We have been publishing interviews with delegates all week, so I thought I would share the comments I was asked to make on e-government and innovation.
My key point was a simple one: most policy innovation is kept separate from the delivery side, but the exciting thing about e-government is that the innovation is the delivery mechanism itself.
The ability to quickly, continuously improve a service according to user feedback is an enormous change for public services - with huge potential - and it has a knock-on impact on just about everything else.
For example, citizens increasingly expect integrated, customiseable services that compare with what they get from their bank. It isn’t enough to put information on a website; instead, it has to be easily found - both on an integrated platform or directly from Google; intuitive to use; and accessible on a large range of devices.
Government must change the way it works
Agencies must now work much closer together to ensure that their digital offerings are integrated - and that information isn’t duplicated across multiple parts of the internet. This year’s UN E-Government rankings gave higher ratings to governments with agencies that cut across their own areas of responsibility, sharing information and resources with other departments.
But this is still rare. Officials are often cautious about sharing data or resources with other agencies, while the nature of public service incentives often means that public servants focus on their own objectives even when they should be helping another agency with a more pressing concern.
Data sharing, in particular, is crucial to to the future of public service delivery. For example, there is enormous potential from combining health information with location data and transport data. Singapore’s Infocomm Development Authority is looking at whether, in the future, it could provide personalised emergency services to citizens by using sensors that notify government when someone is in medical difficulty, find the nearest emergency crew, and then guide them to the scene along the most efficient route.
This approach would need a number of agencies to work closely together, and requires a much more fluid departmental structure than is present in many countries. Our interview this week with Singapore’s Climate Change Secretariat showed one way that governments can create new structures to ensure greater collaboration.
Win citizen trust
Another barrier, though, is public opinion: citizens are increasingly wary of how their data is used. This means that it is vital to be transparent, rigorous, secure - and guide citizens along the reform journey. If this doesn’t happen, there will be tension between government and the people. But including citizens in the process of making these decisions could be a huge opportunity.
South Korea is leading the way here. Its Government 3.0 programme allows people to participate in policymaking decisions, and better understand the challenges faced by officials. A more open approach means that, even if citizens don’t agree with a final decision, they still trust the processes that led to it - as one senior Japanese official recently told us.
It also helps improve delivery. One Chinese province is experimenting with asking citizens for feedback and monitoring their complaints. This was hugely useful - the province discovered that housing was a massive area of concern for citizens, while other potential priorities such as transport and crime received far fewer complaints. Resources were subsequently redirected.
Time for change
The overall trend, then, has to be for greater interaction with citizens, causing iteration in the delivery of public services. I was struck by the comments of one delegate at the Policy Innovation Festival, who said: “The word stakeholder annoys me, because who isn’t a stakeholder?”
That may be true, but only now is every one of those stakeholders empowered to have a voice. Governments can harness this to improve their public services, but it will require restructuring and a change of mindset.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Joshua Chambers
Quelle/Source: futureGov, 15.08.2014
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