities offered by the Internet today, the authors can do the marketing and distribution work themselves, without any assistance by publishers. They may even prefer to make their work available free of charge on the Internet, in order to get more publicity, earning money in other ways, for example by means of live appearances. Some authors, for example researchers, do not get any direct revenues from their published articles anyhow. It is much more important for them to get their articles read and cited by other researchers. This is more easily achieved if the scientific articles are published according to so-called Open Access principles, either by the researchers themselves, through their universities, or by service-providing publishers who operate in accordance with Open Access principles. Similarly, many creators of software artefacts have since long discovered the advantages of using and producing software in accordance with the so-called Open Source principles. Licensing alternatives: Copyleft, Creative Commons Share Alike etc Thus there is a need for a modernisation of copyright laws, focusing more on the true interests of authors and users of different types of intellectual property, and reducing the role of publishers and others to the service-providing intermediaries that they are supposed to be, earning money through fees paid by authors or others, when their services are explicitly asked for, from case to case, rather than by eternal “slave contracts” with the authors. In the absence of constructive legislation initiatives by governments in this area, some groups of authors have taken joint initiatives by themselves, developing new forms of licensing systems, such as “copyleft” and “share-alike”. See, for example, the following references: Wikipedia: “Copyleft”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft Wikipedia: “Creative Commons”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.org/ Copyleft (a play on the word copyright) is the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work. In other words, copyleft is a general method for making a program (or other work) free, and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well. Copyleft is a form of licensing and can be used to maintain copyright conditions for works such as computer software, documents, and art. In general, copyright law is used by an author to prohibit recipients from reproducing, adapting, or distributing copies of the work. In contrast, under copyleft, an author may give every person who receives a copy of a work permission to reproduce, adapt or distribute it and require that any resulting copies or adaptations are also bound by the same licensing agreement.
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Copyleft licenses (for software) require that information necessary for reproducing and modifying the work must be made available to recipients of the executable. The source code files will usually contain a copy of the license terms and acknowledge the author(s). Copyleft type licenses are a novel use of existing copyright law to ensure a work remains freely available. The GNU General Public License, originally written by Richard Stallman, was the first copyleft license to see extensive use, and continues to dominate the licensing of copylefted software. Creative Commons, a non-profit organisation founded by Lawrence Lessig, provides a similar license provision condition called ShareAlike. Read more about business models and authors’ rights Sundgren, B. (2010). Business models and authors rights in the information economy. International Journal of Public Information Systems. Vol 2010:2, pp 171-194. Sundgren, B. (2013d). Business-centric e-governance. The chapter on Business models for the information economy. The open, net-based course E-society – evolution or revolution. Module 1. Introduction to e-society. Wikipedia: “Copyleft”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft Wikipedia: “Creative Commons”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.org/
Providing well functioning infrastructures Infrastructure systems include both the fixed assets, and the control systems and software required to operate, manage and monitor the systems, as well as any accessory buildings, plants, or vehicles that are an essential part of the system. Also included are fleets of vehicles operating according to schedules such as public transit buses and garbage collection, as well as basic energy or communications facilities that are not usually part of a physical network, such as oil refineries, radio, and television broadcasting facilities. Regardless of whether services are provided by public or private actors, there is a need for reliable infrastructures in order to ensure the proper functioning, good quality, and safety of the services provided. The infrastructures may be technical, information system oriented, legal, and organisational. The infrastructures need to be managed in an efficient and non-corrupt way, and this is ultimately the responsibility of the government and its principles, systems, and practices of governance. Both in traditional societies and in e-societies, well functioning infrastructures are of vital importance for the creation of efficient citizen-oriented and business-oriented services of high quality, and for the efficient functioning of all kinds of activities, both citizen activities and business activities.
Managing infrastructures in e-society In the traditional society the infrastructures were mainly “physical”, so-called hard infrastructures, for example road and railroad networks. In modern information-based societies, hard infrastructures 14
are still important, for example telecommunication networks, but another type of infrastructures, socalled soft infrastructures, are becoming more and more important. The soft infrastructures include:
Databases, registers, and information systems, often serving a wide range of different customers and purposes
Standards and rules and tools for efficient exchange of information between users and systems, and between systems, for example standards for identification and authentication, and standard formats and procedures for data interchange
There are well established organisational frameworks for handling traditional hard infrastructure tasks and issues: ministries and administrative agencies for communication and transports, for example. Unfortunately governments often have great difficulties to create corresponding organisational frameworks for handling of the new, soft infrastructure tasks and issues. Many good documents have been written by governments on IT strategies and architectures, but regrettably those documents seldom lead to those powerful, concrete actions, which are needed to provide the modern information society with the soft infrastructures that it needs. There is also a lack of coordination between different sectors and different levels of governance, and there are often unfruitful discussions and controversies about the financing of the necessary work. It is often neglected that infrastructure investments should in general – according to economic theory – be collectively financed, typically via government budgets. Charging the users of infrastructure for the investment costs will inevitably lead to under-usage of the infrastructure, that is, suboptimisation.
The concept of “infrastructure” See Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrastructure Infrastructure is basic physical and organisational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function. It can be generally defined as the set of interconnected structural elements that provide framework supporting an entire structure of development. It is an important term for judging a country or region's development. The term typically refers to the technical structures that support a society, such as roads, bridges, water supply, sewers, electrical grids, telecommunications, and so forth, and can be defined as "the physical components of interrelated systems providing commodities and services essential to enable, sustain, or enhance societal living conditions" Viewed functionally, infrastructure facilitates the production of goods and services, and also the distribution of finished products to markets, as well as basic social services such as schools and hospitals; for example, roads enable the transport of raw materials to a factory. In military parlance, the term refers to the buildings and permanent installations necessary for the support, redeployment, and operation of military forces. To make it simple, infrastructure is anything that is needed everyday, an everyday item. 15
Governments and government administrations in any society have to provide relevant and well functioning infrastructures, resources that are of great importance for most, or at least many of the actors in the society, and which have to be organised and financed collectively in order to reach their full potential. Here we shall focus on such infrastructures which are of particular importance for a well functioning e-society. Hard and soft infrastructures It is common to distinguish between hard and soft infrastructures. “Hard infrastructure” typically refers to the large physical networks necessary for the functioning of a modern society. Roads and railroads are examples of hard infrastructures. They are communication networks. In esociety, telecommunication networks are particularly important, carrying the Internet among other things. "Soft infrastructure” refers to all the institutions, systems, and services which are required to maintain the economic, health, cultural, and social standards of a country, such as the financial system, the education system, the health care system, the system of government, and law enforcement, as well as emergency services. The importance of relevant and efficient soft infrastructures (often in symbiosis with hard infrastructures) is growing rapidly in e-society. Some examples are:
Central registers, based on unique identifiers Mechanisms and procedures for secure identification, authentication, and authorisation Strategic information systems, partly based on registers Strategic e-services, partly based on central registers and information systems, serving all actors in a modern e-society: citizens, businesses, and administrations Security systems and systems ensuring the functioning of important society functions in the case of emergencies and crises Relevant standards based on international cooperation
Hard infrastructures Examples of hard infrastructures:
Transport infrastructures, e.g. roads, railways, canals, seaports, airports Energy infrastructures, e.g. electrical power networks, oil and gas pipelines Water management infrastructures, e.g. drinking water supply systems, sewage collection and disposal systems, drainage systems Communications infrastructures, e.g. postal services, telecommunication networks, television and radio transmission systems, cable distribution networks, the Internet Solid waste management systems Earth monitoring and measurement networks, e.g. meteorological and seismic monitoring networks
Soft infrastructures Soft infrastructures include both physical assets, such as highly specialised buildings and equipment, as well as non-physical assets, such as the body of rules and regulations governing the various systems, the financing of these systems, as well as the systems and organisations by which highly 16
skilled and specialised professionals are trained, advance in their careers by acquiring experience, and are disciplined if required by professional associations (professional training, accreditation and discipline). Unlike hard infrastructure, the essence of soft infrastructure is the delivery of specialised services to people. Unlike much of the service sector of the economy, the delivery of those services depend on highly developed systems and large specialised facilities or institutions that share many of the characteristics of hard infrastructure. Governance infrastructures Some examples:
The system of government and law enforcement, including the political, legislative, law enforcement, justice and penal systems, as well as specialised facilities (government offices, courthouses, prisons, etc.), and specialised systems for collecting, storing and disseminating data, laws, and regulations
Emergency services, such as police, fire protection, and ambulances, including specialised vehicles, buildings, communications and dispatching systems
Military infrastructure, including military bases, arms depots, training facilities, command centres, communication facilities, major weapons systems, fortifications, specialised arms manufacturing, strategic reserves
Economic infrastructures Some examples:
The financial system, including the banking system, financial institutions, the payment system, exchanges, the money supply, financial regulations, as well as accounting standards and regulations
Major business logistics facilities and systems, including warehouses as well as warehousing and shipping management systems
Manufacturing infrastructure, including industrial parks and special economic zones, mines and processing plants for basic materials used as inputs in industry, specialised energy, transportation and water infrastructure used by industry, plus the public safety, zoning and environmental laws and regulations that govern and limit industrial activity, and standards organisations
Agricultural, forestry and fisheries infrastructure, including specialised food and livestock transportation and storage facilities, major feedlots, agricultural price support systems (including agricultural insurance), agricultural health standards, food inspection, experimental farms and agricultural research centres and schools, the system of licensing and quota management, enforcement systems against poaching, forest wardens, and fire fighting
Social infrastructure Some examples: 17
The health care system, including hospitals, the financing of health care, including health insurance, the systems for regulation and testing of medications and medical procedures, the system for training, inspection and professional discipline of doctors and other medical professionals, public health monitoring and regulations, as well as coordination of measures taken during public health emergencies such as epidemics
The educational and research system, including elementary and secondary schools, universities, specialised colleges, research institutions, the systems for financing and accrediting educational institutions
Social welfare systems, including both government support and private charity for the poor, for people in distress or victims of abuse
Cultural, sports and recreational infrastructure Some examples:
Sports and recreational infrastructure, such as parks, sports facilities, the system of sports leagues and associations
Cultural infrastructure, such as concert halls, museums, libraries, theatres, studios, and specialised training facilities
Business travel and tourism infrastructure, including both man-made and natural attractions, convention centres, hotels, restaurants and other services that cater mainly to tourists and business travellers, as well as the systems for informing and attracting tourists, and travel insurance
Read more about infrastructures Sundgren (2013f). Methodological and technical perspectives on e-governance. The chapter on Infrastructures.
Organising and managing registers, databases, and information systems Governments have the overall responsibility for the infrastructures within their domains of authority. Thus a central government of a country has the overall responsibility for the development and maintenance of infrastructures within the country. Traditionally the infrastructures are so-called “hard infrastructures” like roads, railroads, electricity networks, and telecommunication networks. These infrastructures continue to be very important in modern e-societies as well, but there are nowadays also equally important “soft infrastructures”, like information systems used by most actors in today’s society: citizens, businesses and other organisations, as well as the government itself. These actors have a double role: they both produce and use the information in the information systems. The information system infrastructure of a society is typically created around a backbone, consisting of a number of basic registers and databases, containing information about important objects in society, both active objects, called actors or subjects, such as persons and organisations, and passive objects, concrete or abstract “things” or “assets”, like real estate objects (land, buildings, dwellings), cars, natural resources, and financial assets. 18
Registers and databases A basic, orthodox definition of a register is the following one: •
A register is an authorised, up-to-date list of all objects belonging to a certain population
•
The objects listed in the register are uniquely identified by an authorised identifier, such as person number for persons, organisation number for organisations, etc
•
In addition to the identifier, a register may contain additional basic and up-to-date information about the objects, such as name (not necessarily unique) and location and other contact information, e.g. address and telephone number
Example: A person register is an authorised list of persons belonging to a certain population, e.g. all persons living in a certain country at a certain point of time. A core set of registers for the administration of a country may contain (at least)
a register of persons a register of organisations a register of real estate objects: houses, dwellings, localities
Registers of this nature and status are sometimes called base registers. They define both semantically (by means of inclusion rules) and pragmatically/operationally (by means of enumeration) some basic object types and populations of fundamental importance for the administration of a modern society, as well as for official statistics. Links between registers The base registers should be linked to each other, thus materialising important relations between the basic object types, e.g. “the dwelling where a person lives”, “the organisation where a person works”, “the locality where an organisation is located”. Unique and informationless identifiers The identifiers of the objects in a register must be unique and stable over time. The safest way of ensuring stability of identifiers over time is to make them informationless. If an identifier contains information, there is always the risk that this information changes, either because the information turns out to be wrong, or because the status of the object really changes. For example, person identifiers sometimes contain information about the birth date of the person. This information is believed to be stable, but sometimes it is discovered that the information is wrong and has to be corrected. However, if the information about the birth date is corrected, it will also cause the identify of the person to change, which will inevitably cause a lot of problems, both for the person concerned and for others. The identifiers of the objects in a register must be unique (over time) within the population covered by the register. Standard definitions of registered objects
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The definition of a person is relatively straightforward, but for many other objects it is not. For example, there are many possible definitions of an organisation or an enterprise. Different definitions may be suitable for different purposes. As far as administrative purposes are concerned, the legal status of an organisation is often important. On the other hand, for statistical purposes, one may more interested in an organisation in the sense of an establishment that conducts a certain type of business (kind-of-activity) in a certain place (locality), whereas the legal status of the establishment is not so important. Administrative registers and statistical registers One may distinguish between administrative registers and statistical registers:
An administrative register is a register used for administrative purposes A statistical register is a register used for statistical purposes
Administrative registers are typically created and maintained in order to facilitate certain administrative processes, for example taxation of people and businesses. They are also needed for ensuring the legitimacy and correctness of certain transactions, for example transfers of ownership. If you are going to buy a house or a car, you need to be sure that the seller is the legitimate owner of the object that you intend to purchase. Registers are also important in order to ensure that the right persons and organisations get the right services from the government and its agencies, for example education and health care. A statistical register may be created from one or more administrative registers, possibly in combination with data from other sources, such as traditional statistical surveys. Traditionally, registers are used in official statistics as frames for surveys. When conducting a statistical survey, one has to create a frame, or a register, of the objects in the population to be investigated by the survey. When conducting a sample survey, a sample of the objects in the frame is drawn, and then these objects are observed by some kind of measurement method and measurement instrument, e.g. mailed questionnaires or telephone interviews. In order to be useful for statistical purposes, a register should contain contact information for all objects in the register, that is, name, postal address, physical address, email address, phone number, etc, for the object itself and/or a human respondent representing the object. It is also useful if a statistical register contains classification variables that makes it easy to create strata and subpopulations (domains) to be used in the design, production, presentation, and analysis of survey data. Links to other registers and data sources; satellite registers As has been mentioned already, a register should contain links to other registers, thus representing relations between object types and between populations of objects. Such links between registers effectively multiply the amount of information contained in a system of registers. For example, by linking persons with their dwellings, we indirectly associate persons with variables and properties of their dwellings, e.g. “persons living in one-family houses”, “persons living in the same dwelling” (possibly forming a household), etc. Furthermore, a register may be linked to other databases or files containing data about special subdomains (subpopulations) of the population of objects contained in the register. Such data sets 20
are sometimes regarded as satellite registers to the registers that they are linked to; they may or may not fulfil the strict definition of a register stated above. For example, a person register may have satellite registers like “student registers” and “patient registers”. Satellite registers are sometimes named after some important (type of) variable in the registers, e.g. “income registers” and “education registers”. A register extended with other data concerning the objects in the register, which can be used in combination with, or instead of, data collected by surveys. Such register data may reduce the response burden and improve the quality and efficiency of official statistics. Event registers Some registers contain event type objects, e.g. road accidents and crimes. Such registers are cumulative in the sense that they contain all events of a certain kind that have occurred since the time when the registration of such events started. Base registers containing all basic objects of a certain kind, e.g. all persons living in a country, are often closely associated with one or more event registers, containing information about certain types of events that the basic objects are involved in, e.g. birth and death events, migration events, marriages and divorces, etc. Life history registers Base registers in combination with event registers may be used for forming life histories of the basic objects in a base register (or objects belonging to a certain subpopulation, registered in a satellite register), e.g. the life histories of patients or criminals. Life history registers, or life history databases, may be used for longitudinal studies. Metadata and conceptual models Metadata are “data about data”. Metadata may describe:
the sources of data, for example o a data collection process that is part of an operative, administrative process, for example an e-service process o a statistical survey o some existing register or database, based on other data sources, which may again be administrative processes or statistical surveys or other registers or databases the measurement instruments that have been used for collecting the original data, for example questionnaires (paper, online, etc) the contents and meaning of the data: the objects, variables (attributes), and relations informed about by the data the quality of the data: relevance, accuracy, timeliness, accessibility, comparability, etc the physical representation of the data: technical aspects the processes that the data have undergone: data collection, checking and correction, combination with other data, derivations, aggregations and estimations, etc
The contents and meaning of the data is of particular importance for judging the relevance of the data for a particular purpose (which may be different from the purpose for which the data were originally collected). The definitions of the contents and meaning of the data used and produced by 21
administrative processes in governments are often based on concepts defined in the legislation behind these processes, that is, laws and regulations. In order to get an understandable and informative overview of the contents and meaning of a set of data and the underlying concepts, it is often useful to develop a so-called conceptual model. A conceptual model may be built from the basic concept of an object that we have already introduced above (active objects, passive objects, and complex objects) in combination with the concept of variables, sometimes called attributes), which describe qualitative and quantitative properties of the objects, for example the sex, age, and income of a person. Read more about registers, databases, information systems, metadata, conceptual models Registers, databases, and information systems, as well as the concepts of metadata and conceptual models are treated in many publications by Bo Sundgren, see this link. See also Sundgren (2013f).
Developing and managing strategic tools and procedures In addition to a well designed system of registers, databases, and information systems, an efficient, trustworthy, and well functioning e-society is dependent on certain strategic tools, standards, and procedures, in particular for securing safe identification, authentication, and authorisation. There are three important roles for the government here:
The government needs to create trust by standing behind and guaranteeing these tools and procedures. The government also has to adapt the legislation, so that the new e-tools and e-procedures can replace traditional paper-and-pencil-based tools and procedures in practice. The government should also finance this very critical part of the e-infrastructure in order to avoid unnecessary delays in the development and implementation of it, and in order to avoid suboptimal solutions.
E-identification: identity cards, certificates, and digital signatures In individual countries, as well as internationally, there is a need for trustworthy e-identifications (elegitimations): certificates and identification cards, hard and/or soft, which can be used for safe authentication and authorisation of persons and other legal entities. These tools should be provided and guaranteed by relevant government authorities. Ideally they should be widely applicable in both manual and computer-supported, digitalised processes. Estonia is a country which has been very successful in this area, and they have created an identity card, which can be used as passport, driving license, health service card, etc; it can even be used in public transport. The card is accepted and used by all citizens in the country. A related issue is the problem of digital signatures. Many digital documents still have to be printed, manually signed, and sent by ordinary surface mail to the recipient in order to be legally valid. For example, in Sweden companies have to send their annual accounts on paper, signed manually by the managing director, to a government agency, Bolagsverket, where they are archived. A former director general of Bolagsverket called the procedure for doing this “the digital-analogue idiot loop” for the following reason. Most companies nowadays have their accounts in digital form. First the company has to print the accounts on paper, transforming them from digital to analogue form, then 22
the printed document has to be signed manually by the managing director and sent by ordinary surface mail to Bolagsverket. Noone at Bolagsverket actually has the time to check the manual signature of the alleged managing director – it could be signed by “Donald Duck” – and the paper document is then digitalised by scanning and filed in the archive of Bolagsverket.
Enabling citizens and organisations to make their voices heard in constructive ways It is a duty for governments and government administrations in an e-society to develop and use new and creative methods, enabled by e-technology, to support citizens and other actors to make their voices heard in public decision processes on all levels of society. Many of these decision processes will engage and involve other categories of stakeholders as well, such as politicians, civil servants, experts, businesses, and non-profit voice organisations. This duty has a bearing on
both formalised democratic processes, such as general elections, where relevant computersupported procedures should be introduced, for example e-voting, and on less formalised decision processes, for example local level planning processes.
It is important that political organs and civil servants are not afraid of consultations with citizens and other stakeholders that are concerned by a certain decision process. In particular, it is important that they are not afraid of involving those concerned at early stages, even before the politicians and civil servants have formulated decision alternatives and tentative decisions. Active and constructive cooperation between all relevant stakeholders and expertise is likely to improve the quality of the decision-making processes. And today there are many promising models and tools for organising such participative decision-making, managing discrepancies between the goals and preferences of different stakeholders in a rational way. Everyone can have a say that is taken seriously, even though everyone cannot have an outcome that entirely goes his or her way. Sometimes Pareto-optimal decisions can be reached, that is, some stakeholders win and no stakeholder loses.
E-democracy and e-participation E-democracy and e-participation are two concepts which are often referred to in this context. There is no sharp distinction between these two concepts. Maybe one can say that
e-democracy focuses on analysis and formation of collective opinions and policies, either on broad topics, such as education, labour market, or housing, or on more specific issues, such as arms control or death penalty
e-participation focuses on collective decision-making on specific issues, such as the location of a waste collection plant, measures to be taken to improve the environment in a specific area, or how to organise public transport
Both e-democracy and e-participation include formal procedures, regulated by laws, and informal procedures based on voluntary engagement by those concerned. General elections, referendums, and formalised consultation procedures (for example in connection with the planning of a new city 23
centre) are examples that belong to the former category. Informal procedures may be the result of spontaneous initiatives from citizens and citizen groups, often in reaction to proposals and decisions by civil servants or politicians. But authorities and political bodies may also proactively invite the citizens to participate in earlier stages of decision processes, even before issues and decision alternatives have been formulated. It is assumed that both e-democracy and e-participation can benefit a lot from exploiting the new possibilities offered by modern information technology, both as regards availability of information, and as regards methods and tools for processing information. This applies to both formal and informal procedures. For example, e-voting is a way of bringing new qualities into traditional, formalised election procedure, and new methods and tool-boxes have been developed to support participative decision-making, e-participation. Read more about e-democracy and e-participation Sundgren (2013b). The concept of governance. The chapters on e-democracy and e-participation. For a more extensive treatment of the subject of e-democracy, the reader is referred to the education module “E-democracy”, developed by Tomas Ohlin and belonging to the course “E-society – evolution or revolution”. The course is available via the DSV learning platform iLearn2 or via the course website https://sites.google.com/site/esocietycourse2013/; here is the link directly to the course module on E-democracy: https://sites.google.com/site/esocietycourse2013/module-2. For a more extensive treatment of the subject of e-participation and participative decision-making, the reader is referred to the education module “Participative decision analysis”, developed by Aron Larsson and belonging to the course “E-society – evolution or revolution”. The course is available via the DSV learning platform iLearn2 or via the course website https://sites.google.com/site/esocietycourse2013/; here is the link directly to the course module on “Participative decision analysis”: https://sites.google.com/site/esocietycourse2013/module-3.
Providing and enabling relevant and useful e-services Governments have the responsibility to plan (develop and organise), operate and monitor, and evaluate e-services demanded by citizens and businesses, and decided by the relevant democratic bodies (central, regional, and local parliaments). The e-services should be relevant and of high quality and efficiency. They should support important tasks in the lives of citizens and organisations. In order to discover and define such tasks, one may make so-called life-cycle or life history analyses of events and activities in the lives of citizens and organisations, and develop scenarios for them. On the basis of these analyses, including discussions with representatives of those concerned, one may design and develop e-services, first prototypes for getting feedback from intended users of the services, then full-fledged systems. In order to provide good services in an e-society, government agencies and their subcontractors must meet the demands from citizens and other customers who need these services, as discussed in Sundgren, B. (2013c). Citizen-centric e-governance. Sundgren, B. (2013d). Business-centric e-governance. Governments and government administrations should ensure: 24
Good services to citizens Good services to businesses, commercial as well as non-profits Good services to public organs and administrations
E-services can be provided by both public and private actors. Regardless of whether the services are provided by public or private actors, there is a need for reliable infrastructures in order to ensure the proper functioning, good quality, and safety of the services provided. The infrastructures may be technical, information system oriented, legal, and organisational. The infrastructures for supporting e-services need to be managed in an efficient and non-corrupt way, and this is ultimately the responsibility of the government and its principles, systems, and practices of governance.
What is an e-service? It is difficult to provide an exact definition of the concept of an e-service. However, an important feature of e-services is the use of technology, including the Internet, to facilitate the production and delivery of such services. E-services have four main components:
service providers service receivers channels of service delivery (technology supported) one or more (physical) products and/or services, often in combination
For example, as regards private e-services, businesses and non-profit organisations are the service providers and citizens as well as businesses and public administrations are the service receivers. The channel of service delivery is the third requirement of e-service. Internet is the main channel of eservice delivery while other classic channels (e.g. telephone, call center, public kiosk, mobile phone, television) are also considered. The domain of e-services has become an established branch of e-government and is recognised by both practitioners and researchers as being of strategic importance in the modernisation of the public sector. E-services can be provided by private actors (commercial as well as non-profit) as well as by governments (on different levels), or by government agencies. Public e-services may also be operated by private actors, to whom governments and government agencies have outsourced or outcontracted such operations. Some of the e-service needs are so important and complex that they have given rise to new research disciplines, for example:
e-learning e-health e-commerce and e-business
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One type of e-services is e-commerce. E-commerce, is the buying and selling of goods and/or services electronically. It also includes additional forms of commerce performed over the Internet, such as the transfer of funds. Electronic commerce includes consumer-based business (B to C) and transactions between businesses (B to B). It has no time or space barriers. For example, a consumer in one country is instantly able to complete a transaction with a business in another country. E-service providers can typically create an online interface to allow customers to order products and/or services at any time, using one or more convenient payment methods. The same interface can be used for providing customer service functions. If a customer needs to return or exchange a product, dispute a charge or work out a problem with the order, he or she can log on to do so. A company representative can evaluate the information that the customer submits and decide how to proceed if the transaction cannot be handled automatically. Customer services can also refer to the practice of providing people with a positive, helpful experience before, during, or after buying something. It also can refer to a department within a company that focuses on these processes. Employees can engage with individuals face-to-face, by phone or through written communications. Many businesses spend a great deal of time getting feedback and training their employees for this purpose, because it makes a client more likely to become loyal. Companies that specialise in e-services can provide a basic software package for an agency or company to use. The user can customise the package to meet specific needs with things such as inserting a logo or adding new fields for different activities. It also is possible to request a custom software package for a very specific purpose that cannot be met using generic software. Government agencies, for instance, might have concerns about the privacy of information and might need a more robust program with excellent security. References: Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Services wiseGEEK: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-e-services.htm wiseGEEK: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-electronic-commerce.htm wiseGEEK: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-customer-service.htm Sundgren (2013c). Citizen-centric e-governance. Sundgren (2013d). Business-centric e-governance. See also special chapters in Sundgren (2013f).
Requirements to be satisfied by e-service providers It is a challenge for administrations and other service providers to produce and deliver services that match the requirements by citizens and businesses for so-called “one-stop” solutions, where the customer/client only has to have direct contact with one instance in one agency or department. The reason why this natural requirement is often difficult for administrations to meet is that they are organised in a way that does not fit the nature and structure of customer/client problems and needs. Instead administrations are often organised from a production point of view, where different 26
competences needed for solving a particular customer/client problem are located in different agencies or departments. Administrations must be able to cope with this structural clash “behind the scene”, that is, behind the visible interface between the administration and the customer/client, so that the customer/client does not have to move between different contact points in order to get partial answers to his or her problem. Designing the processes for good services, fulfilling the needs and expectations of customers and clients, will require good systems development methods. For example, so-called lifecycle models may be used in two ways: 1. When making an inventory of what kind of services a citizen or a business may need over a lifetime: pre-birth, birth, growing up, having matured, ageing, death, post-death. 2. When designing the service process and its subprocesses, from beginning (request from the customer/client) to end (response to the customer/client). When an organisation develops a new internal information system, it is common to engage the future users of the information system in the development process. This is not so easy to do when an administrative agency develops an e-service for citizens or businesses. There are too many future users of such e-services, and many of them are unknown. Moreover, different users will most probably have different needs and preferences, which have to be taken into account. In such situations it may be better to use some kind of agile systems development method, for example experimental systems development and/or prototyping. The first versions of the system will only be used for getting user reactions to the proposed system. After a number of iterations, most of the users will hopefully be satisfied, and the number of questions and complaints will decline. Citizen or Customer? When a citizen demands and gets a public service of some kind from a government agency, the citizen is in fact a customer in relation to the service-producing agency. It is sometimes debated whether it is appropriate to use the term “customer” for a citizen in this situation. Here are some objections:
The citizen/customer cannot always choose whether to demand the service or not, for example if you are in acute need of medical treatment, or if you have committed a crime and society demands that you accept different kinds of “repressive services” like imprisonment.
In many situations (like those just mentioned) it seems more appropriate to use other terms than “customer”, e.g. “client”, “user”, “patient”, “student”, etc.
Nevertheless, by using the term “customer”, or at least thinking of a citizen in a certain situation as a customer, the producer is encouraged to make a maximum effort to deliver an excellent service to the citizen, like a commercial business has to do in order to survey. The term also emphasises that the focus should be on the citizen, not on the civil servant. The civil servant is there to produce a good service for the citizen; the citizen is not there to make life as easy as possible for the civil servant and the producing agency. Needs for innovative thinking E-service receivers (citizens, businesses, and public administrations) demand well functioning eservices from both public and private e-service providers, wherever and whenever e-services are 27
relevant. It is important that the services are seen from the perspectives of the service receivers, which do not necessarily coincide with the perspectives of those responsible for producing and delivering the services, regardless of whether they are public or private organisations. Three examples of problems that require innovative thinking by e-service providers are:
The need for one-stop solutions (an organisational problem) The need to adapt to user equipment and user software How to get overviews of o society o information about society o available services, including e-services o qualities and costs of available services and e-services
These problems – and possible solutions to them – are treated in Sundgren (2013d). Business-centric e-governance.
Examples of e-services and their requirements There are some sectors of society, which citizens and other actors in society typically consider more important than others, and where they expect good quality e-services, taking advantage of modern technology. In order to get more concrete illustrations of user requirements on e-services, we will go through a list of examples of such sectors and areas taken from Sundgren (2013c). The reader is recommended to consider each example in the list separately and address the following questions: 1. Which government agencies on which levels, if any, should have particular responsibilities for this kind of e-services? Which responsibilities? 2. Is there, or could there be, a role for commercial businesses or non-profit organisations in the production and delivery of this kind of service? 3. Which requirements does this kind of service put on the provider of the service, whether it is a business or not? Here is the list – for more information about each topic in the list, see Sundgren (2013c):
Travel E-commerce Metalevel e-services Education Children care Elderly care Health care Labour market Housing Social benefits, insurances, and financial support Transport of people and goods Telecommunication 28
Taxation Public documents: passport, identification card, driving license
The efficiency and quality of e-services The reader is referred to the corresponding chapter in Sundgren (2013c), where the following aspects are discussed:
acceptance accessibility administrative literacy benchmarking digital divide e-readiness efficiency security stakeholders usability
Enabling and encouraging other actors to provide e-services Rather than developing and managing public e-services themselves, governments and government administrations could encourage private businesses and organisations to develop useful e-services for citizens and businesses. One way of stimulating such developments is to define and manage public data as open data – discussed elsewhere in Sundgren (2013a-f), making public data easy to access and use for entrepreneurs with creative ideas about new information products and services. This policy of making public data available is strongly supported by the EU Directive concerning Public Sector Information (PSI).
Enabling and encouraging innovative development Making public data available according to the PSI Directive and the principles of Open Data is one way for governments and government administrations to enable and encourage one type of innovative development. But there are many more ways in which governments can stimulate innovative developments in an e-society. Governments have particularly strategic roles in the contexts of education and research, sectors of society for which government have a special responsibility, and where e-technology offers so many new opportunities, opportunities that have only begun to be exploited to the benefits of citizens, businesses, and society as a whole. Governments also have a role to stimulate entrepreneurship, as we have already discussed. Moreover, governments are one of the three main actors in the so-called Triple Helix model of innovation processes. Triple Helix denotes a three-way relationship between government, industry and researchers. The model will be discussed further below.
The Triple Helix model of innovation in knowledge-based societies The reader is referred to Leydesdorff (2012) for an extensive review of the Triple Helix model of innovation in knowledge-based societies, including a long list of further references. 29
FINHERT (2013) describes Triple Helix as follows: “Triple Helix – Relationships between Universities, Firms, and Governments At the moment, one unsatisfactory element in the European system has been that the linkages between university and industry, research and business world are not strong enough. Moving towards the knowledge-based society, however, also means that boundaries between public and private, science and technology, university and industry are blurring as the distribution of research locations becomes a key factor of economic growth in a knowledge-based economy. Knowledge has become in growing extent a potential product that can be exploited on the market, which means the industrialisation of the production of scientific knowledge (e.g. Jacob 1997; Ziman 1994). Universities and firms are in growing extent assuming each others tasks, and, as the university crosses traditional boundaries in developing new linkages to industry, it has to devise the connections between research, teaching, and economic development. Within industry, questions are raised about what should be located inside the firm, between firms, or among firms, universities, and government institutions. Are the firms willing to support basic research or is better to leave this task to the universities? What is the role of government given the need for technological innovation in international, national and regional development? (Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff 1995.) This mode of thinking - referred as 'triple helix' - is beneficial especially for the 'hard sciences', in which basic and applied research can be organised according to the triple helix model. However, in the field of humanities and social sciences, anything comparable to the technology centres has not yet been established, even though there are some efforts to that direction. Today the life sciences are a good example of a field where the co-operation between state, universities and a specific industrial cluster is a prerequisite for generating innovations. Universities are needed for the basic research, and they collaborate in R&D with the enterprises for the development of practical applications in specially designed environments (science parks etc.) funded largely by national governments but extracting also a lot of other funding. These installations have the capacity to employ a large amount of experts with postgraduate qualifications in different disciplines. In addition to basic research and development, marketing and many other offside activities are needed to complete the lifecycle of the process from research to consumer products. This kind of a triple helix system is illustrated in the following figure:
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End of quotation of FINHERT (2013). At the Triple Helix IX Conference in 2011, the Triple Helix concept was defined as follows: “The Triple Helix concept comprises three basic elements: 1.
a more prominent role for the university in innovation, on a par with industry and government in a knowledge–based society;
2.
a movement toward collaborative relationships among the three major institutional spheres, in which innovation policy is increasingly an outcome of interaction rather than a prescription from government;
3.
in addition to fulfilling their traditional functions, each institutional sphere also “takes the role of the other” performing new roles as well as their traditional function. Institutions taking nontraditional roles are viewed as a major potential source of innovation in innovation.
Initially, industry operates in the Triple Helix as the locus of production; government as the source of contractual relations that guarantee stable interactions and exchange; the university as a source of new knowledge and technology, the generative principle of knowledge-based economies. The increased importance of knowledge and the role of the university in incubation of technology-based firms have given it a more prominent place in the institutional firmament. Universities, heretofore primarily seen as a source of human resources and knowledge, are now looked to for technology as 31
well. Many universities have developed the internal organizational capabilities to formally transfer technologies rather than relying solely on informal ties. Universities are also extending their teaching capabilities from educating individuals to shaping organizations in entrepreneurial education and incubation programs. Rather than only serving as a source of new ideas for existing firms, universities are combining their research and teaching capabilities in new formats to become a source of new firm formation, especially in advanced areas of science and technology. Universities increasingly become the source of regional economic development and academic institutions are re-oriented or founded for this purpose. New organizational mechanisms, such as incubators, science parks, and networks among them become a source of economic activity, community formation, and international exchange. New modes of interdisciplinary knowledge production, involving Triple Helix partners, inspire research collaboration and firm-formation projects. The entrepreneurial university takes a pro-active stance in putting knowledge to use and in broadening the input into the creation of academic knowledge. Thus it operates according to an interactive rather than a linear model of innovation. As firms raise their technological level, they engage in higher levels of training and in sharing of knowledge. Government acts as a public entrepreneur and venture capitalist, in addition to its traditional regulatory role in setting the rules of the game. The interaction between linear and reverse linear dynamics results in the emergence of an interactive model of innovation. Globalization becomes decentralized and takes place through regional networks among universities as well as through multi-national corporations and international organizations. As universities develop links, they can combine discrete pieces of intellectual property and jointly exploit them. In current international competitive circumstances, innovation is too important to be left to the individual firm, or even a group of firms, the individual researcher or even a cross-national collaboration of researchers. Innovation has expanded from an internal process within and even among firms to an activity that involves institutions not traditionally thought of as having a direct role in innovation such as universities.”
Education and research As was stated above, education and research are sectors of society, where e-technology offers a wide range of radically new opportunities, which we have only begun to exploit so far. The potentials of e-learning and e-research, when fully understood and properly used, will no doubt lead to a knowledge-based society with good opportunities for all citizens, rich or poor, to develop their competences and skills and get better and more qualified jobs. As we have already discussed, the etechnology will also extend the concepts of freedom of information, freedom of knowledge, and openness, thanks to the on-going radical development and reorganisation of media, giving us access to all kinds of literature and culture in new and affordable ways. All citizens will have rich opportunities to acquire information and knowledge, enjoy culture, and improve the quality of their lives. And businesses will find new opportunities to create value for their customers and revenues for themselves. This revolutionary development will no doubt occur even if governments do not engage themselves so much in the process. But on the other hand, governments can really do a lot to ensure that the development will actually lead to all the good effects that we can see as possible. For example, governments can
remove obstacles embedded in obsolete laws and procedures stimulate competition and the development of new business models channel government funding of education so as to stimulate investments in open education resources developed by the best researchers and teachers in respective fields 32
stimulate open and cooperative research, for example according to the Triple Helix model, resulting in open data, open knowledge, and open access publishing
Entrepreneurship, e.g. development of innovative e-services Governments on all levels (international, national, regional, local) can do a lot to stimulate entrepreneurship and a good business climate by exploiting the potentials offered by e-technologies when performing government tasks vis-à-vis entrepreneurs and businesses, and by developing, implementing, and streamlining adequate hard and soft infrastructures, supporting all kinds of business activities in e-society. Some examples of what governments could do:
Eliminate obsolete legislations and administrative rules and replace them with laws and procedures that are relevant, appropriate, and efficient in e-society. Promote open data and freedom of information and knowledge as we have already discussed. Promote the Triple Helix innovation model, stimulating open and constructive cooperation between government, businesses, and researchers. Fund the development and establishment of strategic infrastructures, and key elements in such infrastructures, such as Identity cards, certificates, and digital signatures. Modernise and streamline administrative procedures and support them by business-friendly eservices based on one-stop solutions. Promote the development and use of standards.
Organising and managing a non-corrupt and efficient public sector “Cut down on bureaucracy” is a popular, or maybe rather populistic battle cry, especially in election campaigns. Certainly there are lots of bad, inefficient, and sometimes even corrupt bureaucracies all around the world, not only government administrations but also inside big private companies. Nevertheless, “good bureaucracy” is an essential part of good governance. A good bureaucracy implements and applies the rule of law in an objective and judicious way, not mechanically. A good bureaucracy treats all alike operates according to well-defined procedures that systematically prevents arbitrariness and corruption. A good bureaucracy does not depend on individual bureaucrats, and it operates with good quality and with the citizens in focus. A good bureaucracy is efficient and economises with the tax-payers’ money. In this chapter we shall in particular focus on government efficiency.
Intra-agency efficiency and inter-agency efficiency We may distinguish between intra-agency efficiency and inter-agency efficiency. Intra-agency efficiency Intra-agency efficiency means efficiency within an individual agency. This means suboptimisation, of course, but this kind of suboptimisation is not always easy to overcome, and in any case internal efficiency within an organisation is important, too.
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Even within an individual agency, the striving for efficiency must combine local efforts with more organisation-wide efforts, requiring a “split vision” between local and global goals, so as to avoid internal suboptimisations. In this context the hierarchical stovepipe organisations are often a severe obstacle that needs to be overcome, and which requires active attention and good governance by the top management of the organisation. Inter-agency efficiency Inter-agency efficiency means efficiency across organisational borders between agencies. Ideally it means global, optimal efficiency for the public sector as a whole, nationally and even internationally. Striving for inter-agency efficiency requires holistic analyses and a lot of cooperation and coordination in different dimensions, for example:
across sectors and topics of governance across administrative levels: local, regional, central, international across phases of governance tasks: planning, operation and monitoring, evaluation
Moreover, global efficiency also includes taking into account the efforts and time it takes for the customers and clients of the public sector (citizens and businesses) to perform their tasks in interaction with government administrations. One typical obstacle that often stands in the way of global efficiency across organisational borders is the following one: An individual government agency usually has a budget determined by politicians and higher-level administrators. If such an organisation sees a possibility to rationalise and improve efficiency, this may sometimes require reallocating and reorganising tasks between the organisation and other agencies, and/or even between the agency and its customers and clients. For example, by spending some more resources within the agency, other agencies may save resources, and the customers and clients may save efforts and time. Budget providers are often sceptic to such arguments, and sometimes this scepticism is justified, because it may be very difficult to demonstrate and quantify the gains made by the other stakeholders involved in the matter. For example, how much is it worth for society as a whole, if citizens and businesses save efforts and time thanks to better service from public sector agencies – and how can we be sure in the first place that they will really efforts and time, if one or more agencies are given more budget resources for implementing a certain alleged service improvement.
Using information technology for efficiency in the public sector When computers came along, public sector agencies were among the first to make use of them, for example in population censuses and tax administrations. The application of computers and computer-based methods and tools have gone through a number of phases: 1. During the first phase, the old manual processes were simply computerised in a straight-forward way, without essential changes in the process logic. During the phase the focus was on taking advantage of the characteristics of computers to be very fast and reliable – the computers took over tasks from human beings and executed them much more efficiently, much faster and without errors caused by “the human factor”. The transformation from manual to computerised 34
processes required accurate formalisations of the processes, represented by computer programs, but otherwise there was no major rethinking or redesign of the processes. 2. During the second phase, there was rethinking and redesign of the processes. Maybe the tasks of the agencies could be done in completely new ways thanks to computers and computer software? For example, we may not need to print and disseminate a lot of routine reports, which may not be read by anyone, or which, even if they are casually studied by dutiful employees, may not lead to any specific decisions or actions. Why not let the data stay in the computers, until somebody asks for them, and then make sure that the requestor gets the requested data promptly, preferably presented in a way that is attractive and tailored to the particular needs of the data user? 3. During the third phase, especially after the introduction of the Internet, the external customers and clients, the citizens and businesses, came into focus. How can we make it easier for our customers to perform their duties towards government, and which additional services can we develop that could be useful for them? How can we become more open, and how can we make it easier for entrepreneurs to make use of our data, creating and developing services that we have not thought of, and which we are anyhow not able to develop and manage within our budgets? Government agencies have a huge competitive advantage thanks to the large amount of data that they generate as a side-effect of their tasks. We have already discussed how these data can be organised in registers, databases, data warehouses, and information systems and applications enabled by these data sets. Well designed and well managed data management has already done a lot for the effectivisation of the public sector, and more remains to be done. However, at the same time, it is extremely important that government agencies do not use this competitive advantage in the wrong way. It is sometimes tempting for both politicians and high-level government administrators to encourage the agencies to exploit the huge potential value of their data assets by making business, developing information products and services and selling them at a price that customers are willing to pay. By doing this, the agencies create revenues in addition to the tax-payers’ money that they get from the government via budgets. This may sound good, and it may, at least in the short term, reduce the pressure on the government budget, and save money for the tax-payers. However, it is a dangerous path. It is definitely not a core task for any government agency to make business on their data, particularly not on data which the agencies, enforced by laws and regulations, and funded by taxpayer’s money, have obtained from citizens and businesses free of charge. There are good arguments why these data should not be reused in business activities created and executed by government monopolists. Instead it would be more efficient for society as a whole, if these data were open and available for anyone interested, for example entrepreneurs, free of charge, and in a simple, standardised way, which makes it easy for others to access the data on a large scale, and develop and deliver innovative information products and services in free competition with others. Government agencies are not intended to be business entrepreneurs, and they are probably not very good at it. Moreover, there is no reason why government agencies should take risks and gamble with tax-payers’ money.
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Establish coherent and well balanced process life cycles As discussed earlier in this document, all government tasks in society are associated with on-going, iterative processes, or life cycles:
Planning → Operation and Monitoring → Evaluation (→ Replanning etc)
The Planning subprocess contains design and construction of the process for the task, including design and construction of information systems. The Operation subprocess contains the daily operations belonging to the task, for example providing a certain type of service to citizens or organisations. The Operation subprocess is supervised by a Monitoring subprocess in order to discover possible errors and problems. The monitoring of a process requires a systematic and efficient exchange of information between operators and supervisors of the process. The Operation subprocess includes the management of complaints. The Evaluation subprocess evaluates the performance and functioning of the Operation subprocess. The evaluation is an analytical process based on operational data, including performance data, quality data, and customer satisfaction data, generated by the operations, so-called paradata. The evaluation subprocess typically includes more or less advanced statistical analyses and visualisations, sometimes called Business Intelligence (BI). Both Monitoring and Evaluation is bases on feedback information from Operation. However, there is a difference. Monitoring leads to immediate actions and modifications of the process within the same cycle of operations, whereas the purpose of Evaluation is to provide a basis for more fundamental changes of future iterations of the process. Thus the Evaluation subprocess may lead to a decision to replan and redesign the process. Governments and government administrations will always have to evaluate and improve its services, information systems, and processes – both as regards relevance, efficiency, and quality. The evaluations may be based on feedback and complaints from citizens, businesses, and other stakeholders, for example staff members. Cases of serious malfunctions must of course be detected and remedied immediately. More structural and systematic deficiencies may require deeper analyses. Sometimes it is necessary or highly desirable to involve independent experts and consultants in auditing and evaluations. Some evaluations will be limited to a particular service, system, or administration. Others will have a much broader scope, sometimes focusing on a theme concerning society as a whole, across several sectors and agencies. All processes are based on data All subprocesses in the “Planning → Operation/Monitoring → Evaluation” cycle are based on data, often provided by databases and computer-supported information systems. All subprocesses should also produce data, often stored in the same computer-supported databases and information systems. Today many government agencies will have some kind of corporate Data Warehouse for the storage and retrieval of these data. A corporate database or data warehouse should be regarded and designed as an asset for the organisation/agency as a whole, not just serving one sectorial department/stovepipe. It should contain both the data as such and metadata defining and describing the contents and physical storage of the data. 36
The operation subprocess typically uses and produces so-called operational data, data about individual cases. The evaluation process, on the other hand, typically uses and produces analytical data, summarising data based on aggregations and statistical processing of operational data. Coherence and balance between the subprocesses in the life cycle “Coherence” means that the subprocesses fit together, that there is communication between them. This may be particularly important and difficult when the responsibility for different subprocesses are within different administrative agencies or departments, and/or on different regional levels. For example, parts of the planning and evaluation may belong to the national or regional level, whereas the operation, including the monitoring of the operation, is on the regional or local level. “Balance” means that all parts of a process should be given appropriate attention. For example, it is rather common that the evaluation process is more or less neglected. If a certain task or process does not work properly, and there are many mistakes and complaints, politicians are often eager to change the process quickly, in the hope that it will work better. Without proper analysis and evaluation, there is an obvious risk that such “quick fixes” will not improve the process – it may be like giving a patient a medicine without having examined and diagnosed the patient in a professional way first. Furthermore, analyses and evaluation should not only take place when there are problems with a process; they should be ongoing subprocesses running in parallel with operations and monitoring. Independent supervisors and evaluators It may also be important to separate the responsibilities for different subprocesses in a very clear way. For example, it is often wise to let an independent agency, some kind of “supervision/inspection board”, be responsible for the auditing and evaluation of a process, that is, an agency that is not responsible for the operation and monitoring of the process. Benchmarking and comparisons In order to improve the quality and efficiency of government processes it is often fruitful to use benchmarking, that is, comparisons between the same or similar processes in different parts of the country, or in different countries. Such comparisons are often criticised for not being “fair” or “meaningful” because of different circumstances in different places. Such objections may often be relevant and should be considered, but the important thing is that the comparisons start such discussions: can the differences in performance be attributed to the differences in circumstances, documented by facts, or do at least part of the differences remain, even after the comparisons have been “normalised” and adjusted for the differences in circumstances and conditions.
Managing complex governance challenges across organisational borders We have already noted that managing complex governance tasks across borders is a challenging task. At the same time it is probably one of the most important tasks that political organs and administrations on different levels have to tackle in order to attain governance of good quality and efficiency and to satisfy the justified expectations on a good society by citizens and businesses. We have already discussed why governance of complex tasks across organisational borders, across sectors, and across levels of administration are particularly difficult to manage. Usually solutions cannot be achieved by cooperation alone between the different stakeholders. Active and creative 37
management on the highest political and administrative levels is also required in order to put pressure on the other stakeholders. Both carrots and sticks may have to be used. On the other hand, the decision-makers who are formally on the highest level of the government hierarchy do not have the detailed knowledge that is needed in order to come up with good solutions that will work well in practice. Furthermore, whatever is formally decided, active and constructive cooperation will continue to be important even after an agreement has been reached, in the daily work of all the stakeholders. And it must never be forgotten that the ultimate judgement of failure or success rests with the customers and clients, that is, the citizens and businesses to be served by the public sector. The reader is now invited to analyse three topics of complex governance. The topics have already been mentioned several times during this course. The course material has also described problems associated with these topics, and ideas about how the problems may be tackled have also been indicated. The reader is challenged to use follow all these threads and hints and outline possible solutions. Governance challenge 1: Social care Social care includes health care, elderly care, children care, and possibly some other areas of interest in a modern society. These subareas overlap each other, and individual citizens are often dependent on a mix of services from different subareas. Moreover, different administrations, on different administrative levels, are responsible for different aspects of social care. Ideally the individual clients of the services should not be bothered by these complexities but should get what we have called a “one-stop service” as far as possible. The necessary coordination behind the scenes should not be visible to the clients. The reader is asked to make a reasonably complete analysis of this problem on the basis of what you have learnt during this course, supplemented with articles and empirical evidence that you may find on the Internet. Governance challenge 2: Education Education is another sector of society, where there is a great potential for improvements in terms of quality and efficiency, if new technologies and teaching/learning methods were used more extensively and creatively, for example net-based learning and self-learning. Like in social care, there is room for significant improvements both as regards administrative and substantial tasks. The reader is asked to make an analysis of the challenges in the education sector, including a vision of how new technologies and teaching/learning methods could be used to improve both student satisfaction and efficiency. Use what you have learnt during this course, supplemented with articles and empirical evidence that you may find on the Internet. You may choose to focus on one level of the education system, for example university education. Governance challenge 3: Hard and soft IT infrastructure of a well functioning e-society Some countries, Sweden is one of them, have been very fast in adapting new technologies in the sense that most people have computers and mobile devices and know how to use them in their daily lives. The development of hard infrastructures have also been relatively fast and efficient. But soft infrastructures are lagging behind in many countries. But there are exceptions. One of them is Estonia, which went from old-fashioned Soviet technology and bureaucracy to a smooth administration based on well designed, modern IT infrastructures, both hard and soft, in just a few 38
years in the 1990’s when the country became independent and established a full-fledged modern democracy with e-voting. An early and successful introduction of an e-legitimation for all citizens, which is valid in all areas of society – from passport and identification card to driving licence, social security, and even public transport – seems to be one key to the success. The reader is asked to analyse why a country like Estonia has been so successful, where other, much richer countries, including Sweden, have by and large failed, producing elegantly formulated national strategy documents every year, but accomplishing very little in practice. Use the material you have come across during this course, and search for more evidence on the Internet. You may choose other countries than Estonia for success stories, and you may also choose other countries than Sweden as examples of less successful developers and implementers of soft IT infrastructure.
Literature Etzkowitz, H. & Leydesdorff, L. 1995: The Triple Helix: University - industry - government relations. A laboratory for knowledge based economic development. EASST Review. European Society for the Study of Science and Technology 14(1): 18-36. FINHERT (2013). Triple Helix – Relationships Between Universities, Firms and Governments. The Finnish Network for Higher Education Research and Training. Halder, D., & Jaishankar, K. (2011) Cyber crime and the Victimization of Women: Laws, Rights, and Regulations. Hershey, PA, USA: IGI Global. ISBN 978-1-60960-830-9 Jacob, M. 1997: Life in the Triple Helix: The contract researcher, the university and the knowledge society. Science Studies 10(2): 35-49. Leidesdorff, L. (2012). The Knowledge-Based Economy and the Triple Helix Model. University of Amsterdam. Mann, D. & Mike Sutton, M. (2011). ">>Netcrime". Bjc.oxfordjournals.org. Moore, R. (2005) "Cyber crime: Investigating High-Technology Computer Crime," Cleveland, Mississippi: Anderson Publishing. Ophardt, J. (2010). "Cyber Warfare And The Crime Of Aggression: The Need For Individual Accountability On Tomorrow’s Battlefield". Law.duke.edu. Warren G., Kruse, Jay G. Heiser (2002). Computer forensics: incident response essentials. AddisonWesley. p. 392. ISBN 0-201-70719-5. Ziman, J. 1994: Prometheus Bound: Science in a dynamic steady state. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge U.K.
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