On invitation by the Electronic Governance Center and the e-Macao Program, I visited Macao for presentations and talks about cooperation on eGovernment projects with the United Nations University - International Institute for Software Technology  (UNU-IIST)

Seminar on CitizenVision 2.0 in e-Macao Program

Summary of presentation

Paper From Electronic Government to Collaborative Governance

Conference Website

eGovernment und Netzpolitik im europäischen Vergleich, NOMOS Verlag

Alle sprechen von Netzpolitik, aber was ist das eigentlich? Und wie lässt sich elektronische Verwaltung oder E-Government von Politik im und fürs Netz unterscheiden? Der Band soll Antworten auf diese aktuellen Fragen geben.

Er beginnt mit einer allgemeinen Einführung in den Themenkomplex, in der auch der Stand der vergleichenden Forschung im Bereich E-Government und Netzpolitik dargestellt wird. Es folgt eine Reihe von nationalen und regionalen Fall- und Vergleichsstudien von Experten aus Wissenschaft und Praxis zu verschiedenen Themen.

Die Autoren untersuchen E-Government-Projekte und die netzpolitischen Debatten in Deutschland, Frankreich, den Niederlanden, Luxemburg, Österreich, der Schweiz sowie auf EU-Ebene aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven. Dabei wird eine breite Vielfalt von thematischen Aspekten beleuchtet, es geht sowohl um Fragen der verwaltungstechnischen Umsetzung als auch um strukturelle Aspekte wie Internetinfrastruktur, Datensicherheit, Medienkompetenz etc. bis hin zu Fragen der demokratischen Theorie und Praxis, also elektronische Wahlen, Online-Wahlkämpfe, Abgeordneten- und Wählerkommunikation via Internet sowie elektronische Partizipationsverfahren.

ISBN 978-3-8329-6529-7

Matt Poelmans, Co Author

Suppose you have a problem, what’s the best way to solve it? How about inviting a selected number of experts on the topic from all over the world, pay for their travel, lock them up in a former prison on an island, seduce them to present their views, facilitate that by excellent food, cleverly moderate the discussion, confront the solutions with the problems, integrate and merge different views, and you’ll end up with a deliverable in the form of a manual to solve your problem. Good for you and inspiring for all participants.

 This is precisely what the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR) did when they discovered that eParticipation at the local and regional level in Sweden needed a boost. Of course there are lots of pilots and experiments, but they felt that a consistent view on possibilities and challenges posed by new media was lacking. So they convened a 48 hour #eSummit about this topic on the island of Långholmen in Stockholm.

The eSummit started with 12 minutes statements by the experts about their core view. These covered Big data society, Co creation, Open government, Crowd sourcing, Participatory budgetting, Collaborative spatial planning, Empowerment by e-charters, Anti corruption & social accountability mechanisms, Business process redesign, and so on. Subsequently the experts worked in twos and fours to integrate their views. These were confronted with the expectations of the hosts as expressed by a “ginger group”.

After this the question arose whether or not Sweden actually does have a problem. Being one of the richest countries in the world, with an egalitarian society and high trust in government, one would hardly believe so. However, after some deliberations it was concluded that an ageing population, increasing expenditure and diminishing tax returns does require new approaches to reform the welfare state and its public sector.

eParticipation, meaning that government is willing to let civil society participate in its processes, can help. Even better is eCollaboration, which assumes a more equal relationship in interaction between government and society, when the latter takes the initiatieve. Like in many other countries, Swedish public administrations experiment with eParticipation, Social media and collaborative tools, but these remain fragmented. So the challenge is to put these together in a consistent framework and embed them in daily work.

Thus the experts started drafting an “eCollaboration Manifesto” consisting of a balanced set of ambitions, expectations, approaches and instruments for state-of-the-art citizen engagement. The first version contains integrated and consolidated suggestions for participative policymaking and public service delivery, to be further elaborated by experts and users. Next generation participation projects should combine public agenda setting, open data and collaborative decision making. This eCollaboration approach can be of help not only in the case of public sector reform, but also in other circumstances, like supporting austerity measures or fighting corruption.

The Swedish firm IKEA reinvented home furniture by going back to its core function and restyling it with utmost simplicity. The eCollaboration Manifesto is an IDEA like IKEA, and will provide a construction manual with eGovernance utensils Swedish Design.

From 22 – 24 April 2012, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) held a meeting in Dublin about “Promoting Good Governance and Combating Corruption in Support of Socio-Economic Development”. I was invited as a panellist for the Session “The key role of civil society towards developing comprehensive and effective anti-corruption approaches”.

My contribution was about the eCitizen Charter as a tool for citizen engagement and social accountability. The invitation was a follow up on two previous meetings organized last year about the same topic, held in Vienna (UNDESA) and Marrakesh (UNCAC).

This panel (photos courtesy OSCE), scheduled at the beginning of the second day, was moderated by Elaine Byrne, an Irish journalist and political scientist. She just this week published a book entitled “Political Corruption in Ireland 1922-2010″.

In my contribution I stressed the importance of clear “rules of engagement” between citizen and governmment. The eCitizen Charter provides a framework which empowers civil society. The use of social media has shown to be effective in fighting corruption, notably in the Arabic world. My plea for participative democracy as a necessary supplement to representative democracy was supported by other speakers later that day.

Other panellists covered topics like training of civil servants (Georg Grabenweger from the International Anti-Corruption Academy and Violetta Yan from the Kirgiz OSCE Academy), transparent procedures (Anne-Christine Wegener of Transparency International), anti money loundering action by banks (Roxana Cefan of Raiffaisen Bank International) and monitoring the UNCAC traty (Londa Esadze of UN Transnational Crime and Corruption Centre). The moderator could summarise that in anti-corruption not one size fits all, but civil society indeed cannot be left out as partner in a comprehensive approach.

The OSCE is an organization under the UN Charter created during the Cold War as a West-East forum, and has 57 participating states from Europe, the former Soviet Union, USA, Canada. The meeting was attended by some 250 representatives from states, academia, civil society, private sector and NGOs.

The first day was devoted to an overview of instruments such as international frameworks, legal instuments and monitoring mechanisms for which the states are responsible. Ppreventing corruption by promoting a culture of integrity, transparency and accountability was also given attention, as were regulatory reforms in public procurement and countering bribery. The rest of the conference covered topics like simplification of business relations, integrity of customs and border services, and identifying and recovering stolen assets.

The meeting, held in Dublin Castle was well organised by mr. Goran Svilanovič, Co-ordinatorof the OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities together with his colleagues Edelmira Campos Núñez and and Andrea Gredler. The background paper prepared by the OSCE secretariat convincingly argues the need for measures against corruption because of the econonomic costs and the losses in trust it causes. Corruption exits everywhere, but it does make a difference whether is has become a fact of life that is tolerated, or whether it is considered as an evil that should be erradicated.

This Dublin event actally was the Second Preparatory Meeting for the September 2012 OSCE Forum on “Promoting Security and Stability through Good Governance”. Because of the busy agenda, an approach that got less attention than it deserves was social media and internet. However, during the closing session both the host of the meeting, the Irish Minister of Justice , and the American Ambassador recommended a robust role by civil society in anticorruption measures as an item on the agenda at the Good Governance meeting later this year in Prague.

The eCitizenCharter is translated in 22 languages, to be found under Downloads

From 8 – 11 April the Bahrain International eGovernment Forum 2012 was held. On invitation by the eGovernment Authority (EGA) of Bahrain I attended the forum as a speaker. The venue was the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Manama, Bahrain’s capital. At the opening session of the forum, attended by the Prime Minster, the host country presented its new eGoverment strategy. Bahrain does comparatively well in the UN eReadiness ranking (number 36 out of 196) and is a leader in integrated online services provided through multichannels (actually number 10 of the world).

The UN eGovernment Survey 2012 apparently was used as selection criteria for the first panel session. Since the Republic of Korea is the world leader followed by the Netherlands, I was the second speaker after Deok Soo Park from Korea. In the same session Bill McCluggage of the UK and Hannes Astok of Estonia presented their countries’ strategies. In my presentation entitled “Citizen Centred eGovernment in the Netherlands” I explained our approach to citizen engagement, with the eCitizen Charter as an awareness tool. Moreover I set out why it’s time for a paradigm shift from eGoverment (technology) to Collaborative Governance (participation), which is necessary for citizen engagement to thrive and contribute to social accountablity.

During the rest of the forum a great number of international speakers presented views and cases on eGovernment and several trends and topicslike Social Media, eParticipation, Mobility, Open Data. There was overall agreement on the need for citizen centricity and inclusion. Many speakers covered this, notably Raul Zambrano of UNDP, Julia Glidden of 21c Consultancy UK, Kei Shimada of Japan, Chris Rourke of UserVision UK, Thomasz Janovsky of UN-IIST in Macao, Stefan Gehrke of Germany. The moderators Richard Kerby and Julia Glidden led stimulating discussions. Noteworthy I found Talal Abu Ghazalah’s speech in which he made a convincing case for the eCitizen and the urgency of education reform and free online learning in the Arabic world. One of the fringe meeting was devoted to legal aspects and privacy, with contributions from Ramazan Altinok of the Turkish Prime Minster’s Office, Nibal Idlebi of UNESCWA and Wojcieh Cellary of Poznan University. One other fringe meeting about social media organised by the Social Media Club of Bahrain was successfully overcrowded.

The forum provided an excellent opportunity to share knowledge and exchange views, and the social program gave the speakers a taste of the country. Memorable was the Royal reception of the speakers by the Crown Prince as acting King. Sincere thanks for a well organised forum and friendly hospitality are due to EGA’s CEO Mohammed Ali Al-Qaed and his Forum organizer Lamya Ebrahim Hasan.

In view of the political situation in Bahrain, I was pleasantly surprised by the open program and free discussions during the conference. Bahrain is criticised for its suppression last year of a revolt which looks similar to other Arabic Spring uprisings. The country is devided into a sunnite ruling class and shiite population majority. The help of Saudi Arabia for the government and the supposed influence of Iran on the opposition complicate the conflict. The present situation seems stable, after an independent Inquiry Commission recommended reforms.

Traveling to Bahrain, I reread Peter Mansfield’s “A History of the Middle East” to refresh my historical knowledge of the region where tradition and religion play another role than in the democratic and egalitarian country I live in.

On my way back I took a stopover in Dubai to see the future and visit the world’s tallest building: Burj Khalifa. That was the last missing on my track record of the top 5 buildings in the world, 4 of which I already saw as a speaker on international conferences: Twin Towers in NY, CN Tower in Toronto, Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur and 101 in Taipei.

Electronic Government is no longer an appropriate framework for innovation in the public sector. The emphasis must shift to Collaborative Governance, and a CitizenVision 2.0 can support that transition

Ambition
Fifteen years ago in the Netherlands the first program started of what later became known as Electronic Government (eGovernment). Public Counter 2000 introduced the one-stop shop model and did so under the motto “Thinking and working from the citizen’s perspective”. Ever since, each eGovernment project has called itself “citizen centric”. However, the past years prove that rhetoric is easier than actual implementation. Citizen centricity not only requires a change in attitude, also necessary are practical methods and tools. What progress has been made since and how did citizens benefit from eGovernment?

Results
In order to determine whether a target has been reached, one needs a benchmark. Surprisingly this was missing from the very beginning. Therefore in 2005 the Citizen@Government Forum devised the eCitizenCharter. It intends to match the ambitions of government with the expectations of citizens. The charter consists of 10 quality standards that can be applied both as design requirements beforehand and evaluation criteria afterwards.

As design requirements, the quality standards have been incorporated in the Dutch Government Reference Architecture (NORA). Unfortunately, this has been no guarantee for systematic application. Thus the neglect of transparency has been a major cause for problems like the premature discontinuation of electronic voting, the failure of the eHealth file, the trouble with the public transportation chip card or the commotion about the smart energy meters.

As evaluation criteria, the quality standards were used to measure citizen satisfaction. From 2008 to 2010, the ICTU Citizen Link program annually measured how citizens appreciate the performance of government. That judgment was rather disappointing, not in the least because it did not focus as usual on the delivery of individual products or services, but at the solution of life events. For citizens these are more meaningful than quick services like a passport renewal, so it‘s unfortunate that this approach has been discontinued recently.

Lessons
Plans for the future which 15 years ago were labelled “2000″, are now called “2.0″ but still concern the same problem: how can government reform be truly citizen centric. The eCitizenCharter was ahead of his time because it not only sees the citizen as a passive customer but also as an active participant.

Subsequently, other checklists have become in vogue, such as the Ten Problems of the Ministry of the Interior, the Five promises of the Union of Local Municipalities and the Six Principles for Government-wide Services. The good news is that they do (partially) overlap. The bad news is that they are one-sided propositions by government to improve its own performance. These restrictions are also substantiated in a 2011 critical analysis on the feasibility of the government-wide eServices. This calls for reconsideration whether we are on the right track.

Vision
Because the conceptual framework of eGovernment focuses on services and internal procedures, it cannot cope with two recent trends: interaction and transparency.
With the advent of Web 2.0 new forms of interaction became available, resulting in networks and platforms as organizational models. Methodologies and approaches such as crowd sourcing, open data, co-creation, cloud computing, apps, social media should be embedded in business processes for political policy development and public service delivery.
Since the 2011 “iGovernment” report of the Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) awareness has grown that eGovernment paradigm is no longer suitable and that unhindered flows of data compel for better privacy protection.

According to the present cabinet, citizens are supposed to defend their own interests. Transparency is the key to this. For citizens to be able to act like this, they should possess tools and skills. Therefore we don’t need (yet another) government vision, but a citizen vision that  can support the transition from Electronic Government to Collaborative Governance.  This “Citizen Vision 2.0″ should stipulate the new rules of engagement between citizen and government.

The eCitizen Charter is an excellent starting point. Here are some considerations of how the development of the building blocks of Electronic Government should be adjusted in the direction of Collaborative Goverment.

Accessibility
The website as the default channel for eGovernment is still inadequate as far as accessibility and customer focus is concerned, especially on the local level. Following the example on the national level, on the local level too a standardized website is required. Moreover, this standard should provide for integration in the multichannel platform that citizens themselves use for information sources, contacts and interventions.

Identity
DigiD was a clever intermediate step towards a reliable digital identity, but is no longer suited now that increasingly sensitive information is stored digitally. Besides offering higher security levels in the public sector, government should provide its citizens with a digital identifier (as successor of the paper passport) to remedy the chaos of user names, passwords and PIN codes.

Usefulness
The public is bombarded with “myFiles”, also outside government proper. There is an urgent need for a standardized interface for digital transactions. In redesigning service delivery processes, the nature of the products should not be leading. On the contrary, it’s skils, experience and various citizen profiles that must be taken into  account.

Openness
If openness is the norm, processes should be transparent from the outset. This is a requirement for monitoring (through access and correction rights) and promoting social accountability (fighting corruption). Public Sector Information (PSI) not only supposes releasing datasets, but also calls for a fundamental reconsideration of the character of public service provision (what the government should do and what they can leave the private sector). Citizen’s self-reliance and self-determination call for wider variety in the nature of the services to be provided.

Involvement
Citizens who want to represent their own interests or who want to act for the common good should get the chance. The administration’s reflex to install a committee to solve a problem should be redirected towards setting up of a platform for interaction. From the perspective of a citizen there is no difference between public service delivery and political participation. Standardised prototypes for participation services are to be developed in the field of information, monitoring, evaluation and agenda setting. This should preferably be done through open source standards (like petities.nl) or apps (like ImproveYourNeighbourhood).

Governance
Last year marked the tenth anniversary ICTU, the foundation in which all of Dutch government work together on eGoverment projects. During this period, this foundation contributed to cohesion and cooperation in the establishment of the building blocks of eGovernment. But the trends described above require a fundamental rethinking.

The UN eGovernment Report 2012 ranks the Netherlands secondly worldwide. That’s a boost for everyone working at ICTU and involved in its strategy (iNUP). But like many other rankings, it mainly concerns the supply side, not use, let alone satisfaction. No reason to sit back and relax.

Although during the past decade great progress has been made in the digitization of government, the final conclusion must be that the potential for citizen centricity is still under-exploited. Since many eGoverment targets have been postponed to 2015-2020, eventual success depends on the development of a CitizenVision 2.0 as an updated benchmark.

Matt Poelmans was director of several eGovernment programs at ICTU and is currently senior advisor at HEC

Laura Massoli of the Italian Department of Public Administration interviewed Matt Poelmans

Q1.  The release of the eCitizen Charter in 2006 provided clear and common requirements  for Government  in the provision and delivery of public service. How did you come out with the Charter? Which was the general process and the kind of stakeholders involved in the design of the charter? Which the general aim?

A1.  The charter was originally developed by the eCitizen Forum, an independent advisory body to the minister of the Interior. Composed of institutions like the National Ombudsman, the National Consumers’ Union, the Internet Society and other representatives form civil society, its task was to monitor developments in eGovernment policy form the citizen’s perspective. It created the charter in order to be able to found its recommendations.

The charter was also used by the national eCitizen Panel, consisting of 2000 persons, in its assessment of eGovernment building blocks. And the jury of the annual National Web Awards and later the eParticipation Awards used it to select the nominations. Finally the Citizenlink Program promoted the charter under its threefold task (increasing service quality, measuring customer satisfaction, stimulating citizen participation).

Q2.  What about the use of the charter by the Dutch administrations? Did they find it useful and easy to apply?

A2.  The charter is not mandatory, but has been adopted as a common standard for public service delivery by a so called Administrative Convention between the three tiers of government: national (ministries, agencies), regional (provinces, waterboards) and local (municipalities). The majority of these administrations have implemented the charter in one way or the other.  Moreover it was incorporated in the national eGovernment Interoperability Framework (NORA). The eCitizen Charter Workbook has been widely used for training purposes of civil servants.

Q3.  As you mentioned, the charter was translated in 22 languages (Italian included). Did you start any comparative project on this? Or did you involve other administrations outside The Netherlands?

A3.  The Dutch charter was spontaneously copied by other countries to support their policies for public sector reform. After receiving the European eDemocracy Award 2007, I have been invited all over the world to present the charter. In the same year it was nominated for the EU eGovernment Awards at the ministerial conference in Lisbon. Estonia took it as an example to base its eState Charter on. France used in the Administrative Modernization Program. The EU Institute for Public Administration (EIPA) uses it for eGovernment seminars in Greece and trainings in the Balkan. OECD recommended implementation in their reports and in 2011 the UN Convention Against Corruption selected it as an instrument to enhance social accountability in developing countries.

Q 4.  Based on the quality requirements of the charter, the Dutch Government has carried out –since 2008 – a yearly citizen satisfaction survey which aims at measuring citizen’s perception regarding some life events (having a child, starting a business, going abroad etc)? Which are the latest results of such a survey?

A4.  The survey covers 55  life events and measured whether or not the citizens having experienced those situations were satisfied about the way the were treated. The reference was the extent to which the10 requirements of the charter were fulfilled. Some interesting conclusions are: the longer the service chain (i.e. the greater the number of organizations involved), the lower the satisfaction rate. And when citizens do have a choice in the way their problem is solved, their satisfaction rate is higher. It must be noted that there are big differences in rating between the life events.

The survey produces detailed content about the reasons for the results and gives clues for improvement action. Both successes and failures provide lessons learned.

The highest rated life event is Buying (and Owning) a Car. The reason is that it is a short chain (the number of organizations involved is limited: Car register, Police, Garage, Insurance Company), they work closely together (both public and private organizations), there is a clear chain manager (the Car Register), and the procedures have been highly digitized. Citizens find the charter requirements about convenience important and rate the cooperation highly. In case your licence plates are stolen, the Garage takes care of all things that have to be done with the chain partners.

Two events in the bottom 10 are: Being Fired (Unemployed): Citizens find the charter requirements about active involvement important, but rate them low, mainly for lack of choice and poor support. And Having a Handicapped child: 8 to 10 organizations involved, complicated regulations, different insurance, many patient files, and so on.

Q5.  The life event survey is focused on the “service delivery chain”, without any specific input on the performance of the single administration. Have you foreseen any form of integration between this kind of measurement and those that are undertaken by the individual administration?

A5.  The survey actually measures the satisfaction on three levels: the individual organizations involved, the service chain for a given event and government as a whole. In the 2010 survey the aggregate marks were 6.9, 6.7, and 6.4 (on a scale from 1 – 10). This implies that there is a “loss” of quality perceived when collaboration is required.

The figures about the performance of a single organization have indeed been compared with the outcome of already existing measurement frameworks. These turned out to be roughly the same. The mark for the service chain being lower than for the single organization is mainly due to contradictory information and lack of cooperation.

Q6.  Going through some results related to the 2008 survey, the method “Customer Journey Mapping” is mentioned as a tool for better tackling the “service experience”, starting from the point of view of the user. Could you tell as more about this method and the related application in terms of service improvement?

A6.  Since the rating of single organizations composing the service chain differs quite a lot, “the good ones suffer form the bad ones”. This very outcome created consensus for the next step: how to improve performance together. The customer journey mapping approach does exactly what is says: mapping step by step, with people from both supply and demand involved, what happens to the “victim”. In this way chain deficiencies were discovered which until then were unknown. In order to remedy these, a number of life events were selected that were deemed critical (low rating or high exposure) such as Bereavement, Unemployment and Moving. Lessons learned (also from successes) were subsequently applied to other life events.

Finally:

The eCitizen Charter covers all aspects of the relationship between citizen and government: information, transaction and participation. The charter does consider the citizen not only as a passive customer, but also as an active member of society. So it is also applicable today in the field of web 2.0 and social media. Therefore it plays an important role in the current transition from Electronic government (public service delivery) to Collaborative Governance (creating public value).

The relevance today of the charter is that enhances transparency, which not only is a condition for improving service quality, but also helps to reduce the administrative burden of bureaucracy. So it supports austerity measures that are necessary to fight again corruption and to resolve the present debt crisis.

Italian translation

This Workshop explored how the engagement of citizens—and their organizations in civil society and the private sector—can contribute to improve public accountability in public service delivery and spending. The Workshop enhanced knowledge and built a shared understanding of what participatory institutions, approaches and tools can be adopted by countries to make public service delivery more effective, equitable, transparent, responsive and citizen-centric. This is of particular importance at this time, as the United Nations Members States have identified participatory approaches to the provision of public services as a useful course of action for countries in achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

The meeting was held from 12-13 July 2011 in the UN Headquarters in Vienna. I attended on special invitation by Roberto Vilarreal, chief of Management Development at UNDESA/UNPAN  and presented the eCitizenCharter as a tool for stimulating citizen engagement. His endorsement: “I reiterate my highest professional regard to you as an expert and consultant on eParticipation. I am of the opinion that your leadership and work in the Netherlands about the eCitizen Charter is the most refined and advanced experience with a practical empowering and results-oriented spirit that I have seen around the world in recent times, and that is why I hope that experience can be brought closer to the UN to assist other countries in expanding similarly the rights of their citizens to benefit from the rapid ongoing expansion of eGovernment services.”

Agenda

Presentation