The Office of the e-Envoy's attempt to involve the private sector in delivering public services threatens to exclude smaller businesses and start ups, it was claimed on 11 June 2003. Stefan Magdalinski, a founder of UpMyStreet.com -- which despite its financial woes is still recognised as a leading e-services enterprise -- said that the policy to involve so called "intermediaries" in e-government would not help his former company and is likely to "benefit only bigger organisations".
Speaking at the GC 2003 conference in London, Magdalinski questioned whether the policy had been designed with small businesses and IT entrepreneurs in mind.
He said his former company, which was bought by utilities site uSwitch.com last month after running out of money, would not have been able to take part as an intermediary and that in general, official procurement procedures tend to discriminate against smaller firms.
"The key is would this policy have helped UpMyStreet as it stands now or when we first created it in 1998 and the conclusion is no," he told delegates.
"We'd have spent so much time going through a process which can only benefit bigger organisations. It will not help the small start ups"
Magdalinski said that when he served as chief technology officer of upmystreet, the company could not afford to take part in Government procurements which often involved devoting resources to a bid over many months.
Responding to Magdalinski, Anwar Choudhury, director of e-government markets, technologies and innovation at the e-envoy's office, admitted that more work is needed to involve SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises) in the intermediaries strategy.
"We want to improve that policy so that it does something for SMEs but we also want to ensure that we are engaging the citizen," he said. "We haven't worked out how to involve the innovators in this."
However, Choudhury did say that in general his office is attempting to involve smaller firms.
"We are trying to create space to feed into Government just what SMEs need, sometimes we've even found that we have to shove off large companies to do that," he said.
Choudhury's office published the Policy Framework for a Mixed Economy in the Supply of e-Government Services for a two month consultation at the end of May 2003.
It outlines the Government's plans for improving service delivery by involving "e-enabled intermediaries" who offer services built around the needs of citizens. Intermediaries are described as "organisations from the private or voluntary sectors offering services targeted at and tailored to chosen groups of customers, who may be businesses or individual citizens."
The Government believes that involving intermediaries in the delivery of public services will allow it to expand its overall number of delivery channels, as well as enabling it to offer public services in more "innovative and customer-focused ways". It also hopes the policy will help reduce the cost of e-government.
Quelle: Kablennet
