Quality of society

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Contents 1 Education 2 Health care 3 Safety 4 Related Assignments

The task of government is to provide society with those necessary elements which individual activities fail to provide in a satisfactory amount when left to themselves. Common examples of such functions are education, health and safety.

This fundamental perspective is becoming increasingly meaningful for e-government. Although e-government started in the area of registrative and administratieve applications it now moves beyond this domain, closer to the citizen. With the onset of the internet and the coming online of larger and larger numbers of private citizens, society is becoming able to develop its own digital systems. This brings e-government to the forefront of policy instruments directed at improving the quality of society. And with the development of domains like e-health, e-learning and the responsibility of government to maintain quality in those fields the application of digital information systems outside the organization of government itself will become a more and more prominent issue.

For those involved in e-government this provides several key questions:

• what policies are possible and who develops them?

• what active role is possible for government, and which one should be chosen?

• how should eGovernment systems and solutions connect to (existing) IT solutions throughout communities?

Example: Citywide glass fibre broadband infrastructures In some European countries and cities the following discussion is developing: is a glass fibre broadband infrastructure necessary, is it a basic community infrastructure of social importance like roads and sewerage (and consequently, should government pay for them), and is government investment necessary to start development?

Education

Will the application of learning systems thoughout society be able to not only increase the employability of a population but also its health? What should the government's role be in such matters? What possible roles are there for government?

Health care

Citizen’s health is a task for government. While with illness people enter the professional healthcare sector, before that prevention of illness is a task of government. What IT systems might help, and who should develop an deploy them?

Safety

Police, army and other safety provisions are the task of government. but is the social use of ICT spreads, will community systems exist that allow inhabitants of neighbourhoods to take resonsibility for their own safety? Often citizens cannot take responsibility, even if they wanted to, because they don't have the information to do so. Will we come up with new kinds of information systems that allow citizens to take responsibility?

Related Assignments

• Social integration by screen (PBL)