That's according to Marie Lowman, a speaker at The National e-Government Summit 2004 which takes place in Dublin on 23 and 24 November. The primary aim of the conference is to provide a forum where key parties within the e-government sector can discuss developments and assess the challenges that lie ahead. "E-government in Europe has come a tremendous way in the past 12 months, but there is room for further growth," said Lowman, software company SAS' regional business development manager for the Public Sector, EMEA. Lowman told ElectricNews.Net that the implementation of best practices and greater transparency will help to fuel this growth in the sector.
There are, however, a number of challenges to the successful development of e-government initiatives. Current figures suggest that these challenges are proving difficult to surmount for a large number of initiatives. According to the US Department of Labor, more than 70 percent of government information technology implementations fail to meet expected outcomes.
"Government's need to learn from each other and benchmark themselves against others in the sector that are implementing best practices," said Lowman. "A lot can also be learned from listening to those who will be using the service."
One of the aims of e-government is to open up the information channel to the public by allowing the people to become more involved in e-government processes. Introducing e-government services is supposed to increase satisfaction levels of citizens and businesses, Lowman observed. "End-users need to have a voice in how these initiatives are being run," she said.
"Some initiatives tend to judge success with the incorrect indicators," said Lowman. "Just because a service is provided online does not make it successful; the service needs to be used by the end-user and to provide them with a level of convenience that was not there before," she added.
A recent E-Government Benchmarking Report compiled by IQ Content showed Irish e-government websites coming up short in the accessibility and user satisfaction stakes. The survey sought to measure the performance of the websites from a user's perspective.
"Most e-government surveys assess the availability of transactional services as a mark of maturity -- the more services online, the better the provision," the IQ Content report observed. "But amid the targets, progress reports and maturity surveys, there has been very little attention given to users."
Looking ahead Lowman points to the need for more discussion forums and communication between all the concerned parties from government, public and private bodies to service providers and end users. Efficient evaluation programmes are also necessary to ensure that initiatives are being assessed correctly, she said.
Autor: Deirdre McArdle
Quelle: ElectricNews.Net, 24.11.2004
