The assessment of eNorway from June 2004 summarises the positions of Norway and other countries as shown in various studies. The results show that, in general, the Nordic countries are well positioned, but the results vary depending on the study and its focus.
Source: Norwegian Ministry of Trade and Industry,” Tilstandsrapport eNorge”, June 2004
The United Nations (UN) study is one of the most comprehensive studies available. The ranking is based on several subjects and many statistical indicators in fields such as infrastructure, public net services, and use of services. The World Economic Forum (WEF) report bases its results on 64 variables in 9 fields, focusing on framework and environment for modernisation and use of IT for growth. The Accenture study examines 200 public services and bases the evaluation on the status of these ser-vices. The Economist survey covers a large number of indicators, e.g.
large public investments in infrastructure, IT maturity, and financing.
Besides the statistical indicators, the study also bases its judgements from a reference group. The Taylor Nelson Sofres study focuses on the extent of government services online. It is comprised of a telephone interview with a representative sample of the population. Finally, the ITU Digital
Access Index ranks 178 countries according to criteria such as prices, education, and use of IT.
Another consultant report26, shows that Nordic countries are European leaders in eGovernment, with Denmark, Sweden, and Finland ahead of the pack both in terms of availability of eGovernment services and in readiness of the population to use such services. Challenges that the Nor-dic countries need to overcome include developing internal organisations, designing and integrating applications, and developing standardisation. A large potential is seen in local authorities.
International Experiences in eGovernment
The OECD eGovernment Working Group and the OECD eGovernment Task Force studied lessons from eGovernment initiatives and current experiences in OECD member countries27. They found that the ICT can help in achieving specific outcomes such as improving patient care, and can contribute to broad policy objectives such as reducing government expenditures. It may also be a major contributor to reforms and moderni-sation of the public sector, and can open up the policy process thus build-ing trust and enablbuild-ing citizen involvement.
However, as in the Nordic countries, OECD found several barriers impeding the development of eGovernment. Legislative and regulatory barriers such as accountability frameworks and budgetary arrangements may inhibit collaboration. Another problem is confusion about applicable laws. Furthermore, concern about the digital divide impedes the benefits of eGovernement, and OECD countries show significant differences in access to ICTs and the Internet.
OECD has designed some recommendations for these processes that are summarised below.
Ten guiding principles for successful eGovernement
Vision/political will
1 Leadership and Commitment: Leadership and commitment, at both political and administrative levels, are crucial to managing change. Committed leaders are required to deal with disruptive change, to persevere when benefits take time to emerge, to respond when things go wrong, and to establish visions and plans for the future.
2 Integration: eGovernment is an enabler, not an end in itself. It needs to be integrated into broader policy and service delivery goals, broader public management reform proc-esses, and broader information society activity.
26 IDC, ”eGovernment in the Nordic Region, 2003 Vendor Shares and 2002-2007 Forecast”
27 OECD, “The eGovernment Imperative”, 2003
Common frameworks/co-operation
3 Inter-agency collaboration: eGovernment is most effective when agencies work to-gether in customer-focused groups of agencies. Agency managers need to be able to operate within common frameworks to ensure interoperability, maximise implementation efficiency, and avoid duplication. Shared infrastructure needs to be developed to provide a framework for individual agency initiatives. Incentives can help encourage collaboration.
4 Financing: IT spending, where appropriate, needs to be treated as an investment, with consideration of projected streams of returns. eGovernment requires a level of certainty of future funding to provide sustainability to projects, avoid wasting resources, and gain maximum benefit from given funding levels. A central funding programme could help foster innovation and allow for key demonstration projects.
Customer focus
5 Access: Governments should pursue policies to improve access to online services. Many advantages of online government information and services are not replicable offline, so that those who lack access will be excluded unless action is taken.
6 Choice: Customers should have choice in the method of interacting with government, and the adoption of online services should not reduce choice. A principle of “no wrong door” to access the administration should be adopted. An understanding of customer needs should drive services.
7 Citizen engagement: eGovernment information and services should be of high quality and engage citizens in the policy process. Information quality policies and feedback mechanisms will help maximise the usefulness of information provision and strengthen citizen participation.
8 Privacy: eGovernment should not be delivered at the expense of established expecta-tions of privacy protection, and should be approached with the goal of protecting individ-ual privacy.
Responsibility
9 Accountability: eGovernment can open up government and policy processes and en-hance accountability. Accountability arrangements should ensure that it is clear who is responsible for shared projects and initiatives. Similarly, the use of private sector partner-ships must not reduce accountability.
10 Monitoring and evaluation: Identifying the demand, costs, benefits and impacts of eGovernment is crucial if momentum is to be sustained. eGovernment implementers cannot expect support if they cannot articulate potential benefits.
Source: OECD, Policy Brief “The eGovernment imperative: main findings”, March 2003
Conclusions
The work of developing eGovernment in the Nordic countries includes activities in several areas of such as technology, legislation, organisation, and the market. Some countries and sectors are ahead of others, and there are opportunities for countries and sectors to learn from each other.
The first category includes initiatives to enable various systems in the public sector to communicate safely. Digital signatures, electronic iden-tity cards, standardisation, and technical aspects of communication be-tween different systems are technical questions that need to be handled.
This field has received considerable attention, and intense efforts are solving many of the earlier challenges.
Legislative matters concern the laws that need to be reformed when IT is used as a communication channel between citizens and the public
sec-tor. These questions are also closely connected to technical aspects on security and privacy of personal data. A common complaint is that legis-lation lags behind the process.
Organisational aspects relate to reforms in work processes and col-laboration between organisations. A shared lesson is that interagency collaboration has proven to be a serious obstacle, as is managing the change that accompanies this development.
The Nordic countries have decentralised public sectors that influence both budget systems and culture. Decentralisation contributes to the
“sow-harvest” problem, where benefits do not arise where the costs were invested. One way to reduce this problem is to increase the funding for eGovernment across ministries, agencies, and local authorities.
The organisation of the eGovernment process varies between the countries. The countries have committees, delegations, and other groups that are responsible for working out strategies, action plans, and ensuring inter-ministerial co-ordination. Developing the collaboration between agencies and service providers also requires a structural framework.
Activities connected to the “market”, e.g. development of digital ser-vices based on citizen demand and needs, seem to be neglected. A possi-ble explanation for this is the bureaucratic nature of the participating ac-tors. This may imply less capacity for innovation, but also an administra-tive focus on the process and its goals. More efficient administration is one goal, but IT also has the potential to directly improve the services offered. The “e” is not an end in itself, and focusing only on making the current administrative routines and services available electronically is not enough.
IT in health and social services has the potential to improve welfare while simultaneously improving the efficiency of systems. Budgets are being increasingly strained. Availability and quality of the services need to improve, as does the attractiveness of the sector for personnel. IT does not solve all of these problems, but may offer new opportunities to reduce the strain on the system.
This section describes IT in the health and social services. IT in the health sector is described from the perspective of certain key aspects, e.g.
strategies, security, co-ordination, infrastructure, and applications. Con-cerning social services, the strategies, action plans, and initiatives at the national level are largely covered within eGovernment initiatives, but some services are linked to the health sector. Major efforts have been made in all the Nordic countries and at the European level to develop IT-based services in the health sector.
The aim of this overview is to analyse the extent to which countries and sectors can learn from each other, and to identify the potential bene-fits of co-operation and collaboration.