09-12-2002 -Seminar on eGovernment - Change Implications
Firstly, I'd like to extend a warm welcome to people from acrossthe public sector to this important seminar in Dublin Castle. This is my first opportunity to address such a cross-section of public service leaders since my appointment earlier this year.
My responsibilities for the Information Society agenda cover awide range of policy areas, which bring me more and more into contact with people who frequently seem to be speaking a different language but I am thankful that the policies, which were published in the spring, were very carefully crafted in English in New Connections.
New Connections covers 3 essential frameworks:
Telecommunications infrastructure;
The legal and regulatory requirements and
eGovernment the focus of today's seminar and clearly one of the key underlying infrastructures for building an information society and knowledge economy in Ireland.
Today's seminar is a follow-on to first eGovernment seminar held here in Dublin Castle in the Summer, when the developments and future of eGovernment was laid out in some detail and which gave rise to a number of questions about the change implications for the implementation of on-line services.
This morning, the focus is on some practical examples of implementations and developments at central Government level. They were selected more for their variety than for their provenance and will give an opportunity to explore what is involved in undertaking such far-reaching changes to the way services are delivered. In a sense, you will get some different perspectives on the concept of public service and at how they are being turned into success stories.
It should also be interesting to see what the important issues are in each of the applications and to get an idea about how they might be tackled and I'm not talking about the technology, because it is very clear to anybody who has applied modern technology in the ways we are trying to do now, that the bigger issues are around:
Leadership;
Stakeholder buy-in;
Managing large scale change;
Defining a migration path;
Finding a starting point;
Achieving momentum.
Theme of seminar
So, the theme of the seminar is not some about 'e' as it is about the people and cultural aspects of eGovernment - about the business considerations that have to be addressed and about how the processes and procedures behind the service delivery mechanisms need to be change and nurtured in a professional and planned way. It is, I suppose, about the change implications of eGovernment - reflecting the main issues arising from the first seminar.
Need for success
While it is clear that there would be no eGovernment - ore-anything for that matter - without the kind of computing and communications technology that is revolutionising the world, it is only the enabler of change - it is not the end in itself. But it does really change the context within which business, Government and, indeed, society operates - it opens up all sorts of possibilities for connecting and linking things - sources of information, people, organisations, even Governments - to form new relationships and partnerships and to do new things - not just do old things in new ways.
In the context of public administration, it should prompt us to look again at what we are about - at what we are trying to achieve as public servants - at what we really mean by doing the right thing by the citizen. The difficulty for non-technical people is that they don't know what the possibilities and potential of technology might be - whereas the technology experts don't necessarily focus on what the business - or in the case of public administration - what the service objectives are.
But the secret may lie in a new approach - an approach which starts from a basic understanding and acceptance of the principal of service - a principle to which all of the technology and business strategies point and work towards - in a way that doesn't force the business strategists to think like technologists - and ina way that makes it clear to the technologists what the ultimateaim and mission of the public service organisation, to which they are attached is, all about.
For success, however, it means that everybody 'concerned' with the service must be a party to the principle - and that includes the citizen as a user of services or as a 'shareholder' in the form of a taxpayer - and engaging with the stakeholders presents new challenges to many of us as we shift our focus towards the citizenas a customer.
Most importantly, success is dependent of conviction in what we are doing - in the fundamental obligations we have to the citizen and to each other - and to the drive to transform the model of public service using the power and potential of technology to liberate rather than to frustrate - to serve rather than be served.
Direction of eGovernment
It is interesting to see how eGovernment has been evolving in the relatively few years it has come into our parlance. eGovernment was about web-sites just a few years ago - about putting contact e-mail addresses in written correspondence - and about putting up what amounted to electronic postcards which were really about our perceptions of ourselves rather than about what citizens wanted to know about us . More recently the trend is about more comprehensive service delivery based around transactions and integration of services for the benefit of the citizen.
Today the thinking is moving on and starting to focus on integration or collaboration for more that just service delivery - for policy processing and for internal administration - all of which is being electronically enabled.
Now we're starting to talk about the 'corporate' public service - where there is potential to streamline what we do in, for example, our administrative process - to share good practice and to centralise and share common procedures. There is an emerging need to start scoping out what this new 'transformed' public service might look like - and to devise new strategies to achieve that vision.
There is also an emerging need - again on the service delivery side - to look at the possibilities to tailor services for particular groups or sectors - and you will hear later about an interesting project at the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources focused on servicing the fisheries industry.
Clearly, there is almost endless scope for what can be done -and an onus on all of us to think in terms of change and flexibility in the pursuit of our service obligations.
Conclusion
So, for all of you attending and participating in this morning's seminar, I hope you find the content to be both interesting and stimulating and thought provoking. In saying that, I have absolutely no doubt that we are closer to the beginning than the end of the process of transformation that eGovernment is now all about - and I have no doubt that there will be a need for more of these seminars right across the public sector. I hope too that today will afford an opportunity to identify some of the key issues to be addressed and to permit some in-depth analysis of those issues as they affect you. I wish you well in your deliberations this morning and, again, I want to thank all of you for coming along to this important seminar.
Dublin Castle