Education:EGovernment - origin, definition, principles
From TriasWiki
|
Outline and objectives
- Definition of eGovernment
- Definition of the domain of activity
- Origins and history
- An holistic approach to eGovernment
eGovernment coordinates
eGovernment means the usage of information and communication technology tools with the purpose to improve the management of internal and external processes of the public administration and to favor the supply of services and information to citizen and enterprises
- Actors: Public bodies
- Users: citizens, enterprises, other public bodies
- Object: Government is a term from the political sciences that concerns the management of the administrations
- Means: all the information and telecommunication technologies and especially INTERNET
Definition of the domain of activity
- G2C – government to citizen
- G2B – government to business
- G2G – government to government
- G2E – government to employees
- These definitions has been adapted to broader enlargement to new categories
- Not citizens
- Not enterprises
- Local public administration bodies
Definition by the EU
“eGovernment is the use of information and communication technologies in public administration, combined with organizational change and new skills in order to improve public services and democratic processes and strengthen support to public policies.”
(From: COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE AND THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS, COM(2003) 567 final, Brussels, 26/9/2003)
eGovernment Hype Cycle
At the beginning computers and automation were adopted by the public sector
- The concept of eGovernment dates back to 2000 as an evolution and an enlargement to the public sector of the results achieved by eCommerce
- The birth is due to the widespread usage of Internet all ove Europe
- It was conceived as the most important tool to win the European challenge to contain and reduce public expenses
- Companies needed to reduce the gap with competitors to better perform in business
- The performances of networked enterprises slew down by the response time and the poor quality of the services distributed by the network
- Improvement to the quality of European social life
- In reality Internet enabled an acceleration in the pace of the informatizzazione process of the public sector, which started at least 20 years before
So, what is changing just the name and the technological means?
eGovernment is Innovation
- Innovation is not the utilization of technical means to repeat complex or erroneous procedures
- The technological means has to be the tool to redesign and simplify the whole administrative procedure trying to foresee the:
- direct effects; how a procedure is working now (as-is) and how should work in the future (to-be)
- indirect effects; which might be the repercussions of the procedure in a general vision – how a process might interact with the outside
- delayed effects in time and space; what has to be foreseen to keep the effects over time and geographical transfers – dynamics in time and space
A holistic approach to eGovernment
The concept of eGovernment is enriched by meanings that surpass the basic definition of an application of technology to the public sector including other important sectors in a holistic vision:
- Regulations and praxis
- Organization and processes
- Technology and contents
- Knowledge and human capital
- Communication and accessibility
EU-Vision of eGovernment
Whitepaper on International Collaboration on eGovernment Research
(From: Joint Meeting between the EU and US Delegations at the NSF’s Fifth National Digital Government Conference dg.o 2004, eattle, May 23, 2004)
Conclusions
- eGovernment is not a new discipline but it dates back to the origin of the information technology introduction to the public sector in the 80s
- Moreover a few important factors are added to the technological aspects: regulations, processes, organization
- The holistic approach is probably the most innovative element that causes the renewal of the public sector
- Also if the matter is more and more precisely defined, often he mere adoption of ICTs is often considered as an eGovernment experience
