Local eGovernment is eGovernment

EGovernment

E-Government is digital interactions between a government and citizens , government and businesses/Commerce , government and employees , and also between government and governments /agencies...

 as it relates to local government

Local government

Local government refers collectively to administrative authorities over areas that are smaller than a state.The term is used to contrast with offices at nation-state level, which are referred to as the central government, national government, or federal government...

, police, fire, national park and transport authorities.

Local eGovernment in England

The UK government’s objective was that all of public services in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 should be capable of being delivered electronically by 31 December 2005. The Modernising Government White Paper of March 1999 proposed "all dealings with government being deliverable electronically by 2008." Prime Minister Tony Blair

Tony Blair

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...

 then announced on 30 March 2000 that the target date had been brought forward from 2008 to 2005.

Electronic delivery is defined as delivery through internet protocols and other ICT methods and includes delivery by telephone if the officer receiving the call can access electronic information and/or update records online there and then.

The average local authority achieved a reported 97% e-enablement by 31 December 2005, though it is suspected the actual figure is much lower. The target also applied to the Civil Service, which achieved a reported 96%.

Implementing Electronic Government (IEG) Statements

From December 2001 to April 2006 local authorities were required to publish an IEG Statement on their degree of e-enablement (electronic enablement). The measures include BVPI 157 and the Priority Outcomes.

Best Value Performance Indicator (BVPI) 157

BVPI 157 measures the percentage of 'interactions' provided by a local authority that are e-enabled. The figure must be published annually as part of the Best Value performance management framework. The figure is calculated by considering the following ten types of interaction as they apply to the services provided by the local authority:

• providing information
• collecting revenue
• providing benefits and grants
• consultation
• regulation (such as issuing licences)
• applications for services
• booking venues, resources and courses
• paying for goods and services
• providing access to community, professional or business networks
• procurement

Local authorities may use a proprietary list of services, but are required to validate their list against the Local Government Services List (LGSL).
BVPI 157 forms part of the annual IEG statement.

Priority Outcomes

To guide local authorities in implementing eGovernement, the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions (and its successor the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM)) issued a list of key targets, most commonly referred to as the Priority Outcomes or PSOs (Priority Service Outcomes). The list was issued in the snappily entitled document Defining E-government Outcomes for 2005 to Support the Delivery of Priority Services & National Strategy Transformation Agenda for Local Authorities in England – Version 1.0.
In September 2004, detailed guidance on the Priority Outcomes was issued in the document Priority Outcomes - Explanatory Notes for Practitioners, published by the IDeA (Improvement and Development Agency) and endorsed by the ODPM.

Priority Outcomes are rated with three levels of obligation:

• Required = To be implemented (available for use) by Dec 2005
• Good = To be approved for funding and being actively implemented by Dec 2005 and implemented by April 1, 2006
• Excellent = Voluntary for authorities that have implemented required and good outcomes early.

The following technologies are recommended in Priority Outcomes: Explanatory Notes for Practitioners as those likely to be essential in the achievement of the Priority Outcomes:

• Customer relationship management
  Customer relationship management
  Customer relationship management is a widely implemented strategy for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing,...
  
   system:
  • Customer database (single view of info on each customer, citizen and business)
  • Customer tracking (across access channels and from contact to resolution)
  • Data warehousing (central repository for data, including legacy data)
• Middleware
  Middleware
  Middleware is computer software that connects software components or people and their applications. The software consists of a set of services that allows multiple processes running on one or more machines to interact...
  
   and web services (manages flow of data between all systems, including external)
• Document management system
  Document management system
  A document management system is a computer system used to track and store electronic documents and/or images of paper documents. It is usually also capable of keeping track of the different versions created by different users . The term has some overlap with the concepts of content management...
  
  :
  • Workflow, messaging and e-forms (gets work to the right people at the right time)
  • Document and records management (e-storage of all documents and info)
• Content management
  Content management
  Content management, or CM, is the set of processes and technologies that support the collection, managing, and publishing of information in any form or medium. In recent times this information is typically referred to as content or, to be precise, digital content...
  
   (system for publishing of content to all access channels)
• Security, authentication
  Authentication
  Authentication is the act of confirming the truth of an attribute of a datum or entity...
  
   and smartcards (for security of information)
• e-Payments (system for receiving payments to the council)
• e-Procurement
  E-procurement
  E-procurement is the business-to-business or business-to-consumer or Business-to-government purchase and sale of supplies, Work and services through the Internet as well as other informations and networking systems, such as Electronic Data Interchange and Enterprise Resource Planning.E-procurement...
  
   (system for internal/external buying processes)
• Geographic Information System
  Geographic Information System
  A geographic information system, geographical information science, or geospatial information studies is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types of geographically referenced data...
  
   (GIS) (access to geographical data through maps)
• Local land and property gazetteer (database of land and property information)
• Access channels (websites, call centres, kiosks, digital TV, mobile phones, etc)

Socitm Insight Better Connected reports

Local authority websites are also subject to assessments by Socitm (Society of Information Technology Management) Insight in their annual Better Connected reports.

External links

• ODPM (Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) website
• IDeA (Improvement and Development Agency) website
• Socitm Insight website
• Listings of local authorities and their websites on the Directgov website
• ESD Toolkit by the I&DeA for measuring BVPI 157
• http://www.tfa.net/files/madeleinewestropmarch2009.pdf criticism of eGovernment
• Microsoft Government 2.0 software