Implementing E-Government Portals:

The e-Government Practice Group, through a Joint Economic Research Program with the Government of Kazakhstan, will be preparing a series of videoconferences that connect internationally renowned experts to discuss aspects of e-government implementation. The first of the series, held on November 30, 2005, focused on the implementation of an e-government portal, one of the top priorities of the Kazakhstan e-government program. Presentations were made by 4 international experts, describing their experiences in developing national (Korea), local (USA) and provincial (Canada) government portals and addressed some of the key technical and organizational issues faced along the path to online service delivery.

 

Promotion of online services through ‘one stop’ portals has been extremely successful in increasing the efficiency of government processes, when coupled with significant re-engineering of the back end that facilitates information sharing across departments. In Korea, through the  Government For Citizens Project (G4C), government officers can freely share and reuse information compiled by four major government agencies – resulting in increased business efficiency and reduced administrative costs in the amount of US $400 million annually. The G4C project has, in totality, saved the Korean Government at least US$ 1.5 billion per year.

 

The use of a portal can also become, in addition to a service delivery channel, a Public Relations tool and a very important component of how government communicates with its citizens. In  Montgomery County (USA) and Korea, citizens are offered complete access to government budgets, videos of public hearings, and all public documents. Korea has become a best practice example, as the G4C project has clearly established transparency within the Government, which is now exercising an open administration – all processes are open through online channels.

 

Although each presentation focused on a different tier of government, some common messages were clear:

 

• The Goal is Citizen Centric Service: The core concept for portal development should be the provision of citizen centric service – citizens should be able to access services as quickly and efficiently as possible, ‘anywhere and anytime’, with services organized in a manner that facilitates their access, and with a citizen’s point of view.
• Offer Compelling Services: It is important to offer high priority services, for which there is a strong citizen demand. E.g. being able to renew a driver’s license online is a hugely convenient service.
• Adopt an ‘Enterprise’ View: Truly citizen-centric service delivery requires a movement away from individual government applications in individual departments. Systems can no longer be developed independent of each other – an ‘enterprise’ view needs to be adopted.
• Develop a Unified Information Architecture – To facilitate the development of an enterprise, having an architectural blueprint to work from as systems are integrated at the back end, is extremely important. Funding and systems selection should be based on this architecture, the foundation of which is web enablement of services and systems.
• Adopt a Citizen Perspective to Portal Design: Information in a government portal needs to be well organized to facilitate navigation. Online services should, therefore, be designed based on what the citizen needs, and how best to facilitate their access, e.g. have services organized by topic (health, education, etc) as opposed to the traditional method via departmental listings.
  • Incorporation of Citizen Feedback: One of the key lessons learned was to utilize user/focus groups, representing a wide spectrum of citizenry. Before rolling out portals, it is important to have these focus groups comment on alternative designs from a taxonomy, usability, and ease of navigation perspective. User feedback is also crucial in determining prioritization of service.
  • Importance of Branding – Consistency of design features across portal layers is important, to minimize user confusion. Portal layers should have a similar look and feel, which can often entail a significant cultural change for individual agencies, and detailed back end work.
• Set Clear Performance Targets: Clear annual targets should be set to evaluate progress. Success factors should be defined at the very outset, or else it is very easy to get ‘runaway trains’ in a technology sense. Users may end up using only a small subset of services.
• Utilize Public Private Partnerships: Private firms can assist with technical implementation, design and testing of the portal; in addition to maintaining services when they are made available.
• Offer a Multiplicity of Service Channels: Transactional services need to be provided through regular channels, i.e. physical and telephone, in addition to ‘e’ channels. The technical architecture of the e-channels must reflect the reality that services will be provided through these other means.
• Technology is the easy part: Barriers to providing services are often political, not technical. Ultimately, technology is less of an issue than relationships and people are.

Speakers:

 

• Jeongwon Yoon, Director, National Computerization Agency of Korea - on the   Korean experience
• Alisoun Moore, CIO of  Montgomery County, former CIO of the State of Maryland, USA  - on the USexperience
• Mary Ogilvie, former Vice President,   Service New Brunswick, Canada - on the Canadian experience
• Rajan Bhardvaj, Senior Information Officer, ISG, World Bank - on the technology aspects

Moderator: Deepak Bhatia, Manager, E-Government Practice, World Bank

 

Conference materials:

• Speaker Bios

For more information please email Oleg Petrov at opetrov@worldbank.org