Government use of the Internet
Written: September 1997
Version: 1.0
Author: Paul Bird, Andy Honeywood & Rainer Mantz
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Acknowledgements
This report is the result of global co-operation between members
of the International Council for IT in Government Administration
(ICA) and the G7 Government On-Line project (G7GOL). The results
are based on a survey, the content of which was inspired by a similar
survey devised by the Swiss civil service college for use amongst
the cantons of Switzerland. The ideas it contained were adopted
and adapted for international use, our survey was carried out, and
this report was produced between the 7th and 8th meetings of the
G7 GOL steering group.
Contributors to the survey who completed a questionnaire were:
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Ian Barndt |
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Australia |
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Elisabeth Richard |
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Canada |
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Auli Keskinen |
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Finland |
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Rolf Krost |
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Germany |
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Andras Szigeti |
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Hungary |
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Jim Duffy |
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Ireland |
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Naomi Dadon & Arik Fischel |
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Israel |
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Hiroshi Nakagawa |
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Japan |
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Hyeon-Kon Kim |
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Korea |
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Pierre Mallia |
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Malta |
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Colin Jackson |
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New Zealand |
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Tone Bringedal |
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Norway |
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Jose Manuel Gomes Almeida |
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Portugal |
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Birgitta Nelson |
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Sweden |
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Nic Hopkins |
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UK |
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Neil Stillman |
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USA |
This study could not have been undertaken in such a short time without
the support and assistance of G7GOL's and ICA's national representatives
who either responded to the questionnaire themselves or sought input
from the contributors mentioned above. It has been a rewarding experience
for us to collaborate in preparing this study and presenting these
results to both ICA and G7GOL.
Paul Bird & Andy Honeywood
Central Computer & Telecommunications Agency, UK
Rainer Mantz
Bundesministerium des Innern, Germany
Contents:
1. Executive Summary
The use of the Internet by governments, businesses, and individuals
has grown rapidly within the past few years, especially since the
creation of the World Wide Web. The pace of development and expansion
shows no signs of abating, with new ways rapidly opening up for
organizations to conduct their business.
The results of a survey in which 16 member countries of G7 Government
On-Line and ICA participated demonstrates that governments around
the world have already taken considerable steps to exploit the new
technology, but that even greater challenges and opportunities remain.
All 16 governments now have an established presence on the World
Wide Web. In every case, for reasons of strategic control and in
consideration of security issues, the management and operation of
the principal sites is retained within central administration.
Web sites are presently used almost exclusively for publishing of
information, and only in a broadcast rather than in a tailored way.
In some countries the Web is also used to support the democratic
process via public consultation, but no country has a formal policy
commitment to do so.
Web sites were set up at additional cost in parallel with existing
distribution mechanisms in order to improve public service, but
some are now beginning to realise efficiency savings. Central governments
have generally not invested heavily in special service points such
as kiosks to provide public access to their web sites.
Dealing with government's customers by e-mail is an opportunity
waiting to be seized. The use of e-mail for interaction between
public servants and the citizen or business is still comparatively
rare and provision is mixed. Whilst some countries have already
established a widespread infrastructure upon which improved business
processes using e-mail could be developed, very few have effective
directories enabling the public to make direct contact.
The future for government Internet services lies in the development
of truly transactional services. New ways of working and new business
models will be needed to realise the full benefits. In particular
a high degree of co-operation and cross-agency working, with appropriate
safeguards for the protection of personal data, will be necessary
to tailor governments' services more precisely to their customer's
needs.
2. Introduction
The use of the Internet by governments, businesses, and individuals
has grown rapidly within the past few years, especially since the
creation of the World Wide Web. The pace of development and expansion
shows no signs of abating, with new ways rapidly opening up for
organizations to conduct their business.
This study aims to provide a snapshot of the extent to which government
administrations have already taken advantage of the business opportunities
presented by the Internet, and how they are positioned to move forward.
The main focus was deliberately towards the business related and
customer facing issues which can be typified by the use of two of
the Internet's primary offerings, namely the World Wide Web and
e-mail. Whether associated technologies, for example news groups,
file transfer, or Intranets were employed as part of a solution
was not of primary concern. Indeed in looking at e-mail, the emphasis
was not on whether Internet or other inter-workable technologies
such as X400 were employed, but rather on whether or not extra-governmental
communications were in place.
A questionnaire, which was intended to be easy to complete was devised,
and all national representatives of G7 Government On-Line and ICA
countries were invited to respond. The questions and responses were
expected primarily from a national or federal government perspective,
although there was ample scope to draw upon local government initiatives
where representatives considered these important to the national
picture.
The study was intended to be rapid in execution and delivered in
a timely manner. Following an initial meeting the questionnaire
was developed jointly in Bonn (Germany) and Norwich (UK) making
extensive use of both e-mail and video conferencing for effective
collaborative working. The questionnaire was issued, exclusively
via e-mail, and also published on the World Wide Web. Responses
were obtained over a period of 2 to 3 months. The results were then
synthesised and this report produced between 23 and 25 September
1997.
3. Findings and analysis
3.1 World Wide Web
i. Establishing a service
| All governments
who participated in the study have already established a presence
on the World Wide Web. |
The earliest reported official government web site was established
in the early part of 1994. A significant number of other governments
also seized upon the opportunity in the latter part of the same
year. Since then there has been a steady increase in the number
of governments establishing a web presence. Figure 1 below shows
the pattern of emergence of government web sites over time.
Figure 1.
ii. Government entry points
| A single
point of entry can simplify yet enhance the provision of government
information. |
In all cases, web sites have been established by organizations at
all levels of government including Federal, State and Local Authorities.
Most governments have principal government web sites, but there
are typically many other dedicated departmental sites in each country.
In some countries including Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand,
Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom, administrations have taken
a step further to simplify the process of searching for the various
public sector web sites by establishing a single point of entry
containing direct links, indexing and search facilities. Figure
2 below outlines the principal web sites specified by respondents
in the study.
Figure 2.
iii. Management and operation
| At the heart
of government. |
In all cases, the responsibility of management and administration
of the principal government web sites ultimately falls at the central
or federal level. This indicates that governments are showing high
level political commitment towards establishing an Internet service.
However, the Ministry upon which this responsibility falls varies
between countries. Given that each government is structured and
administered in a different way there is no evidence to suggest
that a particular Ministry is best placed to manage and operate
a government service.
Even in those countries where IT provision is extensively outsourced
to the private sector, operation of the principal web site is retained
within central government administration. Possible reasons may be
to retain strategic control over future developments or in response
to concerns over security and privacy.
iv. Business benefits
| Beginning
to trickle through. |
The key motivation for establishing a government web site was to
improve public service (see figure 3). This suggests that Internet
technology is considered to be an important mechanism through which
certain services can be channeled. Dissemination of information
is also considered to be a key motivation which indicates that web
sites are primarily considered to be an effective publishing medium.
There was a mixed reaction to the concept of using the Internet
to improve electronic service delivery. This suggests that using
the technology in this way seems to fall into the category of value
added services from which business benefits can be achieved after
a basic service infrastructure has been established.
A majority of the respondents viewed the web as a means to support
policy initiatives relating to the transparency of government. Whilst
the Internet is already used for public consultations, countries
have not established central policies to encourage this.
There was sufficient commitment to establish web sites at additional
cost in parallel with existing service and information delivery
channels. Few forecast savings at the outset and only limited paper
reduction, however New Zealand is now achieving cost savings by
using on-line distribution alone for Agricultural regulations.
In most cases, low importance was assigned to establishing web services
to acquire information. This may be because administrations are
still waiting for improvements in security and authentication services
to make this practical.
Figure 3.
3.2 Electronic mail (e-mail)
| Dealing
with government's customers by e-mail is an opportunity waiting
to be seized. |
In 1995 ICA's e-mail study group (www.ogit.gov.au/ica/icamail.html)
found that in most countries, e-mail was fairly well developed for
use in homogeneous organizations and that most administrations had
some level of e-mail in place for communicating within and between
government entities. Then, a few countries (Norway, Denmark, Ireland,
Switzerland, United States and Portugal) had specific e-mail strategies
stressing similar objectives and aims:
extending the reach of e-mail systems to the extra-governmental
community, and
emphasizing that their citizens should have easy access to the public
administration and officers by using the networks
Two years later our survey sought to establish how far a basic infrastructure
and capability had been established. As the earlier report found,
governments use a mixture of Internet and X400 technologies, but
interfaces between the two are entirely possible. Given the spread
of Internet technologies in recent years we assumed that whilst
Internet e-mail would be the technology of choice for the individual
citizen, the technical infrastructure adopted by governments was
not a significant barrier.
Whether or not the basic infrastructure capability was widespread,
no attempt was made to ascertain the extent to which it was already
used in practice for transacting government business with individuals.
However, the existence of strategic plans in some countries to encourage
this is taken as evidence that considerable opportunity remains
to re-engineer government processes and take advantage of new ways
of doing business via e-mail, even in cases where a start has already
been made.
i. Departments and Agencies
| Major variations
in e-mail provision. |
There are wide variations between administrations in the availability
of external e-mail communications. Facilities are generally more
prevalent in countries where e-mail strategies have been adopted.
The extent of this variation is shown in figure 4. For Japan, figures
were available only for central offices where penetration of facilities
was high. In Portugal it is expected that departments will be fully
connected by 1998.
Figure 4.
ii. Directories
| E-mail addresses
invisible to many. |
It is currently difficult for the public to find official e-mail
addresses by electronic means. Directory services are not yet provided
comprehensively by administrations. Norway and Canada both have
a high proportion of e-mail addresses and offer a Web based service.
Australia, USA and Israel have existing Web based services which
provide interdepartmental directories, but typically these are not
comprehensive and provide only contacts for key personnel. Germany
has a similar service at the pilot stage. Sweden has recently procured
a system but it is not yet operational.
Firm plans for interdepartmental directory services exist in Ireland
and Hungary, and this is also a longer term plan in Malta. UK and
Finland have some basic services covering only individual departments.
Elsewhere no reported services exist.
iii. Parliament
| In many
countries all members of parliament have e-mail addresses. |
As the following figure 5 below shows, in many countries all members
of parliament have e-mail addresses.
Figure 5.
Note: UK figures were sampled before the General Election in May
1997 and reflect only officially provided parliamentary e-mail addresses,
excluding private and constituency addresses. Figures for Portugal
and Japan were not available.
It appears that in general politicians are better served and potentially
more accessible by e-mail than civil servants, except in Australia
and Norway where external e-mail facilities in departments are already
extensive.
No data about the extent to which politicians communicate directly
with the electorate via e-mail was explicitly sought, however some
respondents gave additional details. For example, in Israel all
politicians already have e-mail addresses, but on matters of public
consultation using the Internet, the majority work through official
interlocutors rather than using facilities personally.
3.3 Better government
| More efficient
government for a better public service. |
i. The democratic process
| In the absence
of formal policies, some practices are emerging. |
Exactly half of the countries have begun to use the Internet for
public consultation on government proposals ( see figure 6). In
every case, these are working practices instituted by departments.
There is no evidence to suggest that any central policies for public
consultation exist in any of the 16 countries surveyed.
Figure 6.
Of the practices noted, it is in UK, New Zealand and Canada that
the majority of departments publish both Green papers and White
papers on the World Wide Web as a matter of course. In New Zealand,
current consultations are listed on the government's home page.
In the UK, it has become a practice to ensure that the electronic
version is available simultaneously with the paper version, and
electronic discussion groups have been supported. In Canada, it
is common for consultation documents to be published with an e-mail
link, a form or a mechanism where stakeholders can initiate discussion
via a list server.
Australia and Japan also reported that individual agencies publish
draft reports and accept e-mail submissions. In Finland, examples
of consultation are mainly at local level. In Germany, there has
been e-mail discussion on the Electronic Signature Act which was
of particular interest, especially to the on-line community. Canada's
experiences are to be reported in the G7 Government On-Line Electronic
Democracy White paper (http://www.state.mn.us/gol/democracy)
in October 1997 along with experiences of some of those who did
not participate in this study.
In Israel, legislative proposals are published on the web and comments
are invited. Relevant comments are tabled before Knesset debates
and feedback is provided electronically. The Knesset site also supports
a monthly discussion forum on a popular issue.
ii. Service points
| What are
national governments doing? |
In general, national governments make only limited special provision
for public access to their Internet services. Provision of general
purpose kiosks or government service counters is usually on a small
scale or pilot basis although there are larger scale implementations
of specialized applications such as in the Australian job service
and the Swedish employment office.
Portugal's multi-purpose InfoCID kiosks are forecast to number 300
in the near future whilst in Canada the Community Access Program
will create thousands of access points.
Local or State Authorities frequently provide a more extensive infrastructure
often using public libraries supplemented by small numbers of kiosks.
In Australia 1400 local libraries are being equipped with Internet
access.
Both the UK and Canada sometimes use intermediary organizations
to publish information. The Citizen's Advice Bureau provides access
to some UK government information as part of delivering their services
to the citizen. In Canada, intermediaries are used to provide information
to the local business communities. On occasion, intermediaries are
also used to relieve the traffic to government web sites at times
when there is high demand for government information such as when
information about the budget is released. Sweden does not actually
publish information through intermediaries but links are provided
to and from some private sector organizations' web sites.
iii. Securing confidence
| Public services
you can trust |
Very few governments have reported problems with data protection
and privacy issues when establishing a service over the Internet.
Of the handful of the countries that reported such problems, all
concerns were focused towards how government might request information
or publish data on web sites. In the case of the UK, consultation
with the Data Protection Registrar was required to eradicate these
concerns. In Australia, there was also uneasiness over the collection
of web site access statistics. However, these concerns were overcome
when the relevant authorities realized that no personal data was
being gathered.
Sweden has encountered expected problems concerning the use of the
Internet and other emerging technologies in relation to current
legislation. A number of initiatives have been introduced to address
these issues but the process of changing and adapting legislation
continues to move slowly.
Canada reported an incident where the security of a web site had
been compromised. A hacker had gained access and had been able to
change some information.
Incidents like the Canadian experience support the findings in the
WWW section of this report where it has been identified that governments
are retaining operational management of their key web services.
There could be a number of reasons why more governments have not
encountered problems. One explanation is that on a cultural basis,
there are varying expectations as to the degree to which personal
data requires protection. Another likely reason is that governments
took measures to minimize the impact of data protection issues by
limiting the scope of how the technology was to be used. As also
reported in more detail in an earlier section 3.1(iv), government
web sites are generally used only for publication purposes at present.
iv. Engineering the process
| The future
for government Internet services lies in the development of
truly transactional services. |
a. Electronic forms
Forms play a key role in the core of government business. The Internet
represents a medium through which electronic forms can be requested
and submitted efficiently. Many governments have seized upon this
opportunity and are beginning to make electronic forms available
from web sites.
According to the results of this study, very few forms are available
electronically from governments. Germany, UK, and Portugal are demonstrating
the concept of the technology typically through small-scale applications
and pilots. USA is an exception where approximately 40% of government
forms are available electronically.
There are only two instances reported where forms are being completed
and returned on-line. In Germany a specialized application has been
developed and is being used by Customs as part of a wider EDI project.
The UK is conducting an 'intelligent forms' pilot involving collaboration
of 3 departments. This and a very limited number of other examples
are reported on in the G7 Government On-Line situation report to
be published in October 1997 (http://www.open.gov.uk/govoline/golintro.htm).
The barriers to more widespread application appear to be the lack
of a public key infrastructure, authentication and non-repudiation
mechanisms.
b. One-Stop Shopping and Information Sharing
The goals of one-stop government shops and the requirements this
places on departments for appropriate information sharing feature
in the majority of national strategies for information society developments.
In preparing the study, we identified a typical circumstance of
a citizen changing address as an example of this requirement. We
chose the example of the re-registering of personal details not
only to ascertain whether one-stop facilities were available, but
also to establish whether or not countries might have a single national
identification register, and whether or not this appeared to promote
more rapid exploitation of the Internet. The results of the survey
showed that it is too early to establish whether such a correlation
exists.
From the data gathered in Figure 7, there are 9 countries where
there is scope to introduce a one stop shop service to register
a change of address. In the remaining countries, the ability to
notify a change of address only once was largely due to the existence
of a national identity scheme rather any technical solution.
Figure 7.
4. Conclusions
1. The potential for e-mail communication between the public and
civil servants has grown considerably in the past 2 years. But such
communication is still comparatively rare. Some administrations
have established e-mail policies and now have a widespread infrastructure
that makes such communication technically feasible. To benefit from
this infrastructure business processes should be geared to exploit
the facilities.
2. Nearly all governments have established a significant presence
on the World Wide Web with content ranging across a wide range of
departments and government agencies. Government web sites are used
almost exclusively to publish information of potential value to
governments' personal and business customers. Currently governments
do not generally use the World Wide Web to provide tailored information
to, or to transact business with, individual clients.
3. Governments have already shown by their actions in establishing
single entry points to Web based information that they recognize
the public's need for the information from different ministries
and agencies to be brought together in an accessible and easy to
find way. Government Internet services may expand in future beyond
the publishing of general information, to encompass the provision
of information tailored to the individual and to offer a gateway
to transactions which require the participation of more than one
governmental organisation. For such developments to be realised
a high degree of co-operation and cross-agency working will be required,
both to develop a service and to operate it subsequently within
appropriate security and privacy frameworks.
4. The combined strength and interest of the members of G7 Government
On-Line and ICA has enabled this study to survey 16 countries within
a short space of time. Participants have shown themselves to be
open and honest in their assessments, enabling a representative
picture of the overall progress in government Internet services
to be formed.
5. Recommendations
1. E-mail. The benefits of new methods of interaction between government
and its clients using Internet e-mail should be further exploited
by administrations. Policies should recognize that realization of
the full potential is likely to require new methods of working,
in addition to the provision of more extensive e-mail capability
and perhaps changes in legislation.
2. World Wide Web. The achievements of government web sites to date
should be recognized, and plans put in place for further phases
of development involving truly transactional activities.
3. Collaboration between government agencies is needed for further
developments, and agencies should work in synergy to provide customer
focused services.
4. The international networks of ICA and G7 Government On-Line should
be used to learn from and act upon the best practices and emerging
developments in other members' administrations.
5. ICA and G7GOL should continue to work together to provide an
accurate monitor of developments and trends in member countries.
Governments' progress in Internet exploitation should be re-visited
periodically. |
 
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