UN e-Government Survey 2008: From e-Government to Connected Governance

Author: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Division for Public Administration and Development Management
© United Nations, 2007, 225 pages
ISBN 978-92-1-123174-8

What is this whole e-governance thing all about? A simple question with many answers.

People often have a specific application in mind when they think of e-government, or e-governance. It is not always easy to get beyond the gadgetry of things like mobile parking payments, or to look behind things like e-voting, or proactive service delivery. That is exactly what we do at the e-Governance Academy: show what is needed to make these things work, and help understand what it is in reality. But how do you write down all these elements that make up awareness, but that are scattered over a full five-day policy training curriculum?

One very good place to start is the 2008 UN e-Government Survey. The document does not just give rankings, but explains in a very good way what is behind the indices. Because it captures the 192 UN Member States, this explanation is necessarily well-structured and elaborate – how else to capture all the different stages of development in this field?

I am glad to say the UN did a great job at doing just that. If you have some time to spare (a long flight, perhaps?), and if you want to know more about the subject, I really recommend that you read this survey.

The seminar was commissioned by the Council of Europe, as an activity under the Social Security Co-ordination And Social Security Reform Programme (SSCSSA), which they run jointly with the European Union. This programme is in some ways a continuation of a previous three-year action, in which I had been involved from the beginning.

This (and the previous) programme is meant to assist countries in South-East Europe (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” and Turkey, as well as Kosovo) in further enhancing the regional coordination of the social security systems and facilitating institutional, legislative and administrative reforms in the field of social protection according to EU standards.

I have been quite active in advocating that proper attention be given to the administrative side of social security co-ordination. This, in essence, comes down to building multilateral co-operation structures and organising structured (electronic) information exchange. And that, in turn, is a story if semantic, organisational and technical interoperability.

Under the previous programme, we attempted to set up the basics for such a system, but that interest, for various reasons, did not translate into concrete action – something I have always regretted. With this seminar, the issue is back on the table, and there is a real chance that this activity can lead to creating the necessary awareness on the decision-making level.

That will not happen overnight, of course, but I feel we have made a start now. The challenges are expressed, and there is a sense of urgency and of need that was not there before. A next step – motivating ministers, heads of institutions, horizontal government entities, … to take action, and explaining how this action can be taken – is now plausible.

Apart from that, I was happy to be asked to organise this event for another reason altogether. This was a mission with the e-Governance Academy, the organisation I do most of my work for. The team from eGA is pretty diverse, and together we hold a massive experience on many aspects that have to do with the use of ICT in the business of government.

I had talked with my colleagues about social security before, but it has always been difficult for me to find an opportunity to fully explain the specific issues in the administration of social security systems, let alone in the co-ordination of social security. Indeed, even if the challenges for any government administration are in many ways similar, there are some very different accents and points of attention when it comes to social security and – probably even more specific in this context – social contributions.

Hearing me explaining these topics in the seminar has helped my colleages to better understand that specificity. Which will make it easier for me to draw attention to the theme in my daily job, and to further develop a specific training package on e-governance and social security.

A breakthrough? Let’s hope so. But at the very least a useful experience for all involved.

In their own words:

Dutch water boards (in Dutch: “waterschappen” or hoogheemraadschappen) are regional government bodies in the Netherlands. A water board is charged with managing the water barriers, the waterways, the water levels, and the water quality in its region. Water boards are among the oldest forms of in the Netherlands, some of them having been founded in the 13th century.

One of the main goals of KRIHCIA is to share information between the waterboards and co-operate to achieve a stronger position of information management inside and outside the waterboards. To gain information and inspiration, they organized a study visit to Estonia, which, as we know, is a leader in the field of e-governance and employing ICT in the business of government. On the agenda: an introduction to the activities of the e-Governance Academy, talk about e-voting and m-voting, an overview of the underlying infrastructure (the x-road), information about electronic ID-cards and how they can be used for distance identification and digital signatures, and a demonstration visit by a police car, to talk about e-police systems.

Lots of ground to cover in half a day, but I think we did a good job. Most notable, and somewhat surprising to me personally, is that there was a genuine interest towards e-democracy initiatives, such as e-voting (which in the case of Estonia means Internet voting) and citizen participation. It is great to see that these aspects are becoming more and more mainstream, and that e-democracy is gaining a solid foothold in the policy of many countries, governments and organizations.

The visit was especially interesting to me, as I got to introduce the Academy in Dutch – something I don’t often have a chance of doing. It is at times strange to do something in my native language, after I have been working for years in English. But this time it was a great experience, not in the least because of the apparent interest and enthusiasm of the audience.

I should probably have recorded the whole thing, but for those who are interested: here are the slides.

The e-Governance Academy (eGA) attended the WSIS conference and its cluster events in Tunis on the very kind invitation and with the support of the Bratislava office of the UNDP.

Mr. Ivar Tallo, Mrs. Zhanna Pilving and myself represented the Academy at the UNDP/UNIDO pavilion of the ICT4all exhibition, which was one of the big events surrounding the summit. We took the chance to showcase the activities of eGA, and to explain to an interested audience what role promoting the use of ICT in government can play in improving governance and in building open and transparent information societies.

On the square meters next to us, Nicholas Negroponte and his team presented the first prototype of the “One Laptop Per Child” system, which was exciting for all of us. We had been following the news about this project for a while already, and were thrilled to see one first-hand. It wasn’t a fully working prototype, unfortunately, but it wasn’t hard to see its potential.

Needless to say, Mr. Negroponte attracted quite some attention and a steady stream of visitors.

I further had the opportunity to speak at some of the sessions that were organised during the event, and took the opportunity to advocate the idea of an integrated information society and the dissemination of democratic processes using ICT, topics that have been in the mission of eGA since its creation.

Equally important were the many contacts and face-to-face meetings with old and new friends and colleagues, and the visit of The Estonian minister of Telecommunications and Economic Affairs, Mr. Edgar Savisaar, to the eGA stand.

Concrete results of the WSIS conference in Tunis have been bundled in a “golden book”, which is available online. The list of participants can be found here.

These fact-finding missions were organised by the Council of Europe in the frameworks of the Joint Council of Europe European Commission programme Russia VIII, and aimed at exploring, through visits to service delivery organisations, how existing social rights are delivered and how this delivery can be improved via training and information provision.

The team was comprised of one international expert (Mr. Steven Segaert) and one local expert (Mr. Oleg Shakhnazarov), and was lead by Mr. Alexander Kostanyan, administrative officer at the Council of Europe and later on involved as project manager in the project which was the framework for this mission.

The activities in this mission were organised in two times two days of fact-finding visits (Rostov on June 13th and 14th, Krasnodar on June 16th and 17th).

Visits were organised to delivery centres concerned with employment (unemployment benefits as well as job mediation , centrally as well as locally), pensions (the regions’ central administration where it concerns the payment of pension benefits and a multitude of facilities providing services to pensioners) and social assistance (the regional administration as well as local service points and facilities for residential and semi-residential care). During these visits, the team met with high-level administrators as well as middle management and workers in the field, who invariably offered their enthusiast cooperation and hospitality.

The involvement of both an international and local expert ensured a mix of exogenous views on the issues at hand, and comments complemented by local experiences. The ensuing report benefits from, but is not determined by, detailed background knowledge of social services in Russia, the policy choices involved or the legal framework that supports this policy.

The combined reports contained detailed observations concerning the administration of social services (back-office aspects), the delivery of these services (front-office aspects) and – as a separate topic – concerning unemployment services and job mediation. The recommendations and suggestions made during this and other missions formed the basis for further activities to be implemented in the concerned regions in the framework of a joint programme of co-operation between the Council of Europe and the European Commission.