No serious discussion of e-government can leave out Canada. All its services are available online, and they are accessible through three portals designed around citizens’ needs: the customer gateway, the business gateway and the international gateway. They also use common infrastructure such as the ePass secure authentication system.
Canada also leads the world in its systematic engagement with its citizens’ views. The Internet Research Panel recruits 10,000 people from across the country each year to participate in online polls, discussions and focus groups, covering every topic from online services to foreign policy.
Before he left Downing Street last year, the prime minister’s chief political adviser Matthew Taylor made a presentation bemoaning the fact that the internet – potentially such a force for democratic dialogue – is merely adding to the tone of ‘shrill outrage’ and corrosive mistrust.
In Canada, the result of citizen engagement is a model of what business-speak would call the value chain, with trust substituted for profit. The key to trust in government institutions is the citizen’s experience of public services, says the theory. And the key to that is a happy and well-supported government employee.
The result of this insight is that Canada’s impressive capacity for using technology to improve services is now being focused on internal changes, with staff welfare in mind.
Public service reform is a hot topic in the UK, as the line-up of the PM, chancellor and cabinet secretary at last week’s conference on the subject suggests. But there is more talk of efficiency, and staff cuts, than of staff welfare. And the potential use of technology to canvass voters’ views barely gets a mention.
Last week’s Citizen Summit, bringing together 90 people and the health secretary, is fine. But using the internet, that 90 could be 9,000 or more.
Government initiatives are random, unconnected and more about justifying itself than about detailed consultation with citizens. The PM’s e-petitions were a good idea, but they are not an end in themselves. The same is true of web chats. Last week it was welfare minister Jim Murphy, the one before it was health minister Andy Burnham. But is there a point if nothing happens next?
It is not just services or information that need to be joined up. So too does the thinking behind public service reform, the internet and trust in the state.
Autor(en)/Author(s): Sarah Arnott
Quelle/Source: VNUNet, 05.04.2007
