Public Sector Transformation Through E-Government
Page 5
raw data—much of questionable quality—rather than directly deliv-
ering a coherent set of citizen-centric services meant that a large share
of the OGI eff
fforts were not immediately usable by the broader public.
Many required intermediary citizen “hactivists” and developers to
create applications and visualizations to make the data useful. This
reliance on the “invisible hand of data”—“release it and they will
build apps” (Robinson et al, 2009)—proved inferior to more citizen-
centric eff
fforts, such as Britain’s data.gov.uk which focused on col-
lecting centrally identifi
fied high-value datasets and on fi l
fi tering data
down to a citizen’s postal code to deliver localized mash-ups, tools,
and services for informing citizen decision making (e.g., on hospitals,
schooling, local street crime, commuting, etc.) (Rogers, 2011).
The White House recognizes the challenges and endeavors to return open
government to prominence, particularly via the OGP and the release of
the U.S. Action Plan, which recommits the federal government to deep-
ening FOIA and transparency, promoting greater participation in pol-
icy making, expanding access to data, and modernizing recordkeeping
(Open Government Partnership, 2011). While these commitments are
neither dramatic nor new, planned implementing guidelines will provide
more actionable protocols for agency implementations so that outcomes
Open Government as a Vehicle for Government Transformation 21
can be measured across the federal space, and lessons can be shared with
international partners.
6 CONCLUSIONS
The relationship between openness and transformation is symbiotic: open-
ness is essential for providing the tools and guiding principles that enable
transformation, whereas transformation provides purpose and concrete
policy challenges for impactful open government. However, both concepts
continue to lack clearly defined characteristics or thresholds from which
to develop measurable outputs, pin-point maturity, or assess outcomes
(Wilson & Linders, 2011). Likewise, no consensus framework yet exists
to enable consistent interpretation, and no critical analysis has been per-
formed to understand the impact of transformation on those with the least
clout (e.g., the poor, minorities, and the disadvantaged)—that is, will they
be more deliberately engaged or further marginalized?
Not waiting for theory to catch up with practice, the Obama admin-
istration’s OGI spawned a global movement that focuses government
transparency around proactive, wholesale data publication and that spear-
heads adoption of Web 2.0 interactivity for improved citizen participation
and collaboration. Many nations are actively adapting these principles to
their needs, cultures, and conditions, ranging from Norway’s emphasis on
extractive industry transparency to the Philippines’ focus on combating a
culture of corruption by institutionalizing “People Power.” With efforts
still new, many of these transformational eff
fforts have yet to show signifi-
cant measurable value and impact. But the experiences of the pioneers off
ffer
early lessons that can provide a foundation for the transformation of the
government/citizen relationship worldwide.
NOTES
1.
Described fully at https://sites.google.com/site/opengovtplans/home.
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3 E-Government and the Evolution
of Service Canada
Transformation or Stagnation?
Jeff rey
ff
Roy
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
The purpose of this chapter is to critically examine the Government of
Canada’s service transformation eff
fforts over the past decade. Although
e-government denotes a wider reform lens than service architecture and
delivery strategies, for many countries, certainly Canada among them, ser-
vice became the starting point and hallmark of online effor
ff ts at the turn
of the century as Internet usage exploded. The example of Service Canada
was widely regarded as an international leader, propelling Canada to or
near the apex of many surveys such as those completed by Accenture Con-
sulting and the United Nations. In recent years, however, Canada’s relative
performance has stagnated (refl
flected to varying degrees in international
survey rankings) as the service transformation agenda has become mired in
a range of complex issues and challenges examined here.
1 INTRODUCTION
The emergence of the Internet as a mainstream venue for communications
and commerce over the past decade has given rise to online delivery mech-
anisms as a centrepiece of both the public and private sector service strat-
egies alike. With regards to the public sector, the e-government agenda
has come to denote the broad application of new information and com-
munication technologies (ICTs) to the public sector as a whole. In most
countries, however, e-service delivery denotes the chronological starting
point and the main strategic impetus for operationalizing the Internet for
public sector usage.
Within such a digital context, the Government of Canada (GOC) pro-
vides unique insight into the challenges of online and multi-channel ser-
vice delivery. Recognized by organizations such as the United Nations, the
OECD and Accenture Consulting as a leading jurisdiction in online service
capacities, Canada began its second major phase of service delivery trans-
formation in 2005 with the creation of Service Canada. Building on prior
26 Jeff re
ff y Roy
eff
fforts to move information and services online, Service Canada’s mission
is to expand integrated service delivery capacities (in terms of both service
off
fferings and deliv
ery channels) across government in order to realize more
citizen-centric outcomes.
The purpose of this chapter is, therefore, to provide a critical assess-
ment of both the Canadian federal government’s experience to date and
the prospects for Service Canada going forward. This article puts forward
three variables that have been responsible for the decelerating progress of
the Canadian public sector generally and Service Canada specifi c
fi ally since
its early emergence and success, namely: (i) Process—structural and cul-
tural challenges of internal governance in realizing more integrated and
online service off
fferings; (ii) Place—accentuating the multi-channel puzzle
is the tension between urban and rural environments and the multitude of
service architectures in urban settings (combined with the dearth of such
actors in rural and remote locations); and (iii) Politics—the IT literary of
political leaders and the impacts of scandal and minority politics over the
past decade.
The chapter is organized as follows. Section 2 contextualizes the Service Canada model by reviewing the main contours of electronic service
delivery in the e-government era: it also sketches the Canadian context by
describing the evolution of Service Canada. Section 3 then examines the four aforementioned variables shaping the Service Canada experience. Sec-
tion 4 concludes the chapter with a summary of the present IT governance and service quagmire confronting the Government of Canada.
2 THE EVOLVING GOVERNANCE OF
ELECTRONIC SERVICE DELIVERY1
The emergence of Web 2.0 has called into question for many how best gov-
ernments should move into the networking and transformational era (Dutil
et al., 2010). Up to this point, much of e-government’s evolution has reflected
something of a linear path examined in this note—with an emphasis on
government-wide and public sector–wide strategies for interoperability and
integration (leading to some elements of transformational outcomes). The
challenge today is whether such a path can be aligned with the emergent
networked realities taking shape outside of the public sector (facilitated by
online social networking and cloud computing that empower users with a
greater set of choices in terms of front end and back end architectures).
Prior to Web 2.0, within the realm of e-government and online service,