It has added a new goal of transforming people's engagement with government by 2020 "as increasing and innovative use is made of the opportunities offered by network technologies".
State Service Commission deputy commissioner Laurence Millar says e-government initiatives remain relevant.
"New Zealand can't afford anything other than world-class government. We have a number of challenges, such as distance and our small population, and we need low-friction, lowcompliance, efficient government."
He says governments worldwide are finding it hard to measure "transformation" and there is considerable interest from other OECD countries in New Zealand's approach.
The latest e-government strategy asks 15 questions of agencies, such as whether people can easily get information they need and don't need to provide the same information to one agency that they have already provided to another.
It also asks whether government workers put "getting results for New Zealanders" ahead of the interests of the agency for which they work.
Another theme of the revised strategy is that information held by agencies will become an increasingly important resource for businesses.
Steve Hodgkinson, a Kiwi analyst with research firm Ovum in Australia, says working together on e-government transformation will require a change of mindset for public servants.
While departments focusing on their own goals has served governments well for 30 years or so, "it's not good when governments' policy aspirations are tending toward more joined-up services, more holistic approaches."
Dr Hodgkinson says the traditional model is often deeply ingrained in public-sector attitudes, and this will make change difficult.
The needs of departments on one hand and Government on the other pull public sector chief information officers in two directions. This is only made worse by traditional micro-managing of each department's budget, he says, pulling their attention in a third direction, from goals to inputs.
But a radical restructuring may do more harm than good, since such a "sledgehammer" approach will bring unintended consequences. Instead, Dr Hodgkinson recommends more constraints on public sector executives, such as what software to buy, to make it easier for departments to work together.
Public sector CIOs should also be paid bonuses based on collaboration with other departments, not just if they meet internal goals.
He says the Australian state of Victoria is moving in this direction with a pilot that puts department heads in charge of joining up services in a specific area.
New Zealand's e-government strategy promotes a "federated enterprise architecture", based on common technical standards.
Mr Millar says he is unsure if it would make sense to appoint a chief information officer to take overall charge of government IT. "We have a group of CIOs working very well together, so I don't see a compelling case for it."
Autor(en)/Author(s): Tom Pullar-Strecker and Reuben Schwarz
Quelle/Source: Stuff, 20.11.2006
