2001
A fast track approach to online government
By
Marcus Gibson
The Financial Times,
20 June 2001
Few among the world's nations could benefit more from efficient electronic government than Australia, whose vastness, remoteness and unforgiving geography cries out for comprehensive long-range connectivity and easy-to-use consumer-focused networks.
In the 1990s, various state governments started a variety of ambitious and well-thought out initiatives utilising the latest IT and aimed at a surprisingly broad range of needs. Even today, many countries are still scrambling to match the achievements of the Antipodean pioneers.
In 1995, the Australian central government set out to save ADollars 1bn by replacing 300 employment offices with a nationwide network of 2,600 chic and shiny standalone kiosks, half of which were located at new rural locations.
Through simple fingertip navigation, jobseekers - not a patient lot - can scan through virtually all posts currently available, in what has become one of of the most hard-driven e-initiatives in the country.
Very few kiosks have been vandalised, says Lindsay Frost, manager with NeoProducts, the world's leading maker of touch screen kiosks for e-applications, based at Noble Park, Victoria. "When the first batch was recalled after three years only a minority even need re-painting."
Last year, Neo Products opened a facility in Birmingham, England, which will eventually supply around 9,000 kiosks to employment services in the UK. In 1997 the kiosk was awarded the US Smithsonian Award for Technological Innovation in the Workplace.
The kiosks have helped focus efforts on the long-term unemployed. In 1995 Australia's jobless rate was 11 per cent and today it is around 6 per cent, and credit is given to the kiosks' role in bringing together jobs and manpower via www.jobsearch.gov.au.
Vacancies from a much larger group of private and public agencies were included in any jobseeker's search, even those from the Salvation Army's job centre.
Four years ago Acumen Multimedia, a local software company, began to develop a series of portals, now totalling 17, for the Victoria State authorities, including "whole-of-government" online information sites, such as Melbourne's city site - www.melbourne.vic. gov.au - often ranked as the top government site in Australia.
"The imperative of the design was to gain access to any government service within three mouse clicks," says Russell Yardley, Acumen's managing director.
At local government level, Acumen produced online replicas of many local councils' customer service centres, where information and services are available 24 hours a day in a format that can be easily navigated by Australia's extraordinarily diverse racial and ethnic mix of citizens.
"We advise customers not to have a strategy because you never know which one will be right," says Mr Yardley. The company aims to create an outward-facing site, not one that merely distanced telephonic customers even further from services, to the benefit of more idle public sector staff.
In a second, highly beneficial project, Acumen created an e-learning program to help employees in the footwear and leather industry - one third of whom are illiterate - to grade leather, a program based almost entirely on pictures. Internationally, the Australian Government's decision to link airline tickets with electronic visas, the visitor's most familiar experience of e-government, has saved millions of dollars.
Large reception facilities at airports are not needed, and tough immigration controls can be maintained at points of departure, not arrival.
Managing such volumes of data can be daunting. But whereas many governments have set up static informational sites- and thought they had entered the digital age - Australians believe that this is only the start.
"We're in the age of the back office," says Rob Miles, managing director of Ideas!, an e-consulting firm. "Providing quality information which is easy to findand doesn't require an understanding of government structureis a significant challenge."
Maintaining a site in a traditional manner, he says, can cost annually more than three times than the initial cost of establishing the site. Ideas! has therefore produced a content management system, NetEnable, for the Australian Government, which currently handles 2m pages of information.
One of the key concepts of distributed authorising - in which content is separated from technology - is that the information can be accessed and inspected by a number of experts, to check its integrity, even though the document stays in the originating department.
Ideas! has helped deliver two successful projects, the Business Channel (www. business.channel.vic.gov.au) and Land Channel (www.land.vic.gov.au). "It is important to address the fundamental human issues...by viewing everything from the citizen's perspective first," says Mr Miles.
Consistency is another bugbear for many consumers of government services. This is another focus for back office systems. One highly sophisticated piece of software, developed by Canberra-based SoftLaw, automates the process of undertaking complex assessments, such as claims from pensioners or veterans, against complex legislationa veritable mass of rights, regulations, entitlements and obligations.
'Centrelink, the Australian Social Security agency, has developed a system using SoftLaw that helps sort out payments and claims to families. The expense of training staff to become expert in these bureaucratic minefields is enormous.
But with SoftLaw software, says director Peter Johnson, junior staff can provide very accurate responses - and much greater efficiency - in a service once plagued with inconsistency. Civil servants in this section have fallen 30 per cent in number.
Another user has been the Department of Veterans' Affairs. "You wouldn't want to get their disability entitlement wrong," warned one senior civil servant of such feisty consumers.
Rob McMillan, of PA Consulting's Australia group, says: "The Commonwealth (federal) Government has only recently recognised the need for a customer-focused approach, whereas the state and territory governments have been more progressive. There's room for greater co-operation between governments if the full benefits of e-government are to be realised."
Projects being funded by Canberra include the Commonwealth Government's ADollars 450m "Networking the Nation" program, will help regional Australia access the information economy. In 1997 the Commonwealth Government committed itself to an ambitious plan to deliver all "appropriate" government services online by 2001. By last September 2000, 90 per cent of agencies claimed they were on target.
Recently, John Rimmer, chief executive of the National Office for the Information Economy, said: "A common approach by agencies to providing e-services is to ask the question 'What services do we provide that we can put on the net?'
"This will need to change to 'What services would our clients like to have?'."
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