Australian Government Future Challenges For Egovernment Volume01

FUTURE CHALLENGES FOR E-GOVERNMENT
Volume 1 of 2
FUTURE CHALLENGES FOR E-GOVERNMENT
Volume 1 of 2
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CONTENTS VOLUME 1 OF 2
Overview John Halligan and Trevor Moore .................................................................................................................................................................................................1 Preface ........................................................................................................................................9
Community collaboration
Local e-government in Western Australia: how prepared are councils to deliver services and interact with communities in an electronic environment? Deborah Stanton ...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................12 Elements of good government community collaboration Raelene Vivian ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................27 The Internet and democracy Roger Clarke........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................47
Multi-channel delivery
The changing role of multi-channel service delivery Trevor Moore and Paula Flynn ....................................................................................................................................................................................................64 A new strategy for micro-business e-business adoption policy Linda Wilkins and Tim Turner ...................................................................................................................................................................................................77
Collective accountability
A realistic approach for developing a whole-of-government enterprise architecture Peter Croger, Roger McShane and Glenn Appleyard .................................................................................................................................90 Making better determinations Peter Johnson and George Masri 102
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The rise of transparency networks: a new dynamic for inclusive government Phil Dwyer .........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................114 Accountability in cross-tier e-government integration Tim Turner ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................128 Accountability in a shared services world Barbara Reed ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................139
Future Challenges for E-government
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CONTENTS VOLUME 2 OF 2
Privacy and legal

Electronic health records for Australia: some legal and policy issues Shaun Gath ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................6 Managing privacy in identity management the way forward Chris Connolly...............................................................................................................................18 E-government legal and administrative obstacles to sharing data held by Australian government agencies Anne Caine ..................................................................................................................................29 Fraud in e-government transactions risks and remedies Milind Sathye, Eugene Clark and Anni Dugdale ............................................................................41
Accessibility
E-government accessible to all Andrew Arch and Brian Hardy ......................................................................................................54 Connecting the dots accessing e-government Anni Dugdale, Anne Daly, Franco Papandrea and Maria Maley......................................................75
Value and evaluation

Value assessment in e-business transformation Peter King, Andrew McWilliam, Paula Flynn and Jane Treadwell. ..................................................92
Organisational and management issues

The e-Volution of the i-Society in the business of e-Government Wallace Taylor .............................................................................................................................108 Centralisation and flexibility in delivering e-services: tensions and complements Robert Smith ..............................................................................................................................126 New government digital government: managing the transformation Lionel Pearce ..............................................................................................................................136
Acknowledgments ...............................................................................................................151
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OVERVIEW
John Halligan and Trevor Moore
This overview introduces the themes discussed in this monograph. A brief discussion of the impact of information and communication technologies provides a context for this review and several connecting themes that have emerged from the project form the basis for concluding observations about information and communications technology-enabled transformation of government.
Impacts of information and communications technology: comparative perspectives

Technology has always been a driver and an enabler for change. In recent years the rate at which information and communications technology has become available has increased. At the same time these new technologies are widely and conveniently available. The ubiquity of the Internet has been a major driver of commercial, governmental, societal and personal change. The early uses of information and communications technology were largely applied to automating existing processes, such as through the Internet. Early uses of web sites focused on the simple provision of information or the ability to download a form. Lately, however, information and communications technology has been used to transform the way in which business is done with a consequent impact on the experience we have of the organisations with which we deal. The term e-business was coined early in the Internet revolution to denote use of or integration of the Internet into the operation of a business. The comparable term in the public sector is e-government. There are many definitions of e-government most of them post hoc but the OECD (2003) definition is the use of information and communication technologies, and particularly the Internet, as a tool to achieve better government. Ultimately, e-government can be seen as being about the availability to citizens of the full range of government activities including policy development (Margetts & Dunleavy 2002). The early implementation of e-government led not only to efficiencies on the supply side that is, to cheaper and often more effective operation but also to efficiencies for the customer. For example, the ability to register a business over the Internet saves business people time and money. The time saved converts into economic opportunity, that leads to greater economic activity and commercial benefit accruing earlier or more quickly. A second major impact of e-government has been the impact on society. Richards observes that the internet forces the public service to operate in a new model: the network model. This new model can have a profound impact on the quality and quantity of relationships that governments increasingly need in an era of growing disenchantment about the public policy process (Richards 2000, p. 1). The theme of strengthening relations with citizens is echoed by the OECD which notes the potential for better policy making and establishment of a core element of good governance. The OECD observes that use of the Internet:
Future Challenges for E-government Overview
allows governments to tap new sources of policy-relevant ideas, information and resources when making decisions. Equally important, it contributes to building public trust in government, raising the quality of democracy and strengthening civil capacity. Such efforts help strengthen representative democracy, in which parliaments play a central role (OECD 2001, p. 2). It seems obvious, in the light of this, to ask how Australias performance compares with other countries. Australia exists within a competitive world. The effective use of information and communications technology is one tool in developing and exploiting our competitive position. Several surveys have attempted to measure our relative position and, while these need to be handled with care, they indicate that, from an e-government perspective (that is, the use of information and communications technology to improve government administration and the interaction with citizens) Australia has been among the leaders.
The topics researched

The discussion above suggests that information and communications technology has a pivotal role to play both in changing the way government carries out its business and in how the commercial fabric of a government jurisdiction is constituted. The focus of these research projects is on the former impact although some contributions address the latter the two are clearly related. There are several models that attempt to explain the way in which e-government has evolved or is evolving. One model portrays the increasing maturity of information and communications technology usage in e-government. The first step into the e-government or online government world is a basic Web presence. Accenture (2003, p. 8) describes three levels of online delivery capability before the final (depicted) stage of service transformation. The word transformation is important. The previous three levels are essentially about automation that is, taking existing processes and computerising them with little or no change. These processes typically exist within a single government department, ministry or agency. One aspect of transformation is that online service transcends organisational boundaries by integrating departmental silos. It achieves what is referred to in Australia as a whole-of-government approach. Government is hampered by large and monolithic legacy systems which are not well-integrated. Retail banks and insurance companies are similarly hampered it is still difficult for most banks to gather all their data holdings about a customer. Government transparency and accountability have long been designed into the system of public administration. But if the transformation of government service delivery transcends traditional organisational boundaries, there are bound to be questions about who is accountable for what. The issue of accountability is, therefore, one of the themes in this monograph. Where the private sector does seem to have made great progress is in the customer experience Internet banking and online grocery shopping are now different experiences to what they were in the past although they are no more than automation of a formerly physical process. Government has also made substantial progress in this area completing an online tax return or paying a parking fine online are different experiences to the old paper-based process. The experience a customer has is conditioned by a number of factors and the debate is often based around the concept of choice. This line of thinking pointed to the need to consider the question of multi-channel service delivery. Usage of the term channel might be extended to cover the ways in which the business and process of government interfaces with those it serves or represents. This introduces the notion of information and
communications technology in general and the Internet in particular as a facilitator of community. Information and communications technology encourages and enables the formation of networks and these networks can change the dynamics of policy making and of political representation. This gives rise to another issue that of community collaboration which is in turn related to the digital divide. The digital divide is an issue of social inclusion and of accessibility if information and communications technology is to become a significant enabler of governmentcitizen exchange we need policies to optimise inclusion. With so much information now available and with the notion of different departments and enterprises working together coming increasingly to the fore, the issues of what is done with information, who owns it, and how it is protected are of vital concern to everyone. Particularly topical is the question of electronic health records storing everyones health information in a single place is a useful thing to do in aiding treatment but there are reasons that people may wish to segregate parts of their records. There may be issues around whether government can combine, say, a taxation record with a social security benefit record. Hence privacy and legal issues are significant. Finally there is the ever-present question of money. Many governments have committed money specifically to e-government. Singapore and the United Kingdom were among countries to allocate funds explicitly to e-enabling services. More cynical observers were prompted to note that eenablement was funded by longer hospital waiting lists or higher taxes. As with all government initiatives, e-government is a trade-off between conflicting demands for limited resources. These trade-offs are made ultimately on the basis of value. Accordingly, the value and evaluation of e-initiatives is an important topic for consideration.
The main messages

Alternative approaches to community collaboration
The international trend is towards online service delivery and greater citizen interaction. It is widely accepted that citizens expect seamless service delivery. But how far has this gone and what can we learn from experience so far? Three papers survey the field, one provides an overview of the spectrum of options and two focus respectively on a single agency and a level of government. In The Internet and Democracy, Clark reviews a range of possibilities under the rubric of e-democracy. These cover e-voting, e-politics and e-government, and community engagement. Vivian dissects the Elements of good government community collaboration. The Australian Taxation Office has redesigned its approach to community interaction by moving beyond consultation to collaboration. This involves community participation in the design of products and services. From this experience a number of principles can be extracted for good collaboration, including the centrality of the user and following an iterative process. A model outlines the several elements, such as mapping pathways a representation of total experience for client segments. A number of tools and processes are available to support collaborative processes. The potential for community engagement might be expected to be strong at the local level. The paper by Stanton, Local e-government in Western Australia, asks How prepared are councils to deliver services and interact with communities in an electronic environment? Her study analyses local government authorities progress towards embracing mature levels of e-government. It seeks to
rank the maturity of web sites using four categories ranging from publication of information through to transactions and engagement of citizens. A cybernetic management model is employed as a basis for mapping change as councils implement aspects of the model. The results indicate that Western Australian councils are beginning to operate cybernetically but an outward focus of active engagement remains limited.
Multi-channel service delivery

Technology has changed the ways in which governments interact with their constituents. These constituents may be grouped into two categories: people and organisations (or groups). There are two papers on this theme: Moore and Flynns The changing role of multi-channel service delivery and Wilkins and Turners A new strategy for micro-business e-business adoption. A third paper Dwyers The rise of the transparency network that addresses factors relating to the interface between the government and the governed, is categorised in the Accountability theme. Moore and Flynn deal primarily with the issue of government relationships with citizens. They argue that we have tended to confuse the term channel as the means of delivering a product to a customer with the technology that enables the channel. They argue that it is the collection of channels independent of the technology that contribute to an interaction experience which is the basis of the new relationship between government as a service provider and citizens as consumers or customers. What is important about the interaction experience is that it changes the nature of the providercustomer relationship. Government as a service provider is but one component of a value network that delivers government policy; customers are not on the periphery of that value network, they are part of it. Wilkins and Turners paper addresses another aspect of the connection between government and its customers, that is micro-businesses (those with fewer than five employees). The paper suggests that the success of encouraging e-business adoption among micro-businesses might be increased by drawing on the multi-channel strategies in the government-to-citizen sphere. Wilkins and Turner argue within a government-to-business (G2B) context, and ask whether it is realistic not to differentiate between large, medium and smaller business in G2B e-business initiatives. Perhaps unsurprisingly they answer in the negative. Their argument is essentially a multi-channel argument based on the importance of customer segmentation. The argument reflects Moore and Flynns observation that the customer/channel/product combination is an interaction experience that needs to be tailored. Wilkins and Turner argue that, as with government-to-customer (G2C) a one-size-fits-all approach cannot be appropriate or practical in the G2B arena.
Accessibility
The rapid growth of the Internet as a major force for change has created a technological divide between sectors of the population. The digital divide is a phenomenon that arises from many factors other than the obvious one of affordability. People with disabilities or impairments and people living with low bandwidth connections are among groups for whom accessibility may be an issue. Both papers on accessibility are concerned with the substantial number of Australians who are unable to participate in Internet services. A starting point is conceiving access in citizen-centric terms that emphasises interaction and recognises diversity. The Dugdale, Daly, et al. paper, Connecting the dots: Accessing e-Government, employs an extended concept of access to cover infrastructure, and the skills needed to use services and provide opportunities for influencing and shaping decisions about e-government. For each of the several dimensions to access
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there is a need for capacity-building through strengthening communities and social capital, and investing in development of specific capabilities. The relationship between changing public sector organisations and e-government raises questions about embedding information and communications technology and the relevance of innovations, such as learning organisations. The focus of Arch and Hardys paper, E-government: accessible to all, is people with disabilities or impairments. Their concept of accessibility focuses on the users capacity to adjust the interface of web and software applications to meet their visual, hearing, dexterity, cognitive or speech needs. The two means discussed are customising options and assistive technology products. Many online services in Australia (and overseas) have been inaccessible because governments have given priority to making information available but neglected interaction with citizens. Accessibility issues include recognising the need for off-line and online channels to be integrated in an entire end-to-end process, industry skills and practice, and enhancing skills. The authors support a number of requirements, such as best practice, multiple delivery channels, accessibility across an end-to-end process and quality assurance systems.
Privacy and legal issues

It is information that is at the heart of the e-government challenge. Gaths paper, Electronic health records for Australia: some legal and policy issues, addresses a specific aspect of privacy and contains a useful summary of the issues relating to ownership of information. Caines paper, E-government: legal and administrative obstacles to sharing data held by Australian government agencies, tackles the consequences of the ownership issue. She refers to an OECD report (2003), which warns that as e-government becomes more significant, an appropriate balance will need to be struck between meeting citizens needs with improved services and protecting their rights. Gath hints at a practical implication of this in his discussion of electronic health records when he comments on the potential benefits that might accrue from establishing a national network of electronic health records. The issue with electronic health records is about ownership. Caine provides a useful review of the types of information held by the Australian Government and surveys the legal and regulatory regime that attaches to handling information of particular types. We also face the issue of identity management which Connolly addresses in Managing privacy in identity management: the way forward. In their paper Fraud in e-government transactions: risks and remedies, Sathye, Clark and Dugdale observe that in online situations, users can disguise their identities. So identity management is a key aspect of privacy. Connolly discusses both distributed and federated identity management and makes the point that electronic authentication is qualitatively different for the public versus the private sector because of governments unique relationship with citizens. The paper notes that many documents used to establish individual user identity lack security. This factor leads to the discussion in the Saythe et al. paper. Fraud in e-government transactions is an issue. It is not, perhaps, so much that fraud is new but that technology enables different kinds of attacks on secure and private systems and information. They conclude by proposing a number of options for reducing cyber fraud.
Collective accountability in a shared world

The major issue here is about accountability issues that arise from the improved targeting capability afforded by new technologies. Better and broader information means government (and the private
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sector) can target their services at people more effectively. In the regulatory sense this means government compliance activity may take place based on detailed information and the ability to fuse separate bits of information to create new information. New challenges for accountability arise when horizontal and cross-boundary processes are prominent. Reeds paper, Accountability in a shared services world, focuses on recordkeeping as a case for examining governance issues. Rejecting as dated the view that recordkeeping is essentially a paper trail, Reed argues that in electronic environments it becomes paradoxically both easier and more difficult. The paper seeks to connect new accountability with the multiple interpretations of shared services. Four forms of shared services are reviewed: intergovernment, interagency, privatisation and outsourcing, and integrated service delivery. Turner addresses the question of Accountability in cross-tier e-government integration, with particular attention to the case of a complex multi-jurisdictional activity. Four types of integrated services are distinguished: service sharing without electronic integration, collection of services by theme, the agency as single service provider, and technological integration of services. Despite legal and political constraints, the supra-governmental organisation can still be viable and subject to accountability through managing oversight (for example, cross-jurisdictional auditing). The paper by Johnson and Masri Making better determinations points to another important impact of the evolution of information and communications technology. As well as improving our ability to store, access, match and combine data, technology enables us to automate some of the decision-making functions of government. Johnson and Masri focus on decisions that determine the rights, entitlements or obligations of people. These types of decision can be the subject of administrative and judicial review, and as they often have significant impact on people and business performance, it is important to get them right and for processes to be transparent. Automation is a sensible option where it can improve performance in cost, quality and/or accountability. Safeguards and dangers are also discussed. The protection of individual (and corporate) rights extends beyond protection of information into the safeguarding and transparency of the processes that use that information. In The rise of transparency networks: a new dynamic for inclusive government, Dwyer examines communities that are networked and that share information and scrutinise public and private organisations. Although the forebearers of transparency networks have been recognised for some time under various names, such as epistemic communities, the recent variants are distinctive. They have several defining characteristics in terms of purpose, organisation structure, operational mode, behaviour and impact. Transparency networks exhibit six dimensions of variability, including goal congruence, compliance mechanisms, scale, issue definition and culture clash. The paper concludes with several broad guidelines. Croger, McShane and Appleyard, present A realistic approach for developing a whole-of-government enterprise architecture, which draws on ongoing work with implementing this approach at the state level. Enterprise architecture offers a roadmap based on a framework that consists of several integrated domains. The approach can facilitate and support interoperability and joined-up decision making.
Value and evaluation

There is one paper in this theme. The way in which e-business initiatives could or should be justified has always been a challenge. The challenge is different for government than it is for the private sector. There are several reasons for this. One is that the notion of revenue (or increased sales) has no direct analogy in
government. A second is that, while a private sector organisation can (in theory) close down certain channels and save money, that option is not open to government. Another reason is that some cost saving options such as sending business processes off-shore are not open to government. Nevertheless, as the King, McWilliam et al. paper on value and evaluation observes, business cases for e-government programs still require the conduct of rigorous demand and value assessments to ensure program improvements are at reduced costs. A key word is value. The challenge of measuring e-government performance has been addressed in several papers over the years most recently by Stowers (2004 p. 9) who states that public sector performance measures are typically quantitative ways of determining the resources that go into providing services (input measures), the immediate results of those services (output measures), and the longer-term results of providing those services (outcome measures). Understanding the relationship between input and outcome is a key component of demonstrating accountability for the effective use of resources and, in particular, determining return on investment.
Organisational and management issues

Finally, three papers focus on a range of organisational issues.Taylor, inThe e-Volution of the i-Society in the business of e-Government, explores the challenges facing government in terms of changes to existing structures from the impact of information and communication technologies. Smith, in Centralisation and flexibility in delivering e-services, explores several fundamental questions about handling complementarity among the components of e-government and balancing centralised management and flexible, accessible services. Ultimately, this represents a move from e-government to e-governance. The cases of two state governments, one in the United States (Michigan) and the other in Australian (Victoria) and recent literature provide the basis for examining infrastructure to support e-government and the importance of governance styles. In the final paper, New government, digital government: managing the transformation Pearce inquires into whether it is possible to define for e-government a suitable, comprehensive, holistic management model. He reviews stages in growth models for e-government and develops change management through an organisational development approach to e-government. The model of intervention involves six steps to mature e-government.
Conclusion: connecting themes

Several themes emerge from these papers.
Citizen engagement
Many papers refer to the way in which the Internet, in particular, but also information and communications technology trends, have made government more immediate and approachable. At one level this is reflected in changes in the way services are delivered both in terms of the channels for delivery and the interactive nature of that delivery. But the levelling power of the Internet is also impacting on the way policy is developed by enabling formation of online pressure groups.
Organisational integration
The recent Management Advisory Committee (2004) report on whole-of-government responses to Australias priority challenges points out that this focus on horizontal issues is the current reflection of the coordination tradition in Australian public administration. Many of the papers in this monograph reflect this point. However, recent advances in technology have thrown the challenges
associated with achieving integration into much sharper relief. These challenges which are both interand intra-governmental are technological, organisational and cultural.
Networked governance
Another impact of the levelling effect of technology is the emergence of value networks. The Management Advisory Committee (2004) observed that most whole-of-government priorities require close cooperation with external groups, such as community organisations, businesses and other jurisdictions. Technology accelerates this need because it facilitates rapid, peer-to-peer (or stakeholder-tostakeholder) communication. The role of the private sector in government service delivery and, indeed, policy development is often overlooked or under-estimated. While the public may traditionally have thought of government as synonymous with bureaucracy, in the future government will be highly networked and delivering outcomes through federations of organisations and agencies.
E-governance
The culmination of these trends, if realised, is a broader conception of e-government that encompasses a range of non-government participants and which addresses the challenges in the complexities of service integration across agencies and governments.
References
Accenture 2003, e-government Leadership: Engaging the Customer, <http://www.accenture.com/xd/xd.asp?it=enweb&xd=industries\government\gove_capa_egov.xml>. Australian National Audit Office 2004, Quality Internet Services for Government Clients Monitoring and Evaluation by Government Agencies, ANAO, Canberra. Management Advisory Committee 2004, Connecting Government: Whole of Government Responses to Australias Priority Challenges, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra. Margetts, H & Dunleavy P 2002, Cultural barriers to e-government, in Building Public Services through e-government, report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, HC 704111, London. Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development 2001, Engaging citizens in public policymaking: Information, Consultation and Public Participation, PUMA Policy Brief No. 10, OECD, Paris. Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development 2003, The E-Government Imperative, OECD, Paris. Richards, E 2000, Lessons from the Network Model for Online Engagement of Citizens: A project by Canadian Policy Research Networks with Public Works and Governments Services Canada, paper presented to the LENTIC Colloquium: Quelle administration publique dans la socit de linformation, Brussels May 1819. Stowers, GNL 2004, Measuring the performance of e-Government, IBM e-Government Series.
PREFACE
Information and communication technologies have been a powerful factor in transforming the way government programs and services are delivered. Sometimes this change is explicit the addition of new web or telephone transaction services. Sometimes it is implicit a closely targeted benefit, grant or taxation program is made possible because of the governments ability to more carefully segment its customers according to their needs and to analyse the information necessary to determine applicability. More change, and greater information and communication technology capacity to support change, is coming. How does Government continue to adapt in an environment of accelerated technological change and additional potential functionality? Does this added functionality impact on how government regards itself and the role it sees itself performing? How does it impact on the governments role relative to citizens and the business sector? As the working environment changes, a greater understanding of the opportunities to use information and communication technologies to improve services and service delivery, is emerging. In considering the impact of information and communication technologies on its future operations, government aims to situate the discussion within an understanding of other elements in its working environment that accelerate or retard transformation. How do these factors interplay in producing a conducive setting for what government wishes to achieve in transforming its services? Mr John Rimmer, the former chief executive officer of the National Office for the Information Economy, was an enthusiastic proponent for stronger collaboration in the e-government area between the government, the Institute of Public Administration Australia and the academic sector. His role in initiating this series of research papers is most appreciated. The Institute of Public Administration Australia (ACT Division) and the Australian Government Information Management Office collaborated to advertise nationally for proposals, and commissioned and produced a series of papers from key people in e-government in Australia. The proposal was for a series of papers that addressed deep and substantive issues in relevant areas of e-government. The papers were to be short, intended to stimulate debate, and encourage progress in a range of e-government areas. The main but not exclusive areas identified were: alternative approaches to community collaboration multi-channel delivery value and evaluation collective accountability in a shared services world accessibility privacy.
Future Challenges for E-government Preface
Each paper was examined by a Steering Committee of eight members made up of representatives from industry, the public sector, academia, the Institute of Public Administration Australia and the Australian Government Information Management Office. The papers in these two volumes have raised a number of fresh issues and extend understanding of some familiar questions. A central element of the project was publication of these papers for the Business E-volution of Government conference held by the Institute of Public Administration Australia on 2627 May 2004. The views expressed in these papers indicate the depth of debate surrounding e-government in Australia. The Steering Committee does not necessarily concur with all the views expressed but believes they make a substantial contribution to the debate in Australia.
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C O M M U N I T Y C O L L A B O R AT I O N
Future Challenges for E-government Community Collaboration
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LOCAL E-GOVERNMENT IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA: HOW PREPARED ARE COUNCILS TO DELIVER SERVICES AND INTERACT WITH COMMUNITIES IN AN ELECTRONIC ENVIRONMENT?
Discussion paper no.1
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DJ Stanton*
Synopsis
Australian governments at all levels are participating in the global trend towards delivering services online and interacting with communities in an electronic environment. The primary focus thus far has been an internal one as governments put in place the management and technology models to support this transformation. As this transformation is achieved, an outward looking phase focusing on citizen interaction and active participation is developing with the thrust past e-government to e-governance and e-democracy becoming more pronounced. Just how prepared are local governments in Western Australia to take up this challenge? In this practitioner-based paper, the attitudes of elected and appointed representatives from all councils in Western Australia towards online service delivery and interacting with citizens in an electronic environment are discussed based on a study undertaken in 2003. A management model to support local e-government is presented and its dimensions used to predict the capacity of Western Australian local governments to implement local e-government. Various themes relating to e-governance and e-democracy, including that of trust, are explored and some gaps between thinking and practice in managing to enable local e-government in Western Australia are discussed.
* Division of Community Development, City of Nedlands, Western Australia. School of Management Information Systems, Edith Cowan University, Australia.
Introduction
Western Australia makes up approximately one-third of Australia and 10.42 per cent of its population. Services are provided through 143 Local Government Authorities, making up 23 per cent of Australias local governments. The median age of households is 34 (WALGA 2003). Some Local Government Authorities are also grouped into voluntary Regional Local Government Bodies, established to provide better service through collaborative resource sharing. Increasingly, citizens are demanding more accountability and transparency in their dealings with government and seamless interaction between government departments to complete transactions efficiently. This has provided a strong and irreversible impetus for the move towards e-government at all levels. E-government has been defined as ... the use of information and communication technologies and particularly the Internet, as a tool to achieve better government (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development 2003). This definition can be further broadened to encompass the application of technology to ... provide citizens and organizations with more convenient access to government information and services; and to provide delivery of public services to citizens, business partners and suppliers, and those working in the government sector (Warkentin, Gefen, Pavlou & Rose 2002, p. 157). Implicit in these definitions is the provision of information and services to citizens online. The components of e-government can be further defined as ... e-access; e-provision; e-delivery; e-policy; e-community and e-democracy (Huang, DAmbra & Bhalla 2002, p. 577). This further definition indicates the citizen-centric context within which egovernment should be placed. The Office of E-Government was established within the Western Australian Department of the Premier and Cabinet in February 2003 in an effort to harness the use of information and communication technologies to transform the public sector. According to its strategic plan, the mission of this office is to transform the operations of government, using technology as a tool, to improve internal efficiency, service delivery to citizens and community participation (Office of E-Government 2003). Various reports by government and business have sought to define the extent of actual and proposed implementation of e-government at a national (Accenture 2001; World Markets Research Centre 2001; UNDPEPA 2002; Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development 2003), state and local government level (DTLR 2002; Multimedia Victoria 2002). For councils traditionally the closest interface between government and citizens use of the Internet is increasingly becoming the medium of interaction, with generations from the baby boomers onward seeing the Internet as the premier business channel. Indeed, the imperative to interact with citizens in an online environment is illustrated by figures for usage of government online services which peak in the 2534 year age group, remaining strong in the 35 44 years age group and then declining (Dexter and Parr 2003).
Providing choice: The interactive component of e-government

The impact of this urgent move towards e-government and its extensions of e-governance, e-democracy and e-participation is that local government is now being required to provide a choice of channels for interaction between itself and the community. The effect of e-government overall and local e-government in particular is thus to aim to provide a more customer-centric service focused on access, choice, and engagement for the citizen.
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A recent United Nations report points out that while e-government services ... have proven instrumental in raising the efficiency and effectiveness of public administration, ... much more has to be done to fully realise their promise and potential to deepen deliberative democracy (United Nations 2003(a)). In seeking to interact with their citizens in an electronic environment local governments must clearly distinguish between the short-term institutional (whether this be physical or virtual) and long-term interactive components of e-government. The interactive component of e-governance seeks to engage citizens and government in dialogue throughout the political process leading to the end product of citizen-centric service delivery (Riley 2003). Its focus is on the way decisions are made rather than the way they are implemented (Marche & McNiven 2003). In so doing, complexities are created for government in its approach to interacting with their citizens and customers in a technology mediated environment. Egovernance and its subsets of e-democracy and e-participation are vital to ensuring the sustainability of the transformation to e-government. Where electronic service delivery is a feature of e-government, electronic engagement and consultation are features of e-governance.
Website maturity
Various inquiries into local government in Western Australia have urged structural reform to enable councils to more efficiently service citizens. Delivering services online through a virtually-extended enterprise has been suggested as a mechanism to achieve this required efficiency through transforming local government into local e-government (Stanton 2002). In this type of enterprise, the council provides services and interaction online while maintaining a physical face, providing a choice of interaction points for its community. In 2001, the Western Australian Local Government Association (WALGA) was successful in gaining $6.6 million funding from the federal Networking the Nation scheme to implement two projects designed to deliver online local government services Linking Councils and Communities and Community Access to the Information Age. Initial funding for the Linking Councils and Communities project was $1.2 million with a further $4.4 million for implementation of later stages of the project. The Community Access to the Information Age project attracted $232 000 funding (Australian Local Government Association 2001). Progress towards local e-government transformation can be aligned with the maturity of council web sites. Generally three categories are used to rank the service maturity of web sites (Accenture 2001): publish (static information and one-way provision of information) interact (capacity for communication is present and a two-way feedback opportunity is available for citizens) transact (capacity for complex interaction, including online transactions is present). Increasingly a fourth category that of innovate is being used for those sites which engage citizens as partners in policy making (Caldow 2004). Characteristics of this interactive/strategic category include providing options for domestic citizen engagement such as e-petition; e-consultation and e-policy to achieve the e service outcomes and priorities of e-citizenship and democratic accountability (DTLR 2002).
New Public Management in the local government context

Considerable debate is now taking place as to the definition and separation of the roles of elected and appointed local government representatives. Council governance is being recast in New Public Management terms. Political and operational management are being separated. Elected representatives
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(the Mayor or Shire President and Councillors) are now viewed as the Chairman and Board of Directors whose role is to set strategic and policy direction. The role of the appointed representatives (the Chief Executive Officer and Executive staff) is to implement this strategic and policy direction operationally. Indeed, the Local Government Act 1995 confers sole operational responsibility on the CEO. Hansen (2001) suggests that in the local government context, New Public Management could be renamed New Public Government, with debate about the extent to which the institution of government is being reorganised using New Public Management principles, along with the administration of government. Whatever the outcome of this debate, the benefits of New Public Management in increased customer focus, transparency and accountability are tangible and present, however clear distinction between the strategic and operational levels is often still an issue, particularly for elected members (Marton 2003). It is also becoming clear that information and communications technologies should not used as an end in themselves, although certainly they will provide New Public Management outcomes of efficiency and effectiveness in government. Rather e-government development must sit within the context of the vision ... of society with which people want to identify and make part of their life experience (United Nations 2003(b)).
Management models for transforming to local e-government: geocentrism versus cybercentrism

What management skills are required to achieve customer-focused outcomes in an e-government environment? Councils are commonly perceived as operating under hierarchical, bureaucratic management models. A recent OECD report (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development 2003) cites various requirements for effective e-government, including leadership, better e-government skills for managers and public-private partnerships. It would appear that a different management model incorporating increased flexibility and a focus on interacting in the virtual, rather than the purely physical, environment is required. In transforming to local e-government, councils are beginning to operate in a new virtual environment, reliant to a far greater extent on information and communications technologies to produce this transformation. This requires implementation of a new management model to support this shift and act as an enabler for this transformation. The cybercentric management model, proposed by Gordon (2000; 2001) is suggested by the author as the new management paradigm for interacting in the local e-government environment. The dimensions of Gordons original cybercentric management model have been adapted for local government (Stanton 2002). In contrast to the old model of geocentric management with its focus on the physical environment and marginalisation of information technology and management information systems from the decision-making process, cybercentric management is designed to enhance customer outcomes through flexibility, efficiency and increased accountability. Its various dimensions support public sector implementation of New Public Management principles to provide outcomes in a digital age as local governments move from a place to a space orientation in interacting with citizens. A comparison of the elements of the geocentric and cybercentric models drawn from Gordon (2001) and adapted for local government by Stanton (2002) is shown in Table 1. The applicability of these cybercentric dimensions as enablers of local e-government is further supported by the inclusion of leadership characteristics and guiding principles for successful e-government implementation derived from the literature as indicated.
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Table 1: Comparison of Gordons Geocentrism and Cybercentrism Dimensions, adapted for local egovernment implementation
Cybercentric model dimension Management Features of Geocentric Management Information Technology (IT) and Management Information Systems (MIS) segregated from the rest of the business. Features of Cybercentric Management IT and MIS brought into key decision making. Single points of entry to multiple agencies allowing the opportunity to interact seamlesslya. Integration of e-government as an enabler into broader policy and service delivery goalsb. Flattening of the organisation with horizontal authority. Accountability, monitoring and evaluationb Strong performance management focusc. Continued next page Cybercentric model dimension Company Goals Features of Geocentric Management Goals/objectives are known and not questioned by management. Features of Cybercentric Management Goals/objectives are elastic and reinvented as the market evolves and changes. Creating innovative solutions for the citizens and businesses serveda. More structured knowledge management strategies to facilitate greater information flows, better knowledge of the customer and a greater sense of organisational identityb. Reengineering business processes to change the way the organisation worksb. Importance of focus on implementation as well as strategiesb. Virtually-extended company understands the agility of e-commercec. Importance of customer relationship managementa. Customer focus providing access, choice, citizen engagement and privacyb. Sustained customer focus and development of improved services, not just improved accessc. The company looks for opportunities to enjoin other companies in mutually beneficial R&D ventures. Inter-agency collaboration in customer-focused groupings. Information and communications technology funding seen as an investmentb. Councils work together and with public sector agencies to deliver e-governmentc. Contract workers and consultancy. Skills required by managers are not solely technical [or administrative] but also embrace facility in participating in the information and communications technology decision-making processb.
Corporate Structure
Broad, hierarchical structure with vertical command.
Market Position
Defined by competition and view of market structure as defined by physical presence.
Competitiveness
The company fights for market share, and bitterly defends its knowledge.
Employment
Lifetime employment.
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Information and communications technology skills and knowledge are essential and should be accessed from more than one person or employment source to build capacity requiredc. Strategic Vision strategic Vision defines strategies according to a limited choice of options. Cyber vision offers a wide range of options limited only by the ability to alter perceptions, intervene, or destabilise existing realities. Vision and implementation. Striking the right balance between political leadership & administrative simplicitya. Vision/political will including leadership and commitment at both political and administrative levelsb. j18
Practical and realistic vision and political will with a change management emphasisc. Notes: a b c Accenture 2001, e-government Leadership: Rhetoric vs Reality Closing the Gap. Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development 2003, The e-government imperative, OECD, Paris. Audit Commission 2002, Message Beyond the Medium: Improving Local Government Services Through e-Government.
E-government drivers and the cybercentrism continuum

There is basic agreement on the drivers enabling transformation to e-government. These include vision/political will; common frameworks/cooperation; customer focus and responsibility encompassing accountability, monitoring and evaluation (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development 2003); strategic investment; and civic engagement (in defining a shared vision of e-government) (InfoDev 2002). These drivers apply equally to global and local levels of government. The cybercentric dimensions described above can thus be seen as required enablers of e-government implementation. Using the cybercentric dimensions of the model, the preparedness of elected and appointed council representatives for e-government implementation can be mapped onto a continuum (see Figure 1).
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Figure 1: The Cybercentrism Continuum

5 cybercentric 4
C E 3 O
2 geocentric 1
Mayor/Shire President Source: Stanton 2002
The continuum is made up of four quadrants, with responses from elected representatives mapped on one axis with corresponding responses from appointed representatives mapped on the other axis.
Testing the management model to support online service delivery

A pilot study was carried out in 2002 among six adjacent councils in Western Australia forming the Western Suburbs Regional Organisation of Councils (WESROC) (Stanton 2002). Cybercentric management was hypothesised as the means to support service delivery through the virtually-extended enterprise. Such an enterprise achieves better customer-focused outcomes through resource sharing, economies of scale, no additional bureaucracy, flexibility and the development of fields of work rather than organisations of jobs, acting as the virtual face of a physical entity (Stough, Eom & Buckenmyer 2000). The pilot study was designed to investigate the attitudes of elected and appointed council representatives towards interacting in an e-government environment and their preparedness to do so based on their level of cybercentrism. The continuum map produced for this pilot group of councils confirmed the anecdotal observation that in transforming to local e-government, councils were moving into a cybercentric management environment.
Results of a survey of Western Australian councils

In 2003 the pilot study was extended to encompass all appointed and elected representatives of the 143 Local Government Authorities in Western Australia. The aims of this were twofold: to assess the level of implementation of the cybercentric management model in progressing towards local e-government to provide deeper information on management attitudes towards the key cybercentric dimensions and their interpretation in a local e-government environment. Survey questions from the initial pilot study, based on the seven cybercentric dimensions of the proposed management model were further refined. The dimension of trust was also investigated, as this has been
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identified as one of the key factors for e-government adoption and citizen uptake (Warkentin et al. 2002), making a total of eight dimensions examined. A total of 134 responses were received. Of these, 84 were from CEOs and 50 from Mayors/Shire Presidents, with 34 paired responses from the same council. The overall cybercentrism of response is shown in Figure 2 below.
Figure 2: Overall comparative cybercentrism of response
Source: Stanton 2004
The average CEO response is 3.77 ranging from 3 to 4.6. The average Mayor/Shire President response is 3.74, ranging from 2.0 to 4.4 with 1 and 5 indicating the geocentric and cybercentric extremes respectively.
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Figure 3: Overall paired response continuum map.
The overall paired response is mapped in Figure 3. These paired responses are clustered almost entirely in the cybercentric quadrant of the continuum map. Finally, the responses were clustered to ascertain the congruence of the questions and the relevant dimension was confirmed confirming the integrity of the survey. The overall degree of cybercentrism of the eight dimensions is shown in Figure 4. This can be used as an indicator of the degree of readiness and probable success of Western Australian councils to implement local e-government. A high degree of cybercentrism in all dimensions indicates a high degree of readiness and high probability of success. As the dimensions become more geocentric, overall or individually, the degree of readiness and the probability of success will decrease. Individual councils exhibiting a high degree of geocentricity in a majority of dimensions are unlikely to succeed in the transformation to local e-government, to the detriment of their citizens.
Figure 4: Degree of cybercentrism exhibited by WA Councils in the eight dimensions surveyed
Mayor/Shire President
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Discussion
There can be no doubt that Australian usage of online services has become part of our way of life. Government funding of programs at all levels, simplification of web sites and introduction of citizenfocused portals has sustained this growth. A corresponding focus on addressing the problem of the digital divide, particularly in regional areas has produced a high level of uptake of e-government services. An average 50 per cent of producers in regional Western Australia use the Internet regularly (Curtis and Stanton 2001). This is confirmed in a study of Internet use in various countries including Australia (Prattipati 2003) where 58 per cent of our citizens had used the Internet in the previous month, 79 per cent of that usage being for online government services. Not surprisingly, this study identified public access to the Internet as the most important factor associated with use of government online services and thereby influencing the implementation of e-governance. Western Australians, in both regional and metropolitan areas, are well placed to use appropriately targeted online services provided through local e-government. An assessment of Western Australian council web sites in August 2002 (Gentle 2002) indicated 50 per cent of councils had a web site. The site rating for these web sites indicated 65 per cent were introductory (corresponding to the publish category); 30 per cent were medium (corresponding to the interactive category) and 5 per cent were advanced with backend integration (corresponding to the transaction category). By December 2003, the number of councils with web sites had increased to 88 per cent. Dexter and Parr (2003) point out that while global Government Online usage has remained relatively stable at 30 per cent in both 2003 and 2002 (up from 26 per cent in 2001), consulting continues to be the least used online service overall at 4 per cent, with no change from 2002. However, Government Online use in Australia in 2003 was 47 per cent (up from 31 per cent in 2001) but stabilising, with 29 per cent using interactive services in 2003 compared to 22 per cent in 2002. Of this figure, 9 per cent was attributable to consulting usage. Similarly, while the global average for transacting and providing increased by 1 per cent to 8 per cent and 9 per cent respectively, the corresponding Australian figures are 20 per cent and 18 per cent. In fact, a recent United Nations report benchmarking e-government in its member states ranks Australia second only to the United States in its implementation of and capacity to develop e-government (UNDPEPA, 2002).
Citizen interaction, customer focus and cybercentrism

Overall, the responses to this study indicate Western Australian local governments are beginning to operate in the cybercentric mode necessary for implementation of local e-government. This suggests that overall the attitude of appointed and elected representatives is moving towards providing an environment for service delivery online and for interacting with citizens in an electronic environment. However, the study shows that different cybercentrism dimensions have been addressed to different extents, which may slow the transformation to local e-government and beyond. Agreement is apparent between elected and appointed representatives on the importance of customer focus, illustrated by the response to the market position dimension. While this dimension is cybercentric, it is clear that the focus is still an internal one, with dimensions relating to internal structure outranking the market dimension in importance. Although numerous councils have developed consultation policies, guidelines and strategies in recent years, the majority of these centre on implementation in the physical environment using techniques such as workshops, forums and information sessions. This raises issues of access and
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equity of participation as well as cost-effectiveness. Physical methods of consultation are costly, however use of e-participation methods is limited. Overall, there is limited readiness as yet within Western Australian councils to pursue an outward focus, actively engaging citizens and businesses, despite an awareness of the importance of the customer. It is also clear that this shift in focus cannot take place while the dimension of strategic vision dimension, with its reliance on knowledge of customer needs, ranks relatively lower than those dimensions with an internal focus.
Trust and cybercentrism

Clift (2003) suggests that Increasing citizen satisfaction and service is the bridging outcome between traditional e-government projects and online efforts to promote participatory democracy. Trust is also a vital aspect in this process, just as it is a central aspect of our economic and societal interactions (Warkentin et al. 2002) and the basis for transparency and accountability, two much-touted outcomes of e-government. Pavlou (2001) shows that trust is one of the four important variables (which also include perceived risk, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use) for predicting the intention to use online transactions. Even in a virtual environment, local e-government is the most intimate level of government for our citizens. For this level of e-government to succeed, it must be preceded by an intention to engage and a lack of trust will inhibit the development of this intention. Marshall and colleagues (2001) point out that a trusting relationship is a fundamental critical success factor in the virtual organisational environment. Cybercentristic management styles, with their emphasis on flattened hierarchies, flexibility and communication flows provide the environment for development of trust. It is evident that development of trust between both internal collaborative and external participative e-government stakeholders must be a condition for effective interaction in this virtual environment. It is important that trust is developed between levels of government offering online services as well as between the government and the citizen in providing that service. The quality of initial local e-government interactions will influence uptake of online services and ultimately the e-participation of the citizen. If trust can be built between the council and the citizen, increasing participation in local e-democracy and eparticipation initiatives will result in improved policy-making and increased citizen satisfaction. This study shows conclusively that elected and appointed council representatives have recognised the importance of trust building in a local e-government environment, with trust emerging as the most cybercentric dimension tested in the study. However, the strategic vision to implement this outcome and interact comprehensively with citizens in an electronic environment is still in transition from the geocentric to the cybercentric. This transition effect is likely to limit the transition to local e-democracy and e-participation as the provision of a wide range of strategic options is limited. New Public Management principles form one of the pillars supporting the move towards e-government at a national, state and local level. They act as enablers of the change from a geocentric to cybercentric management environment in the Australian public service through the transformation of the culture of the public service from a rules-bound bureaucracy to an entrepreneurial and performancebased focus in which the public service is at arms length from the state (Van Gramberg & Teicher 2000, cited in Anderson, Griffin & Teicher 2002 p. 14). A new management model for local egovernment utilising the dimensions of cybercentrism is suggested to support this change.
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Slow progress in developing some of the cybercentric foundations for local e-government
There has been some evidence that implementation of cybercentric principles leads to increasing flexibility in skill sets and a workforce able to do more with less (Anderson, Griffin & Teicher 2002). In the present study, however, it is apparent that the council approach to employment is only marginally cybercentric, with little progress being made away from the geocentric dimension of lifetime employment to the cybercentric dimension of contract workers and consultancy to provide more flexibility in skill sets and staff distribution. This is reinforced by the geocentric attitude towards corporate structure, where a vertical, hierarchical structure is preferred to a horizontal, flattened structure which would provide more flexibility and more options in the field of work. The performance-based and increasingly accountable culture of New Public Management shifts the focus onto citizen satisfaction and the provision of services and opportunities for interaction and participation that enhance this. However, incomplete transformation to the cybercentric management model, with central control maintained in some areas, has led to slower progress, particularly in relation to implementation of e-governance and its subsets of e-democracy and eparticipation.
Conclusion
This study has examined the attitudes of elected and appointed council representatives towards provision of services online and interaction with citizens, placing these attitudes within the wider context of national and global e-government and the requirements of New Public Management. A management model to support the transformation from a physical to a virtual environment and thus implementation of local e-government has been proposed and its characteristics identified. The responses provided by elected and appointed representatives have been mapped on a continuum to visually represent the overall level of implementation of the cybercentric management model. This has established a baseline for progress in implementation of the management dimensions critical to sustainable implementation of local e-government, including local egovernance. Significant levels of agreement are apparent between elected and appointed representatives in all dimensions of the cybercentric management model. However, significant lag in transforming some management dimensions to a cybercentric mode has been noted and it is predicted this will impede the transformation process. If the local e-government effort is to be successful and timely the corporate structure, employment and market position dimensions must become cybercentric to support the development of trust and thus citizen satisfaction. This study shows that Western Australian councils are embracing local e-government and that progress is being made towards implementing the cybercentric management paradigm required for this to be successful. Significant overall agreement between elected and appointed representatives in all dimensions tested indicates an overall harmony in attitudes. The necessity and value of trust and the need to bring technology skills into decision making if information and communications technologies are to be used to improve service delivery is recognised. Recognition of the necessity for collaboration and resource sharing for successful local e-government is also obvious.
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However, while the employment dimension remains only marginally cybercentric and the corporate structure dimension remains geocentric there must be concern about the ability of Western Australian local e-government to provide effective outcomes. It appears that, while elected and appointed council representatives have embraced the ideology of local e-government and its necessity, inconsistent progress is being made across the cybercentrism dimensions overall to ensure a sufficiently flexible corporate structure to deliver cost-effective local e-government. While implementation of Western Australian council web sites has increased by over 70 per cent since August 2002, the majority of sites are no more than transactional at best, indicating councils are still at the initial implementation stages for local e-government and have some way to go in progressing from local egovernment towards local e-governance. Consistent implementation of the cybercentric management model, along with funding and political vision, will be the enablers of this further transformation.
Further work
Further work will analyse and rank council website maturity at the time of the study, thus providing a benchmark for longitudinal study of progress. Case studies and interviews linked to this baseline and implementation of cybercentrism dimensions will be undertaken with regional and metropolitan councils at various stages on the cybercentrism continuum to assess best practice indicators for local egovernment and e-governance in Western Australia.
Bibliography
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Dexter, A & Parr, V 2003, Government Online: an international perspective 2003 global summary, accessed 29 December 2003, <http://www.tns-emnid.com/presse/GO_REPORT_2003.pdf>. DTLR 2002, e-gov@local: towards a national strategy for local e-government: a consultation paper, accessed 14 April 2002, <http://www.odpm.gov.uk/stellent/groups/odpm_localgov_605129.hcsp>. Gentle, C 2002, Connecting across jurisdictions a local government perspective, Sinclair Knight Merz, accessed 27 January 2004, <http://www.wa.ipaa.org.au/papers/chris_gentle.ppt>. Gordon, LA 2000, Cybercentrism: a teleology of knowledge management dynamics, Education at a Distance, vol. 14, no. 10, pp. 340. Gordon, LA 2001, Cybercentrism: the new, virtual management, Management Decision, vol. 39, no. 8, pp. 67685. Hansen, K 2001, Local councillors: between local government and local governance, Public Administration, vol. 79, no. 1, pp. 10523. Huang, W, DAmbra, J, & Bhalla, V 2002, Key factors influencing the adoption of e-government in Australian public sectors, paper presented at the 2002 Eighth Americas Conference on Information Systems, Dallas, USA. InfoDev 2002, The e-Government handbook for developing countries, The World Bank, accessed 25 November 2003, <http://www.cdt.org/egov/handbook/>. Jellinek, D 2000, E-government reality or hype?, accessed 15 April 2002, <http://www.cisp.org/imp/october_2000/10_00jellinek.htm>. Langford, J & Harrison, Y 2002, Partnering for E-government: Challenges for Public Administrators, accessed 28 July 2002, <http://web.uvic.ca/padm/CPSS/PDF/Partnering for Egovernment.pdf>. Marche, S & McNiven, JD 2003, E-government and e-governance: the future isnt what it used to be, Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 7486. Marshall, P, McKay, J & Burn, J 2001, Structure, strategy and success factors for the virtual organization, in S Barnes & B Hunt (eds), E-commerce and V-business: business models for global success, Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford, UK. Marton, RL 2003, The path for top management teams to achieve high-performing council organisations, Australian Journal of Public Administration, vol. 62, no. 4, pp. 5058. Mower, M 2001, Cyber citizens: The electronic evolution in local government, Management Services, vol. 45, no. 4, pp. 1819. Multimedia Victoria 2002, Putting people at the centre: government innovation working for Victorians, Department of State and Regional Development, Victoria. Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development 2003, The e-Government imperative, OECD, Paris. Office of E-Government 2003, Strategic Plan 200305, accessed 28 September 2003, <http://www.egov.dpc.wa.gov.au/docs/stratPlan/FinalstrategicplanJuly.doc>.
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Pavlou, P 2001, Consumer intentions to adopt electronic commerce Incorporating trust and risk in the Technology Acceptance Model, accessed 18 June 2003, <http://www.mis.temple.edu/digit/past_meetings/digit2001/ConsumerIntentionsToAdopt_Digit2001.doc>. Prattipati, SN 2003, Adoption of e-governance : differences between countries in the use of online government services, Journal of American Academy of Business, Cambridge, vol. 3, no. 1/2, pp. 38691. Riley, TB 2003, E-government vs e-governance: examining the differences in a changing public sector climate, Commonwealth Centre for E-Governance, accessed 20 November 2003, <http://www.electronicgov.net/pubs/research_papers/tracking03/IntlTrackRptMay03no4.pdf>. Stanton, DJ 2002, The cybercentrism continuum and virtually-extended enterprises in local government, paper presented at the 3rd International We-B Conference 2002, Perth, Western Australia. Stough, S, Eom, S & Buckenmyer, J 2000, Virtual teaming: a strategy for moving your organization into the new millenium, Industrial Management and Data Systems, vol. 100, no. 8. UNDPEPA 2002, Benchmarking e-government: a global perspective, Assessing the progress of the UN member states, United Nations. United Nations 2003 (a), Status of and trends in the development of e-government, Report of the Secretariat, Economic and Social Council, accessed 25 November 2003, <http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/unpan010302.pdf>. United Nations 2003 (b), World public sector report 2003: E-Government at the crossroads, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, accessed 10 December 2003, <http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/unpan012733.pdf>. Van Gramberg, B & Teicher, J 2000, Managerialism in Local government Victoria, Australia, International Journal of Public Sector Management, vol. 13, no. 5, pp. 476490. WALGA 2003, Western Australian Local Government Directory 200304, WALGA, Perth. Warkentin, M, Gefen, D, Pavlou, P, & Rose, GM 2002, Encouraging citizen adoption of e-Government by building trust, Electronic Markets, vol. 12 no. 3, pp. 15762. World Markets Research Centre 2001, Global e-government survey.
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ELEMENTS OF GOOD GOVERNMENT COMMUNITY COLLABORATION

Raelene Vivian*
Synopsis
Community collaboration on design and implementation of products, services and systems is growing at a rapid rate. Government agencies are now recognising that the process of collaboration is critical to achieving successful interactions with the community. The Tax Offices recent experience in collaborating with the community has enabled a deeper understanding of its clients and their evolving needs, expectations and processes. The Tax Office experience has brought about a focus on community participation in designing products, services and interactions, not just at early development stages, but through to implementation and evaluation. There is a strong recognition that a one size fits all approach will not meet the expectations of the community. The Listening to the Community initiative has provided the Tax Office with the opportunity to develop a model on which good community government collaboration must be based. This model incorporates elements of sound methodology; collaborative tools and processes; community access processes; human capital; client experience/pathway; and assurance processes with client perspective.
* Deputy Commissioner, Ptax, Australian Taxation Office
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Introduction
The Tax Office has a major change program to transform the client experience making things easier, cheaper and more personalised for taxpayers. This is an intensive program which started from listening to the community to understand what changes were important from the communitys perspective. This involved a shift in how collaboration was undertaken from a consultative approach to an approach more focused on user-centred design. These improvements in collaboration have been achieved by evolving usage of information and communication technologies by both government and the community. This paper explores how the Tax Office has undertaken this collaboration with the community in developing the change program, and from this experience a model is proposed detailing the core elements required for good government collaboration and engagement with the community. This model is reflective of the growing expectation of government agencies to provide products that: better meet the community needs are personalised to their circumstances are available with quicker turnaround times can be continuously improved once implemented are safe, in terms of security and privacy.
Lessons from government community collaboration

Tax Office Listening to the Community project
Listening to the Community was established in March 2002 by the Commissioner of Taxation, Michael Carmody. The Listening to the Community project aimed to find significant improvements to the Tax Offices systems to make tax easier, cheaper and more personalised for the community. To deliver these improvements, the Commissioner was adamant that the Tax Office listen to the community, understand their issues and work directly with the community to design solutions to their issues. Listening to the Communitys user-based design involved 30 user clinics, eight creative retreats and 54 user observations, using activities that followed the discover, invent and evaluate process of user-based design (see Figure 1). At each stage of the process there was strong collaboration with users of the tax system. The process was based around three community segments individuals, small businesses and tax agents.
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Figure 1: Overview of the activities
Discover
Small business
Invent
Evaluate
Tax agents
Individuals
Does the ATO currently listen and respond to the community?
Ideas
Plans
Prototypes
Validation
Has Listening to the Community made a difference?
Benchmark survey A baseline quantitative survey for the community and ATO staff, to be used to evaluate whether the co-design process achieves its goals.
30 user clinics The clinics aim to understand key tax administrative issues from a user perspective. Each clinic involves 68 members of a target group and a similar number of ATO staff. Each clinic takes about a day.
8 Creative The retreats aim to develop prototype tax admin products and approaches based on taxpayer priorities. The agenda for each retreat is set by the results of user clinics. Each retreat lasts two days and involves about 30 people from the community and ATO.
54 User The user observations test the prototypes developed during and after creative retreats.
Survey A survey to measure the impact of the listening initiative.
The discovery stage of the process employed user clinics to understand client needs and thoughts on ways in which tax administration could be improved. Participants for these exercises were drawn from the community and discussions took place behind a glass wall, enabling Tax Office observers to listen, but not participate in the discussion. The result of the user clinics was a set of irritants and suggestions from the perspective of community participants. The invention stage also required heavy community involvement with the Tax Office to work with it at creative retreats on the design of possible Tax Office products to address issues raised in the user clinics. These issues were clustered and prioritised to provide a basis for solution design in the creative retreats. Creative retreats comprised retreat leaders, facilitators, designers, Tax Office staff, third party providers and the community. The retreats defined the broad outline of new products, which then required project work to progress. Evaluation of the products developed through the first two stages was undertaken through user observations. These observations provided the Tax Office with the opportunity to validate the products by watching users interact with prototypes. Validation took place over three stages testing the prototype, refining the prototype and reviewing the manufacture and delivery methods. Prior to the operational release of any product, one-on-one interviews with target groups were held, providing the opportunity to further refine the prototype before launching. The solutions developed from Listening to the Community are driving a major change program currently underway in the Tax Office. Different segments proposed different products and solutions. These solutions have been formally published in Making it Easier to Comply (August 2003) which outlines the Tax Offices commitment to implementing the products developed through Listening to the Community, including a list of each of the experiences clients, by market segment, can expect from the Tax Office .
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The Tax Office learnt from Listening to the Community and the subsequent Change Program that community collaboration in design is an evolving process. As the Tax Office continues to develop products and services to improve clients experience with the tax system, it has been necessary to continue refining design methodologies, collaboration processes and build and enhance tools to assist in engaging the community. The Tax Office will continue to improve how it engages the community as additional products and client experiences are included in the Change Program to address shifts in community needs, the availability of improved technology and the introduction of new tax laws.
Learning from these experiences

Listening to the Community, with its associated collaborative design approaches, was fairly extensive in terms of the numbers of clients engaged in the process and the facilities and resources employed. The scale of this exercise was, in part, a function of the need to provide visibility and promote good community relations, as well as the need to employ a methodologically sound and effective collaborative process. However, other researchers in the field have confirmed that the underlying discovery and design philosophies employed could be pursued, in appropriate cases, using less extensive approaches. Particularly in the case of cyclical or other amendments to existing products and the redesign of products a great deal can be discovered about the performance of existing products through one-on-one close observation of a client engaging with the product. The point about raising the issue of these additional techniques is to indicate that many of the important advantages and benefits of the collaborative processes advocated in this paper, can be achieved through lower scale, lower cost and less resource intensive processes. However, judgements about methods must be made taking into account all aspects of the problem or issue to be dealt with, while at the same time ensuring the methodological underpinnings that ensure collaboration in discovery, design and testing are carried into every choice of approach. From this case study and other collaborations undertaken by the Tax Office, it is apparent that there is a need to find ways to closely work with the community to understand their needs, perspectives and capabilities. The most important learning has been the need to understand collaboration and design from the perspective of the community of users, understand how any proposed changes will impact the way they do their business and interact with the Tax Office. The community must also have a sense of trust in the agency and the process that it is worthwhile them contributing to the collaborative process. To engage the community, the government must make contributing as easy as possible for citizens, for some this means traditional methods of consultation such as public meetings and hard copies of documents. However, the evolving direction of community consultation provides scope for relying more heavily on information and communication technology products such as web sites, SMS and email. There is also some argument for using a clearly identifiable figurehead to encourage the community to engage in the process. Most importantly though, is the need for government agencies to work together and find ways of integrating their products and services from the perspective of the community. There is strong evidence to suggest that citizens expect seamless service delivery from government agencies and want services delivered in clusters, rather than the silo approach. There is a need to treat citizens in segments and recognise that blanket treatment will not meet the expectations of the community (Andrulis & Hirning 2002). For example, the Tax Office has approached collaboration in design by considering taxpayers as part of a respective segment. A portal for tax agents has been developed to provide tax agents with a seamless point of entry and communication with the Tax Office. The
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Tax Agents Portal enables tax agents to send and receive secure messages, view client accounts and ultimately will allow tax agents to request payments and transfers between client accounts.
Principles for good government collaboration

Principles can be drawn out from this case study which underlie how government can approach collaboration with the community. The following Tax Office design principles evolved through development of the Integrated Administrative/Taxation Design approach and are fundamental to improving the community experience.
Take a user-centred approach

As the community is the end user of most government products and services, it makes sense for government agencies to fully understand the community needs, values and expectations as changes are made. Taking a user-centred approach to design facilitates creating products and services that are easier, cheaper and more personalised for the community.
Make the emerging design visible early

For collaboration to be a fast, energetic process the community must be engaged to move with the government quickly towards a shared product design goal. Producing design documentation and prototypes provides both the community and the government with a practical and tangible focus as well as providing a powerful way to engage in the collaboration and progress the design together. Information and communication technology can assist in both prototype development and engagement processes.
Work collaboratively in interdisciplinary teams

A key feature of successful collaborative design is the core design team, comprised of people with diverse expertise who are all motivated to improve the communitys experience with government products and services. It is imperative that the core design team has representatives of the voice of intent, the voice of experience and the voice of design. Without all three voices, the success of the product is jeopardised and there is potential for poor integration between different, yet related systems and products (see Figure 2).
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Figure 2: Three voices of design

The Three Voices of Design must be represented in any collaborative design process. Failure to listen to a voice will result in a product, or solution that is unstable and unlikely to be sustainable The Voice of Intent is often represented by the Projects Sponsor. This voice has an unwavering understanding of the intent of the project and has responsibility for ensuring that the intent is realised
Voice of Intent
Voice of Experience
The Voice of Experience is represented by the internal and external users of the product. This voice provides a detailed understanding of the issues and can identify solutions
Voice of Design
The Voice of Design is represented through Design Facilitators, Information Designers and User Researchers and has responsibility for ensuring design principles are followed through the project
Build a shared understanding of intent

In any governmentcommunity collaboration the intent, that is the specific concrete purpose of what government is trying to achieve, must be made clear. Collaborating to design a change must ensure the delivery of intent which means both community and government representatives involved must have a shared understanding of what they are ultimately trying to achieve, and they need to maintain that shared understanding over time as the intent invariably evolves.
Follow a disciplined yet flexible process

It is important to have some basic processes to follow in any collaboration leading to design of new products and services. It is essential these processes stay true to the design principles and achieve higher quality in less time ensuring that intent is understood and shared; a blueprint is developed of the overall design; specific products or services are designed and built; and products and services are tested to ensure they deliver on the intent and are implemented.
Design the entire change up front

In any collaborative process an overall plan of the entire change is necessary to measure and evaluate the quality of the designed change and to ensure that the intent has been delivered. A blueprint provides a description of how the intent will impact on the community and also provides internal focus for the government agency detailing the business processes that will support the products and services and the impacts on agency staff and technology. An understanding of community infrastructure is also necessary. For instance, an electronic solution may not be viable if only a small percentage of the community can interact electronically with the agency.
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Elements necessary for good government community collaboration

From these six principles, the model (Figure 3) showing key elements for good government community collaboration has been developed.
Figure 3: Key Elements of Government Community Collaboration
Design methodology
Many collaborative processes with the community leading to large scale change involve collaborating on design, ranging from the broad level of the overall change to the detailed development of the new product or service. It is important that the overall design methodology is articulated and incorporates how the community will be engaged in the process from end-to-end. Three principles contribute to achieving optimal user centred design. They are:
Early focus on users
The user should be the starting point in any collaborative process. There must be a deliberate intention to understand the user, the context in which they work and how this may be impacted by any proposed change. This includes understanding how users think and feel, not just what they do, or say they want. Effective product design involves users at all stages, from concept options to prototyping to building and testing. This saves time and effort and can avoid disasters by highlighting issues and problems before it is too late for corrective action. User input at the end of the process can be helpful to refine minor design features but will only confirm a failure if the product design has been based upon flawed assumptions. Over time the involvement of users in the design process changes, from providing information to evaluating progress, as the internal design team gradually develops a deeper understanding of user needs and wants, and how the product can respond.
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Regular testing
Testing the product with the community at various stages through its development, from early concepts to final prototypes, allows both quantitative and qualitative information to be fed back into the design process. This is to ensure usefulness (does the product do what it is designed to do?) as well as usability (do the sort of people likely to use it, actually find it easy to use?). The nature of testing changes as it seeks to answer different questions about the product always aiming to ensure quick gains can be made from limited effort.
Progressive refinement
Collaborative design is an iterative process, it is neither neat nor linear. This provides opportunity to increase knowledge about the community and what it will do with your products, in doing so enable modification, re-shaping and refining of the design. User-centred design is a standard practice in the design of leading computer software and other humanmachine interfaces. The Tax Office has developed a design approach to product design called the Integrated Administrative/Taxation Design approach. This approach is outlined in more detail at Attachment A. Consideration also needs to be given as to how the design methodology links in with other delivery methodologies (for example, systems development methodologies, project management methodologies) and that these methodologies support the process of community engagement, both in terms of the outcomes and the process.
Collaborative tools and processes

Government agencies need to have a range of tools and processes available to undertake community collaboration. The selection of the most appropriate tool and process will need to consider the scope of the overall collaboration being undertaken. Consideration should be given to: stage of collaboration supporting technology available to both the agency and the community time available for the process level of confidentiality required in the collaboration providing an overall picture of the change from beginning to end impact of the change on the other interactions the community may have with the agency on other business processes they may undertake the need to encourage direct dialogue between the community and the designers of the change. The following describe some tools and processes being used by the Tax Office to support their collaboration with the community.
User clinics
User clinics are generally used in the early stages of the collaborative process as they provide fast qualitative information on the needs of the community. During a user clinic, members of the community are invited to share their views, whilst the Tax Office simply listens.
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User observations and usability tests
User observations and usability tests enable the Tax Office to directly observe the users interacting with the products and services. User observations provide the Tax Office with the opportunity to evaluate and validate prototypes of products and services developed during co-design workshops and creative retreats.
Co-design workshops
A co-design workshop brings together the Tax Office and the community to focus on developing products, rather than generating ideas. The workshops, often referred to as creative retreats, provide a making opportunity, providing a structured, yet engaging way to harness community creativity, focus on exploring problems as well as develop new ideas and test concepts. CO-DESIGN WORKSHOP SIMPLIFIED TAXPACK The Listening to the Community initiative in the Tax Office surfaced the idea of a simplified tax form for people with simple tax affairs. Two workshops were held in February 2003 in Canberra and Melbourne. The participants worked together to create prototypes of a simplified TaxPack. TaxPack was evaluated what is good and bad about it? Then ideas were generated through focusing questions such as: What look and feel would you want? What features should a simple TaxPack have? What should the content be? Feedback and brainstorming of these ideas were used to create and refine a series of prototypes. It was done hands-on using felt tip pens, paper, scissors, tape and glue a messy but fun process. The resulting prototypes were developed into two trial simplified TaxPacks. A pilot program was run in August 2003.
Walkthroughs
A walkthrough is an exhibition that assists the community to understand a proposed change by presenting the information visually, allowing the users to easily navigate through the exhibition and choose the level of detail they want. A walkthrough can act as a stimulant to conversation between the agency and the community. WALKTHROUGH CONSOLIDATIONS PROJECT The Consolidations walkthrough provided a conversation for potential users of the new consolidation legislation and the tax officers who would be implementing it. It was broken into colour coded segments and the information was presented in three distinct levels a descriptor, a summary and a detailed explanation. This allowed attendees to easily skim content and choose the level of detail they required. Tax officers were available at each area of the walkthrough to help participants make sense of the displays. It was also used to showcase consolidation products, so developers were on hand to answer questions.
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A user testing breakout area was designed as part of the walkthrough which enabled the clients to user test some of the products. The exhibition was held Australia-wide so it was designed to be flexible enough to be reconfigured to venues of different shapes and sizes and easy to assemble and dismantle.
Prototypes
Prototyping is the act of making early iterations of the design of the product or service available to be discussed between both agency and community. The key with prototyping is to do it early and often, prototypes must be able to be built and modified easily, cheaply and quickly. Too much time spent trying to perfect a concept can result in unworkable divisions within the agency and community.
Surveys/questionnaires
Use of information and communications technology in surveys and questionnaires may include the use of online surveys. Online surveys are especially useful when looking for the communitys reaction to visual products such as letters and forms. At this stage the number of users with access to online surveys results in a sample which is not accurately representative of the population. However, it is possible to compare the population of online users to the general population of Australia and use demographic information to weight accordingly.
Scoping room
One of the challenges agencies have in designing collaborative processes is understanding the overall impact of the change, the impact on all the client segments, agency operations and infrastructure, as well as client infrastructure and compliance costs. Tools to assist in understanding the overall complexities and iterative nature of designing the change at an early stage of collaboration, both from an ongoing perspective and client perspective are being developed. An example of such a tool is a scoping room. A scoping room provides space for mapping and better understanding likely and potential impacts of change on community segments and current agency products, services and infrastructure. The Tax Office has recently developed a scoping room, details on this room are available at Attachment B.
Simulation centre
Agencies are starting to develop or access simulation centres. Simulation centres allow the whole client experience to be tested and observations of all parties involved in the interaction undertaken. Simulation centres bring the designers and users together into a common space that provides creative support and the ability to share experiences. These centres enable agencies to simultaneously test the communitys experience with the product, while at the same time testing the experience of the internal users. For example, the Tax Office has been able to concurrently conduct tests on both internal and external users of proposed telephony improvements. The Tax Office has recently opened a simulation centre in Brisbane, details on the design of this simulation centre are available at Attachment B.
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Community access processes

It is becoming essential for agencies to understand and identify the community they need to involve in collaborative processes. Agencies need to develop processes which enable them to: identify areas of the community to involve in collaboration recruit users from relevant sections of the community to be involved in the collaborative processes track users involved in collaborative processes. Agencies use both in-house methods of recruitment and external suppliers such as marketing and surveying consultants. Agencies also need to build a knowledge of core intermediaries, lobby and community groups which can also assist in leveraging community engagement.
Human capital
The changing government community collaboration processes are demanding a shift from the traditional public service skills to those skills more immediately associated with collaboration and design. Some areas of new skills required to support collaborative processes with the community include user research and testing, design facilitation, as well as product and information design skills. All four skill sets work closely together to ensure the collaborative processes and tools employed are being utilised and managed effectively. The role of the design facilitator is to guide the collaborative process through working with the community to synthesise and clarify its needs and requirements in the design of new products. The design facilitator is responsible for drawing together the community and the design team to develop the products, services and processes that will support not only the community, but will be sustainable and cost effective for the organisation. User research and testing skills are required to assist in identifying community needs and experience with products and services. User researchers and testers employ a range of human-centred testing and research methodologies, market segmentation and analysis, simulations and usability testing to determine if the product or process fits naturally with the community. Information design skills are necessary to document the outcomes of the collaborative processes such as user clinics and creative retreats. Information designers have the ability to create visual representations of complex concepts, ideas and conversations. Product designers are usually information technology experts, capable of designing the product, process or service to fit the intent of the community.
Client experience/pathway
An essential element of good collaboration is an understanding of the communitys experience and interactions with government and the wider system. The Tax Office has developed this concept by mapping user pathways for identified client segments. A pathway is a representation of the client segment experience of the tax system comprised of several interrelated layers and components. It then reflects the clients perspective, the elements of the tax system that apply specifically or are used significantly by that segment, the products and services that support those elements and supporting documentation that includes government policy relating to the segment. Pathways also include a description of the community segment and a rationale for why the segment is important to the agency.
Future Challenges for E-government Privacy
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The advantage of a pathway is that it assists in understanding the total user experience, not just an experience of individual products and services. It also helps to identify gaps and duplications in products and services, alternative delivery channels and leverage points, as well as analysis of the impacts of the introduction of a new proposal. User pathways also assist to identify potential partnerships and synergies, as well as to identify areas of particular complexity, inconsistencies and unintended consequences. The following example of a pathway (Figure 4) was prepared by the Personal Tax business line within the Tax Office. The focus of the pathway developed reflected the interactions of the seniors segment of the individuals market. The illustration represents the three high-level phases within the pathway and a more detailed picture of the decisions involved in one of these phases.
Figure 4: Personal Tax Seniors Pathway
SENIORS PATHWAY
Issues Interactions: Tax and social security issues Interactions: Others Products
Preparing
Transition
Managing
MANAGING RETIREMENT
ISSUES: AS I GET OLDER, MY CIRCUMSTANCES ARE CHANGING
INFORMATION AND SUPPORT

Who can I trust? Who can I ask for help? How do I know Im making the right decision? What if I make the wrong decision? Where can I get more information?
LIFESTYLE How will I cope with the changes in may life? ATTITUDES
Need for Support Need for reassurance Dignity Dont want to be treated like a childor patronised Im more afraid of making a mistake Ive earned the right Im entitled I dont want to have to worry about money My financial resources are diminishing Death/Incapacity of partner. My health is deteriorating. Estate planning Living Arrangements Independence Housing Options Technology
Charities
Church
Family
Friends
Government Agencies
I worry that I wont be able to cope with change
Complex concepts
Assurance processes with client perspective

Understanding the total client experience involves assessing impacts during development of a changed product or service and providing assurance and evaluation of the changes. This evaluation must sit alongside additional assurance processes, such as project management assurance. As government agencies engage the community in collaborative design processes, it is essential that assurance processes are put in place to ensure the intended client experience is reflected in the final product or service. As part of the Tax Offices Change Program the reporting focuses on the progress of the delivery of the client experience. This form of reporting on the end client experience enables scope or product changes to be identified early in the process. Assurance and evaluation must be an iterative process to ensure the messages heard in collaboration retain their validity over time. An iterative process involving rechecking the understanding of the desired client experiences is essential, without it there is a risk of producing products or services that are inconsistent with the original governmentcommunity intent.
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Future challenges for government agencies

Most government agencies are involved in some form of community collaboration, both to support increasing government desire to better reflect community needs in design of future changes and to reflect a community with growing expectations of its involvement in the design of new products and services. Government agencies are constantly evolving their collaborative approaches with the community some agencies, such as the Tax Office, are radically redesigning their approach. However, whilst much progress has been made there are a number of emerging challenges for government agencies to consider, such as: technology divide as the gap in the community widens this will impact both the collaborative approaches and design of solutions using information and communications technology required to support the community the tension between the community desire for personalisation to their circumstances with the community wide services and products that agencies need to deliver the ongoing demand for cross agency and government collaboration the ability of agencies to organise collaborative approaches for common customers to effectively collaborate across agency organisations, processes, information technology systems to provide a holistic approach from the citizen perspective the ability to capitalise and learn from other agencies, share tools and processes to both encourage improvements in collaborative approaches with the community and maximise overall efficiency for government agencies in undertaking these processes the ability of collaborative approaches to keep pace with the community environment long lead times between delivery of the change and initial collaboration mean community requirements need to be continually retested and reflected in the product or service under development. Government community collaboration will need to embrace all six elements of the community collaboration model. The ongoing challenge will be to maintain alignment across the six elements whilst ensuring the community both maintains confidence in the collaborative process and their ability to contribute. The criticality to this approach will be the ability of government agencies to understand how the community will be impacted in terms of both their dealings with the government agency and also the business of the community.
Glossary
Retreat Leader Clients Facilitators Information Designers Tax Office staff Third Party Providers Focus Group Generally a Tax Office Senior Executive Service (SES) officer and product owner. Determines boundaries of retreat and manages expectations Members of the community External facilitators supplied by the Tax Offices research company Specialists in representing group ideas visually Tax Office staff provide tax technical expertise and are actively involved in the design process Third party providers help to identify possible technology driven solutions as well as describe the constraints A discussion with a group of users about a product or an idea usually run by a facilitator
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Paper Prototyping/ Mock Up Electronic Prototyping System Prototyping Walkthroughs User Interviews Stakeholder Interviews Group Collaborative Design Sessions Contextual Interviews Expert Interviews Usability Evaluation (including Usability Walkthroughs, Usability Tests and Heuristic Evaluations and Protocol Analysis) Business Simulation (including Business Capability Testing)
Working with users to create paper based designs for new products Working with users to test/design electronic versions of systems (eg using HTML or Powerpoint) Working with users to test/design electronic versions of systems (eg using HTML or Powerpoint) A visualisation exercise with a group of users where they are taken through the proposed user experience One on one interviews with users and stakeholders One on one interviews with users and stakeholders Interactive workshop with users, designers and project team members Sitting with a user and observing them doing their work/activity and asking questions or discussing their actions Evaluation of the usability of a product by a Usability Expert Evaluation of a product, process or system by the users whilst they are being observed interacting with the product. Heuristic Evaluation and Protocol Analysis involve a more detailed look at eye movements, facial expressions and number of mouse clicks Evaluation of the User Experience (end to end) in a realistic production like environment
Acknowledgments
John Body Dick Buchanen Lindsay Burgess Michael Davies Sonia Dickinson Jim Farris Philip Fisher Tony Goldsby-Smith Kerryn Gourlay Fionna Granger Peter Jones Darren Menachemsom Dr Claude Rakisits Darryl Rhea Alison Towler Joan Young Assistant Commissioner, Information Management, Change Program, Australian Taxation Office. Contributor to Australian Taxation Office, Design Conferences Director, Simulation Centre, Business Solutions, Australian Taxation Office. User Research, Business Solutions, Australian Taxation Office. User Research, Business Solutions, Australian Taxation Office. Contributor to Australian Taxation Office, Design Conferences IT Strategy, Information and Communication Technology, Australian Taxation Office. Contributor to Australian Taxation Office, Design Conferences Business Solutions, Australian Taxation Office Director, User Research, Business Solutions, Australian Taxation Office. Assistant Commissioner, Business Solutions, Australian Taxation Office. User Research, Business Solutions, Australian Taxation Office. Department of Defence. Contributor to Australian Taxation Office, Design Conferences User Research, Business Solutions, Australian Taxation Office. Managing Director, Colmar Brunton Social Research
Special thanks to Leah Ross and Amanda Kingston of the Tax Office for their contributions to developing this paper.
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Bibliography
Alben, L 1997, At the Heart of Interactive Design, Design Management Journal, summer, pp. 926. Andrulis J & Hirning K 2002, Collaborative Government Services: Building for the Future, IBM Institute for Business Value, <http://www-1.ibm.com/services/strategy/e_strategy/collaborative.html>. Australian Taxation Office 2000 (December), Reforming the Tax Design Process: A blueprint for building an integrated tax design capability, ATO, Canberra. Australian Taxation Office 2002 (April), The Guide: applying an integrated approach to tax design, ATO, Canberra. Australian Taxation Office 2002 (August), Stakeholder Relations: Development of a Stakeholder Management Framework, ATO, Canberra. Australian Taxation Office 2002 (December), Listening to the Community ... the journey, ATO, Canberra. Australian Taxation Office 2003 (July), Personal Tax Individuals Pathways, ATO, Canberra Australian Taxation Office 2004, Observing Users, ATO, Canberra. Australian Taxation Office 2003, Project Management Lessons from Listening to the Community, Draft Version 3. Department of Defence 2000 (June), Defence Review 2000 Our Future Defence Force, Public Discussion Paper, Department of Defence, Canberra. Department of Defence 2000 (September), Australian Perspectives on Defence: Report of the Community Consultation Team, Department of Defence, Canberra. Department of Defence 2003 (April), The Australian Defence Force: Capability Fact Book, Department of Defence, Canberra. Hodgkinson S 2003, e-Government Strategy: taking e-Government beyond transactions, e-Government Strategy & Policy, Multimedia Victoria <http://www.egov.vic.gov.au>. Market Research Society of Australia 2001 (June), Internet Workshop Papers, presentation, Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra. National Office for the Information Economy 2003, The Current State of Play 2003, NOIE, Canberra, <http://www.noie.gov.au>. State Services Commission 2003 (June), Government.nz@your.service: New Zealand E-government Strategy, <http://www.govt.nz>.
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Attachment A
Australian Taxation Office Integrated Administrative/Taxation Design

Integrated Tax Design (ITD) was born from the Review of Taxation in which it was recommended that a more open process of consultation and co-design be used when designing taxation policy. The review recommended that legislative and administrative design be treated and managed as a single end-to-end design process. The Tax Office has responded by developing the Integrated Administrative/Tax Design Wheel (IAD Wheel) which provides a graphical representation of the operational design capabilities which must be applied to each tax, or administrative design project. The IAD Wheel (Figure A1) consists of six stages, some overlapping in recognition that system changes rarely follow a linear progression and that the system is multi-faceted and unpredictable and allows the design of systems which are interdisciplinary, user-centred and co-designed.
Figure A1: Integrated Administrative/Tax Design Wheel
Stage 1: Formulate intent

The first stage of the IAD methodology is initiation of the design project. It focuses on building a shared understanding of the project why it is needed and how, in general terms, the project will come into existence. Stage 1 involves several steps which include exploring the current situation (A), imagining an improved situation (B) then developing a hypothesis to move from A to B. The second step involves securing a sponsor, usually in the form of a senior officer within the Tax Office. The third step involves promoting the intent and preparing initial Policy Intent and Scoping Brief documentation. Stage 1 is concerned with clear articulation and developing a shared project intent to ensure the success of the project.
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Stage 1 requires the participation of clients in user clinics, consultative forums and community events where it is possible for the designers to build an understanding of the issues concerning relevant groups of taxpayers, other users, intermediaries and industry bodies.
Stage 2: Create blueprint

The goal of Stage 2 is to create a clear and coherent picture of how the proposed change will look when implemented. The blueprint provides a picture of how the proposed change, or system will work it is the conceptual design of the proposed change to the system-in-use. The elements of the blueprint include further developing the hypothesis of how the intent will be realised in all aspects of the overall design. The other elements of the blueprint include identifying the users who will experience the system firsthand and use its products; developing a list of the products and services that will be available to support the users experience of the system; the delivery mechanism or processes that will deliver the products and services; the connections between the proposed system and existing or new products that could impact on the users experience; and evaluating the costs and success of the design from the perspective of both the users expectations and the organisations goals. Developing a user pathway is a primary objective of Stage 2. User pathways provide a graphical representation of the sequence of experiences the user will have, either in making the transition to the new system or in ongoing interaction with it. Stage 2 involves user participation in focus groups, discovery interviews and observation to help the organisation understand which users are likely to be impacted and how they will be impacted, as well as to understand users experiences and behaviour.
Stage 3: Design products

This stage involves designing products which interpret and deliver the intent established in Stage 1, as well as supporting the user pathway determined in Stage 2. Stage 3 requires establishment of a product design team, a review of the intent documentation prepared in Stage 2, identification of stakeholders and preparation of a timeline for delivery of the changes. The user participation in this stage includes focus groups, discovery interviews, observations/protocol analysis and questionnaires to explore user needs. By Stage 3, the design team is able to prepare a set of high level product requirements and prepare a prototype. The prototype in this stage is a simple product often in paper form and is used to help stakeholders and users visualise and test the product. The use of prototypes enables the Tax Office to determine user preferences.
Stage 4: Build products

Stage 4 involves building the actual product, as well as any supporting products users require. This stage may involve writing law, coding information technology systems, and training staff as well as writing, designing and publishing user information. Users participate in this stage through repeated testing of prototypes for useability and reliability.
Stage 5: Test user pathway

This stage involves a dry run of the product, including its supporting products and services. Testing of user pathways simulates the users experience with the product through observation and protocol analysis to test the complete system and the users interaction with it.
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To aid test user pathways, the Tax Office has developed the Simulation Centre (see Figure B1). The purpose of this centre is to allow the Tax Office to work with internal users, developers, staff and community to improve the administrative design of the tax system by bringing designers and users of the tax system into a common space. It provides users with the opportunity test and evaluate Tax Office products, processes and systems.
Stage 6: Implement change

Stage 6 is not only concerned with actual implementation of the product, but also with continuous evaluation and identification of potential enhancements. It is also necessary, at Stage 6, to ensure the intent of the project is realised in practice. To evaluate the success of the change, unsolicited user feedback is analysed.
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Attachment B
Tax offices tools to support collaborative design

Scoping Room
The Tax Office has recently added a Scoping Room to its suite of tools to support collaborative design. The Tax Offices Scoping Room includes such facilities as: historical analysis of taxpayer behaviour documentation on tools and processes which may be employed to engage users documented case studies a library of blueprints a register of research projects. The Room also provides a scan of the Tax Offices strategic environment including the Tax Office structure and plan, a map of Tax Office administrative systems as well as pictures of what the Tax Office is expected to look like, and what users are expected to look like in one to three years. The Scoping Room currently contains an impacts framework detailing the Individuals market segment. The detail includes user pathways, listing of Tax Office products and services, demographic information on related market segments and internal capabilities, reflecting the layers of design within the tax system.
Simulation Centre
The Tax Offices Simulation Centre (Figure B1) is a usability laboratory designed to enhance the Tax Offices user-centred design and allow design teams to have a greater focus on user involvement in the design and evaluation of Tax Office products, processes and systems. The aim of the Simulation Centre is to bring designers and users of the tax system into a common space that provides creative support and the ability to share experiences. The Simulation Centre will help the Tax Office design and build products that continually improve and respond to the tax communitys needs as well as enable the Tax Office to achieve its strategic and tactical objectives. The Centre will also provide the Tax Office with the ability to conduct objective and impartial evaluation of the design and development of products, processes and systems at an integrated, whole-of-system and discrete product level. Enabling the Tax Office to work more closely with internal users, application developers, staff and the community in the administrative design of the tax system is expected to support real-time prototyping. The Simulation Centre provides the Tax Office with a space to conduct focus groups, prototyping in paper and electronic media, user walkthroughs, user interviews, group collaborative design sessions, contextual and expert interviews, as well as to undertake usability evaluations and business simulations and business capability testing. The Simulation Centre brings together designers and users of the tax system, providing creative support and the ability to share experiences. The Tax Offices Simulation Centre is unique in that it has two simulation rooms, enabling the user testing of a product from both an internal and an external user perspective. The two rooms allow the design teams to simulate different working environments, such as call centres, home offices, work
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stations and front counters. Used separately, the rooms provide the design teams with the opportunity to design, test and evaluate their designs with users through the design process. When the two rooms are used together, they allow the design teams to engage in end-to-end or multi-process simulations. The Group Discussion Room provides design teams and simulation centre staff with the opportunity to carry out a range of user-based design activities, such as prototyping, walkthroughs, focus groups and collaborative design sessions. The Observation Room is a soundproof enclosure, fitted with one-way observation mirrors. The mirrors allow for optimal viewing of the simulation rooms. The Observation Room enables design teams to capture and store video and electronic data and images of user interacting with Tax Office products, processes and systems, whilst allowing designers and developers to discretely observe how users, both internal and external, interact with and use their designs.
Figure B21: Simulation Centre layout
Design Space The design space details aspects of the testing for the project manager and their team.
Group Discussion Room The taxpayer is briefed about the up coming process by the user researcher.
Simulation Room A The taxpayer prepares to complete the electronic version of the BAS form.
Observation Room Simulation Room B The taxpayer prepares to complete BAS paper form. The phone operator prepares to answer the BAS questions from the taxpayer. User researchers observe the interaction between the taxpayer and the products.
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THE INTERNET AND DEMOCRACY

Roger Clarke*
Synopsis
The Internet creates new possibilities for the processes of democracy, and at the same time creates great challenges. For example, the most obvious application is to support elections; but the vulnerability of personal computers makes online voting a risky proposition. The Internet has provided greater scope for communications from parties to voters, and from members of parliament to their constituents. The Internet also supports a potentially very busy back-channel and, as a result, parties and politicians may feel some pressure. They are, however, likely to feel far more concerned about representative democracy coming under threat from electronically-facilitated direct democracy. Some aspects of e-government are also relevant to democratic processes. Greater community engagement and participation are possible. On the other hand, these ideas challenge the status quo. This paper surveys developments in e-voting, e-politics and e-government, and identifies some specific topics on which more detailed research would be valuable.
* Principal, Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, Canberra; Visiting Fellow, Department of Computer Science, Australian National University.
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Introduction
There are many senses in which the term e-democracy is used. It may refer to the automation of existing processes such as voting. Alternatively, it may encompass ways of improving upon conventional representative democracy. In its more extreme forms, the term might envisage replacement of existing forms of democracy with something new. To many people, it also implies greater access to the workings of government. The purpose of this paper is to survey the important streams of thought that exist early in the 21st century. The paper commences by briefly reviewing the aspects of Internet technology and of cyberspace behaviour that appear to be particularly influential. It considers the prospects for e-voting. This leads into ways in which members of parliaments can influence their constituents, and can use polls to augment their sense of the mood of their electorate, what issues are of current concern to them, and what their opinions are on those issues. It also looks at the scope for voters firstly to monitor their local members actions and their performance against their undertakings, and secondly to bring pressure to bear on their local members, for example, through email campaigns and precinct and issues-based committees whose purposes may be variously to support, to influence, and to oppose. Consideration is given to whether representative democracy is threatened by the ubiquitous and alwayson nature of the Internet. Will polling graduate to referenda, initiatives, recalls and plebiscites?; and will representative democracy be qualified by, or even give way to, some form of direct democracy? Several senses of the term e-government are then examined, including information flows driven by agencies, and those driven by the public. Of particular interest is the progressive extension of impact assessment beyond projects with environmental impacts to those with impacts on social values, such as privacy. Several movements from the second half of the 20th century are re-visited, to see whether they may bear more fruit in the new context of the Internet and cyberspace. The paper concludes by identifying a considerable number of issues that are in need of more detailed study.
The Internets potentials

Since it became generally available in the mid-1990s, the Internet has established itself as the information infrastructure that the economy and society had been waiting for. The origins and nature of the Internet in Australia are presented in some depth in Clarke (2004). There are weaknesses in Australias information infrastructure, in such areas as the practical availability and cost of broadband, and disadvantage based on location and on household income. On the other hand, penetration of at least the basic services is high (NOIE 2003a; 2003b), and transformation of both business and social activities is well under way. Accessibility appears set to improve further as wireless transmission from diverse mobile devices is facilitated. The behaviour patterns of individuals and groups in cyberspace has some characteristics rather different from those in the real world. A science is yet to emerge, but some aspects of cyberculture ethos are reasonably discernible (Clarke 1999b; 2004). There is a blend of entertainment and infotainment, on the one hand, with a considerable amount of social discourse, on the other. Among the catch-words that people associate with the Internet are human communications, openness, egalitarianism, participation, spontaneity and pseudonymity. In the context of democracy, a particularly significant expectation that has derived from the explosion of the Web has been effective freedom of information (Clarke 2000).
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The wild enthusiasm of the Webs early years has been tempered by the dot-com implosion and excesses such as spam, malware (such as viruses and worms), and dissemination of child pornography. Reactions against the Internets impacts have the potential to seriously constrain access to information (Clarke 1999c), and perhaps even to convert the Internet into a tool of authoritarianism (Clarke 1994; 2001). The focus of this paper, however, is on the use of the Internet to enhance existing democratic processes, and perhaps to change the form of democracy.
E-voting
Representative democracy depends on large numbers of people electing small numbers of people to exercise powers that the constitution accords to elected representatives. Voting needs to be conducted in a context free of undue influence, or at least of coercion and a climate of fear. Voting systems must therefore be designed to protect every voters choices against disclosure. The integrity of a voting system is also critical to public confidence. It must resist manipulation, and ensure that the vote count reflects the votes actually cast. The systems security and integrity must be both demonstrated in advance, and audited in arrears. Achieving these objectives is very challenging.
Technology-enhanced booth voting

Information technology can be applied to conventional polling-booth elections. This is often referred to as Electronic Machine Voting or Direct Recording Electronic. Much faster and more reliable calculation of the results is feasible, especially in complex proportional schemes such as the HareClark system used in Tasmania and the ACT. The Department of the Parliamentary Library (2002) provides a review of the Electronic Voting and Counting System (EVACS) system developed in Canberra and applied to the ACT elections. The considerable confidence that exists in relation to EVACS stands in sharp contrast to the situation in the United States. Serious concerns exist there about the many different device-types that have been installed recently to address the parlous state of vote-counting in that country (see, for example, Schneier 2003). Given that the modern ballot method is widely referred to in the United States as the Australian ballot, it is only reasonable that Australia lead the world in this area as well (see, for example, Zetter 2003).
Internet voting
There is considerable interest in enabling voting over the Internet. This is often referred to as Remote Electronic Voting or online voting. An optimistic scenario involves support for voting on any device attached to the Internet. But the nature of the Internet is such that data transmitted over it is subject to interception and adaptation. The security of commodity workstations is very low, and hence the data stored on Internet-attached devices, and the processing performed on them, are highly vulnerable to unauthorised access and manipulation. At the other extreme, online voting might be restricted to a set of purpose-designed devices, that are located within controlled locations, such as public libraries, and that transmit data over the Internet in a secure manner, for example, by means of a Virtual Private Network. Schemes have been used to support relatively small-scale elections, for example, for the boards of industry associations. There is considerable public disquiet, however, about the possible application of e-voting to the election of members of parliament, because there are so many risks involved. A few proposals have been put forward that might address those risks in a satisfactory manner (for
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example, Chaum 1988). At this stage, none of the many competing developers have convinced sceptics that they can satisfy the requirements of a secure and auditable system. Moreover, it has been argued that the nature of the Internet is such that it is simply not feasible for a satisfactory scheme to ever be devised. Rubin (2002) provides a review of the challenges. Jefferson et al. (2004) reports on a specific system called SERVE (Security Analysis of the Secure Registration and Voting Experiment), that was developed in order to enable an estimated 100 000 overseas United States military personnel to vote over the Internet in the 2004 Presidential election. The paper concluded that the scheme has all the flaws of any Direct Recording Electronic system, together with numerous other fundamental security problems that leave it vulnerable to a variety of well-known cyber attacks. A matter of days after the Jefferson et al. report was published, the agency responsible for SERVE abandoned the scheme. The most likely directions currently appear to be that e-voting schemes that utilise the Internet in some way will be applied to low-risk elections, and for informal and semi-formal polling of the views and attitudes of relatively small and well-defined electorates. As experience is gained, security is demonstrated, audits are performed, public confidence increases, comprehensive risk assessments are undertaken, and risk management plans are devised and implemented, e-voting may come to be applied to progressively more risk-prone elections.
E-politics
Whether or not e-voting proves to be effective, it is only one small part of the political process. This section considers the broader question of applications of the Internet to support politics. Firstly, attention is paid to ways in which conventional representative democracy can be enhanced. Then the alternative of direct democracy is considered, followed by the possibility of intermediate forms.
Representative democracy
Briefs (1991) argued that we have to dismiss the idea that computerized systems, however sophisticated and extended they may be one day, will ever play a considerable, more substantive role in political decision making in a genuine sense. More than a decade has elapsed since then, and there have been no changes in computerized systems so major as to undermine that thinking. But has the convergence of computing with communications, and the advent of the Internet, changed the situation? The potential of the Internet to enhance conventional political processes was recognised at an early stage. Australia was an early mover in the e-publication of Hansard and in web-casting of the proceedings of Parliament and Parliamentary Committees. Further opportunities exist in such areas as the conduct of hearings by means of Internet tele-conference and video-conference, and voter sentiment meters on webcasts, for example, of Question Time. Progress has been slow in the area of petitions, however. In almost all Australian jurisdictions, they must still be on paper, and signed by each petitioner in writing (resisting the electronic transactions legislation which was passed before the end of the last century). Common uses have been for communications to citizens from parliamentarians and political parties. Party web sites have been established to encourage membership, declare policy, and provide public access to media releases. Domain names have been acquired to assist in the projection of both party and person brand names, and in specific campaigns. Email has been harnessed, to such an extent that the House of Representatives and the Senate were virtually unanimous in exempting political parties from the spam legislation that the Parliament enacted in late 2003. It is likely that additional means will be harnessed or invented, in order to support
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communication of political messages to voters. For example, push polling (a political message disguised as a survey question) lends itself to Internet contexts. The Internet supports voter pull as well as politician push. Web sites and search engines make the past statements and actions of parliamentarians much more easily researchable than used to be the case. Inconsistency over time and in different venues, and duplicity, are more readily unearthed, and more readily brought to attention. Whether this will cause politicians to become less inconsistent and less duplicitous, or voters to become more cynical about politicans, remains to be seen. In addition to such representative watch capabilities, the Internet offers additional scope. There has been a tendency for parliamentarians to treat individual emails as being informal communications rather than letters from constituents. Coordinated email campaigns can be somewhat more convincing, especially if checks confirm that the identities, the contact points and the message are authentic. On the other hand, these approaches have, to date, shown little sign of displacing talkback radio as the barometer of electoral opinion. Some more formalised approaches may, however, attract closer attention from representatives. Opinion polling has long been conducted by parties. The economics may be changing, and it could become more feasible for individual members of parliament to conduct them within their own constituencies. In addition, electronically-supported election committees may prove highly valuable to candidates. If so, such groups might soon negotiate themselves into a fuller role as standing constituency committees. Issues-based groups may also gain attention, although perhaps only in relation to those issues that are perceived by politicians to be important enough to swing an election result. Finally, the Internet facilitates social activism. In addition to familiar real-world activities such as marches, demonstrations and sit-ins, social activism has a cyberspace dimension. The Internet has been a boon for interest groups in conducting consultations, preparing submissions, and coordinating action. Instruction in responsible social activism is offered on such sites as Net Action. A case study from the New South Wales South Coast is provided by Allen (2003). At its most extreme and non-constructive, social activism can involve automated generation of volumes of emails, web site defacements and redirects, web site parodies, and denial of service attacks on political web sites. A collective term for such relatively destructive forms is hacktivism (sfear 1999). Politicians can ensure that only extremist troublemakers resort to such methods by responding positively to more constructive approaches.
Direct democracy
One of the original reasons for representative democracy being preferred over other forms was practicality. Transport, electronic communications, and now the Internet, have rendered direct democracy far more practicable than it used to be. For the existing system of parliamentary democracy to retain acceptance, it may be necessary for the Internet to be applied to more than just a few minor enhancements to representative democracy. An analysis of alternatives is currently being undertaken by the Victorian Parliament. Direct democracy involves the voting public having powers greater than merely the election of representatives. Examples include: the initiative: to initiate legislation, that is, to instruct the legislature to consider a Bill, or to force a referendum
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the referendum: to determine whether a Bill will become law, or to reject or repeal a Bill already passed by the legislature, or to determine Constitutional amendments the recall: to remove from office an elected or an appointed official the plebiscite: to determine a change of sovereignty. Direct democracy risks influence by the powerful, and rapid swings in voter sentiment. On the other hand, these forms originated in ancient Greece, and they coexist with contemporary representative democracy. Switzerland, and the 50 per cent of United States states that have at least some form of direct ballot, have not become ungovernable. The outright replacement of representative democracy may be too risky, or simply too threatening to established interests. Several intermediate forms already exist, however, and more are likely to emerge. For a recent review of developments, see Economist (2003). An example of particular relevance is the deliberative poll. This involves a forum in which discussion and analysis are conducted, and communicated to both parliamentarians and the public. It enables participation, and provides voice, but the parliament delegates no power of decision. This approach is unusual in Australia, although the Constitutional Commission of 198788 was an example. The Internet provides ample means whereby fora could be created to support deliberative polling. Large representative groups could be periodically provided with information, and their thoughts gathered using Internet channels. Individuals could volunteer for limited-term participation in such councils, advisory bodies or juries. Assimilation of such elements of direct democracy may be necessary for the existing system of parliamentary democracy to retain acceptance.
E-government
The term e-government is commonly used to refer to any form of information or service delivery by government agencies to other parties, including individuals, business enterprises and other government agencies. The focus of this paper is on only those aspects that directly relate to the democratic process. Communications from government agencies to citizens have matured from brochure-ware, to information services, and on to discovery processes including both structured menus and search engines. For some years now, entry points have been provided to mediate between citizen needs and agency structures, in many cases across jurisdictional boundaries (Clarke 1999a). Other categories of e-government are, on the other hand, less well developed. Some agencies accept communications from citizens by email, or by less user friendly web-form interfaces. These communications are capable of being supported by sophisticated workflow processes, although correspondence management systems are only now being enhanced to deliver on that promise. The tensions between service on the one hand, and cost-control and cost-transfer on the other, loom large in this area. Norms for handling enquiries and complaints were set long ago by Ombudsmans Offices and standards organisations, see for example, SA (1995), Ombudsman (1997). The barriers to effective research by individuals and groups have been broken down by the e-library that the Web has enabled, coupled with the power of search engines. The Internet offers many opportunities for improved communications between community groups and government agencies. Distance and cost have been barriers in the past, but it is now much more
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practicable to establish and maintain focus groups, and to run formal advisory groups and consultative committees. An example is the guidance on community consultation provided by the Government of Western Australia (WA 2002). This reluctance is in marked contrast to governments overseas. European countries have been positive about e-democracy (for example, the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers 2002, whose key Principle is reproduced in the Appendix to this paper). The European Union has invested in support for interactions among citizens about e-government-related matters. Initiatives on consultation and participation have been launched by the governments of Canada and New Zealand. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development has also initiated policy discussions in this area (OECD 2003). Clarke (1992) drew attention to the significant differences between conventional information systems and the then-emergent extra-organisational systems, to which people were directly connected. The early examples, such as ATM and EFTPOS systems, depended on dedicated networks; but the Internet has enabled such systems to become commonplace. The last half-century has seen a long series of discussions about how to increase stakeholder involvement in the conception, design and operation of information systems. These have included: sociotechnical systems Emery & Trist (1960), Mumford (1983) soft systems methods Checkland (1981), Checkland & Scholes (1990) participative design Emery & Emery (1993), Emery (1997) the social informatics approach, which is the interdisciplinary study of the design, uses and consequences of information technologies that takes into account their interaction with institutional and cultural contexts Kling (1999). The emergence of a practical mechanism for participation can be seen in the progressive mutation from Environmental Impact Statements to the much more community-involving Environmental Impact Assessment notion. These are paralleled by the greatly increased recognition of the need for Privacy Impact Assessment (Clarke 1998) and Social Impact Assessment. The Internet has altered the economics of participation.
Conclusions
The Internet has opened up a greatly increased range of options for the Australian polity. They bring to a head the long-simmering tension between government as mechanism of social control and government as service-provider to citizens. If the tensions are to work themselves out constructively, much more information is needed on the wide variety of options. The following are specific projects that, in the basis of the survey conducted in this paper, could make valuable contributions to e-democracy in Australia: studies to establish deeper understanding of the patterns of cyberspace behaviour of Australian citizens, with particular reference to matters of a political nature a study of the scope for technology, such as the Electronic Voting and Counting System, to be applied in Australian government elections and referenda documentation of the use of online voting in all contexts in Australia, and in other relevant countries
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studies of the use of the Internet to support responsible social activism a study of the techniques of hacktivism, and of the motivations underlying their use a study of the impact of the Internet on the practicability and economics of direct democracy, particularly key elements such as initiatives and referenda a study of the use of the Internet to support deliberative polling and other kinds of formalised consultative processes documentation of enquiry and complaints handling processes in Australian Government agencies, with particular reference to enhancements that are possible in the Internet context studies of community consultation processes, covering environmental, privacy and social impact assessment, and including case studies of effective use of the Internet to achieve effective and efficient communications between agencies and stakeholder groups.
Bibliography
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Resources
E-democracy generally
Clift S 2000, E-Democracy, E-Governance and Public Net-Work, at http://publicus.net/articles/edempublicnetwork.html CoE 2002, Draft recommendation on e-governance Council of Europe Committee of Ministers, June 2002, at http://www.coe.int/t/e/integrated_projects/democracy/02_Activities/01_e-governance/01_egovernance_draft_recs_v2.asp#TopOfPage Communications of the ACM 44, 1 (January, 2001), Special Issue: 10 articles on e-democracy Minnesota E-Democracy, at http://www.e-democracy.org/. Reflecting the intrusion of commercialism, this group claims E-Democracy as their registered trademark since January 1998, at http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=75218010 Pew 2003, Untuned Keyboards: Online campaigners, citizens, and portals in the 2002 elections Pew Research Centers, 20 March 2003, at Report=85http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=85
E-democracy generally in Australia

Geiselhart K 1998, Democracy in an Information Age Attractors and Bifurcations Melbourne Journal of Politics, vol. 28, at http://www.bf.rmit.edu.au/kgeiselhart/assets/images/melb_j_of_pol.doc Geiselhart K 2002, Electronic Democracy Resources, at http://doctordemocracy.net/resources.htm Griffiths M 2002, Australian e-democracy? The potential for citizens and governments, Monash University, 26 March 2002, at http://www.egov.vic.gov.au/Documents/e-democracy1.doc Victorian e-government Resource Centre, at http://www.egov.vic.gov.au/Research/ElectronicDemocracy/edemocracy.htm
Internet technology
Clarke R 2003, Wireless Transmission and Mobile Technologies Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, October 2003, at http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/EC/WMT.html Clarke, R 2004, Origins and Nature of the Internet in Australia Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, January 2004, at http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/OzI04.html Clarke R, Higgs PL & Dempsey G 2000, Key Design Issues in Marketspaces for Intellectual Property
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Rights Proc. 13th International EC Conference, Bled, Slovenia, 19-21 June 2000, at http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/EC/Bled2K.html NOIE 2003a, Pocket Stats National Office for the Information Economy, July 2003, at http://www.noie.gov.au/publications/NOIE/statistics/pocket_stats.htm NOIE 2003b, NOIE Information Economy Index National Office for the Information Economy, August 2003, at http://www.noie.gov.au/publications/NOIE/NOIE_index/Aug03/index.htm
Cyberspace behaviour
Clarke, R1999, Ethics and the Internet: The Cyberspace Behaviour of People, Communities and Organisations Bus. & Profl Ethics J. 18, 3&4 (1999) 153-167, at http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/IEthics99.html Clarke, R 2000, Information Wants to be Free, Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 24 February 2000, at http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/IWtbF.html Clarke, R 2001, Paradise Gained, Paradise Re-lost: How the Internet is being Changed from a Means of Liberation to a Tool of Authoritarianism Mots Pluriels 18 (August 2001), at http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/PGPR01.html Clarke, R 2004, Origins and Nature of the Internet in Australia Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, January 2004, at http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/OzI04.html#IUse
E-voting
Chaum, D 1988, Elections with unconditionally-secret ballots and disruption equivalent to breaking RSA In Advances in Cryptology EUROCRYPT 88 (Berlin, 1988), C. G. Gunther, Ed., vol. 330 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, pp. 177-18 Lorrie Cranors resource pages, at http://lorrie.cranor.org/voting/ election.com Inc., at http://www.election.com Electoral Commission 2002, Modernising elections: A strategic evaluation of the 2002 electoral pilot schemes, at http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/files/dms/Modernising_elections_65746170__E__N__S__W__.pdf Electronic Voting entry for an Encyclopedia of Computers and Computer History, at http://lorrie.cranor.org/pubs/evoting-encyclopedia.html EPICs Voting Page, at http://www.epic.org/privacy/voting/ e-Voting Security Study, CESG, 31 July 2002, at http://www.edemocracy.gov.uk/library/papers/study.pdf Fischer, EA 2003, Election Reform and Electronic Voting Systems (DREs): Analysis of Security Issues November 4, 2003, Congressional Research Service, The Library of Congress, at http://www.epic.org/privacy/voting/crsreport.pdf Report of the National Workshop on Internet Voting: Issues and Research Agenda March 2001 Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, at http://news.findlaw.com/cnn/docs/voting/ nsfe-voterprt.pdf
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Tadayoshi, KT, Stubblefield, A, Rubin, AD & Wallach, DS 2003, Analysis of an Electronic Voting System, Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute Technical Report, TR-2003-19, July 23, at http://avirubin.com/vote/
Concerns about the integrity of e-voting

The Free e-democracy Project, by Jason Kitcat, at http://www.free-project.org/learn/ (includes Key Players in the industry) FIPR Reservations, at http://www.fipr.org/e-democracy/FIPR.html Jefferson, D, Rubin, AV, Simons, B & Wagner, D 2004, A Security Analysis of the Secure Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE) 20 January 2004, at http://www.servesecurityreport.org/ National Committee for Voting Integrity, at http://www.votingintegrity.org Recommendation on legal and operational standards for e-enabled voting (Second Draft) Multidisciplinary Ad Hoc Group of Specialists for the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers, July 2003, at http://www.coe.int/T/e/integrated%5Fprojects/democracy/02%5FActivities/02%5Fe%2Dvoting/ 02%5FDraft%5FRecommendation/04IP(2003)47revision_after_LOS_220703.asp#TopOfPage Rubin, AD 2002, Security Considerations for Remote Electronic Voting Communications of the ACM, 45, 12 (December 2002) Schneier, B 2001, Internet Voting vs. Large-Value e-Commerce Crypto-Gram Newsletter, February 15, 2001, at http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0102.html#10 Schneier, B 2003, Computerized and Electronic Voting Crypto-Gram Newsletter, December 15, 2003, at http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0312.html#9 Verified Voting Coalition, at http://www.verifiedvoting.com/
E-voting in Australia
ACT Government report on the ACT election system, at http://www.elections.act.gov.au/EVACS.html DPL 2002, Electronic Voting in the 2001 ACT Election Department of the Parliamentary Library, Research Note 2001-02 No. 46, 18 June 2002, at http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/rn/200102/02rn46.pdf EVACS, the software developers site for Electronic Voting and Counting System, at http://www.softimp.com.au/evacs.html Victorian e-government Resource Centre, at http://www.egov.vic.gov.au/Research/ElectronicDemocracy/voting.htm Zetter, K 2003, E-Voting Done Right in Australia, Wired Magazine, 3 November 2003, at http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,61045,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1
E-politics
Briefs, U 1991, Support of Parliamentary Decision Making by Computerized Information Systems: The West German Experience in Clarke R. & Cameron J. (Eds.) Managing Information Technologys Organisational Impact North-Holland, 1991, pp. 335-339
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Broder, DS 2000, Democracy Derailed: Initiative Campaigns and the Power of Money Harcourt, 2000 Chen, P 2002, Virtual Representation: Australian Elected Representatives and the Impact of the Internet Journal of Information, Law and Technology 2002 Issue 3, at http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/02%2D3/chen.html Davis, S, Elin, L & Reeher, G 2002, Click on Democracy: The Internets Power to Change Political Apathy into Civic Action Westview, 2002 Economist 2003, Power to the people: A pervasive web will increase demands for direct democracy 23 January 2003, at http://www.economist.com/opinion/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=1534259 Norris, P 2000, Democratic Divide? The Impact of the Internet on Parliaments Worldwide, Harvard University 2001, Proc. Am. Pol. Sc. Assoc. Annual Meeting, Washington DC, 31 August 2 September 2000, at http://ksghome.harvard.edu/%7E.pnorris.shorenstein.ksg/acrobat/apsa2000demdiv.pdf Norris, P 2002, Democratic Phoenix: Reinventing Political Activism Cambridge University Press, 2002 Project on Government Oversight, at http://www.pogo.org/
Internet activism
Allen J 2003, Mogo Charcoal Plant Campaign: How the Internet was Utilised Charcoalition, February 2003, at http://www.acr.net.au/~coastwatchers/charcoalition/objects/howinternetutilised.pdf The Hacktivist, at http://www.thehacktivist.com/ McKay, N.1998, The Golden Age of Hacktivism Wired Magazine, 22 September 1998, at http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,15129,00.htmlNet Action (1998-2001) The Virtual Activist 2.0, at http://www.netaction.org/training/ Ramasastry, A 2002, the Law And Politics Of Internet Activism: The Yes Men, Peta, Rtmark, And The Phenomenon Of Parody Websites, Wednesday, FindLaws Legal Commentary, Jun. 05, 2002, at http://writ.news.findlaw.com/ramasastry/20020605.html
E-government
Clarke, R 1994, Information Technology: Weapon of Authoritarianism or Tool of Democracy? Proc. World Congress, Intl Fed. of Info. Processing, Hamburg, September 1994, at http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/DV/PaperAuthism.html Clarke, R 1998, Privacy Impact Assessments, Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, February 1998, at http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/DV/PIA.html Clarke, R 1999, Electronic Services Delivery: From Brochure-Ware to Entry Points. Proc. 12th International Bled EC Conf., Slovenia, June 1999, at http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/EC/ESD.html Clarke, R 1999, Freedom of Information? The Internet as Harbinger of the New Dark Ages First Monday 4, 11 (November 1999), at http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_11/clarke/, and at http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/DarkAges.html
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Consulting Canadians, at http://www.consultingcanadians.gc.ca/cpcPubHome.jsp?lang=en Ombudsman 1997, Good Practice Guide to Complaint Handling, Commonwealth Ombudsman, 1997, at http://www.ombudsman.gov.au/publications_information/Special_Reports/good_practice.pdf Participate in [NZ] Government, at http://www.govt.nz/en/participate SA 1995, Complaints handling Australian Standard AS 4269-1995 WA 2002, Consulting Citizens: A Resource Guide, Citizens and Civics Unit of the Government of Western Australia, April 2002, at http://www.ccu.dpc.wa.gov.au/docs/guidecolour.pdf
Consultation and participation

Beer, S 1972, Brain of the Firm Allen Lane, London, 1972Beer S. (1975) Platform for Change Wiley, New York, 1975 Checkland, P 1981, Systems Thinking, Systems Practice Wiley, Chichester, 1981Checkland P. and Scholes J. (1990) Soft Systems Methodology in Action Wiley, Chichester, 1990 Clarke, R 1992 Extra-Organisational Systems: A Challenge to the Software Engineering Paradigm, Proc. IFIP World Congress, Madrid, September 1992, at http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/SOS/ PaperExtraOrgSys.html Emery, F 1997, Participative design: effective, flexible and successful, now! The Journal for Quality and Participation, 1997, at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/7527/fred.pdf Emery, F & Emery, M 1993, Participative design for participative democracy The Australian National University, Centre for Continuing Education Emery, FE & Trist, EL 1960, Socio-technical systems in Churchman C.W. and Verhulst M. (Eds.) Management Science Models and Techniques Vol. 2 Pergamon, Oxford, 1960 International Association for Public Participation, at http://www.iap2.org/ Kling, R 1999, What is Social Informatics and Why Does it Matter? D-Lib Magazine 5, 1 (January 1999), at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january99/kling/01kling.html Miller, JG 1978, Living Systems McGraw-Hill, New York, 1978 Mumford, E 1983, Designing Human Systems, Manchester Bus. Sch., 1983 OECD 2003, Engaging Citizens Online for Better Policy-making OECD Policy Brief, March 2003, at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/62/23/2501856.pdf Wood-Harper, AT, Antill, L & Avison, DE 1985, Information Systems Definition: The Multiview Approach Blackwell, Oxford, 1985
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Appendix: Council of Europe on e-democracy

Council of Europe 2002, Draft recommendation on e-governance Council of Europe Committee of Ministers, June 2002, at <http://www.coe.int/t/e/integrated_projects/democracy/02_Activities/01_ e-governance/01_e-governance_draft_recs_v2.asp#TopOfPage>.
Principle 2. E-democracy
Member states should: explore ways in which e-technologies can employed to improve the responsiveness of public authorities clarify the legal framework that permits e-participation as one of a range of participation instruments available to public authorities promote e-participation in local, regional, national and inter-governmental public life, and encourage e-participation by the full range of communities existing in a local area (both communities of place and communities of interest) and ownership by these communities of ideas, positions and public value recognise and explore the opportunities that e-technologies can bring in improving the transparency of democratic decision making within and between public authorities make at their own initiative official documents available online to the public when it is in the interest of promoting transparency of public administration or will encourage informed participation by the public on matters of public interest; and encourage central, regional and local public authorities to do likewise make official documents available online to the public in an unabridged version in order to enable the public and the media to build their own views on the issues in question work with the online media as central partners in the dissemination of public information, and in doing so, seek regularly the opinion of media professionals on how public information should be presented in order to best serve their needs pay attention to the need for moderation, feedback to participants and follow-up in e-participation and online consultations and debates in recognition of the medias role in encouraging e-participation, public scrutiny and transparency, support the modernisation of the media in particular local and regional media and the training of journalists so that it can fully exploit the possibilities offered by e-technologies strengthen the scrutiny of decision-making in public authorities, by improving access to information and communication within and between public authorities improve the processes of democratic decision-making by focusing upon the tools and information that support the legislature, judiciary and executive of public authorities in reaching appropriate decisions consider e-enabled ways of voting in elections at all levels of government, as one component of improving engagement of citizens with government promote the use of e-technologies to support locally elected members in conducting their representative and constituency roles
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explore the capabilities of a range of e-technologies to encourage participation and access to information, and target efforts in this area specifically at hard to reach or excluded groups encourage the development of new forms of citizen expression and e-networked public spheres and practices, such as on-line civic networks, citizens panels, deliberative polling, focus groups and preference modelling, in accordance with existing legislation take the necessary and appropriate steps to facilitate easy access to public officials.
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M U LT I - C H A N N E L D E L I V E R Y
Future Challenges for E-government Multi-Channel Delivery
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THE CHANGING ROLE OF MULTI-CHANNEL SERVICE DELIVERY

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Trevor Moore* and Paula Flynn#
Synopsis
The history of Customer Service Centres and Call Centres in Centrelink for the last 10 years demonstrates that channel management is a challenging task. Each channel (the phone, the office, the Internet, and paper mail) must be planned for and managed at the same time as considering the impact on other channels. In the early days, cross-channel impact was something organisations were learning about: there was little or no established practice, and taking into account the needs of both the customer and the organisation was confronting without supportive organisational systems and coherent decision making. The evolution of technology and the blending of channels now makes multi-channel service delivery even more complex. We are now grappling with the idea that a customer can blend traditional channels (for example, the phone and the Internet) on the one device and that service delivery organisations are expected to support the choice they wish to make. This begs the question of what is multi-channel service delivery and where is it headed as we move into the first decade of the 21st century. Our contention is multi-channel service delivery is becoming embedded in the fabric of the organisation which is, in turn, creating what we call the interaction experience where the customer is central to the design of service delivery across channels.
* Partner, AP Solutions Deployment; Partner, IBM Business Consulting Services. # Organisational Change, Business Transformation Team, Centrelink. Author of Centrelinks eBusiness Strategy and the Centrelink Case Study for the Computerworld Honours Program 2004. Graduate Certificate of Management, Deakin University; Bachelor Arts (Journalism & Literature), Deakin University.
Background
The term channel is relatively new and increasingly commonly used, particularly in the context of multiple channel (multi-channel) service delivery. The concept, however, is not new a channel is a mechanism by which suppliers of goods or services deliver those goods or services to those people who will use them. The term channel has frequently been used to refer to a particular type of technology, for example telephone, personal computer, paper mail, or a physical location. In the 1990s computing and telecommunications technologies merged and it became fashionable to refer to information and communications technology rather than information technology. The new technology capabilities enabled a degree of customer self-service not seen before. In turn, the term multi-channel service delivery came into vogue as customers began to either self-serve, or be serviced, through more than one channel. THE MULTI-CHANNEL SERVICE DELIVERY FACTORS Any organisation serious about multi-channel service delivery must consider a number of factors when looking to connect people to services (or products). These factors include, but should not be limited to: what multi-channel delivery is what channels will and wont be used what services are suitable for which channel the cost associated with the primary and secondary preferred channels from the organisation and the customers perspective (at a minimum, but ideally including also the cost to organisation within a value network context) the possibility and impact of latent demand when a product or service is made available through a new channel and what impact this has on capability customer choice (or preference) in service delivery what impact movement of a customer from one channel to another channel during a transaction or interaction has oncost (channel economics), organisational capability (technology, information, people, business process design) and customer service perceptions and experience (customer experience management, customer relationship management). Customer movement across channels is recognised as one of the hardest factors to articulate in multi-channel service delivery whether organisational skills for the new channel exist, are grown internally, purchased, or a combination over time. These seemingly small changes in technology capability had major ramifications for all industries as organisations seriously embraced business process re-engineering and customer experience management techniques as they realised that electronic service delivery fundamentally changed the way they designed and did business.
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As more sophisticated tools are introduced into the channel the term becomes increasingly blurred when applied to, for example, the online channel. New mobile telephone products have Internet capability, Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) capability, personal computing capability as well as telephony capability, so we need to ask whether the mobile phone is now part of the online channel or the phone channel or a bit of both, or something new. Further, self-service requires a much deeper understanding of channel economics with a consequent focus on customer wants and needs. It also requires a greater understanding of the balance between service and self-service, which leads to a need to manage service delivery channels. We are outgrowing the use of the term channel, in its current meaning, at a rate equivalent to the introduction of new technology-based tools. The term channel has often been thought of as synonymous with terms such as online. But this usage does not accurately reflect changes in the way people interact and expect to interact with government and private industry. This is especially so given the increasing use of telephone self-service, SMS and other data transfer methods that are not based upon the personal computer as the method of interacting. These new data transfer methods lead to new complexities of multi-channel service delivery. We might also ask whether the current meaning of the term multi-channel continues to be useful as business and government move further into the electronic world and the electronic world moves away from defined tools to blended tools or whether the definition is evolving and changing as our experience with electronic service delivery matures. The impact of technology on information usage and knowledge-based operations may even now not be fully understood. CUSTOMER There are some semantic issues over the term customer and these semantic issues affect both private and public sectors in different ways. These are outside the scope of this paper. The key point about customers is that there is a business relationship between a person (or group) and an organisation (see www.gao.gov/special.pubs/bprag/bprgloss.htm). Certain levels of service apply to the conduct of that relationship and, while these may vary (rightly or wrongly) according to the competitive landscape, those levels of service are independent of whether we call the person (or group) concerned a customer or something else. Understanding who your customers are, what they want and why and how they want it is an essential component of multi-channel service delivery. Customers needs change continually: if we take a look at the automotive industry, the baby boomers were once content with safety, quality, reliability and affordability. The interactive generation demands products that are valuable to them and that enhance and enable their lifestyle. Segmentation of customers is important and needs to be done not by guesswork but by market analysis. It is important to recognise that customers make decisions on a combination of rational thinking, emotion and impulse (Zaltman 2003). These factors point to the value of personalisation and customisation. These are essentially new areas for government and for the private sector. They contribute to the customer experience that the customer has it is no longer the case, as most industries recognise, that if we build it, they will come to us. Experience is the growing factor that influences retail buying decisions (Chu & Pike 2003).
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Emergence of the interaction experience

In this paper we argue that meaning of the term channel is changing and is now taking on a new meaning: what we should be considering is the interaction experience and not the technology which is the medium for communication. The channel is a means to an end, not an end in itself. We argue this because, like all new implementations, there comes a point at which the new becomes the norm and the norm adjusts for the next innovation. In the case of online service delivery, channels have become the norm and now need to adjust to the integration of technology tools with one another. We argue that channels are becoming part of a more comprehensive concept, which we have called the interaction experience. This implies that the interaction experience is made up of a complex blend of technology tools and practices, such as multi-channel service delivery and management, customer experience management/customer relationship management (depending on the organisations approach) and channel economics together with the capabilities of the organisation and the user. The interaction experience, and indeed multi-channel service delivery and management, is complicated by the emergence of value networks as the emerging structural paradigm for all industries. We are seeing enterprises configure themselves to mediate interactions and exchanges across a network of their customers and suppliers. The customers are an integral part of the network not simply peripheral to it and the value network organisation provides the networking service through a consistent and coherent infrastructure. Value networks must excel at matching customers and multiplying connections between them (Computer Sciences Corporation 1998) as well as enabling greater flexibility and reliability in meeting fluctuating and changing demands. The value network is the next level of maturity in service delivery advanced by electronic or digital communication. The concept and operation of value networks are outside the scope of this paper but need to be kept in mind when considering multi-channel service delivery. We must now consider the relationship between the citizen, business or other entity as a customer of government in terms partly of the products and services they consume but more particularly in terms of the experience they want to have while interacting with government (whether this be one government agency or many). As organisations choose to be part of value networks, designing service delivery from the customers perspective, we are inadvertently moving multi-channel service delivery to a new place in the e-government/e-commerce equation and this place is as a component of the interaction experience. This move means there is a greater need for government organisations to focus away from looking at channel management as an inside-looking-out activity and towards analysing the interaction experience as an outside-looking-in activity and to broaden that focus to include others in their value network. This is a challenging and complex notion given organisations are still coming to terms with the realities of multi-channel service delivery.
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Basic constructs in multi-channel service delivery

There are three basic constructs in multi-channel service delivery: a customer a channel a product or service (for this paper we focus on service). Figure 1 shows that a channel connects a customer with a service. It is important to understand that a customer and an organisations view of a channel may be different and that this should be factored into channel management. For example, a customer may view email as online but from the organisations perspective it may be considered as paper (and thus arguably attract the costs of written communication).
Figure 1: Channels connect customers with a product or service
One of the integrating factors of the linkage between channel and service is the cost of service delivery not only on any particular channel but also as a mix of delivery over several channels. A detailed assessment of this topic is outside the scope of this paper but, nevertheless, the issue of cost impacts on the notion of choice within the interaction experience. Cost is a major factor in making decisions about which channels should deliver which services or, to put it from the customer point of view, about which services might be accessed through which channels. We make some observations about the impact of cost in the discussion below of the interaction experience factors. Each of these basic constructs needs to be managed and they each need to be managed consistently in relation to the other two.
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SERVICE We use the terms product and service interchangeably focusing on service in the context of this paper. We have restricted the definition of service to external or intermediate services we say that a service must meet an expressed need. This enables us to separate outputs, such as final demands for payments, from outputs such as a doctors consultation or a television. Some services cross the boundary between the organisation and the outside world. These are of two kinds: external services are those designed to meet the needs of an external customer: external products meet some expressed need of a person or a group intermediate services which are used by another organisation to generate products of its own; the implication is that the intermediate product meets an expressed need; value networks expand this kind of product. Other services are internal they exist to feed other activities within the organisation called by-products. A by-product may not necessarily meet an expressed need within the organisation. The process by which an organisation decides what does and what does not constitute a service is service management (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: A product model
external products
L
activities
L
by-products
inputs (raw materials)
The changing nature of the customer experience

It is not enough simply to segment customers. You also have to know what products they might take, over what channels they might take them, at what points they are most likely to cross over to another channel and what that means to business operations. It is not enough to focus on channels alone you also need to know which products are suitable for which channels and how customers view particular channels (for example, trust and privacy) and whether their views can be changed. A focus on the service, at the expense of the customer, is a return to a we-know-whats-best-for-you approach to service (or product) delivery.
L
L L
L L L L
intermediate products
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CHANNELS A greater range of channels presents two major opportunities: A choice of channels means that, in principle, it easier to approach your existing customers and it is easier to reach new customers (because a new channel may be easier for them). Encouraging particular groups of customers to use particular channels can increase the effectiveness of the product or service (because it can be better targeted) and can reduce cost (by moving particular groups of customers to lower cost channels provided they stay in channel). Thus, multi-channel delivery is a discipline or functional area in its own right. It is less about managing channels than it is about: understanding customers and their behaviour working out how to move people from one channel to another understanding the possibility of increased flexibility in the use of organisational resources in delivering services clarifying how customers move themselves through those channels and what support they might need to complete their business. This means putting yourself in your customers shoes as part of the decision-making process around service delivery options. One of Centrelinks most significant experiences has been the involvement of customers in the initial design phase of services, recognising that the customer is becoming a part of the organisation through self-service and multi-channel service delivery. There is no fundamental difference between government and other industries the challenges are the same. The last couple of years have seen a global economic slowdown although Australia has been reasonably well-insulated from the worst effects of this and this, together with increasing globalisation and more demanding customers, has affected government and the commercial world. If we look at the retail and banking industries, we find that they share at least three basic business objectives with government (IBM 2003). These are: To enable employees to focus on value-added activities. This starts with creating a single view of the customer across channels (and your value network) to improve customer insight and help change the way professionals do their jobs. To transform the customer experience. The focus is on enabling customers to move seamlessly from channel to channel while receiving an unprecedented level of consistent, highly personalised service. To take costs out of operations. The goal is to optimise business processes and computing resources quickly to deliver the best customer experience at the lowest cost. Technology has changed and continues to increase the degree of connectedness between formerly discrete components of the world (see for example, Mulgan 1997; and Cilliers 2000 for an exposition of connectedness in complex systems. The former deals extensively with government.) One of the corollaries of this change has been development and description of value networks where value is created around adding value to sets of customers and their life events. This means value networks include any organisation that adds value to those customers. In achieving the three objectives above we now need to recognise that
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customers themselves are part of value network. The option no longer exists of excluding them from the design of products or services and from consideration of delivery methods. The interaction experience becomes another component of the complex system that is the value network. The concept of the value network carries with it the notion of boundarylessness that is, there is no edge. The value network embraces and ultimately will integrate all levels of government and all other agencies (public and private) that have to do with the conduct of the business of government. This means that the interaction experience is not on the periphery as there is no periphery it (the experience and not the delivery technology) is a central component of the business of government. THE DIGITAL DIVIDE The digital divide is outside the scope of this paper but it is important to briefly touch on it as it impacts multi-channel decisions particularly for government. The banking and retail industries can choose their customers or at least they can decide on whom they wish to focus their investments. Governments do not have this flexibility or at least not in the same way. The customers that government needs to target to implement a social welfare policy may be the very people who are on the other side of the digital divide. There are four issues for government in relation to the digital divide: How to work with people who cannot afford new technologies. How to work with people who refuse/have a preference not to use new technologies. Accessibility to new technologies. How to give people the experience, confidence and trust needed for them to be able or willing to migrate to new service offerings.
Outside looking in
For the customer, the internal structure of the supplying organisation are not usually important in terms of a desire to acquire a particular product or service. This is a challenge for government that is generally organised for many administrative and political reasons but is not often organised for service delivery reasons. This is sometimes referred to as the silo effect. The silo effect becomes more pronounced as more services are available for customer use and as customers become more a part of the organisation through self-service. Customer tolerance (or intolerance) of silos will be the driver of change for the next thing of self service the value network. The quality of the interaction experience depends upon two broad concepts: Value to the customer: includes those functional characteristics of the experience, and for government in terms of service some consideration of the social policy outcomes. These are the activities or transactions that achieve a measurable output, for example, that a particular application is lodged, an address is changed in all appropriate places in one go or a parking fine is paid. Convenience for the customer: includes characteristics related to ease of use. These may be referred to as non-functional they may affect the way something is done but not the act itself. These can be those things that relate to the feelings of the person during the experience or their relationship with the organisation during the experience. For example, if I can fill in a form via the Internet I can do it from a place of convenience to me where I feel comfortable, not rushed and able to seek further assistance from the organisation if I need it in a manner that suits me (that is, cross channel impact potential).
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There are, of course, other important considerations for the interaction experience, for example privacy, which we have excluded from the scope of this paper.
The interaction experience factors

The interaction experience is about looking at matters from the customers point of view. There are at least six factors in the interaction experience that any strategy for multi-channel service delivery should address explicitly to connect effectively and efficiently with the customer in the interaction experience (see Figure 3). It is equally important that the multi-channel service delivery strategy consider these inputs in the context of any other organisations they connect with to create a value network. That is, understanding each other as well as the mutual customer in the interaction as the mutual customer may seek different answers to each question, as may the organisation to that of your own organisation and as stated earlier, the customer generally isnt concerned with how many organisations they are dealing with to achieve their business outcome; but the organisation should be.
Figure 3: The interaction experience
While we may derive these factors from the customers point of view, each factor has a dual expression from the suppliers point of view. A multi-channel service delivery strategy should be explicit about these factors. It is important to note that accessibility permeates through each of these items and should be considered in the context of each. THE CHANGING ROLE OF LEGACY SYSTEMS IN CREATING THE SINGLE CUSTOMER VIEW Experience has now taught us that in creating the single customer view, generally through using the Internet as the interface, we inadvertently change the role of legacy structures and systems from that of interface to data holdings. This does not decrease the importance of that legacy system, but in fact increases it. In turn, this can affect customer behaviour as customer service staff adjust their behaviours (and business processes) accordingly, which in turn ripples to directions and advice provided to the customer and how the customer interfaces with the organisation. As customers generally buy several products from the same company understanding any underlying behaviour throughout the entire process depends upon integrating possibly incompatible systems and processes. This is huge cultural, business engineering and technical challenge.
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Choice
From the customers viewpoint Can I choose what service I take over what channel? Can I choose whom to deal with for this product? Can I choose how I access these products/services? What additional costs would I incur between one channel and another From the suppliers viewpoint Can I choose my customers? Do I have a choice of service delivery channel? Can I influence the delivery channel? Can I target products to particular customer groups through particular channels? To what degree will cost savings through channel management impede successful product take-up? Choice is often supposed to rest with the customer and, indeed, one aspect of multi-service delivery is about choice enabling the customer to choose the delivery mechanism that is most convenient to him or her and provides them with the best value and experience. Yet the supplier has a choice as well; for government agencies, this can be more limited than that of private industry where it is preferable that unprofitable customer segments are shifted to a competitor. Government does not have this choice. Government has customer sets that are more difficult to service for a variety of reasons and this must be factored into the choice answer on both sides of the relationship. Further, government may choose to have a service delivered via a particular channel. It is important to recall that, while I may not have a choice about to whom I pay my taxes, I may have a choice about how I pay my taxes. Choice in the banking industry is interesting: it is difficult (though not impossible) to survive today without a bank account. The choice is less about whether than about which one.
Commitment
From the customers viewpoint Am I prepared to make a commitment (usually in time channel and/or loyalty to the channel) to this product over to this channel? Will my commitment be stronger here than on another channel? Do I trust this organisation? From the suppliers viewpoint For a given product will the customer use this to conduct their business or simply use the channel collect information or both? Are we able to commit to the upfront and ongoing costs of this channel and service? How do we wish to capture data from the browsing activity? What level of commitment do we want/expect from the customer in this channel? Will the chosen channel/s help deliver social policy outcomes (for government)? Does the cost of doing business over a particular channel impede the commitment of the customer to the product? Can I offer security over any channel? In the automotive retail industry much thought is given to whether a customer will buy a car over the Internet. This leads to the concept of high commitment products. A car is frequently the second largest purchase a person makes so represents a considerable emotional as well as financial investment. An analogy for government may be around services relating to legal or regulatory need tax, business registration, welfare benefits. These are high commitment products in the context of the intangible experience elements a person must commit time, energy and effort to seeking out the right solution for their needs at
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that time/event in their life. For example, anecdotal feedback from customers using Centrelinks online self-service indicates that time commitments play a key role in their choosing to use the online channel to conduct their business with Centrelink. It is important to note that the event may drive the channel choice of the customer and this should be factored into decision making by the organisation. The degree to which a customer will make a commitment to a particular product over a given channel depends also on any cost impacts. It is generally more expensive to use surface mail to effect a transaction than it is to effect the same transaction online. But there may be other factors in play, such as security, privacy and identification, that mean some physical documentation is necessary.
Need
From the customers viewpoint Do I need what is being offered does it enhance my sense of wellbeing, security, etc and will it satisfy my needs? Does it make my life easier? From the suppliers viewpoint What is it that that will be needed by our customers? What do we need them to do/take/buy? How will this value be created and felt on a technological, as opposed to personal, channel? How much variation is there between the needs of different customers? To what extent can I afford to respond to that need? In a government context need may be a difficult concept. We need to pay our taxes, we need to register businesses, we need to license our cars, we might need welfare assistance. On the other hand we may not want to do these things for a variety of reasons. Compliance is a need just as much as the voluntary desire for something. Need is a tricky area of the interaction experience and should be carefully thought through and is very different from want. Need could be considered a negative driver to seek out services particularly if it is not coupled with a want. This, in turn, means organisational decision making about service delivery channels have to consider the convenience and useability in the context of the negative driver. Need, in the private sector context is a positive driver to seek out services as the customer is willing to participate in the interaction because what is sought will add value to their life and/or make their life easier.
Integration
From the customers viewpoint Do I always have to do this the same way? Can I mix and match services and channels to meet my needs? Will this work against what I need to achieve for me? Do I have to tell someone all this information all over again if I cant finish it on the same channel? Can I do everything I want to do in the one go (that is, from end-to-end)? From the suppliers viewpoint How can I ensure that what I deliver over the Internet/telephone is the same as what I deliver through a store or shopfront? How can I ensure that the things delivered within the channel are consistent with each other and add value to the customer through integration of services? How do I address any inconsistencies that might cause the customer to seek alternate methods of interaction?
Integration of channels is about consistency in look and feel and ultimately in experience which drives integration of services from the customers perspective. It is also about integration within and between organisations. It is confusing to a customer to find an online experience is so markedly different to traditional channels that you cannot work out if you have achieved your needs. Let us consider business registration. A customer may begin to use the Internet to register a new business but then find that she needs additional advice. If she uses the phone she needs to be sure she does not have to repeat all the information she has already entered on the Internet. That is, that this information was captured and made available to the other channel. Achieving this is only partly a technical issue much depends upon being clear about the business processes used within each channel, across channels and end-to-end in the
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transaction itself that is intra and inter organisational integration. This point becomes even more important in the context of a value network where the information may be changing organisational boundaries as well as channels. That is, the choices made about integration impact on the ramifications for the customer and their entire experience not just that of your organisation.
Useability
From the customers viewpoint Is it easy to use? Does it make sense? From the suppliers viewpoint Are we approachable? How are we designing our services and products? What are the things that make our customers want to come to us? Useability is about ensuring the experience is user friendly. This is about not only the technology but about the processes, information, and communication methods used. Examples include language level, clear and easy-tofollow steps and so on. Useability is tightly coupled to integration and loyalty. If it is unusable how can it be integrated and how can it create customer loyalty. Useability success is derived when services are designed based on the user as the primary element of suability and the organisation as the secondary element. One of the greatest experiences for Centrelink has been the involvement of real customers in the initial design phase of services, recognising that the customer is becoming a part of the organisation through self-service and multi-channel service delivery.
Loyalty
From the customers viewpoint Whats in it for me if I use this channel? How good is this organisation at helping me to need to achieve my needs through the channel? From the suppliers viewpoint How can we help customers achieve their needs painlessly and in a timely manner so that if they come back they choose to come back this way? How can I create an experience that has my customers saying good things about the organisation more often than bad things? Loyalty relates to the degree to which a customer is prepared or, better, enthusiastic about returning to a supplier for a particular product or service. Loyalty is established by a complex interaction of the preceding factors, the nature of the product/service itself, the reputation of the supplier and a number of other factors. Suppliers need to determine where they wish to generate loyalty. For government, loyalty is generally equated to trust, service offer and experience in one channel which spills over into expectations of the other channels. That is, a customer trusts a government agency to ensure accuracy in the information or assessment provided to that customer and therefore the customer is loyal to the government agency in the context of speaking well of that organisation. This is compounded by their expectations and previous experience of other service delivery channels. This is commonly called the word-of-mouth impact. Wordof-mouth can make or break a service especially in a multi-channel service delivery environment.
Conclusion
Multi-channel service delivery is a reality today. There is broad acceptance that governments service customers and that they deliver services. There is also a broad understanding that service delivery in the context of government is about creating value for the customer through participation in value networks that make it easier for the customer to achieve their sought outcome in their interaction with government. This means organisations have to understand their value proposition in the
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context of the customer as well as the value network/s in which they participate, recognising that the value proposition may vary for different value networks. We have made some comparisons with the banking and retail industries. Research associated with the automotive retail industry also suggests that customer experience is an important attribute of the relationship with the supplier. We extend this into what we have termed the interaction experience where we recognise the customer as continuing to be central to the process but highlight that it is a two-way (or in a value network multi-way) experience driven by at least six factors each of which must equally be addressed as part of a multi-channel service delivery management strategy and its supporting decision-making processes and practices. We recognise that the interaction experience is a key component in both attracting customers to do business in a particular way and in encouraging compliance in the broadest sense with government regulation. Government and private sector have similarities and differences. Both can learn from each other, but both must understand their point of differentiation. For government, the differentiation point is predominately that of choice. Choice in how a citizen or customer deals with government (that is, channel choice) rather than choice of provider. Choice is reliant on several factors including exposure to new technology, such as the Internet. For private industry the differentiation point is integration. Because private industry can opt to deliver services through only certain channels decisions can be taken to not integrate the channels but only offer services via certain channels. In very limited cases, government can make this choice also but the choice is predominantly around staying on traditional channels rather than newer technologies and channels. The term multi-channel is changing in meaning and position in the service delivery equation as we naturally progress to the next level of meaning in e-government and away from technology as the e. The value of the term multi-channel lies in thinking about the channel as a technology or physical asset rather than a method of interacting. What is becoming really important in service delivery is the interaction experience the sense of satisfaction and value that the customer obtains through their specific relationship with government through the service delivery channel(s).
References
Chu, J & Pike, T 2003, What top-performing retailers know about satisfying customers: Experience is the key, IBM Institute for Business Value, <http://www-5.ibm.com/services/uk/pdf/ibv_retailcrm_1.pdf>. Cilliers, P 2000, Complexity and Post-Modernism, Routledge, <http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/2/2/review1.html>. Computer Sciences Corporation 1998, Foundation Strategic Innovation Report, Computer Sciences Corporation, <http://www.cscresearchservices.com/foundation/library/si00.asp>. IBM 2003, Building an Edge in Multi-Channel Banking, IBM, Australia. Mulgan, G 1997, Connexity, Chatto and Windus, London, <http://www.innovationwatch.com/books/bks_0701163968.htm>. Zaltman, G 2003, How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market, Harvard Business School Press, Harvard.
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A NEW STRATEGY FOR MICRO-BUSINESS E-BUSINESS ADOPTION POLICY

Linda Wilkins* and Tim Turner#
Synopsis
The adoption of e-business by the private sector is still a key thrust of the Australian Government information economy. Many indicators show that Australian business is moving online, however these indicators also show that the smallest-scale businesses (micro-businesses, employing less than five people) are lagging in the adoption of e-business. This paper reviews the approach that the Australian Government has adopted to encourage e-business adoption among micro-businesses. It notes that in micro-businesses the influence of the chief executive officer or founder is dominant. On that basis, the paper suggests that the success of encouraging e-business adoption among micro-businesses might be increased by drawing on the multi-channel strategies in the governmentto-citizen sphere.
* School of Information Systems, Deakin University. # Lecturer, Information Systems, School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, University of New South Wales @ Australian Defence Force Academy.
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Introduction
The information economy is an accepted reality, although not with the same shape or colour as the evangelical pundits originally described it. There is increasing use of information and communications technologies in everyday business activity (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2003a). To at least some extent, the predictions that the e in e-business will soon be irrelevant (Alsop 1999) are coming true; but not for all businesses. The promotion of the adoption of e-business by businesses in Australia remains a continuing priority for government (Accenture 2003, National Office for the Information Economy 2003a). This paper briefly reviews the approach the Australian Government is using to encourage more comprehensive e-business adoption among Australian businesses. The paper draws on case studies in the export industry to illustrate some specific characteristics of differently-sized businesses that influence the success of the governments approach. Consideration of whether the governments approach is suitable for small- and micro-businesses is framed in four questions: Is it realistic not to differentiate between large, medium-sized and smaller business in government-tobusiness (G2B) e-business initiatives? Does the lack of differentiation manifest in the current G2B rhetoric match the actual experience of government agencies and businesses with G2B e-business systems? Is the current non-differentiated G2B approach seen to work? Is the current approach appropriate? The paper concludes with suggestions for an alternative approach for encouraging e-business adoption in small- and micro-businesses drawing on the governments approach to dealing with citizens in the information economy.
A brief review of the Australian Government e-business adoption encouragement approach

All of the indicators of the presence of the information economy continue to increase. Household access to and use of the Internet is increasing (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2003b). Government services are widely available and second-generation e-government services are starting to appear (Accenture 2003). Business adoption is still increasing, albeit more slowly than earlier (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2003a). The Australian Government continues to develop and implement policies and programs aimed at increasing business adoption of information and communication technologies, particularly those related to the Internet and the information economy (National Office for the Information Economy 2002). The range of activities the Australian Government has put in place to encourage business adoption can be summarised into two main thrusts: early government use and promotion of electronic G2B interactions, usually over the Internet promotion of the benefits of participating in the information economy. Examples of government adoption to promote electronic G2B interactions are: Initial forays, such as Transigo, which failed at least in part because of the lack of the network adoption needed for critical mass (Department of Communications Information Technology and the
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Arts 2000a), and EXDOC (discussed in more detail later) and Tradegate ECA <www.tradegate.org.au> in the export area, both of which are moving into their second generations to accommodate new technologies and approaches. Introduction of the Business Entry Point <www.business.gov.au> that centralised the governments information resources on business matters and offered some of the first integrated e-government services for business (National Office for the Information Economy 2002). Introduction of the governments e-procurement strategy released in 2000 that sought to pay all suppliers electronically and to use electronic procurement approaches with all suppliers able to participate (Department of Communications Information Technology and the Arts 2000a). Introduction of the Goods and Services Tax compliance requirements, particularly the requirement for large businesses to interact with the Australian Taxation Office electronically. Development of digital signature infrastructure with projects such as Gatekeeper, and the ABNDSC (Australian Business Number Digital Signature Certificate) (Department of Communications Information Technology and the Arts 2000b). Educational activities that promote awareness of the information economy and the benefits to business of adopting e-business approaches have been as explicit as a variety of travelling roadshows, the e-business guide <www.e-businessguide.gov.au>, and publication of various case study compilations (National Office for the Information Economy, 2003c). The government has also participated in substantial and targeted programs encouraging e-business adoption such as the 10 rounds (to date) of the Information Technology Online (ITOL) grants program in which $9.4 million dollars has been used to catalyse 94 projects deliberately aimed at promoting adoption within industry sectors (National Office for the Information Economy 2003b). The government has generally aimed at encouraging small to medium enterprises (SMEs) to adopt e-business while largely assuming that the large enterprises in the economy will automatically, or have already, adopt these approaches. Indeed, in the arrangements for the new taxation system, the government adopted the position that large enterprises must use electronic reporting for compliance, while SMEs were encouraged to take the opportunity. The government recognises explicitly the importance of SMEs to the overall economy and aims to encourage a large proportion of businesses (by number) to adopt the benefits of e-business for the betterment of the businesses and consequently the Australian economy (National Office for the Information Economy 2003a). Furthermore, the government has an important role to play at a time when the global reach of ebusiness and the accelerating consolidation and integration of global supply chains threaten SME control of their traditional markets (Al-Qirim 2004). The government encourages adoption of typical e-business approaches such as electronic markets, electronic supply chain integration, and online catalogues. While not inappropriate in itself, there are no alternatives discussed; businesses either go online, or they do not. And, to a large extent, the governments approach of early adoption of electronic G2B activities has focused on Internetenabled interaction. Different industry sectors have received different levels and types of attention over time. However, there is no particular targeting of programs at specifically-sized businesses. These are two characteristics of the current government e-business adoption encouragement policy that deserve more careful attention:
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The one-size-fits-all SME adoption programs may not be effective for micro-businesses as the people involved in the business may not think of themselves as a business, or at least not be able to differentiate their personal preferences for information technology use from those that might constitute good business. The tendency to advocate all-or-nothing adoption, rather than presenting and encouraging a multichannel view of e-business similar to the approach the government itself has adopted for government-to-citizen (G2C) activities.
EXDOC: An example of electronic G2B system implementation

The importance of e-business uptake and its diffusion to smaller firms in the G2B context is evident to government agencies such as the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service (AQIS). AQIS undertook the phased implementation of EXDOC across a number of sectors. EXDOC1 is an online G2B system designed to facilitate access to online documentation for producers requiring a health or phytosanitary certificate to export. First implemented in the meat sector, EXDOC was gradually phased in for use by producers in other sectors including dairy, fish, grains, horticulture, wool, and skins and hides. The service anticipated immediate value-adding opportunities from the successful diffusion of EXDOC such as increased capacity to use existing infrastructure to accommodate the increase in productivity and output. An AQIS regional manager summed up the benefits: EXDOC ... requires the same number of people in AQIS regional offices, they get information and they get it quicker before anything happens and most of it is done electronically without interference (Wilkins, Swatman & Castleman 2001). Metcalfes law states that the value of a network increases with the diffusion of the technology (Shapiro & Varian 1999). Industry leaders taking part in the EXDOC implementation were keenly aware that unless all members of a sector especially the numerous smaller producers took up online offerings, the G2B system would fail to deliver significant benefits. Leading firms and professional associations in sectors such as meat and dairy exerted considerable pressure on AQIS to ensure deadlines for EXDOC take-up were enforced. There is little doubt that the lobbying efforts of industry leaders were directed to gaining the value-adding network effects of Metcalfes Law. A post implementation review of EXDOCs roll-out expressly refers to industry awareness of the critical importance of G2B cross-sectoral uptake to business outcomes from the EXDOC implementation: The industries that are well advanced with the uptake of EXDOC are aware that the maximum benefits of EXDOC will only be realised once all exporters in their industry are using the system. These industries are also critical of AQIS for not being stricter in enforcing cut off dates for the manual system; they also wish AQIS to increase the cost of the manual system to make it relatively expensive for non-users to encourage uptake (Minter Ellison 2002). The EXDOC system implementation is substantial evidence that micro-business adoption of G2B technology is vital for sustainable diffusion of online systems and the resulting network effects industry seeks to gain.
A brief review of small to medium enterprises

Small to medium enterprises make up a very heterogeneous group. The realm of SMEs encompasses organisations with between zero and 200 employees, or an annual turnover of less than $200 million
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(Australian Bureau of Statistics 2003a). This presents a substantial range of business types and attitudes. Typically, smaller firms have been included in the market only as part of the trading community rather than as an economic cluster (Brown & Lockett 2001). Despite being poorly understood small and new enterprises are widely recognized as engines of employment creation (Audretsch 2002). Micro-businesses with five or fewer employees survive by continuously applying entrepreneurship to preserve their edge. Considerable fragmentation in SME studies has led to a number of contradictory findings regarding drivers and barriers to uptake (Al-Qirim 2004). What is emerging from larger longitudinal studies however, are clear indications that reasons for adopting e-business and the benefits realised from adoption differ significantly for SMEs from those of larger firms across a number of indicators. The idea that small businesses are miniature versions of large businesses rather than unique in their own right, is gradually giving way to recognition that e-business is a rather complex concept. One of the small number of shared characteristics of the SME group is the role of the chief executive officer, especially in micro-businesses. Most micro-businesses are virtually ruled by the chief executive officer, who is the sole employee, or the founding entrepreneur, or the head of family (Mintzberg 1992). This individual is typically the dominant strategy setter, and his or her enthusiasm for, or ignorance of, particular business ideas will make or break their adoption and success within the business, particularly in the areas of information technology adoption (Cragg & King 1993; DeLone 1988; Lefebvre, Mason & Lefebvre 1997; Poon & Swatman 1999). There is little doubt that the chief executive officers recognition of the business value of the Internet combined with his or her attitude to business growth represent key factors in determining Internet adoption strategies in smaller firms (Cragg & King 1993; DeLone 1988; Lefebvre, Mason & Lefebvre; 1997; Levy & Powell 2003; Poon & Huang 2004; Poon & Swatman 1999). Where the chief executive officer takes on the role of local champion, he or she can play an important role in raising awareness, undertaking investment in the new technology, giving legitimacy and diffusing it through various mechanisms to other actors (Cragg & King 1993; Lefebvre, Mason & Lefebvre 1997; Norgren & Hauknes; 1999). The literature provides strong support for the finding that SMEs will aim for specific adoption strategies to satisfy the chief executive officers requirements. It is therefore important to take into account that while chief executive officers in smaller firms need to know more about e-business, they appear to be generally positive about e-business per se (Oliver & Damaskopoulos 2002). The pivotal role chief executive officers play in e-business adoption in smaller firms may explain recent studies which counter the generally pessimistic assessments of tardy and strategically limited adoption of e-business by SMEs. It now appears that small firms can be more proactive in their use of e-business applications than their larger counterparts. Daniel and Grimshaw (2002) found that whilst larger firms were more interested in e-business applications to improve operational efficiency, smaller businesses took a more strategic slant. These smaller firms looked to e-business to extend their ability to respond to competitors, provide enhanced customer services, and improve relations with suppliers. The study also found that smaller businesses believed they had achieved greater benefits from their e-commerce services than had the larger firms in all areas explored. Evidence of focused investment in e-business by SMEs emerged in another recent study of 27 firms. Contrary to the generally pessimistic literature, managers of SMEs were found to align their information systems and strategic contexts with the expectation of collecting significant benefits (Levy, Powell & Yetton 2001)
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Firm-level decision making emerged as a key determinant of technology innovation uptake in the crosscase analysis of the EXDOC case studies (Wilkins 2003). The EXDOC implementation revealed that adoption of innovative technology, such as e-business, occurs historically as a reaction to external pressure. However, adoption because of external pressure often exerted in the form of mandatory adoption tends to remain patchy until senior management see industry wide benefits translating to benefits for their individual firms (Wilkins 2003). There is also evidence that even single small firms can play an important role in raising awareness, undertaking investment in new technology, giving legitimacy and diffusing it through various mechanisms to other actors and so acting as local champions for technology adoption (Norgren & Hauknes 1999). Our brief review illustrates some key points. SMEs are not homogenous and a one-size-fits-all strategy is unlikely to be satisfactory. When focusing on micro-businesses, the chief executive officer of the business is the key decision maker and is the person for whom adoption education and encouragement should be targeted. Finally, although SMEs are not yet vigorously adopting e-business, their adoption is crucial to industry/sector-wide benefits being realised. There is evidence that properly encouraged, micro-businesses will adopt e-business in a strategic and effective manner and that the influence of their adoption might punch above their weight in terms of industry-wide adoption.
A review of the Australian Governments e-business adoption encouragement approach

Earlier, we identified two key elements of the Australian Governments current e-business adoption encouragement approach: a one-size-fits-all view and an all-or-nothing message. We will frame the consideration of these areas of attention through the lens of a number of questions.
Is it realistic not to differentiate between large, medium-sized and smaller business in G2B e-business initiatives?
Current research provides significant evidence that a lack of differentiation leads to poor identification of business requirements. The role of the provider or vendor is a critical component in adoption of online technology. Smaller businesses differ from larger enterprises in their total reliance on the provider. The pivotal role of the provider plays a critical role in the firms overall level of satisfaction with the technology, their ongoing ability to implement new systems for specific users and their ability to manage their information technology staff (MacGregor, Waugh & Baker 1996). Providers that have adopted an undifferentiated approach to e-business both in G2B and business-tobusiness (B2B) contexts often discover the costly shortcomings of such an approach. One recent investigation of the criteria used in enterprise resource planning software investment, found an interesting mismatch between the perspective of e-business vendors and smaller firms. Whilst vendors had focused on promoting enterprise resource planning package selection in the form of competitive weapons for SMEs, what the SMEs actually wanted were tools that could help them to better manage their day-to-day operations. Vendors had also underestimated the close attention smaller firms paid to local and continuing support for the product they chose (Hallikainen et al. 2002). In cases where providers do identify and subsequently facilitate specific business requirements of smaller firms, the result can be surprisingly successful. In the case of the phased implementation of EXDOC, users came from agribusiness sectors comprised largely of very small firms lacking strong industry representation and often of a very fragmented nature (Peterson, Cornwell & Pearson 2000). These
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barriers to e-business adoption were particularly evident in the fish sector. Fortunately, the known problems stimulated careful preparation and close cooperation between AQIS and industry representatives in the EXDOC implementation process. Despite the known difficulties, the result has been a highly satisfactory outcome appreciated as such by both AQIS and fish industry representatives (Minter Ellison 2002). Based on both B2B and G2B experiences outlined here, differentiation between large, medium-sized and smaller business in G2B e-business initiatives appears to be a more realistic option for sustainable systems development.
Does the lack of differentiation manifest in the current G2B approach match the actual experience of government agencies and businesses with G2B e-business systems?
Accommodation of differences is a particularly important issue in the public sector where government agencies generally cannot choose their customers (Haque 2001; Harris 1999). The services they provide must be for everyone and equity issues must be taken into account. Consequently, government online services must be more flexible and facilitative than those provided by private enterprise firms who can pick their market segment more freely and exclude difficult or less profitable customer segments (Haque 2001; Quiggin 1999). These issues are made explicit in the G2C environment and there are many initiatives in place to address them, including that all citizen services will be multi-channelled; that is, available through a variety of communication media, not only the Internet. This same explicit recognition of diverse needs is not apparent in G2B initiatives. The cross-case analysis of the EXDOC case studies support the need for differentiation in facilitating uptake of G2B e-business across sectors. In implementing EXDOC, AQIS staff in each sector had to take equity issues into account and accommodate the service to the capabilities of smaller firms. Equity issues clearly had an impact on the speed at which each sector could be moved online. For example, many smaller firms especially in the fish and horticulture sectors export irregularly and only in small amounts and have little extra cash to invest in new procedures. The limitations of smaller producers in the meat industry also had to be taken into consideration during the initial implementation of EXDOC. An AQIS-accredited software supplier to the industry noted that, in 2000 after a long period of preparation and even though the majority of producers had gone online, the smaller meaties many of whom were not computer literate could ill-afford the cost of purchasing software and hardware (Wilkins, Swatman & Castleman 2001). Sustainable EXDOC take-up and diffusion within and across the relevant business sectors depended on resolving such firm-level issues. Firm-level considerations had to be taken into account if whole sectors were to benefit from this new online system for accessing AQIS documentation (Wilkins, Swatman & Castleman 2002). AQIS practice therefore did not reflect the lack of differentiation manifest in the current G2B approach.
Is the current G2B non-differentiated approach seen to work?

Case studies cited in this paper indicate that where government agencies such as AQIS have successfully implemented a G2B system, they have not followed an undifferentiated G2B approach in practice. In fact, we suggest that the lack of differentiation evident in G2B offerings may well be a contributing factor to the significantly lower e-business adoption rates of SMEs (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2003a).
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Incentives for SMEs to adopt G2B e-business are most evident in the area of compliance with legislative regulations (Chaplin 2002). Government agencies fail to engage with the real needs of SMEs where smaller firms see only increased costs and more regulatory interference as the only tangible outcomes of such changes. Smaller firms are unlikely to follow industry-level promotion of e-business unless they see clearly how take-up will address small business issues in ways that are targeted to their specific business needs. A sole proprietor in the meat industry and long-term exporter to the Russian republics voiced a common micro-business perspective on regulatory compliance requirements: The EXDOC system is simply one of the processes involved in getting myself from point A to point B and recovering the money that I need to get for it so I dont pay too much attention to the details ... I look at what do I have to do and I do it ... I just accept thats the basis Ive got to follow ... simply a function that needs to be performed (CM personal communication 2000).
Is the current approach appropriate?

Many of the premises upon which e-business is both designed and disseminated to small businesses appear to have been based on untested assumptions concerning the nature, implementation and use of e-business technologies in smaller firms (MacGregor, Waugh & Baker 1996). The fundamental issue of how SMEs actually benefit from implementing e-business, as against the perceived benefits and costs, has only recently come under scrutiny (Poon & Huang 2004). The case studies and surveys referred to in this paper testify to the rich diversity in SME network management practice and use of e-business (Al-Qirim 2004; Nilsson, Magnusson & Enquist 2003). The simplistic nature of an undifferentiated approach appears to be not only inappropriate but increasingly difficult to justify.
Discussion and conclusion

The evidence that all SMEs are not the same, and that for micro-businesses, in particular, the chief executive officer has a critical role leads to the thrust of our argument. The chief executive officer/owner of the micro-business has essential control of technology policy, information and communication technology adoption, and the purse-strings of the business. The message of e-business adoption can address the scepticism that appears to exist, with the majority of micro-business managers, of the benefit of adopting e-business. As the micro-business is often a person trading as a business, or a small family concern where the sense of family overrides the sense of a business, strategies that are focused on real people rather than corporate entities are likely to be more sympathetically received. This does not mean the message should not address business issues; indeed they must, as micro-business-people take their business efforts very seriously. But it does mean the messages must be framed to appeal to the humanity of the recipient. The government has demonstrated a similar message with the current G2C multi-channel approaches. In the G2C sphere, the government readily acknowledges that not everyone is comfortable using the Internet and other information technologies, and that these people have a legitimate expectation that e-government adoption does not preclude them from benefiting from the new technology introduction. This same framing of the extent of e-business should be turned to the micro-business end of the G2B approach.
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This idea has two aspects. One is that the government should more actively adopt and promote multi-channel approaches to its G2B initiatives. It is important to demonstrate that e-business is more than the Internet; it is a whole approach to business that includes Internet but also involves other communication media (for example, telephone) and operational approaches (for example, greater use of business support software). The other is that by demonstrating that the multi-channel approach is a legitimate e-business strategy, micro-businesses that might be resource-constrained and/or sceptical (or even frightened) of information technology can start thinking about e-business from a perspective that is more comfortable to them. They can see their own business in terms of already having some (perhaps many) of the characteristics of a robust e-business and the remaining element (Internet and information technology) is a natural step forward with further benefits both in the new approaches and in the refinement of their existing approaches. One argument that might be raised, to introduction of a more multi-channelled approach to microbusinesses, is that G2B interactions are inherently bureaucratic and promoting interactions in nonelectronic channels will not realise the benefits of e-government. However, this misses the point of encouraging an holistic view of e-business. Although many potential benefits lie in (fully) electronic interactions, there are positive benefits from thinking about the way business is conducted in light of the potential for an electronic channel being added. By making these elements explicit as part of a multi-channel e-government offering to micro-businesses, the individuals who are the key decision makers of those businesses can come to understand, on a personal level, how the idea works. Another view of a multi-channelled approach to micro-businesses is to emphasise the advisor/intermediary role. That is, reinforce the intermediary as the face-to-face or over-the-counter channel that reticent e-business adopters are familiar with and then work hard on connecting these intermediaries, which are dominantly small and medium businesses, to the government electronically. It is exactly this strategy that has established Australia as a leader in electronic tax lodgement (Rimmer 2001). In this paper, we have briefly reviewed the current approach used by the Australian Government to promote adoption of e-business by SMEs. We noted that it was a one-size-fits-all approach with an all-or-nothing emphasis. We reviewed the appropriateness and efficacy of that approach in light of the literature on the nature of SMEs and their adoption of information technology and e-business. The literature findings are supplemented and supported by case studies from a significant and successful program of encouraging e-business adoption. The literature and the evidence from the case studies indicate that the current approach is sub-optimal; SMEs are not all the same and their motivations and approaches to adopting new technologies are varied. With particular reference to micro-businesses, this paper adopts the view that the government could introduce approaches in future electronic G2B deployments that draw more heavily on the experience of the G2C approach; that of adopting multi-channelled approaches to accommodate personal preferences. Finally, we note that two competing pressures might be addressed through the use of intermediaries. The governments interest in increasing electronic interactions with business can be balanced against the reticence for adoption among very small and micro-businesses by promoting the adoption of electronic channels by the advisors to these small firms.
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Future Challenges for E-government Multi-channel Delivery
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Oliver, J & Damaskopoulos, P 2002, SME eBusiness Readiness in Five Eastern European Countries: Results of a Survey, in 15th Bled Electronic Commerce Conference eReality: Constructing the eEconomy, Bled, Slovenia, pp. 58499. Peterson, J, Cornwell, F & Pearson, C 2000, Chain Stocktake of Some Australian Agricultural and Fishing Industries, Bureau of Rural Science, Canberra. Poon, S & Huang, X 2004, E-Commerce and SMEs: A Reflection and The Way Ahead, in Electronic Commerce in Small to Medium-Sized Enterprises: Frameworks, Issues and Implications, ed. Al-Qirim, Idea Group, Inc, pp. 1729. Poon, S & Swatman, PMC 1999, An exploratory study of small business Internet commerce issues, Information & Management, vol. 35, pp. 918. Quiggin, J 1999, The Future of Government: Mixed Economy or Minimal State? Australian Journal of Public Administration, vol. 58, no. 4, pp. 3953. Rimmer, J 2001, Electronic Government in Australias Information Economy, available: 23 August 2002 <http://www.noie.gov.au/publications/speeches/Rimmer/Canada_Oct01.htm>. Shapiro, C & Varian, H 1999, Information Rules, Harvard Business School Press, Boston. Wilkins, L 2003, Building G2B Online Communities: The Influences on Uptake of Innovative Technology, PhD (submitted for examination), Deakin University. Wilkins, L, Swatman, PMC & Castleman, T 2001, Organisational Factors in the Diffusion of an Industry Standard: Implementing an Online Documentation System for Australian Exporters, Electronic Markets, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 22230. Wilkins, L, Swatman, PMC & Castleman, T 2002, Mustering Consent: Government-Sponsored Virtual Communities and the Incentives for Buy-In, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, vol. 7, no. 1.
Notes
1 See <http://www.affa.gov.au/content/output.cfm?ObjectID=29486AD7-D0CB-463E-99FC73BBC61F36A0> for Frequently Asked Questions about EXDOC.
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C O L L E C T I V E A C C O U N TA B I L I T Y
Future Challenges for E-government Collective Accountability
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A REALISTIC APPROACH FOR DEVELOPING A WHOLEOF-GOVERNMENT ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE

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Peter Croger*, Roger McShane# and Glenn Appleyard**
Synopsis
Information and communication technology now provides opportunities for governments to deliver better services, sometimes at a lower cost. However, the realisation of these opportunities often depends on the effective management and coordination of the service delivery infrastructure, particularly business processes, information resources and technology resources, over multiple government agencies. Frequently, coordination must also extend over multiple jurisdictions. In recent years, many government organisations have sought to develop enterprise architectures as frameworks for managing these services and resources. For government enterprise architectures to be effective, they must complement and reflect the current management realities, the decision-making dynamics and the diverse organisational cultures found across governments and their agencies. The authors of this paper have been engaged as consultants by the Tasmanian Government to assist in the development of an enterprise architecture framework and an implementation plan. This paper outlines some of the ideas emerging from the consultancy project.
* Principal, Croger Associates, Bachelor of Science (Honours). # Principal, Quill Australia, Bachelor of Science, Diploma in Education. ** Independent economic consultant specialising in matters relating to public finance, and intergovernmental financial relations, Bachelor of Economics.
Introduction
As governments seek to offer increasingly mature e-government services, they face the challenges of joining up services, information assets and technology systems that are managed by different business units within agencies, by different agencies or by different jurisdictions. Many governments are responding to these challenges by implementing enterprise architecture practices. These practices were first developed in the 1980s, initially as a way of improving the way that large complex organisations undertook their planning for information technology and systems. Enterprise architecture ideas have developed considerably since that time, but today the term government enterprise architecture is used to describe a wide range of approaches from loose cooperation between government organisations through to highly centralised planning and control arrangements. The Tasmanian Government is now considering its approach to enterprise architecture and we have been engaged as consultants to help the Government develop a framework and an implementation plan which would have a whole-of-government focus. The project is not yet finished, but in this paper we present some ideas about a realistic approach to implementing enterprise architecture in a state government.
Adoption of information and communication technology within Tasmanian Government

In Australia, state and territory governments are primarily concerned with direct delivery of services to their communities. Most of their employees (police, nurses, doctors, teachers, park rangers and others) interact with the public on a day-to-day basis. Like most governments, the Tasmanian Government is organised into agencies that each manage identified groups of government services, but also have particular policy remits. In April 2004, the 10 core Tasmanian agencies were: Department of Economic Development Department of Education Department of Health and Human Services Department of Infrastructure, Energy and Resources Department of Justice Department of Police and Public Safety Department of Premier and Cabinet Department of Primary Industries, Water and Environment Department of Tourism, Parks, Heritage and the Arts Department of Treasury and Finance.
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The silo structure of governments is long established, but increasingly, policy issues transcend many agencies. Similarly, service delivery involves regulatory frameworks, business processes and delivery infrastructure that are managed by multiple agencies. Information and communication technology can be a strong enabler to improve services, reduce some costs and enhance flexibility to meet future challenges. The historical adoption of information and communication technology by government in Tasmania matches the developments in many other governments. Individual Tasmania agencies have invested in information and communication technology infrastructure and software systems over many decades and particular agencies were often early adopters of this technology. For example, secondary schools were equipped with computers that were inter-connected through telecommunications services in the early 1970s. By the early 1990s, all Tasmanian Government agencies had acquired their own sets of software systems and were operating their own information and communication technology infrastructure. By the mid 1990s, it became apparent that there were advantages in a more integrated approach to service delivery that transcended particular agency boundaries. The key focus was to integrate and improve service delivery channels and business processes. However, this required application software systems, information resources and technology infrastructure to also be integrated. ServiceTasmania was launched in 1997 as a one-stop-shop for a range of services from most government agencies. It offered services for government clients through three channels: over the counter through shop fronts around the state over the phone through a single phone number with an interactive voice response system over the Internet through a single government web portal <www.service.tas.gov.au>. Between 1999 and 2003, the National Office for the Information Economy managed the Trials in Integrated Electronic Regional Services (TIGERS) Program in Tasmania. This built on some of the approaches developed through ServiceTasmania but had the broader aim of trialling electronic service delivery innovation for customers conducting business with all three levels of government: the Australian Government, state government or local government. TIGERS introduced valuable electronic services but it also demonstrated important practical lessons regarding the introduction of electronic services that involved multiple agencies and multiple jurisdictions. These lessons were in areas such as: how effective services can be designed and built for clients what types of benefits can be achieved how organisational relationships need to be managed how financial arrangements need to be managed what approaches to project management are effective how technology interoperability can be achieved what is involved in sharing information and data. Today, Tasmanian Government agencies are managing projects which have considerable impacts on other agencies and sometimes on other jurisdictions including local government. An example is the Monetary Penalties Enforcement Project which is currently underway and which seeks to improve the collection and processing of fines. The objectives of the project include:
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improved revenue collection more efficient processes more convenient services for clients better social justice outcomes. This project is being led by the Department of Justice but has major impacts on two other agencies: the Department of Police and Public Safety and the Department of Infrastructure, Energy and Resources (which is responsible for vehicle and driver registration). There are also impacts for other state government agencies and local government bodies. A key output of this project will be new legislation and policies for collecting and enforcing monetary penalties. Another output will be more effective and efficient business processes. These outputs will be supported by changes to organisational arrangements and changes to application software systems. The Monetary Penalties Enforcement Project and ServiceTasmania are typical of many initiatives that are now being undertaken by governments to improve the delivery of services. The services involve management of business processes, sharing of information resources and use of technology systems that involve multiple agencies or multiple jurisdictions. This is creating new needs for joined-up decision making between these agencies and jurisdictions.
Enterprise architecture
Many governments throughout the world are adopting enterprise architecture approaches as a means of developing this joined-up decision making. Enterprise architectures are often described as blueprints and roadmaps which help enterprises plan for the future. Enterprise architecture concepts are partly based on the work of John Zachman, an expert in the planning of information systems. He recognised that the executives and other decision makers in large complex organisations needed a tool to help them understand their organisations. He developed the Zachman Framework which provided a model for describing organisations according to a two-dimensional grid. One of the dimensions covered different types of elements, such as the data, business processes, organisational units and other components that made up the organisation. The other dimension offered different levels of detail which would be relevant for different types of decision makers such as executives, business managers and technologists. The Zachman Framework is a comprehensive but complex way of describing organisations. The six-row-by-six-column grid offers 36 different perspectives or domains for a single enterprise. For practical purposes, most approaches to enterprise architecture use a simplified model for describing an enterprise.
Change through projects

Most governments now have a strong focus on project management practices. They seek to implement changes through projects that are managed under clear governance arrangements using appropriate management project methodologies.
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Government projects are largely about changes to the way government organisations deliver services to citizens, to businesses and to other governments. Sometimes, they are about changes to the services provided internally within a government organisation. Enterprise architecture ideas, including the work of Zachman, have shown that change in services involves changes to many domains. So a change in the way a business licence is issued, or in the way training courses are provided to remote communities, involves changes to business processes, to technology systems and to information resources. The different domains are not independent: they are integrated with each other. Indeed, a key enterprise architecture concept is that the domains are simply different perspectives of the one overall environment.
Integrated domains
During our consultancy, we have developed a simplified model based on five integrated domains (see Figure 1). For each domain, there are representations which enable different decision makers to develop a useful understanding of the overall business, information and technology environment.
Figure 1: Architectural domains
Delivery Model Domain Business Process Domain Information Domain Application Systems Domain
Technology Infrastructure Domain
Delivery model domain

The Delivery Model Domain provides a high level, conceptual picture of how services are delivered. Descriptions of this domain allow senior decision makers and policy analysts to develop a helicopter view of the various services. These representations are generally simple diagrams, but the form of the diagram can vary considerably based on the nature of the services and the existing conceptual framework of the audience. For many services, a business value chain diagram can be an effective highlevel representation. In the Tasmanian Government, policy makers in different agencies have developed high-level diagrams for describing areas such as the criminal justice system and the teaching processes. These diagrams have been used for both policy analysis and for planning new processes and systems.
Business process domain

The business process domain provides a perspective that describes the various business activities that contribute to the services. This is frequently the way business unit managers think about the units and activities they manage. Diagrams at this level are often drawn as flow charts.
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Information domain
The information domain is about the different information resources that are involved in a service. These information resources can encompass a range of electronic formats such as databases, electronic documents and email messages. They can also encompass non-electronic formats such as paper-based records.
Application systems domain

The application systems domain is concerned with the different applications software systems that are used to support the business processes and access the information resources as a service is delivered. Some of these systems are commercial off-the-shelf packages. Other systems are custom built.
Technology infrastructure domain

The technology infrastructure domain is about the underlying technology foundation. It concerns the basic computers and networks on which the applications systems are hosted and on which electronic information is stored and transferred.
Interoperability
Each of these domains have descriptions of the different components that contribute to a service. However, many of these components are actually part of many services. For example, government service offices such as the ServiceTasmania shops undertake initial processing for many services; a single accounting software system can be part of both a fines collection service and a community grants management service; a single property database can be used for both taxation collection and assessment of development applications; a telecommunications network can transfer data for a multitude of different services. The use of multiple components in services and the sharing of components across multiple services creates needs for interoperability: different business units need to manage business processes that are shared with other business units; applications systems need to be able to pass transactions to other applications systems; information needs to be shared between multiple business processes and applications systems; different technology infrastructure components need to be technically compatible with each other. The greatest interoperability challenges are frequently at the higher level domains. In the service delivery model, interoperability issues can touch on matters of conflicting public policies: a model for providing youth justice services may conflict with a model for delivering school education services. In the business process domain, a range of organisational, cultural, regulatory and similar issues can create major challenges for achieving interoperability between different business units, agencies or jurisdictions. In the application system domain, there is a need for ensuring transactions and information can be reliably and securely transferred between different software systems. In recent years, a number of new technology approaches have become available to support this, including use of XML and Web services. In the information domain, the sharing of information for multiple purposes means interoperability must address the labelling, formatting and meanings inherent in those shared information resources.
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At the lowest level the technology infrastructure domain it is particularly important that the different operating software and hardware products are compatible with each other. However, widespread adoption of standardised technologies, such as Internet protocols for networking, have meant interoperability at this level is becoming less of a challenge.
Planning and decision making

When decision makers plan changes, it is important they understand that each of the five domains can be impacted in some way. When a policy maker designs changes to a government service, the business processes, information resources, applications systems and technology infrastructure will also need to be changed. When an application software package is replaced, there will be changes to business processes, databases and technology infrastructure. Some governments are seeking to achieve joined-up decision making through enterprise architecture approaches that are based on the strong centralisation of planning and decision making for information and communication technology. This can involve development of comprehensive and mandated standards together with the central assessment and approval of various plans and decisions. In some cases, central offices are established that become the architect for the whole of government. In other cases, attempts are made to establish unified planning processes across government. This approach to enterprise architecture does not always recognise the practical dynamics of decision making within agencies and across agencies. The means by which government services are delivered at any time are the products of a large number of decisions by a large number of decision makers: policy makers setting strategic frameworks, business managers designing business processes, technical staff selecting technology products, and many others. Centralised approaches to enterprise architecture can also be in conflict with contemporary notions of public sector management. In a recent speech, the Australian Public Service Commissioner, Mr Andrew Podger, discussed the New Public Management theory and noted that one of the key themes has been the replacement of prescriptive rules-based cultures with approaches based on principles and values, and a greater role for leadership. This recognises that there will continue to be many empowered decision makers, but decisions need to be made in accordance with commonly understood principles. When individual agencies seek to improve the delivery of their services, they face the challenge of coordinating the various decisions and decision makers within their agency. As more policy areas and more service delivery mechanisms involve multiple agencies and often multiple jurisdictions, the challenges increase significantly. The TIGERS Program demonstrated the importance of effective management strategies for dealing with these challenges. This has also been the basis upon which the national Integrated Transactions Reference Group (ITRG) has been pursuing its agenda. The ITRG was established by the Online Council of Ministers and includes representatives of the Australian Government, the states and territories and local government. It is developing a national strategy for delivering integrated services across jurisdictions together with a practical work plan. The ITRG has recognised that the key challenge is organisational interoperability. It is addressing this through development of a National Service Improvement Framework which is based on: principles for collaboration agreements for collaboration
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project agreements integration resource kits. The key issue to be addressed is influencing the practices and behaviours of decision makers. In his speech, Mr Podger also quoted an earlier speech by the Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Dr Peter Shergold: Too often the pursuit of seamless government is articulated through the bureaucratic vehicle the Inter-Departmental Committee or the Task Force rather than through the behaviours of those who steer it. Approaches to enterprise architecture need to reflect these lessons and these realities. We believe a realistic approach to enterprise architecture can support more joined-up decision making in two distinct ways. Firstly, it can provide decision makers with the tools and understandings that enable them to collaborate with other decision makers. Secondly, it can establish clear governance processes and guidance within which decisions must be made. As shown in Figure 2, these must occur within an overall strategic context including legislation and government policy.
Promoting collaboration
There needs to be effective collaboration between decision makers at different levels within agencies and between decision makers across agencies. This collaboration needs to be at a practical level and requires the decision makers to share: common understandings common practices common toolsets.
Common understandings
The different decision makers need to be able to share common pictures or maps of the overall environment in which they are implementing changes. These maps need to provided integrated representations of the five different domains. The integration of these representations should enable the different components (business, information, application system and technology infrastructure) to be identified. They should also provide the different perspectives requires by different types of decision makers (such as policy analysts, business managers, technologists).
Figure 2: Elements of enterprise architecture
Strategic Context
Enterprise architecture
Collaboration
Guidance
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It is not feasible, nor valuable, to attempt a complete mapping of all services offered by a government, to a comprehensive level of detail. Nevertheless, different units, including policy units, project teams and technology support groups, are constantly mapping and describing the different domains. In most cases, the maps are created in a variety of formats that cannot be easily integrated, shared or re-used. Development of shared and integrated maps requires: common forms of representation (generally based on international standards) shared repositories of maps common mapping practices to be adopted across agencies. When project managers and other decision makers are designing changes, they also need to know which other projects or decision makers are working in the same space. For example, a project manager introducing a new revenue collection service would need to know that another project was changing the cash register receipting software in government offices. Creating a common understanding of other projects can be achieved through a range of practical means, including development of a shared register of key projects.
Common practices
Coordinated decision making, effective integration and promotion of interoperability also require common practices to be adopted across government agencies. These practices include: project approval and management assessing the impacts of proposed projects and other changes designing methodologies in early stages of projects mapping of the five domains outlined earlier quality assurance. The organisational arrangements and dynamics within governments such as the Tasmanian Government are seeing some of the common practices emerge, particularly in project management. Accelerating adoption of common practices can be supported through: development of relevant guidelines extension of advisory services to agencies active communication and promotion use of existing communities of practice brokering of relevant training courses.
Common toolsets
Development of common understandings and common practices can also be supported through adopting common toolsets. At a basic level, these toolsets can be simple document templates. Adoption of common project management practices by Tasmanian Government agencies has been significantly progressed through development and adoption of common templates for project plans and other documents. At a more sophisticated level, the toolsets can be comprehensive software products for mapping and recording maps.
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Providing guidance
Decision makers also need to be provided with guidance regarding the policies and standards within which they can make their decisions. This guidance needs to be established through a clear development and endorsement process. There also needs to be clarity regarding compliance with this guidance. The scope, nature and compliance processes of such guidance is dependent on the public sector management arrangements and the organisational culture that applies in the particular government. As discussed above, some international approaches to government enterprise architecture has involved centralised regulation of decision making and a strong emphasis on compliance. A different approach may be appropriate for the Tasmanian Government based on three levels of guidance: information and technology policies and guidelines architectural principles information standards and technical standards.
Information and technology policies and guidelines

The Tasmanian Government currently has a small number of high level policies and guidelines for managing information and technology. Some have been endorsed at Cabinet level. Broader government policy imperatives may see new policies and guidelines being developed in the future, particularly addressing areas such as authentication and identity management.
Architectural principles
Architectural principles are succinct, high level statements that summarise relevant policies and practices for managing information and technology. The Tasmanian Government has adopted a set of architectural principles that are similar to those adopted by the Australian Government. Architectural principles need to be revised from time to time.
Information standards
Information standards describe the agreed means for representing information that is recorded or exchanged. Standards address structure, value and meaning of information. Some standards are adopted following endorsement by national or international standards bodies. Other standards need to be developed to meet particular local needs: a common financial receipt number across government is an example. An ongoing process could be established for adopting, developing, endorsing and promulgating information standards. This would be based on identified lead agencies. There are clear lead agencies for financial information, health information, geographic information, and other categories.
Technology standards
Technology standards describe agreed ways that different technology products should interoperate. Many governments identify the technical standards their agencies should follow and publish these as interoperability frameworks.
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The Tasmanian Government does not currently have a detailed interoperability framework document and this does not currently pose a major constraint to higher levels of interoperability. Nevertheless, there are new and emerging areas where decisions on technical standards will be beneficial. These include standards for topics such as wireless networking and encryption.
Endorsement and compliance

The guidance could be progressively developed and published through existing collaborative processes such as working groups and communities of practice. In each case, final endorsement could be through a committee comprising executives from the different agencies. The Australian Government has established an Information Management Strategy Committee which comprises a number of agency Secretaries. In Tasmania, there is an Inter-Agency Steering Committee with a similar strategic focus that comprises Deputy Secretaries from each agency. Apart from a small number of policies endorsed by Cabinet, there are no arrangements for mandating the different types of guidance: guidelines, architectural principles and standards. This means agencies have the discretion to comply or not comply with the guidance. In Tasmania, it is not proposed to introduce an enforcement mechanism to mandate the adoption of the guidance. An alternative approach is that any decision to not adopt guidance should be the result of a clear and transparent processes and endorsed by agency executives. This approach could be adopted through the agreement of senior agency executives who form the Inter-Agency Steering Committee. Most Tasmanian Government projects are now managed using quality methodologies that include use of external quality advisors. Part of their role is to provide advice to project steering committees regarding compliance with government project management guidelines. This quality advice role could be extended so that steering committees are advised regarding compliance with enterprise architecture guidance.
Implementation
The implementation of enterprise architecture practices across government is about introducing and improving the common understandings, common practices and common toolsets of decision makers. It is also about developing and disseminating the necessary guidance. The approach to implementation needs to reflect the existing organisational culture, skill levels, budget issues, governance arrangements and management methodologies that are in place. Importantly, the implementation program must be supported by senior agency executives. For the Tasmanian Government, the appropriate implementation model may be a well managed but incremental approach which builds on existing administrative arrangements. The implementation activities could initially address: establishment of an ongoing communication program regarding enterprise architecture development of new mapping practices for the five domains establishment of repositories for recording and sharing of domain maps refinements to project management practices and methodologies training in new practices development of new guidelines
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development and dissemination of information standards development and dissemination of technical standards.
Conclusion
E-government is increasingly concerned with delivery of services, management of business processes, sharing of information resources and use of technology assets that involve multiple agencies or multiple jurisdictions. This is creating new imperatives for joined-up decision making. Government-wide enterprise architecture practices can be an effective means of joining up this decision making. However, the approach adopted needs to recognise practical dynamics of decision making within agencies, across agencies and between jurisdictions. In this paper, we have sought to describe a realistic approach to enterprise architecture in which collaboration between decision makers is promoted within a common base of guidance.
Disclaimer and acknowledgement

The ideas that we present in this paper do not represent the opinions or policies of the Tasmanian Government or any of its agencies. However, we acknowledge the substantial work and ideas of the many Tasmanian Government employees who have contributed to the consultancy project.
References
Chief Information Officer Council 2001, A practical guide to federal enterprise architecture, CIO Council, Washington. Croger, P, McShane, N & Appleyard, G 2003, The TIGERS report, National Office for the Information Economy, Canberra. Hagel, J & Brown, J 2001, Your next information technology strategy, Harvard Business Review, October 2001. Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation 2003, White paper on enterprise architecture, Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation 2003, Copenhagen. National Association of State Chief Information Officers 2002, Enterprise architecture development tool-kit V2.0, NASCIO, Lexington. Orr, K 2004, The three faces of enterprise architecture, Enterprise Architecture Advisory Service Executive Report 7 (1), Cutter Consortium, Arlington. Podger, A 2004, Innovation with integrity the public sector leadership imperative to 2020, Australian Journal of Public Administration, vol. 63, no. 1. United States General Accounting Office 2003, Electronic government potential exists for enhancing collaboration on four initiatives, GAO, Washington. Weill, P & Broadbent, M 1998, Leveraging the new infrastructure, Harvard Business School Press, Boston. Zachman, J 1987, A framework for information systems architecture, IBM Systems Journal, vol. 26, no. 3.
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MAKING BETTER DETERMINATIONS

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Peter Johnson* and George Masri#
Synopsis
Some level of automation is already used in many government decision-making processes, usually in the form of computers speeding up complex calculations. Further automation can be of use to government if it reduces the cost of decision making, or improves quality or accountability. Rulebase technology, which is designed for executing bodies of rules, can achieve all these aims. The actual rules (the rulebase) are separate from the software that executes them and can be written in plain English, allowing policy makers and legislators to easily see what rules are being applied and how. To maximise the potential benefits that such technology can provide government agencies would ideally adopt appropriate safeguards and take an integrated design approach to development and implementation. Agencies should also endeavour to select the most appropriate technology to support the effective performance of their decision making function.
* Founding Director, SoftLaw Corporation Ltd, BA LLB. # Senior Business Consultant, SoftLaw Corporation Ltd, BA LLB.
Determinative decision making in government

This paper concentrates on decisions by government staff that determine the rights, entitlements or obligations of citizens. These decisions are (or should be) usually made under and within the constraints of legislation. They are usually the types of decisions that are subject to judicial or administrative review rights. They are frequently decisions that have a serious effect on peoples lives or companies activities and performance. It is easy to find examples of federal government fields within which these decisions are routinely made: immigration, compensation, social security, industry grants and subsidies, employment schemes, veterans entitlements, taxation any field in which a citizen or business seeks a decision from government. These decisions can easily have a very real effect on peoples lives. In the business world, these decisions can have a direct effect on revenues and costs. They are often profoundly important. The administrative cost of making these determinations runs into several billion dollars each year. Finally, this is a field in which good government requires high levels of propriety and accountability, because of direct and significant effects on public revenue and citizens rights and obligations. It is a field in which executive government has been entrusted with the administration of legislation, which must be both lawful and fair. Poor administration is not only undesirable, but can represent a breakdown in the rule of law, at least insofar as affected individuals or businesses are concerned.
Conventional methods for determinative decision making

The traditional method adopted by executive government for making these determinations is to entrust them to trained delegates of the legislatively empowered decision maker (such as a Secretary or Commissioner). In this paper, we will call this manual decision making. Its quality depends on the quality of the information and training on which the decision maker relies, their aptitude, skill and conscientiousness, and the context within which they work (such things as stress, pressure for throughput, time allowed for the decision, and support). For the past 30 years, manual decision making has been supplemented with automated support, through data processing and calculation facilities. There are some very large areas of federal administration where primary decisions have effectively been automated for a long time. These have largely involved numerically-based decisions, and particularly calculation of monetary entitlements or obligations. In this paper, we will call this development automated calculation. These automated processes are usually based on legislation, and are clearly effective decisions determining peoples rights or obligations. It is important to recognise that automation of some types of decisions is well established in government. The main focus of this paper is on far more substantial automation of determinative decision making, particularly using rulebase systems. These systems enable a dramatic shift from the traditional reliance on manual decision making, and a substantial extension beyond automated calculation. However, before we discuss the potential of rulebase systems, it is useful to explore why the automation of determinative decision making is attractive to government, and a set of criteria on which any method of determinative decision making should be assessed.
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Business drivers for automation

Measures of performance
Ultimately, there are three primary measures of performance for government in the conduct of this activity: cost, quality and accountability. Government will always seek to reduce the costs of delivering any program or performing any administrative function, if that is possible. The burden to the taxpayer should properly be minimised, as long as the quality of service and appropriate standards of public accountability can be maintained. This desire to cut costs affects determinative decision making in several ways. Programs may increasingly be targeted, introducing greater complexity to determinations. Staff numbers or delegations may be reduced, so as to reduce the cost per transaction (or determination). The government may seek to make decision-making functions contestable or distributed, to reduce administrative costs. E-government and self-service initiatives may be seen as legitimate ways in which costs of this function can be reduced. There are many determinants of quality in this function, including legal accuracy, consistency, equity, proper exercise of discretion, convenience, timeliness, transparency to the citizen. These decisions are a service the government provides to individual citizens and businesses, but also involve obligations to the Parliament and the community. Quality must be assessed according to how well the service is delivered and how well these obligations are met. Many current government initiatives evince a desire to improve quality in service delivery: e-government initiatives, joined-up government, customer-focused services, new service delivery models and an increased focus on broad social outcomes. These aspirations create pressure for agencies to be able to move away from their traditional reliance on specialist, trained staff to make determinations. Accountability is a basic requirement of executive government, and one that distinguishes its work from that of the private sector. All determinative decisions must be accountable: to the person affected by the decision, to the Parliament, and to the community. In order to be accountable, the decision should be correct or justifiable, the process by which it was made should be seen to be fair and the basis of the decision should be transparent and sufficient. A constant challenge for government is how to retain accountability, while reducing costs and improving service quality. High levels of accountability must be preserved if new decision-making methods are adopted in order to reduce costs or improve quality.
Automation
Automation will be attractive to government where it can improve performance under at least one of these criteria, while at least retaining an adequate level of performance for the others. In the past, automation has chiefly been in the area of automated calculation. The main driver has been cost reduction: computers are good at crunching numbers efficiently and accurately. Effective, automated data management has introduced improvements in accountability, by storing client data and records of decisions, and providing the means for fast and reliable access to that information. But, apart from calculations, there are only piecemeal or occasional examples of significant automation of determinative decisions. Any technology that can be demonstrated to reduce costs, improve service quality and maintain or improve levels of accountability must be explored by government. In the field of determinative decision making, the advanced technology that offers these benefits is rulebase technology. Before examining
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rulebase technologys potential, and comparing its performance to the use of more conventional methods, we propose a set of criteria for evaluating different techniques for decision making. These criteria build from and elaborate on the three basic criteria: costs, quality and accountability.
Criteria for effective decision making

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of any function in government, it is essential to set criteria. What are the criteria for comparing different techniques for determinative decision making? There are none that are established and accepted. This perhaps reflects the fact that the possibility of different techniques is not clearly contemplated. Here we propose such a set of criteria. We suggest that these criteria should be used to gain a baseline appreciation of the quality of conventional performance in this function. The criteria should also be used to assess the suitability and performance of new techniques, and alternatives to implement those techniques, for this function.
Cost
The major factors that must be taken into account when assessing the costs to government of determinative decision making (across a given body of work) are: cost of setup of the decision-making function productivity the cost per decision cost and ease of maintenance of the function overall cost of the function the combination of all staff, facilities, resources and systems to perform the function.
Quality
The major factors that must be taken into account to determine the quality of the determinative decision-making function are: accuracy whether the ultimate decisions are in accordance with law and policy consistency of outcomes whether different people in the same situation would receive the same decision, regardless of the decision maker currency whether the knowledge used to make the decisions is reliably up-to-date responsiveness of the function to change whether the system is able to be kept up-to-date easily in a context of volatile policy comprehensiveness whether the full scope of the decision (or all useful decisions) is delivered fairness and the appearance of fairness in the process and outcome practical scope of the decision-making function whether unusual determinations or determinations that require application of superseded criteria or particularly complex determinations are able to be delivered flexibility whether the manner in which the function is performed is entrenched and inflexible, or can be changed quickly and easily flexibility in service delivery whether the customer is provided with convenient and useful options in accessing this service
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simplicity and ease of use whether members of the community that rely on the function find it practically accessible customer experience whether the customer experience is empowering, dignified, convenient, timely, coherent and happy; or disempowering, demeaning, inconvenient, delayed, bewildering and out-of-control.
Accountability
The major factors that must be taken into account to determine the level of accountability in a decisionmaking function are: accuracy whether the outcomes are in accordance with legislation and policy effective control the extent to which the agency or officer that has the ultimate legal responsibility for the decisions can practically assure the process by which, and the quality at which, decisions are being made transparency to the subject of the decision, and the ease and effectiveness of independent scrutiny of the process for making decisions and of the basis of each decision capacity for effective audit responsiveness to change the level of assurance that changes to legislation or policy can be implemented in a manner that ensures maintenance of high quality determinations.
Comparing decision-making techniques

It is easy to be sanguine about traditional decision-making methods, particularly where there are no detailed baseline measures of the cost, quality and accountability of those methods. Manual decision making is extremely costly, making it a prime target for automation. It relies on an army of specially-trained staff, a very costly method of performing the function. The quality of manual decision making is variable and unreliable.1 Full, detailed audits of the manual administration of complex legislation frequently disclose alarming error rates.2 Accountability is also questionable, particularly where there is a large number of dispersed decision makers: transparency is often low, documentation highly variable and external scrutiny piecemeal and often compromised by the lack of documentation. Traditional automation of calculations reduces some costs, but only addresses one aspect of the decisionmaking function: the calculation of numeric components. Many complex government decisions are based on non-numeric policy and legislative criteria. Automation unquestionably improves the quality and consistency of calculation-based determinations, as long as programmers have not taken shortcuts to simplify intricate legislative requirements. However, traditional automation through use of procedural code is highly opaque, precluding any sense of transparency and any effective external scrutiny. In effect, accountability shifts from the business area with formal responsibility for these determinations to the information technology provider responsible for this automation.
Rulebase technology
Rulebase technology is a discrete field in information technology. It is specifically designed for executing bodies of rules. The key feature of rulebase technology is the separation of a statement of rules from the code which executes it. Usually, the rules will be declaratively stated in a rulebase. This rulebase cannot do anything on its own it is simply a description of the rules that are to be executed. The rules are investigated, and their logic applied, by an inference engine, a completely separate piece of code.
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Usually, the inference engine is a stable, third-party product, which does not change from application to application. Because the rulebase is simply a declaration of the rules that need to be applied, the manner in which the rules are written will have a profound effect on how transparent and comprehensible the rulebase is to people familiar with the underlying policy. If the rules can be written in English (as in some technologies) the rulebase will be highly transparent. The following is an example of how rulebase representation of legislation can be transparent and coherent. This is rulebase code, as written by the person translating legislation requirements for the computer to process: 6.1.3 Member this Part applies to3 6.1.3 Chapter 6 Part 1 applies to the member if; (a) both; the member has been posted for duty at a relevant locality; and the member lives at a relevant locality or (b) the member has been serving on temporary duty at a relevant locality for a continuous period of more than 21 days; or (c) the member is posted for service in a seagoing ship based at a relevant locality. Rulebase technology therefore provides a new approach to the automation of determinations. Some key features of this technology are: it does not use procedural code, but separates the declaration of rules (representing the legislation or policy) from any code that executes those rules it does not rely on an arcane computer language, comprehensible only to specialist technical staff, but can represent the rules in English it has the capacity to automate complex logic of the type that is prevalent in legislation and policy, and thus a far broader field of determinations than simply calculations (which it can also deal with) it can deal with large and complex sets of rules, enabling the logic of entire bodies of legislation to be comprehensively included in an automated system the code can be created, and directly understood, by policy experts (or independent auditors) rather than by technical specialists, such as programmers it can interrogate a person who has no knowledge of a piece of legislation or policy, asking questions about each relevant issue, and drawing conclusions about precisely how the legislation or policy applies to that person it can automatically generate a comprehensive audit report on the extent to which and the manner in which the person satisfied the legislation or policy which provisions were satisfied and why. Rulebase technology is useful for a particular type of determination: those that involve broad or intricate bodies of legislation. They automate logic, rather than judgement. They can be used to fully automate a decision-making process as in a batch process where the data on which the
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decision is to be based is reliable. Alternatively, they can guide a decision maker or client through the consideration of legislation, automatically identifying all appropriate issues and applying the legislative logic, but relying on the decision maker to exercise judgement on the application of each relevant legislative criterion to the facts of the case. This automation of legislative navigation and determination from discrete issues of judgements removes the need for the decision maker to know the legislation. Rulebase systems can never fully automate the exercise of discretion or difficult issues of judgement, although they can consistently guide the correct process for such decisions. While rulebase technology can be used to transform decision making in an agency, it can also be used in less ambitious ways: to complement manual determinations, or to automate calculations in place of conventional information technology systems. In either case, it will bring the substantial benefits that flow from the points raised above. But it is in administrative transformation that maximum benefits can be secured.
A comparative assessment of rulebase technology

It is useful to note three key (and repeatedly demonstrated) outcomes from use of rulebase technology in determinative decision making in government. First, they lead to high levels of accuracy and consistency in determinations. Second, they enable people who have little or no specialist knowledge to make these determinations reliably. Third, they are highly transparent, both in their underlying construction and code, and in their determinations. These key points underpin the following case studies of the use of rulebase technology for making determinations with the use of conventional techniques.
An integrated approach to deploying rulebase technology
In seeking to reap the potential cost, accuracy and accountability benefits that rulebase systems can deliver, the Department of Veterans Affairs took a holistic and integrated approach to implementation of such a system. In deploying their Compensation Claims Processing System (CCPS), the Department of Veterans Affairs not only introduced an extensive rulebase system but also integrated it with wide-ranging business process redesign initiatives and a complementary case management system. A key finding of an ANAO audit of CCPS soon after its deployment was that this integrated approach had led to substantial improvements in the efficiency and administrative effectiveness of claims processing.4 In its first full year of operations CCPS had delivered a range of benefits for the Department of Veterans Affairs: reduced staffing levels by at least 30 per cent achieved productivity improvements of around 80 per cent reduced running costs of between $2 million and $3 million per annum (excluding on-costs) or upwards of $6 million per annum (including on-costs) reduced time taken to process claims and appeals on an average by 60 per cent (from 180 days to 73 days) improved the consistency of decisions and ensured equitable treatment of claimants simplified administration with the team-based approach and devolution of decision making to the lowest level facilitated internal review of claims, thereby reducing the cost of the appeals process
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produced management information specifically tailored to management needs created more interesting and multi-skilled jobs and empowered staff to take responsibility for investigating and deciding claims gained support and acceptance by the veteran community.5 CCPS is used to administer approximately 2500 pages of legislation on medicolegal issues, which are often intricately interlinked. It has been in production since 1994, and is maintained by a small staff.
Improving accuracy in determinations
The Military Compensation Scheme provides workers compensation entitlements to serving members and ex-members of the Australian Defence Force. One important benefit under the scheme is weekly payments for incapacity, where a work-related injury has compromised a persons ability to earn. In 1996, the Department of Defence conducted an audit of decisions on the determination of incapacity payments among its offices throughout Australia. This comprehensive audit identified a national error rate of 25 per cent in the calculation of entitlements, rising in some States to as much as 40 per cent. The process also identified entrenched differences in interpreting key provisions of the complex legislation, which meant that different policy approaches were habitually taken in different offices. Calculation of weekly payments was, at that stage, a manual process. Interestingly, the level of overpayments that resulted from the erroneous determinations was almost exactly equivalent to the level of underpayments (at least at the time of the audit). While that could be characterised as fortunate revenue neutrality, in fact it disclosed two equally concerning problems: inequity for those former staff who were being underpaid and inappropriate expenditure on those who were being overpaid. The Department replaced manual determinations with a rulebase system, which guided the decision maker through the investigation of correct legislative provisions, and determined the appropriate level of payment. The decision maker was still required to make judgements on individual legislative criteria, though each of these low-level criteria was supported by detailed commentary and research material. Introduction of the system led to consistently accurate determinations. The system has been in constant use since its introduction in 1997.
Delivery of public sector entitlements
HR eXpert,6 developed for the New South Wales Premiers Department, is an intelligent and interactive online system that provides tailored advice and information on employment conditions and entitlements to about 60 000 public sector employees in New South Wales. It helps staff understand their employment conditions and entitlements and provides personalised answers to a range of questions. The initial release of HR eXpert covers maternity leave, study time, extended leave, recognition of prior service, leaving the service and voluntary redundancy.7 HR eXpert models about 120 pages of legislation and policy from a wide range of sources.8 It also models a significant amount of additional business process rules.
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HR eXpert enables staff, managers and human resource professionals to calculate human resource conditions and entitlements without the need to have any prior knowledge of the applicable legislation, policies, awards or agreements. Users of HR eXpert merely have to answer a series of easy-to-understand questions through an online interview process that is tailored to individual circumstances. The system delivers a detailed, justified report of entitlements at the end of the investigation. HR eXpert also provides broader range of strategic benefits,9 as it: promotes greater efficiency in the delivery of human resource services reduces the amount of time human resource staff spend responding to routine enquiries helps human resource staff shift their focus to more value-adding strategic functions allows human resources to play a more valuable role in the overall efficiency and effectiveness of agencies service delivery facilitates greater employee awareness and improved knowledge of human resource conditions and entitlements increases accuracy, consistency and transparency in the application of human resource conditions and entitlements.
Safeguards and dangers

Safeguards for determinative decision making
There is a common conviction that when a new technique, such as use of rulebase systems, is introduced to government, it will require new safeguards. This reaction can hide two interesting issues. The first is an assumption that there are adequate safeguards in place for the old techniques: that the new techniques introduce new risks to an environment that is otherwise being perfectly managed. In our experience, this is far from the truth. The second is our suggestion: that the necessary safeguards for a function, such as determinative decision making, do not change. Rather, it is the means by which the safeguards are implemented that change, as techniques for performance change. We suggest that there are four major safeguards that need to be in place to protect good government, no matter what system is used for determinative decision making. These are: information on performance of the function detailed measurements based on appropriate criteria, benchmarking and auditing a risk management framework for the function a thoughtful set of controls that reflect the inherent risks of whichever techniques are chosen to perform the function effective process design processes that are designed to complement the strengths of the technique chosen for the function, addressing such issues as delivery, feedback, review, evaluation and audit, and to maximise cost reductions, quality improvements and accountability requirements appropriate work structures that exploit the opportunities presented by the chosen technique, to ensure cost reduction, quality improvement and accountability. These safeguards seek to protect the integrity of performance of this function, in line with our criteria of cost, quality and accountability. If the fundamental technique for performance of a function is changed, and the means of implementing these safeguards are not revisited, the performance of the function will be compromised.
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Practical dangers in the use of rulebase systems

In our experience, the major practical dangers from the deployment of rulebase systems fall into one of two categories. The first is the failure to take note of all the safeguards outlined above, and failure to approach their deployment as a task that requires integrated design across all of these areas. The second is the failure to assess and select an appropriate technology, in the light of the criteria outlined above (cost, quality, accountability). Where rulebase technology is to be used for determinative decision making in government, contending technologies should be assessed against an appropriate set of business criteria.
Safeguards and the need for integrated design
Rather than repeat the safeguards outlined above, it may be useful to outline some practical consequences of the failure to implement them. We will imagine that rulebase decision-making systems are to be deployed. Some real and common dangers include a failure to: set clear objectives (and measurable criteria for attaining those objectives) for what the agency seeks to achieve, in deploying this technology for decision making measure an adequate and accurate baseline of performance (taking all relevant factors into account), so improvements (or deficiencies) can be identified and measured ensure that decision-making processes are redesigned in tandem with the technology design, so as to maximise the overall benefit explore the potential and design the means of effecting changed work structures and cultural practices roles, delegations, scope of work and staff skill set given the opportunities provided by the technology identify existing risks, new risks, new opportunities to manage or mitigate risk, and appropriate risk management actions integrate risk management decisions with decisions about technology, process design and work structures. The use of rulebase systems for determinative decision making can be a transformational step. It can reduce costs, improve quality and improve accountability, all quite dramatically. But, as with most technology, the transformation relies on smart, thorough, integrated design of the way in which it will be used.
Selection of appropriate technology
The second major practical risk is selection of inappropriate technology for the task of determinative decision making. It is not appropriate here to specify what the appropriate technology is technology changes over time, new players emerge and the context of deployment will bring different emphases to different projects. However, we suggest that the criteria of cost, quality and accountability remain a useful basis for evaluating any technique (whether based in technology or not) for the function of making determinations. These criteria emphasise the practical business requirements in that function. We believe those requirements are an appropriate starting place, and an essential framework, for selection of appropriate technology.
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This highlights a second practical danger in this area. This is that the selection of technology for this function can be seen as a technical (information technology) question. The technology must support the effective performance of the function. Until criteria for effective performance of the function are defined, and until any technique is evaluated against those criteria, it is impossible to make an informed decision about whether a particular technology will be suitable or successful in improving performance in the function.
Conclusion
Substantial automation of government determinative decision making, using technologies such as rulebase technology, is becoming increasingly commonplace. The cost, quality and accountability benefits of automation can be compelling. Achievement of those benefits is determined by a range of issues that have nothing directly to do with the technology. Use of advanced information and communications technology in government requires much more than innovative technology. It requires clarity of analysis, creativity in the design of its deployment and a constant focus on the values and objectives that remain constant, despite changes in the techniques for administering government programs.
Bibliography
Administrative Review Council 2003, Issues Paper on Automated Assistance in Administrative Decision Making, AGPS, Canberra. Australian National Audit Office 1996, Compensation Pensions to Veterans and War Widows Department of Veterans Affairs, AGPS, Canberra. Australian National Audit Office 1996, Management of IT Outsourcing Department of Veterans Affairs, AGPS, Canberra. Australian National Audit Office 2001, Assessment of New Claims for the Age Pension by Centrelink, Audit Report no. 34, 200001, AGPS, Canberra. Australian National Audit Office 2003, Review of the Parenting Payment Single Program, Audit Report no. 44, 200203, AGPS, Canberra. Barrett P 2002, E-Government and Joined-Up Government, presented at the Global Working Group Meeting, Wellington, New Zealand. Barrett P 2002, External Scrutiny Of Government Decisions Trends And Lessons Learnt, presented at the Institute of Public Administration Australia, ACT Division, Seminar on Improving Government Decision Making, 31 May 2002, Canberra. Commonwealth Ombudsman 1999, Special Report Balancing the Risks Own motion investigation into the role of agencies in providing adequate information to customers in a complex income support system, Commonwealth Ombudsman, Canberra. Johnson P 1999, Electronic Service Delivery: Achieving Accuracy and Consistency in Complex Transactions, Australian Journal of Public Administration, vol. 58 no. 3, p. 66. Johnson P & Pender H 2002, Reinventing Legislation: An Integrated Approach to Developing and Administering Legislation, presented to 5th International Tax Administration Conference organised by the
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University of New South Wales Australian Taxation Studies Program, Sydney, Australia. Masri G 2003, Administrative Decision Making in a Changing Public Administration Environment: A Case for Rulebase Systems, presented at the Administrative Law Forum Conference on Administrative Law: Problem Areas Reflections on Practice, Canberra. OSullivan K 1996, Creating worlds best practice in compensation claims processing, unpublished paper Department of Veterans Affairs, Canberra. Perton V 1999, Victorias Proposals for a 21st Century Legal System, presented at Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII) Law via the Internet 99 Conference, 2123 July 1999, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.
Notes
1 See for example Australian National Audit Office 2001, Assessment of New Claims for the Age Pension by Centrelink, Audit Report no. 34, 200001, ANAO 2003, Canberra; and Australian National Audit Office, Review of the Parenting Payment Single Program, Audit Report no. 44, 200203, ANAO, Canberra. 2 One example was an audit in 1997 of the manual calculation of incapacity payments under the Military Compensation Scheme, which disclosed a national error rate of at least 25%, rising to 40% in some States, and entrenched differences of interpretation which had previously been hidden. In our experience, this is not atypical of the results of detailed audits of manual decision making. 3 Defence Pay and Conditions Manual. 4 Australian National Audit Office 1996, Compensation Pensions to Veterans and War Widows Department of Veterans Affairs, AGPS, Canberra. 5 OSullivan K 1996, Creating worlds best practice in compensation claims processing, unpublished paper, Department of Veterans Affairs, pp. 8 & 9. 6 HR eXpert can be viewed on the NSW Premiers Department website at <http://www.premiers.nsw.gov.au/WorkAndBusiness/WorkingForGovernment/HRExpert.htm>. 7 At the time of writing this paper other areas such as salary packages and travel compensation were being developed for inclusion in the next release of the system. 8 HR eXpert models provisions within the following legislation: Crown Employees (Public Service Conditions of Employment) Award 2002; Public Sector Employment and Management (General) Regulation 1996; Public Sector Employment and Management Act 2002; Transferred Officers Extended Leave Act 1961. It models provisions set out in the following policy material: the Premiers Department Personnel Handbook,; Premiers Circular Managing Displaced Employees (199727); Premiers Circular Managing Displaced Employees (199605); Premiers Circular Non-SES Salary Packaging and Motor Vehicles (200351); Premiers Circular Salary Packaging for Non-SES Employees (200271); Premiers Circular Australian and Overseas Travel Allowances. It also models the following ATO Guides: ATO-NAT1004 PAYG Statement of Formulas for calculating amounts to be withheld; ETP A guide for employers on permanent disability of an employee; ETP A guide for employers on redundancy of an employee; Fringe benefits tax and salary sacrifice arrangement; as well as Precedent letters (AF053, AF097) supplied by Premiers Department. 9 As outlined by the Special Minister of State, the Hon. John Della Bosca, MP at the launch of HR eXpert at Sydney on 24 March 2004.
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THE RISE OF TRANSPARENCY NETWORKS: A NEW DYNAMIC FOR INCLUSIVE GOVERNMENT

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Phil Dwyer*
Synopsis
Transparency networks are inter-networked communities that share information about and scrutinise the policies and practices of firms, industries and government. They are self-organising, and non-hierarchical in structure, which makes them impossible to control or manage. Since they do not fit the broadcast paradigms which most businesses and government bodies have developed to communicate, form opinion and solicit views, they threaten to undermine the status quo. What may have been appropriate forms of engagement and communication in the pre-networked world are now inadequate to meet the needs of the wired generation. However, the rise of transparency networks also represents an opportunity to learn about the evolving needs and values of citizens, which are negotiated on such networks. For governments, the decision to engage with transparency networks is likely to be painful and transformative. It will be an ongoing journey which is likely to change the nature of the process of policy making, for example.
* Chief information officer and President, C-Infinity Research Inc.
Introduction
Metcalfes law of networking states the total value of a communications network grows with the square of the nodes on the network. The Internet suddenly caught the popular imagination in the mid 1990s because it had reached critical mass: although the size of the network was growing linearly, the power of the network started its hockey-stick ascent at a certain, critical point. But, as mathematician David Reed has observed, many kinds of value are created within networks. According to Reed: While many kinds of value grow proportionally to network size and some grow proportionally to the square of network size, Ive discovered that some network structures create total value that can scale even faster than that. Networks that support the construction of communicating groups create value that scales exponentially with network size, that is, much more rapidly than Metcalfes square law (Reed 1999). This is Reeds law of networks. We have discovered a class of networks which we call transparency networks. Transparency networks are a new organisational form: self-organising communities which, for the most part, operate unseen in the background of the networked world, but which are capable of emerging with dramatic power and intensity to organise around key issues and to hold companies to account for instances of social injustice, environmental rapine and financial impropriety (see Figures 1 and 2). These networks are emerging as crucial venues for discussion and debate on a range of policy topics, such as global warming and Kyoto, genetic engineering, and evolving labour standards (Sabel, ORourke & Fung 2000). Many companies, and most governments, are scrutinised by their own transparency network; though they may not be aware of its existence until an event-driven crisis kicks the network into action with damaging results for relationship capital. For companies, engaging the network and its participants is prudent to mitigate risk. For governments, the benefits of engagement with transparency networks have other dimensions. Transparency networks can be thought of as early warning systems which signal crucial societal changes. They are a window to the emergent value of good which is evolving from social, economic and political trends. They are also, increasingly, a venue for public policy discussion and debate. Governments are in danger of being progressively excluded from these network-centric debates by-passed by the immediacy and self-organising capabilities of transparency networks. While transparency networks will clearly not replace the traditional instruments of democracy, it is crucial that governments embrace the phenomenon of the transparency network in order to learn, and take advantage of the new fora for debate which they afford. It is also vital that governments are aware of the pressures these networks are placing on companies (particularly multi-national corporations) operating in their domains. For a company, engaging the transparency network can help it synchronise its values, policies and activities, with those of the society in which it operates. Governments can use the networks to solicit a wide range of opinion as an aid to policy innovation.
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However, successfully engaging transparency networks will not be easy: they represent a world which is alien to most corporate cultures, and to time-honoured democratic processes bridging the gap between these worlds will be challenging. The process of engagement will change those companies that attempt it. Because the network allows the mutual exchange of ideas and beliefs, companies will take on some of the characteristics of the network, even as they attempt to impose their world-view on network participants. We have called such companies values-based enterprises because of their increased emphasis on ethical issues. Governments too will experience greater pressure for transparent government and will find it increasingly difficult to cast a cloak of secrecy around themselves. Prudent and timely disclosure will be preferable to uncontrolled exposure, and transparency will be used as a weapon to disarm political opponents (Libyas call to disclosure on the subject of weapons of mass destruction is one recent example of the tactical deployment of transparency to wrong-foot opponents). One example of such pressure at work is to be found in the United States, where the non-partisan Votewatch <www.votewatch.us> has been set up to scrutinise the forthcoming presidential election, in an attempt to prevent the irregularities which plagued the George Bush Jr. election in 2000.
Five defining characteristics of the transparency network

What distinguishes a transparency network from any other online community?; and why are these distinctions important enough to justify the coining of a new name? Most companies are surrounded by a natural network of stakeholders (a network which would include, for example, suppliers, customers and shareholders) this network has been described as the companys business web (Tapscott, Ticoll & Lowy 2000). How are transparency networks different from the business web which surrounds many companies? We believe there are five key characteristics of a transparency network which help distinguish them from other networked communities. These characteristics involve the networks: purpose organisational structure operational mode behaviour impact.
Purpose doctrinally led, united by core belief

A transparency network takes its participants from all five layers of transparency: the company itself; its partners and suppliers; its customers; the market (that is, the financial market); and the public sphere including government (see Figure 1). What brings this diverse set of stakeholders together into a network? Most often it is a single issue. We have studied transparency networks focusing on issues ranging from genetically modified food, and environmental despoilment, to the sponsorship of brutal civil wars and the mistreatment of employees. Some of these networks are dominated by non-government organisations, others are driven by employees of the firm, still others take their lead from concerned investors. The common theme uniting all these networks is their core purpose: to scrutinise and if necessary call to account the entity at the centre of its activity.
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Figure 1: The generalised five-level model of the transparency network viewed as a richly interconnected, many-to-many network
However, not all transparency networks focus on a single issue, or core doctrine. We have seen instances where a network has a least two issues vying for the attention of network participants. Nor do we suggest that networks are always confrontational, although currently most are. Some transparency networks have moved beyond confrontation, and into a more mature and stable relationship of mutual learning and cooperation between network participants.
Organisational structure self-organising, non-hierarchical, inclusive, dynamic

Transparency networks have no chief executive. Rather, they are formed from a number of participating network nodes, connected by a richly woven web of links. This gives these networks a peer-to-peer configuration, which is as unlike broadcast models of corporate communications as the Internet is unlike television (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: In reality transparency networks are richly interconnected groups of stakeholders and each network will have different configurations, roles and aims
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There is much we do not know about how these networks form, and the dynamics of their development, but initial studies indicate they share some common characteristics which set them apart from most other organisational forms. For example, they are self-organising: they have no constitution, no mission statement, or overtly stated remit. There is no invitation to join a transparency network, and no rules of membership. How, then, do they appear? Currently, there is no satisfactory answer to this question, although it seems likely they are formed through existing relationships which may not be visible on the network. How are they managed? The simple answer is: they are not they do not have a command hierarchy, or a control centre. But they do have organising principles. After studying a number of transparency networks of various types, it is clear that network participants play distinct and complementary roles in advancing the networks implicit, but unstated goals. For example, in most networks hubs emerge spontaneously attracting a greater concentration of network connections than average network nodes.1 Nodes also assume diverse functions within the network: some act as clearing houses for information, others act as intermediaries, others rally and synchronise the action of the other participants. Not all participants are aware of the greater network beyond the boundaries of the local area which they inhabit. This is what gives the transparency network its swarm-like characteristic. Like a swarm it is dispersed and has no core or centre; it can rapidly self-organise to attack an attack which is difficult to defend against, because its victim can be hit from many directions at once.2 Like a swarm, intelligence and decision-making power is distributed across the system, which makes these networks more resilient to failure, and able to manage complexity and exceptions (Arquilla & Ronfeldt 2001). Failure of single nodes, or even hubs, on the network will not disable the entire community.3 Finally, they take advantage of Reeds law: their power grows exponentially, rather than linearly. In summary: transparency networks are hard to control, difficult to detect, and massively adaptive, which makes them extremely effective. They impose, upon their target company, industry or issue, a powerful transparency, which creates a profound impact on the operating environment. Who can join a transparency network? Membership is not confined to non-government organisations (although they are particularly attractive to non-government organisations). We have mapped networks dominated by employees. We have also seen networks that scrutinise classical business processes (such as supply chain monitoring and product certification). There are also examples of networks led by investors, or by local communities. However, while the network may originate at one transparency layer, or amongst a single stakeholder group, its impact and influence is likely to be felt at most or all the other layers of transparency. A network which emerges from non-government organisation activities, for example, has the potential to impact the public capital markets (hitting share prices) consumer markets (changing consumer purchasing decisions) and the media (exposing the issues at stake to a much wider audience).
Operational mode facilitate fluid, reciprocal information flow

Transparency networks exist to generate and exchange information, which is their common currency. The networks topology, and many-to-many communications ethos nurtures a neutrality which enables the best information to dominate the network traffic. On the transparency network, information flow is democratic not oligarchic users vote the best information to network dominance by exchanging it
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with each other, rather than a few network owners determining what information will be available for exchange. These information flows are unmediated and instantaneous. This information flow is also invasive, rendering information monopolies and opaque environments ineffective and transparent. Corporations, governments and industries have spent decades erecting barriers to information flow into and out of their various organisations (Stiglitz 2001).4 They have carefully managed the process of information dissemination and controlled both the manner and context of disclosure in order to insulate themselves from the negative impact of bad information. These control and management techniques have typically been founded on understanding and influencing traditional information distribution channels the press, television and radio. The advent of the transparency network renders such control and management techniques ineffective: since the network organises dynamically, disseminates information rapidly, and reaches most network participants in a maximum of two network steps, it will often have spread its information seeds too widely too quickly for traditional public relations techniques to react effectively. Impermeable information barriers are becoming pervious in the networked world, and information is flowing into the vacuums which overly protective policies of secrecy and non-disclosure have created. Of course, the information on the network is hugely variable in reliability, type, and source. The transparency network will often tap into what knowledge management experts term informal sources of knowledge, but this is not the sole source of network traffic. Technology enables the network to offer participants rich, complete and immediate information sets far beyond those available in more constrained media formats (such as print constrained by space, or television and radio constrained by time and bandwidth).5
Behaviour organic, event-sensitive, turbulent

After studying around 25 transparency networks at various stages of maturity, it is possible to make some broad observations about them, but further investigation into the network dynamics which rule their formation, growth and behaviour will be required. There are three critical factors which contribute to overall network behaviour: the volume of traffic on the network, or its intensity (both number of users and number of interactions), the number of nodes and the density of connections on the network, or its extensity, and the speed at which information travels on the network its velocity. Over time, the intensity, extensity and velocity of the network is very variable the network can change behaviour rapidly and unpredictably. Most networks exist in a state of relative quiescence: there are a small number of active participants and very little (or benign) impact on the firm, industry or issue at the networks core. Intensity, extensity and velocity are low, and the network seems to be under control. Quiescent transparency networks are often invisible. Since they have little or no impact on companies or their operations, they are easily ignored or overlooked. The network is dormant, and its capacity for damage is latent. However, as some companies have found to their cost, transparency networks are inherently unstable, and can explode into dramatic life, given the right conditions. In the networks studied, this explosion was triggered by an external event concerning the firm or issue at its centre. Suddenly network intensity, extensity and velocity explodes: more people are attracted to the network; they exchange larger volumes of information; more nodes are added and hubs begin to form around key participants there is an avalanche of activity that tips the network over into a state we call Vortex (see Figure 3).
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Figure 3: Stable and vortex states on the transparency network the vortex state represents a network which is swarming
This nomenclature is helpful because it highlights one of our central axioms about engaging with transparency networks: it is not possible to opt out: like it or not, if the network tips over into vortex, it will suck you in. However, the metaphor also masks an important aspect of the behaviours we observed in networks of high intensity, extensity and velocity: it implies the network is an indiscriminate natural phenomenon, without will or purpose. In fact, it exhibits more will and purpose when it is in this mode than at any other time. Its behaviour has much in common with a swarm. Just as insects swarm to attack an interloper with a single purpose but without central control or coordination, so the transparency network suddenly surges with activity in order to expose the corporation or industry at its heart, or to share critical information. Since the attack is inherently uncoordinated, without a single centre or command structure, it is difficult to defend. Damage can be inflicted from almost any direction. Swarming networks can be very destructive. When they attack companies, they erode corporate reputation, relationship capital and brand. The power and persistence of this reputation damage goes far beyond the local disturbances cased by the initial attack. According to Toronto-based research firm, Environics, Nike is still suffering from the fallout of its 1992 exposure for the use of sweatshop labour amongst its suppliers, despite over a decade of campaigning to rescue its tarnished image.6 The swarm may subside, but it is simply dormant. A single event can trigger a recurrence. In Nikes case, this trigger was provided by a customer who asked for his shoes to be customised with the word sweatshop. Nikes response to the request prompted a viral email explosion which revived the whole issue. Companies may try to identify ring-leaders by mapping the networks hubs but removing a hub, when the network is swarming, is likely to cause fragmentation (that is, the hub will divide creating a richer, denser network (Stiglitz 2001).7 Attempts to control or manage order into the transparency network; either by attempting to drown out the voices of the network participants or by trying to wrest control from them, generally make matters worse.8 The network is stabilised through feedback: attempts to remove nodes (by shutting down key sites, for example or drown them out) amplifies instability (Arquilla & Ronfeldt 2001).9
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Impact generate shifts in values, behaviour

In the recent debate in New Zealand over genetically modified (GM) foods, and government policy on genetically modified crops, the main forum of debate has been the transparency network which has assembled around the issue. In a single week, between 29 September and 6 October 2003, traffic skyrocketed on four key sites which had been monitoring the GM debate Mothers Against Genetic Engineering; Genetic Modification in New Zealand; Physicians and Scientists for Responsible Genetics; and Greenpeace New Zealand (see Figure 4).
Figure 4: New Zealands genetic modification sites swarm in early October 2003
0.0055
www.tegel.co.nz
0.0050 0.0045 0.0040

per cent
www.www.psrg.org.nz www.madge.net.nz www.gm.org.nz
0.0035 0.0030 0.0025 0.0020 0.0015 0.0010 0.0005 0

24 Sep 25 Sep 26 Sep 27 Sep 28 Sep 29 Sep 30 Sep 01 Oct 02 Oct 03 Oct 04 Oct 05 Oct 0.0004% 0.0022% 0.0020% 0.0018%
Chart of all All Catagories sites market share figures based on daily visits. Time periods represented with broken lines indicate insufficient data. Generated on: 6/10/03. Copyright 2003 Mitwise Pty Ltd.
This demonstrates one of the primary challenges to government of transparency networks: public debate and discourse is in danger of migrating away from institutions of government. Historically in democracies, public debate was localised to afford a locus for meeting and debate. Networking has removed the physical constraints of venue, and created an alternative and more convenient locus for a widely distributed public. Transparency networks have the potential to overtake government as the leading venue for such debates10 especially in the under-25 age range, which is increasingly feeling disenfranchised from conventional democratic institutions, seen by this age group as irrelevant. What does this mean for companies in general, industries at large and government institutions? The GM debate in New Zealand is instructive. Companies such as Monsanto, which has re-invented its business in the past decade because of its belief in GM technology, have much to lose if the public debate over genetically modified organisms goes against them.
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Monsantos strategy, during the past half decade at least, has been to lobby government, through traditional channels to clear a path for adoption of its products in North America and around the world. The acrimonious debate between the European Commission and the United States over Europes moratorium on genetically modified organisms stems from the Bush administrations efforts to open up overseas markets for United States agri-chemical suppliers. The United Kingdom Government attempted to lead the policy debate on genetically modified organisms to a wider public, with disappointing results.11 Public cynicism over behind-the-scenes lobbying and hidden agendas is one cause of the publics reluctance to engage in debate with legislators. Increasing transparency into the policy-making process has exposed the links between corporate political sponsorship, corporate lobbying and public policy (for example). Online, however, the GM controversy has been marked by strident and extensive public debate open and accessible to everybody. GM-focused web sites are now amongst the most highly trafficked sites in New Zealand and have become the focus for the real public debate. Thus, companies who really want to influence the debate and achieve consensus, will be forced to engage with these online communities, or risk losing the argument. Meanwhile, if governments really want to encourage a widespread public policy debate, they will be forced to engage the online networks which play host to the most lively and outspoken critics of GM technology. This does not mean governments should set up a web site, and attempt to migrate the debate away from other sites and onto their own. A change of role (and mind-set) is needed. Participation requires the humility to take part without playing the leading role: government should allow the natural dynamics of the network to decide appropriate roles. The GM debate is a helpful, if extreme, example of the importance of the shifting landscape of public policy debate, because it demonstrates that such stakeholder engagement is not simply window dressing, undertaken to keep a vocal minority at bay: it can be a key component of a companys attempts to open up markets and achieve widespread public approval for its activities. It is also a powerful illustration of government being by-passed: New Zealands government did not have a voice in the online debate. How should governments respond? Clearly, by engaging with transparency networks. However, this process should not be entered into lightly: corporations who have been drawn into transparency networks find the scrutiny of the network intimidating not only does participation suggest you are willing to be held accountable; it implies you are committed to change, and it begins an iterative process in which the network antagonists will demand increasing evidence of that change at work. The network imposes a values ratchet (see Figure 5), which is hard to turn back without damage.12
Figure 5: The values ratchet an ongoing, iterative process
Transparency
L
L
Demonstrating consistency

Exposing
Values are a moving target Emergent values and norms are defined through negotiation with network participants When transparency is high, the rewards and consequences of valuesbased behavior are more balanced.
Building Trust
Values
Redefining or reinforcing
Behavior
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Note: Transparency exposes behaviour; negotiation and debate is the likely consequence, which will result in a redefinition or a reinforcement of values; values, as they evolve are fed back into the process of stakeholder engagement, and are likely to encourage greater transparency thus the cycle continues.
Merely by participating in the network, values, assumptions and behaviours become exposed. Participants are subjected to ongoing critical examination and increasing demands of compliance to the networks doctrinal credo. The network quickly spots and exposes inconsistencies between rhetoric and behaviour: it is quick to detect spin and is merciless in punishing it. This description of life on the transparency network may encourage the majority to abstain, rather than expose themselves to such scrutiny. However, there is a compelling, and long-range value in participation: the transparency network is an early warning system which can help alert corporations and governments to emerging social and environmental issues. The values ratchet is an iterative cycle of self-reflection, negotiation, and discovery which will stimulate positive change. Typically, a corporation considers the job of defining its values to be the domain of its elite: and these values are viewed as a single-shot inoculation against risk taken once and then forgotten.13 Yet the values of the society in which the firm is operating are in a constant state of evolution. The companys values cannot be allowed to ossify: instead, it must track societal changes and internalise them to keep pace. This will not happen automatically. In the past, major corporations have had change forced upon them by sudden and extreme exposure to public scrutiny and opprobrium. Participation in the transparency network provides the context, and the venue for a planned and systemic approach to creation and development of values which is preferable to this brutal, if effective, incentive to change.
Transparency networks six dimensions of variability

Each transparency network has a unique fingerprint which distinguishes it from all others. To perform network analysis, we found it necessary to develop a categorisation scheme based on characteristics of the networks form and behaviour.
Leadership
Network leadership can emerge at any one of the five levels of transparency. We tracked networks which are lead by non-government organisations, investors, customers, suppliers and employees.
Institutionalisation
Most of the networks we studied are uncodified, and informal. However, some networks are developing their own sets of rules and processes. The network around Unilever, for example, includes participants from the Marine Stewardship Council a body set up by Unilever and the World Wildlife Fund to monitor the state of the worlds fisheries. Institutionalised networks are, by nature, more stable and predictable.
Goal congruence
Goal congruence describes the degree of doctrinal alignment between the networks participants and the firm, industry or issue at its centre. Some networks (such as Unilevers) exhibit a high level of collaboration as the firm and the networks participants work together for similar goals (for example, sustainable fisheries). Others (such as that surrounding Monsanto) are marked by conflict the credo
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of the network is at odds with that of the firm at its centre, and there is little room for collaboration or consensus.
Compliance mechanisms
Compliance on most networks is voluntary and normative: there are no rules and nobody enforcing or seeking to impose rules on the networks participants. The central doctrinal beliefs of the network act as primitive but effective inclusion or exclusion criteria. Though it is rare to find transparency networks with mandatory or legally enforced compliance mechanisms, some do build themselves out of legislative structures: for example, the United States Governments Toxic Release Inventory makes web sites such as <www.Scorecard.org> possible, and this has helped spawn a self-organising network including individuals and groups who use the site to target polluters.
Scale
Networks range in scale from the local to the global. However, they tend to cascade to larger scale, in an avalanche effect which may contribute to the formation of swarming. Employee-led networks are a good example: both Wal-Mart and McDonalds have found themselves targeted by employee-led transparency networks, which began by addressing local problems. Wal-Marts started with a single group in Las Vegas which quickly spread to 30 Wal-Mart locations in 16 states. Thus, seemingly local problems, which would traditionally have flown under the corporate radar, can quickly get out of hand, and pose national or, in the case of McDonalds European workers, international problems.14 New Zealands transparency network around the topic of genetically modified organisms is an example of a tightly focused national network.
Issue definition
Though all networks are doctrinally led the scope and boundaries defining the networks core beliefs may be very variable, and indeed may include more than a single issue. Some networks are issues focused (with a focus on, for example toxic waste, labour standards or global warming) while others are firm-centric. While this seems like an almost trivial distinction, it has important practical implications on the firms ability to defend itself against attack. For example, Exxon Mobil has become the primary corporate target of the environmental lobbys campaign over global warming. Yet the company has only marginal power to change the primary factors which drive the problem: our reliance on fossil fuels for transportation, heating and power generation. Companies, on the other hand, who are at the centre of a firm-centric, rather than an issues-centric network, have more power to effect the outcome. Governments are in a somewhat different position: they have the opportunity to leverage key issues led transparency networks to include voices which may have been drowned out by former, less granular democratic processes.
Culture clash: eight observations on the changing nature of management

In a recent paper, David Snowden (2002), director of IBMs Cynefin Centre, demonstrated the disconnect between complex and chaotic systems, such as transparency networks, and the managed domain of business and government. Bridging this divide will challenge any traditionally managed organisation, for the following reasons: Power and authority on the network is decentralised and dispersed, rendering traditional models of negotiation and lobbying ineffective.
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Self-organising systems are non-hierarchical thus, transparency networks cannot be managed, and dealing with them will pose a major challenge to organisations fixated on hierarchies. Traditionally, transparency has been controlled by exerting influence over a finite number of key information distribution channels. The effectiveness of this strategy will decline as networks fragment or bypass these channels. This suggests a more open approach to communications which will involve complex and engaging dialogues rather than broadcast messages. Transparency networks tend to raise the level of local transparency exposing what some firms and governments would prefer hidden in the new-found environment of transparency, those with more hidden, or more to hide, will be at a much greater risk of exposure. Voluntary selfdisclosure is more viable in conditions of increased transparency. Issues in the chaotic environment at the edge of the network will become increasingly important, as they will rise to prominence more quickly. Engaging a more fragmented and dispersed stakeholder group is difficult, but it will become increasingly necessary for success. The emergent value of good, as negotiated on the transparency network, will help inform and define societal values: the notion of good corporate citizenship is evolving, and corporations will need to engage with transparency networks in order to synchronise their values with those emerging on the network, and to have a hand in that evolutionary process. Governments too have their part to play. This will lead to a new and unfamiliar role for companies they will be forced to take a point of view on issues that had previously been out of their concern or remit. This will accelerate the already noticeable trend of the politicisation of the corporation. In the absence of global institutions to set world-wide standards (for example, labour standards) these may increasingly be set by negotiation between multi-national corporations, and multi-national, but nongovernmental bodies. Even the management of employees for most companies the business factor over which they might expect to exercise the most control will become more problematic, as the employee is increasingly affected by transparency into the organisation, and are also increasingly responsible for transparency bleed out of the organisation.
Six guidelines on transparency strategy and governance

The command- and control-based entities that drive and manage the economic and social foundations of our society must have a strategy a bridge to connect the ordered world of corporation and government with the rich but anarchic environment of the transparency network. Without it, these pillars of society will be increasingly exposed to risk. We propose six broad guidelines to aid them in their endeavours to build that bridge (see Figure 6): Identify key stakeholders Design and define an information architecture this will dictate what activities and decisions will be tracked and reported Access which stakeholder groups will be granted access to what information. What will be the cycle time of this reporting and access? Context which information channels will be used to disclose information (broadcast and online media, corporate web sites, annual reports, reporting portals and stakeholder web sites etc.)
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Governance Who sets the rules for information disclosure. Who monitors and enforces these rules? Infrastructure Operational support for the strategy which technologies will be employed to deliver on the decisions made in steps 15.
Figure 6: The six-step process of building a transparency strategy
References
Arquilla, J & Ronfeldt, D 2000, Swarming and the future of conflict, Rand National Defense Research Institute, viewed on 15 March 2004 at <http://www.rand.org/publications/DB/DB311/DB311.pdf>. Arquilla, J & Ronfeldt, D 2001, Networks and Netwars: the future of terror, crime, and militancy, Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, California. Barabasi, AL 2002, Linked The New Science of Networks, Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Reed, DP 1999, That Sneaky Exponential Beyond Metcalfes Law to the Power of Community Building, viewed 15 March 2004, at <http://www.reed.com/Papers/GFN/reedslaw.html>. Sabel, C, ORourke, D & Fung, A 2000, Ratcheting Labor Standards: Regulation for Continuous Improvement in the Global Workplace, Social Protection Unit, Human Development Network, World Bank, viewed on 15 March 2004, at <http://www-wds.worldbank.org/servlet/WDS_IBank_Servlet?pcont= details&eid=000094946_01110204011329>. Snowden, D 2002, Complex Acts of Knowing Paradox and Descriptive Self Awareness, Journal of Knowledge Management, Special Issue, July 2002. Stiglitz, J 2001, The Rebel Within: Selected Speeches By Joseph Stiglitz, Anthem Press, London. Tapscott, D, Ticoll, D & Lowy, A 2000, Digital Capital: Harnessing the Power of Business Webs, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Massachusetts.
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Notes
1 Characteristics which seem to influence node formation include: power of the entity (political or otherwise), extranetwork reach (that is, they are gatekeepers to key resources outside the confines of the network) and influence both on, and beyond the network. For a fuller description of swarming in conflict situations, see Arquilla & Ronfeldt (2001). While it is true that scale-free networks such as the Internet and, by extension, transparency networks, are resilient to failure, mathematician Albert-Laszlo Barabasi (2002) has demonstrated they are less resilient to attack than truly random networks. Joseph Stiglitz (2001) argues: The question is, given that the public has paid for the gathering of government information, who owns the information? Is it the private province of the government official, or does it belong to the public at large? I would argue that information gathered by public officials at public expense is owned by the public just as the chairs and buildings and other physical assets used by government belong to the public. A powerful example of this in the public domain is the United States based site Scorecard.org <www.scorecard.org>. This site is run by an independent non-profit group called Environmental Defense Fund. It combines 400 scientific and government databases to profile local environmental problems and the resulting health effects. Visitors enter their zip code and are given a list of pollution sources in their community. The site attempts to reduce the friction involved in provoking a response from the public for example, it provides the phone numbers of plant managers at local polluters and gives users action recommendations on what to do about their local polluters. Environics CSR Monitor has tracked corporate reputation over several years. Rand researcher John Arquilla (2000) anticipated the use of the network form to mount attacks on corporate interests swarming transparency networks are amongst the first evidence these prognostications are coming to pass. Consider an example: in the 1980s the United Kingdom Government used the official secrets act to prevent the United Kingdom publication of a book which gave details on the espionage career of Sir Anthony Blunt: then art advisor to the Queen. The government was able to prevent the books publication and distribution in the United Kingdom, though it was widely available elsewhere in the English-speaking world. It would be difficult to imagine the government achieving that today: the book, or at least the crucial passages from it, would be made available on the Internet. There would be little the government could do, in practical terms, to prevent to books electronic dissemination from other parts of the world into the United Kingdom. David Snowdon (2002) argues that introducing more information into a chaotic environment merely increases the level of chaos. We observe this effect in action on transparency networks we have studied.
2 3
6 7
10 Compare the volume of the general public who attend town hall meetings, or regional and national assemblies, with the volume of people who engage in public networked debate. Democratic discourse and deliberation is shifting to a networked model. 11 Writing in the United Kingdoms Guardian in June, George Monbiot pointed out that the United Kingdom Government spent nothing to publicise this debate <http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,974024,00.html>. 12 Starbucks experience with Fair Trade coffee is an example of this ratchet effect. It was not enough for the company simply to offer Fair Trade coffee at some of its stores: since adopting the Fair Trade product line, Starbucks has come under increasing pressure to spend more of its marketing budget on promoting the Fair Trade brand. 13 See, for example, Workplace Magazine, September 2003, where Rose M Patten, Executive Vice-President, Human Resources and Head, Office of Strategic Management at BMO Financial Group explains BMOs approach to the development of values. 14 McDonalds Workers Resistance Movement quickly spread from a few outlets in the United Kingdom and now embraces sites all over Europe and some in North America <http://www.mwr.org.uk/home.htm>.
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ACCOUNTABILITY IN CROSS-TIER E-GOVERNMENT INTEGRATION

128
Tim Turner*
Synopsis
One of the most challenging aspects of the future of e-government is the practical implementation of seamless government across jurisdictions. In Australias federation, this means integrating systems and processes across some combination of the Australian Government, State and Territory governments, and local governments and authorities. This paper sketches the likely practical implementation of such integrations and then focuses on the issues of accountability for the organisational arrangements described. As well as identifying the limitations present in current legal and regulatory circumstances, the paper proposes one possible approach that uses information technology to facilitate practical scrutiny of a complex multi-jurisdictional operation.
* Lecturer, Information Systems, School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy.
Introduction
This paper paints a picture of a future where electronic government (e-government) services are integrated across tiers of government in Australia. It does not focus on the necessary technology issues that must be addressed, nor does it consider the process re-engineering and the standards agreements that will be needed to make integrated services a functional reality. Rather, it looks at the underlying organisation needed to balance the requirement of focused operations delivering an efficient service, and the variety of interests that must coalesce to provide the environment in which integrated services are operated. The paper firstly sets the scene by defining e-government and integrated services as a basis for the remainder of the discussion. Attention then turns to describing the type of organisation that will be needed to house the operations of any non-trivial cross-jurisdictional integrated service. It adopts a vision of such an organisation at its most complex, involving many government agency partners as well as the private sector. After briefly recounting the nature and characteristics of such an organisation, the paper narrows its focus to the accountability issues the organisation would raise. Critical issues around jurisdictional boundaries and the limits of auditor insight into complex services operated by many partners are explored. Finally, the paper introduces a potential accountability facilitator derived from the same technologies that permit the integration of services. The proposed facilitator is complete with a security architecture that would help maintain the integrity of jurisdictional boundaries without compromising the thoroughness of accountability review.
An introduction to integrated e-government

E-government is a well-established part of government activity (National Office for the Information Economy 2002). Virtually all developed countries and an increasing range of developing countries are providing government information and services enabled or supported by Internet and information technologies (Accenture 2003; Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development 2003). A substantial proportion of these international e-government offerings are really only alternative information channels, but early pioneers have already established the viability of providing more complicated services over the Internet (Accenture 2003; Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development 2003). In Australia, the federal government established an agenda to have all appropriate services online by 2001 (Department of Industry, Science and Technology 1997). In February 2002, Prime Minister John Howard announced the attainment of that goal with over 1600 services available (Alston 2002). The then Minister for Communication, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Richard Alston, stated that this was only the beginning and that the government would focus on increasing the interactivity of the services available and the integration of offerings between agencies and across government tiers (Alston 2002). This direction has been embedded within Better Services, Better Government (National Office for the Information Economy 2002), where one of the six key objectives is to integrate related services leading to the quality and efficiency of government services and information [improving] to create broader and faster access to integrated, flexible and more customised services (National Office for the Information Economy 2002, p.1).
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Australia is and has consistently been one of the leaders in implementing e-government (Accenture 2003; National Office for the Information Economy 2002). It is appropriate and inevitable that the Australian Government would turn its attention to the more challenging task of integrating services across agencies and across jurisdictions. This goal is one of the archetypal catchcries of e-government: From the users perspective, e-government should enable citizens and business to deal with government on a vast range of matters, any time of the day or night, without having to understand which part of government is providing the service they require (National Office for the Information Economy 2002, p. 5). So, what does integrated services that hide the machinery of government actually mean? In considering the actual services, there are four variations that are lumped together into integrated services discussions. They are: All relevant agencies offering the same service in a common manner, sharing data definitions and at best sharing data, but no technological integration between the services being offered (for example, Tasmanias CouncilConnect <http://www.councilconnect.tas.gov.au/councilc/home.do>). Services are collected together under a common theme or event. The services are not inherently integrated, or even with a common look-and-feel, but are grouped in ways that aid discovery and promote comprehensive completion of necessary services (for example, Australia.Gov <http://www.australia.gov.au/>, HomeInSite <http://www.homeinsite.tas.gov.au/> and FishOnline <http://www.fishonline.tas.gov.au/>). Services are delivered by a single provider as an agent of other government agencies. Singular services are offered by the agent and the integration is hidden from the customer (for example, Centrelink, ServiceTasmania, ServiceSA). Services are technologically integrated into a pseudo-supply-chain application. This requires the most sophisticated integration work and is not often implemented (for example, online ABN registration process <http://www.abr.business.gov.au/>). Regardless of the extent of claimed or proposed integration, there are inhibitors to perfect integration (that is, a single, coherent instance of a service offered regardless of the legislative or jurisdictional distinctions underlying the different elements of the service). The dominant inhibitors are the need to maintain a multi-channel offering for the vast majority of government services (National Office for the Information Economy 2002) and the political requirements for autonomy and sovereignty, particularly when crossing jurisdictions (Balmer 1981; Painter 1998b). That is, each agency at each level of government will be motivated to maintain its own offering of its element of some over-arching integrated service to accommodate those customers who do not need the whole integrated service, to accommodate unique exceptions, and to maintain a means of demonstrating delivery of undertakings made by the relevant political bosses (typically, but not exclusively, Ministers) (Barrett 2002b). Consequently, integrated services will tend towards aggregation of existing self-contained services (or parts thereof) either through the simple collection techniques illustrated in portals that are available today, or through more sophisticated constructions where some supra-government service automatically links together the relevant and necessary components of the integrated service through electronic integration with the components maintained and offered by the constituent agencies. There have been some early attempts as such services, with the earliest being the Business Entry Point and the Australian Business Number Registration process. Others have been trialled as part of the Trials of Innovative Government Electronic Regional Services (TIGERS) project.
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Making integrated e-government services real

The approach of integrating services ad hoc from multiple service offerers is well-established in the rhetoric of technologies like Web Services and ebXML (Mertz 2001; Wolter 2001). There are very few examples of the technology working as suggested at present, but there is enormous attention in the area so examples will increase. This paper is not directly interested in the technological issues surrounding integration; the subject is being considered and written about widely. If there is to be a supra-governmental service it will be operated by some organisation (Painter 1998b). As the ideal circumstances of integrated services arch over all three levels of government in Australia, the organisation is likely to be framed in terms consistent with other inter-governmental relations approaches, for example, the MurrayDarling Basin Commission, the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission, or the Australian National Training Authority. Such organisations have been applied to a variety of cross-jurisdictional issues, with mixed effectiveness (Barrett 2002b; Painter 1998a; 1998b; 1998c). But an organisation supporting delivery of cross-jurisdictional integrated e-government services will almost certainly include the added complexity of involving at least one private sector partner (Barrett 2002b; Painter 1998a; Wettenhall 2003) given the need for specialist technical skills and whole-ofnation coverage for support. This is not guaranteed, but this paper considers it as it is a more complex problem than straightforward intergovernmental relations (if there is such a thing!). The arrangements that might be necessary are difficult to describe concisely. In an effort to capture the whole arrangement, Figure 1 is used to help guide the description that follows.
Figure 1: Sketch of supra-governmental organisation scope and interests
Private Sector Component
Australian. Government Component
State Government Component
Local Government Component
Service Scope Organisation Scope
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The organisation (central circle in Figure 1) is composed of the interests of the main jurisdictions and provides the environment in which the integrated service is delivered. The service, however, is composed of more than just those operations that lie within the organisation; the service boundary is represented by the square in Figure 1. This incorporates the idea that each participant would offer some of (or their entire component of) the integrated service as a stand-alone offering under their own brand. The relative proportion of each participant would change for each integrated service, and many would not include some private sector online service directly, but the general condition suggests all participants are involved in the service, and all those involved in the service are involved in the organisation that delivers the integrated whole (the scope of the segments in Figure 1). One further complication that Figure 1 cannot represent without cluttering the diagram unacceptably is the fact that each participant is very likely to actually be some number of participants from each jurisdiction; that is, many Australian Government agencies; many (probably all) States, and likely many State-level agencies; many, if not all, local governments; and possibly several private sector players within a consortium involved in the organisation. It would be difficult to overstate the complexity of this organisation, and it is likely that there would be several such organisations, probably a minimum of one in each sector (for example, health, taxation, welfare, industry development, etc.) if only to assuage public concerns about centralised data holdings by the Big Brother government(s). The nature of this supposed organisation is fascinating because of that complexity. Obvious areas where wholly new approaches are likely to be needed are in: formal participation structures (some hybrid of intergovernmental arrangements and public companies) the governance structure (membership of a board of directors would be hotly contested) accountability (the focus of the remainder of this paper) how such an organisation would evolve over time in the face of changing technology, changing consumer demands and regular changes of government (politicians and policies). It is little wonder that many information technology professionals are of the view that, in e-government the technology is easy, the politics is where the real issues lie (Cole 2001). The paper now turns to the matter of accountability in this postulated future arrangement for delivery of complex, integrated, electronic government services.
Accountability in cross-jurisdiction administration

This paper adopts the following definition of accountability: the legal obligation to be responsive to the legitimate interests of those affected by decisions, programs, and interventions. To be responsive includes the duty of care and the requirement that information concerning expenditure of funds and the exercise of public authority should be given to the individuals affected, including legislators (Considine 2002, p. 22). This is important in both private and public organisations, but is generally more important in public organisations (Bozeman & Bretschneider 1986). The ability of the public sector external auditor to report in detail to the public domain of Parliament on the efficiency and effectiveness has no similar parallel in the private sector (Barrett 1996, p. 5). In the private sector, provided the decision maker does not break the law, they may choose to do as they wish with no requirement to justify their decisions to others
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(Bozeman 1979; Quiggin 1999). The higher level of scrutiny in public organisations leads to higher levels of accountability mechanisms (Bozeman & Bretschneider 1986) usually implemented as controls over process and procedures (the means) (Barrett 2002a; Considine 2002) because of the difficulty in identifying performance and output measures (the ends) to control (Bretschneider 1990; Rainey 1983). There is a substantial overlap between the demands of accountability and those of governance (Barrett 2003). Governance is attracting a great deal of attention at present because of high-profile failures in the private sector through poor or corrupt management (Barrett 2001b), and the public sector is not immune to criticism in this area. This paper will, however, focus on the accountability issues embodied in the validation and verification of appropriate activity, and specifically some of the issues of auditing the postulated organisation. The general public expects that the government is working in their (the publics) best interests; a feeling of proprietorship and a fundamental belief that this is what government exists to do (Rainey, Backoff & Levine 1976; Singh et al. 2001). In circumstances such as an integrated service provided across many tiers of government and involving private sector partners, the public will typically not be able to grasp the complexity of the accountability issues involved (Haque 2001). But they will have a simple requirement: its operation must be fair, equitable, correct, timely, and not inadvertently disadvantage them. One suggestion is that a reasonable test ... might be that [the accountability arrangements] are at least equivalent to the transparency and accountability ... if such arrangements were contained within one jurisdiction (Crompton 2004, p. 5). The public will want to be assured of this not by some complicated collection of audit reports but through a simple statement, preferably by an elected official who can be held electorally responsible that everything is fine. They will want to know that the large, detailed, audit reports exist, but not be particularly interested in the details themselves (Balmer 1981). What circumstances can we expect in the review of the appropriate behaviour of our postulated organisation that might lead to addressing the publics expectations? Both the federal and state levels of government have Auditors General whose role is specifically to provide an independent authoritative statement to the public, through the Parliament, of the appropriateness of operations of the government (Barrett 2001b). State Auditors General have authority to audit the operations of local governments in their State (Barrett 2002a). Most government agencies also maintain an internal audit team and many engage external auditors for additional scrutiny. However, all of these auditors are limited in the scope of their review by the legal environment in which they operate (Barrett 2002a) and, at base, the Australian Constitution (Balmer 1981). In short, the federal Auditor General cannot review the operations of State government agencies, and no state Auditor General can review the operations of a federal government agency. And here lies the first issue with our proposed organisation. Recall Figure 1 the service scope extends beyond the organisational boundary into the operations of some federal, state and local governments. The federal Auditor General must limit his review to operations within the federal government sphere, and within the organisation itself. State Auditors General are similarly constrained. This can lead to two separate reviews developing two different, conflicting opinions on the success of the operation of the organisation (Barrett 2002a). To some extent this is ameliorated if the audits are conducted simultaneously, however, if there are several states involved, this is a lot of simultaneous audit activity and may be unachievable (Barrett 2002a).
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The involvement of private sector players in the mix is less problematic in terms of access because of the contractual arrangements most likely to be adopted in such a circumstance (Barrett 2002a; 2003). Essentially, private sector partners would be obliged to allow all relevant Auditors General to examine relevant records (Barrett 2002a). However, serious issues might arise when commercially sensitive elements of the private sector players operations are included in the integrated service and are discussed in detail in audit reports (Barrett 2003). For the government to gain benefits from including private sector players, it would be expecting to incorporate leading edge, highly competitive service components of its private sector partners. Such service components may represent the competitive advantage of the partner. Revelations in public audit documents about the processes, and particularly any weaknesses, would certainly represent potential damage to the private sector partners business. Furthermore, the organisation itself would be likely to have an internal and/or an external auditor appointed to promote efficient and accountable operations. These auditors would have the ability to see into the operations across the whole range of the organisation (entirely within the circle of Figure 1). They may even be provided access to relevant elements of the public sector and private sector partners operations. But, even if perfect insight was gained by that, they could only report to the organisations leadership and almost certainly not be able to compel parliamentary attention to problems that might lie within one or more government agencies at whatever level. However, it seems unlikely that an auditor of our postulated organisation would be granted the complete range of access needed, and indeed, there may be concerns about revealing all of the operations within the organisational boundaries.
How to manage accountability in our new organisation

So, what remedies might be available to address the risks that are identified within this new organisational space? Two possibilities are immediately apparent, and there are probably others. Firstly, the powers of Auditors General are established, and constrained, with the body of legislation governing our country (Barrett 2002b; 2003). Intergovernmental agreement to amending the relevant laws might allow Auditors General to cross jurisdictional boundaries in appropriately limited ways to allow complete investigations in the national (or public) interest. Such changes are likely to be fraught with political problems, if indeed the legal problems are surmountable. Further discussion of this alternative is outside the capacity of the author but this is an area where more research might valuably point to useful models for future intergovernmental collaboration. We are imagining this Byzantine organisation in the context of the application of information technology in the operations of government. Perhaps information technology offers a potential remedy (Barrett 2001a; 2002a)? The problem seems to be to allow insight into operations in other jurisdictions that relate directly to the operations of the integrated whole without revealing the broader internal workings of autonomous agencies. One possible technology solution exists through creation of highly-secure, shared audit logs of relevant information technology systems operations. In essence, as well as any other operations in the information systems that are integrated to produce the overarching service, a requirement might be set that an encrypted record of all transactions of the type offered within the service are written to a secure audit database housed within the proposed organisation (Barrett 2001a; 2002a). This would mean all transactions conducted by all organisations involved in the integrated service that relate to the components of the integrated service (even those transactions that were not delivered as part of an integrated transaction) would be written to one location.
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The use of encrypted transactions allows controlled access to data that includes transactions not related to the specific operations of the postulated organisation; that is, those transactions that were not part of an integrated transaction but that used systems in partner agencies that are normally part of an integrated transaction. One technique that might be usefully applied has been proposed for secure electronic vote counting (Jorba, Ruiz & Brown 2003). In short, a publicprivate key pair is generated. All entries written to the audit database are encrypted by the public key of the audit database. The private key is not held by any one participant in the organisation, but say, one half is held by the organisations auditor, and the other half is held by all other interested auditors (generally public sector Auditors General). Two auditors must be involved in any examination of the audit database records. Transactions can be further verified by using digital signature authentication approaches, if necessary. Any auditor can examine all transactions of a certain type but cannot enquire into the processes in the partner organisation that produced the records unless otherwise permitted to in law. For clarity, the purpose of component systems writing all transactions to the audit database instead of only those involved in integrated transactions is two-fold: it is simpler to have systems always do something than conditionally do something, and the comparison of transaction results in integrated and isolated operations provides necessary contextual information for assessing accountable operation of the relevant information system. This technology solution is not perfect. It means that complete audits of the integrated service rely upon entirely electronic records but does not guarantee that any particular audit will be able to investigate the procedural actions that led the system to generate the electronic records. It does, however, provide a single source for all audit investigations, and that should promote better coordination between auditors with relevant access to generate a comprehensive view of the accountability of the integrated services operation. The solution is not the only thing needed to address accountability in the proposed organisation. It is complementary to the other necessary elements of good accountability practice, including clarity in governance, policy, and procedures (Barrett 2001a; 2002a).
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Conclusion
E-government is sufficiently acceptable that it will simply be the way government operates in the future (Deloitte Research 2000). The next steps in the e-government journey are not yet clearly defined, and they will not be easy; the low-hanging fruit has been picked, citizen expectations have been piqued and are increasing (Accenture 2003; National Office for the Information Economy 2002). Although technology is slowly moving towards ready interoperability, the diversity of government approaches to administrative and policy matters will constantly challenge integrators. To accommodate citizens increasing expectation for e-government to simplify interactions with government and to hide the complexity of the bureaucracy needed to manage the complex policy issues of our time, integrated services that cross agency and jurisdictional boundaries are necessary (Barrett 2002a; National Office for the Information Economy 2002). To protect the autonomy of governments at different levels and to maintain the democratic principle of allowing people to elect representatives in line with their view of delivery of representational capacity, these integrated services will be agglomerations of individually crafted components found in many jurisdictions and even in the private sector (Balmer 1981; Barrett 2002a). To coordinate the operation of these integrated services in some equitablygoverned approach will require creation of organisations with unique ownership structures, novel governance structures, and subject to innovative accountability regimes (Barrett 2002a). Importantly, these organisations will be different to, and more complex than, current intergovernmental arrangements, because of the likely intimate involvement of private sector partners (Barrett 2002a; 2003; Painter 1998c), and because of the detailed administrative nature of their operation, where daily transactions span multiple jurisdictions. This paper recounted some of the complexity of such organisations and particularly discussed the apparent issues to be addressed in the accountability of an organisation that provides integrated services across tiers of government. It noted that the legal structures in place in Australia limit the extent to which any of the otherwise appropriate auditing entities could oversee such an organisation. These limitations may be addressed by changes to the law. However, the paper proposed a means whereby the technology that promotes the potential for highly integrated government services can provide a suitable basis upon which the existing auditing structures and jurisdictional boundaries could reach far enough. This would allow the existing auditors to provide the necessary assurance to the public that these supragovernmental organisations meet the expectation of acting in the publics best interests without compromising the sovereignty and autonomy of government and private partners.
References
Accenture 2003, eGovernment Leadership: Engaging the Customer, Accenture. Alston, R 2002, Government Online a Success as Australia Moves to a New Era of eGovernment, <http://www.dcita.gov.au/Article/0,,0_1-2_15-4_103828,00.html> (23 August 2002). Balmer, CJ 1981, Criteria for the allocation of responsibilities: an interpretive discussion, in Towards Adaptive Federalism: A Search for Criteria for Responsibility Sharing in a Federal System, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, pp. 21742. Barrett, P 2001a, E-Government: Transforming Public Administration, paper given at Institute of Public Administration Australia, ACT Division Half-day seminar on 20 April 2001, Canberra.
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Barrett, P 2001b, The Role of Watchdogs in this New Era of Partnerships, in Beyond Traditional Boundaries, Institute of Public Administration Australia National Conference, Sydney. Barrett, P 2002a, e-Government and Joined-Up Government, in Global Working Group Meeting, Wellington, New Zealand. Barrett, P 2002b, Governance and Joined-up Government Some Issues and Early Successes, Australian National Audit Office, Canberra. Barrett, P 2003, Public private partnerships: Are there gaps in public sector accountability? in 2002 Australasian Council of Public Accounts Committees, 7th Biennial Conference, Melbourne. Barrett, PJ 1996, Managing Risk as Part of Good Management An ANAO Perspective, <http://www.anao.gov.au/Web/wsPub.nsf/SpeechesByTitle/EA1B4CE68914DCEC4A2568FE000B41A C> (16 January 2002). Bozeman, B 1979, Public Management and Policy Analysis, St Martins Press, New York. Bozeman, B & Bretschneider, S 1986, Public Management Information Systems: Theory and Prescription, Public Administration Review, vol. 46, pp. 47587. Bretschneider, S 1990, Management Information Systems in Public and Private Organizations: An Empirical Test, Public Administration Review, vol. 50, pp. 53644. Cole, J 2001, East Bay cities get e-government boost, <http://eastbasy.bizjournals.com/eastbasy/stories/2001/09/10/story4.html>, (22 January 2004). Considine, M 2002, The End of the Line? Accountable Governance in the Age of Networks, Partnerships, and Joined-up Services, Governance, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 2140. Crompton, M 2004, Light Touch or Soft Touch Reflections of a Regulator Implementing a New Privacy Regime, National Institute of Governance, Canberra. Deloitte Research 2000, At the Dawn of e-Government: The Citizen as Customer, <http://www.dc.com/obx/script.php?Name=getFile&reportname=at_the_dawn_of_egovernment.pdf &type=pdf>, [requires free registration] (16 January 2002). Department of Industry Science and Technology 1997, Investing for Growth, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra. Haque, MS 2001, The Diminishing Publicness of Public Service under the Current Mode of Governance, Public Administration Review, vol. 61, no. 1, pp. 6582. Jorba, AR, Ruiz, JAO & Brown, P 2003, Advanced Security to Enable Trustworthy Electronic Voting, in Third European Conference on e-Government, eds F Bannister & D Remenyi, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, pp. 37784. Mertz, D 2001, Understanding ebXML: Untangling the business Web of the future, <http://www106.ibm.com/developersworks/library/x-ebxml>, (24 October 2003). National Office for the Information Economy 2002, Better Services, Better Government, <http://www.noie.gov.au/publications/NOIE/better_services-better_gov/Better_ServicesBetter_Gov.pdf> (22 January 2004).
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Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development 2003, The e-Government Imperative, OECD, Paris. Painter, M 1998a, After Managerialism Rediscoveries and Redirections: The Case of Intergovernmental Relations, Australian Journal of Public Administration, vol. 57, no. 4, pp. 4453. Painter, M 1998b, Collaborative Federalism: Economic Reform in Australia in the 1990s, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Painter, M 1998c, Public Sector Reform, Intergovernmental Relations and the Future of Australian Federalism, Australian Journal of Public Administration, vol. 57, no. 3, pp. 5263. Quiggin, J 1999, The Future of Government: Mixed Economy or Minimal State?, Australian Journal of Public Administration, vol. 58, no. 4, pp. 3953. Rainey, HG 1983, Public Agencies and Private Firms: Incentive Structures, Goals and Individual Roles, Administration & Society, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 20742. Rainey, HG, Backoff, RW & Levine, CH 1976, Comparing Public and Private Organisations, Public Administration Review, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 23344. Singh, S, Ryan, A, Kelso, R, Laidler, T, Burke, J & Tegart, A 2001, The User Perspective on Government Electronic Service Delivery, CIRCIT@RMIT, Melbourne. Wettenhall, R 2003, The Rhetoric and Reality of PublicPrivate Partnerships, Public Organization Review, vol. 3, pp. 77107. Wolter, R 2001, XML Web Services Basic, <http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/understanding/ webservicebasics/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnwebsrv/html/webservbasics.asp>, (24 October 2003).
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ACCOUNTABILITY IN A SHARED SERVICES WORLD

Barbara Reed*
Synopsis
This paper explores notions of accountability in emerging shared services environments using recordkeeping as a specific example of governance issues to be defined. Records raise issues of responsibility, ownership, custodianship and accessibility for all parties to the accountability arrangement. The paper identifies notions of accountability from the plethora of available literature emerging from governments around the world as they tackle these issues. Following that exploration, models of shared services are explored identifying the accountability and recordkeeping issues raised, using two case studies to illustrate particular aspects of the issues.
* Director, Recordkeeping Innovation Pty Ltd; MA (Hons) Melb; BA (Hons) Syd; Dip Arch.Admin UNSW; Fellow, Australian Society of Archivists.
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Notions of accountability
Accountability is a broad concept with definitions that are not uniformly accepted across all disciplines and organisations. While broad definitions can be agreed upon and generically expressed as being called upon to account for actions to someone, the precise meaning depends on implementation variables within specific contexts which change with time. Thus Mulgan defines accountability as a relationship in which one party, the holder of accountability, has the right to seek information about, to investigate and to scrutinise the actions of another party, the giver of accountability and as a situational concept in that it needs to be specified in context: who is accountable to whom and for what. He further asserts that accountability is always other-directed and retrospective, inquiring into actions that have already taken place distinct from both responsibility which can be exercised without reference to other persons, and from regulation and control which are forward looking mechanisms of influencing behaviour (Mulgan 2002). The concept of accountability is at the basis of our system of government. Accountability exists between parliament and the people; between ministers in the Westminster system and parliament; between ministers who have been given responsibility for specific agencies and those agencies; within agencies between layers of the organisation; and increasingly explicitly assigned to individuals through performance agreements and employment contracts. This explanation of accountability stresses its hierarchical and inward focusing nature. The Canadian Auditor General is working with a newer definition of accountability, less tied to the hierarchical where accountability is a relationship based on obligations to demonstrate, review and take responsibility for performance, both the results achieved in the light of agreed expectations and the means used (Barrados 2003). In 2002, ONeill in her Reith Lectures spoke about the revolution in accountability and a new culture of accountability and audit describing an unending stream of new legislation and regulation, memoranda and instructions, guidance and advice where new accountability culture aims at ever more perfect administrative control of institutional and professional life (ONeill 2002). In Australia, as elsewhere, the elevation of accountability is notable as a feature of government rhetoric variously embracing a raft of notions including governance, responsibility, sanctions, regulation and control (see also Mulgan 2000).
Recordkeeping and accountability

The relationship of recordkeeping and accountability has been well established within the archives and records profession and has been the subject of considerable research and practical work since the 1990s.1 The relationship has been succinctly expressed as it is not enough to make someone accountable for something and to hold them accountable, someone must also be accountable for keeping adequate records so that the forum [external scrutiny] can undertake the review and reconstruction which is a necessary ingredient in any accountability process(Hurley 2004). This integral connection is common ground for professional recordkeepers in Australia and has led to establishment of some world leading guidance in the area. Within the Commonwealth, the Auditor General is particularly aware of the integral links between recordkeeping and accountability, noting in relation to one accountability crisis: Poor recordkeeping attracts corruption like flies to a carcass (McKemmish 1998). During 2002 and 2003, the Auditor General undertook a series of audits of recordkeeping in Commonwealth agencies, stating: Recordkeeping is a key component of any organisations corporate governance and critical to its accountability and performance. A sound appreciation of recordkeeping assists an organisation to
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satisfy its clients need and helps it to deal positively with legal and other risks. When linked with information management more broadly, sound recordkeeping can assist organisations business performance by: better informing decisions; appropriately exploiting corporate knowledge; supporting collaborative approaches; and not wasting resources, for example by unnecessary searches for information and/or re-doing work (Australian National Audit Office 2003). However this is not necessarily a view intuitively shared by either the public or specific public officials, and the dilemma about the role of recordkeeping in accountability is vividly illustrated in the recent comments of a senior public official brought to account by the Senate Select Committee on a Certain Maritime Incident when asked if the absence of a paper trail was worrying: For me, no. I am concerned with effectiveness and outcomes. That means I am concerned about paper trails in that there is a quite appropriate requirement for a paper trail in an audit or other sense, but successive governments have made it clear that they want a public service that is able to be flexible and get the job done. That, for me, does not mean producing huge mounds of paper (Weller 2002, p. 88). The dated view of recordkeeping as a paper trail constraining action is challenged by the professional reality of modern Australian recordkeeping, which stresses the integral nature of doing business and keeping records of the business. In electronic environments recordkeeping becomes paradoxically both easier and more difficult. Computer systems are predicated on transactions and computer transactions are created automatically as a part of the operations of the systems. However the misunderstanding of records and their role in business means these transactions are not routinely captured and managed in ways that ensure their reliability and authenticity over time to enable them to be accessible when required. At present this requires deliberate human intervention or clever systems design to capture those transactions that constitute records of action. If the issues are not actively addressed, this critical component of accountability is not intuitively captured in systems designed on data principles alone, leading to significant vulnerability for all organisations.2
Accountability in a shared services world

A significant rethinking of models for delivery of services both within government and to the public, has been underway worldwide, often, although not exclusively, discussed in conjunction with electronic service delivery and electronic government. Accompanying this is a need to rethink accountability, what it entails and how to accomplish it. Accountability frameworks suitable in a stable bureaucratic environment are not immediately applicable to the more flexible, responsive, innovating and risk taking environment.3 It is in this emerging government environment that new forms of accountability are being developed. Distributed, delegated or shared accountability are being discussed, where the processes and structures for the exercise of power are distributed and the obligations to demonstrate and take responsibility for performance in the areas of policy, program design or program delivery are delegated or shared (Fitzpatrick 2000). The aim of establishing different models is to replace strict hierarchical accountability models with those that are more outcome focused and risk tolerant. Where risk taking, organisational learning and experiment are the factors of value, accountability measures and governance structures which privilege predefined performance targets aimed at cost reduction are less appropriate hence the search for more appropriate models.
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While significant attention is being paid to enabling different models of accountability to foster more innovative relationships across multiple parties involved in service delivery, representatives of the external scrutiny role in the accountability framework also consistently issue warnings, for example, Maria Barrados, the Assistant Auditor General of Canada stresses: there should be a sharing of accountability in partnering arrangements: not a diffusion, but a sharing. But unless care is taken, accountability can be diffused ... or deliberately lost ... Shared accountability is not less, but rather more demanding. Shared accountability does not get you off the hook at all (Barradas 2003). And from New Zealand: The vertical accountability of public servants is compromised to the extent that they are in power-sharing arrangements with players outside the Public Service. The sacrifice of power diminishes both control and accountability (Anderson & Dovey 2003). The requirement for robust accountability frameworks capable of adapting to meet the needs of multiple players is most evident when shared services entail collaborative endeavours involving parties from government, private and/or non-profit organisations. As Mulgan has identified, conduct of accountability is quite distinct between the three sectors: In brief, then, the public sector is subject to high overall levels of accountability, the commercial sector to strong accountability for results but less for process while the non profit sector is comparatively unaccountable, relying instead on goodwill and personal commitment (Mulgan 2002). Many governments, both nationally and internationally, have been actively exploring notions of accountability and the degree to which accountability can effectively be implemented in a shared services world and what might be different. Features stressed in discussion of new accountability include: the capacity to accept greater risk avoidance of interpretation of accountability as a part of the blame element a more flexible approach to tailoring accountability mechanisms suited to the specific situation, with a variety of measures including greater attention to outcomes, and in some cases process, rather than outputs and throughputs an acceptance that not all projects will succeed, but that positive outcomes can be seen in critical examination of activities and that this does not invalidate the need for accountability (Richards 2001; Fitzpatrick 2000; Anderson & Dovey 2003). More specifically, guidance on defining accountability regimes in non-traditional hierarchical arrangements stress a number of conditions which need to be present prior to engagement in collaboration, including a realistic assessment of willingness to collaborate; an understanding of the operating environments and variables of all partners; clear definitions of objectives as well as roles and responsibilities; realistic expectations; and an agreed performance reporting, measuring and evaluation system.4
Models for shared services

When we turn to the concept of shared services, however, it is clear that there are multiple interpretations of what is meant. Shared services can embrace a number of substantially different models. For the purposes of this paper, shared services have been grouped into the following categories for discussion:
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inter-government (trans-border) privatisation and outsourcing inter-agency collaboration integrated service delivery.
Inter-government (trans-border)
Agreements to work across governmental boundaries are not new. CommonwealthState collaboration has been constant, though intermittent, throughout the history of the Commonwealth, commencing with the initial multi colony collaboration which formed the Federation. Examples of CommonwealthState bodies include the River Murray Commission (predecessor to the MurrayDarling Basin Commission) which commenced in 1917, the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Authority from 1949, and various task specific organisations such as the Companies and Securities Law Review Committee (198490) or joint Royal Commissions. The mechanisms for establishing such bodies are well established, usually by legislation jointly enacted by the parliaments of the cooperating states and the Commonwealth. These legislative arrangements determine terms of reference and rules of operation, including accountability frameworks. Since 1992, a more flexible regime of inter-governmental cooperation has been established by the Council of Australian Governments. Over 40 CommonwealthState Ministerial Councils currently operate under this umbrella. These bodies facilitate consultation and cooperation between governments in specific policy areas and may initiate reforms. Where matters affecting New Zealand are involved, New Zealand is represented on the Councils. There is clear precedent for operating in this way. Agreements are made where joint action is to be taken, and each participant formally accepts responsibilities for the actions and activities designated by these agreements and validates the arrangement within their own jurisdiction.5 Guidance on the records of inter-governmental agencies has been developed by the Council of Federal, State and Territory Archives, itself a collaborative body with no clear jurisdictional owner (Council of Federal, State and Territory Archives 2003). These guidelines are geared mainly to the ultimate disposition and custody of records, rather than establishing the proactive recordkeeping rules applicable to operating inter-governmental agencies. The guidelines are post hoc. However, a general practice rule is that the government supplying the Secretariat to the organisation has formal recordkeeping responsibility. In practice, negotiation on these issues is necessary and the environment for which these guidelines have been produced tends to be retrospective and reactive. This arrangement is less clear cut with ad hoc bodies that spring up, either under the various Ministerial Councils or through sectoral agreement. The Council of Federal, State and Territory Archives is an example of one such body. More and more ad hoc structures seem to be appearing, often to provide coordination for inter-governmental projects. These projects tend to appear in areas of sensitivity such as environmental management or services to specific community groups. From the outside it appears in some instances as though the allocation of the space and resources is as ad hoc as the bodies themselves, often with a particular governmental representative offering office space and financial accommodations within existing structures as a facilitative mechanism to get things happening quickly. In these instances the accountability frameworks under which the body operates are completely unclear and the potential is that they fall (sometimes intentionally?) outside of the existing accountability frameworks.6
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In the words of Dr Peter Shergold, Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet: Not surprisingly, given the ambiguous boundaries, intergovernmental relations are marked by tensions. Disputes arise over which government has carriage of policy, how it is funded, the manner in which it is implemented and appropriate lines of responsibility and accountability (Shergold 2003). Nonetheless, the basic framework for operations for inter-governmental structures are generally in place and work well. One of the latest initiatives, a joint agency between Australia and New Zealand, illustrates the processes for formation.
Case: Trans Tasman Therapeutic Products Agency

This new agency 7 (to commence operation in July 2005) is being established to administer a Joint Scheme to regulate therapeutic products in Australia and New Zealand. The new agency is cross jurisdictional being a regulatory body in both Australian and New Zealand jurisdictions, intended to replace two previously jurisdictionally separate agencies. Establishment of this body is the result of five years consultation, discussion and negotiation. The new organisation will exist under legislation enacted in both jurisdictions, although the Australian legislation will provide the legal personality of the agency. This follows a round of formalised agreements using the diplomatic channel of Treaties. The governing arrangements to be implemented are a Ministerial Council, on which the relevant Ministers from Australia and New Zealand are given equal say in oversight of the agency and the operation of the regulatory framework, will be established the Ministerial Council will appoint a Board to oversee operation of the agency the Ministerial Council will be able to make Rules, where both Ministers agree on all decisions the Managing Director will be able to make Orders Rules and Orders will have equal applicability in both Australia and New Zealand paths for reviewing decisions, using Review Tribunals and the courts, will be identified, with people able to choose the jurisdiction in which to pursue matters. decisions of both review bodies will be equally binding in both jurisdictions. One of the stated principles of the arrangement is no lesser accountability (that is, to ensure the agency is no less accountable to ministers, parliaments and other stakeholders than comparable public sector organisations in either Australia or New Zealand). This accountability arrangement clearly identifies that access to official information, in line with the two countries freedom of information legislation, will be preserved (Trans Tasman Therapeutic Products Agency 2002). In this instance, there is a distinction to be made between the arrangements for CommonwealthState bodies described above, for this is an agency that is intended to be truly cross-jurisdictional, equally valid in both independent sovereign jurisdictions. Recordkeeping issues are being addressed before the agency is established, with input sought by the National Archives of Australia (and presumably the Archives New Zealand) on the recordkeeping rules to be applied. In fact there is considerable coherence between the recordkeeping principles adopted in both the jurisdictions, however the degree of regulation, the implementation of standard methodologies and the specific rules that apply are different. A decision needs to be made on which jurisdictions rules will prevail. The case should not arise, for example, that a citizen of New Zealand would, in New Zealand, use the rules of the jurisdiction to access information that a citizen within Australia making the same request would be denied under Australian law. Yet the converse is true, the citizens of either jurisdiction will not
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wish to be presented with forms and procedures belonging to a different jurisdiction. Similarly, in an agency which is equally owned by both jurisdictions, which regulatory body owns or is responsible for its records? This will be resolved through friendly negotiation, but it is likely that the rules of one jurisdiction will be privileged. But it is not quite as straightforward as a statement of no lesser accountability implies. In terms of providing a model for the newer electronic integrated service delivery initiatives, this model with its formal agreements and long planning phase will not suit the immediacy of the requirements. However, the long planning lead time does allow the accountability issues, including recordkeeping, to be clearly identified and addressed before the agency opens for business.
Privatisation and outsourcing

During the 1990s all governments, but specifically those of Victoria, South Australia and the Commonwealth, actively engaged in a program of outsourcing government functions to private providers. Various arrangements were put in place including establishment of government business enterprises, effectively privatising previous government bodies, and sale of parts of government agencies. The debate over this strategy raged fast and furious during the 1990s with accountability being one of the critical factors at issue, as allegations about using such mechanism as a deliberate tactic to avoid accountability were aired. A series of crises, such as the failure of the gas supply in Victoria, and issues to do with infrastructure maintenance and the cryptosporidium outbreak in Sydneys water supply, focused attention on the accountabilities of privatised providers in these domains. Each of these accountability crises required records to enable external scrutiny to take place. While the results of the privatisation initiatives have largely become a fait accompli, the issues of selling off of public assets is still a high ranking one on the political agenda (viz Telstra) with attention on the rights and services to the citizen refocusing the agenda squarely into the citizen-centric model more apparent in todays integrated electronic service delivery mode. In terms of recordkeeping, the ownership and transfer of records to the privatised entities were critical to the conduct of the entities and the documentation and proof of the ongoing rights and responsibilities of the organisations and citizens they served. Treating records as an invisible part of the assets in such sales was revealed as an unsatisfactory model. Options for records in such instances included transfer of custody, as opposed to ownership, where the extant records reverted to the Commonwealth at the end of their usefulness to the new organisation. Alternative arrangements such as copying, access arrangements and temporary transfer were devised (National Archives of Australia 2001). Outsourcing is the ongoing identification of services that can be delivered on behalf of government by another body most often a private commercial entity. Such arrangements are not without a considerable body of precedent, usually from the infrastructure construction area where such publicprivate interactions have been common for a number of years. However, outsourcing of services is a phenomenon which dates from the 1990s. Australian government at federal and state level now has considerable experience with these arrangements, and through the experience of early controversial outsourcing deals such as the Integraph contract in Victoria and the active oversight of Auditor Generals, a significant body of practical experience has developed about sourcing, specifying, managing and monitoring such arrangements. Essentially such arrangements come down to a commercial agreement established by contract. The contractual nature of the arrangement establishes a clear principalagent relationship and places the government in the position as the principal.
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While not without some continuing debate, the discussion on contracting out of services seems to be less emotive with the weight of practical experience in devising appropriate contracts. Debate continues to rage over areas where delivery of critical services are delivered to members of the public on behalf of government. In particular, areas such as detention centre management have demonstrated that, even when contractually the obligation for accountability may rest with the private provider, there is a public expectation that the relevant minister will accept responsibility where controversy over levels of service and appropriate delivery of service are raised, paradoxically maintaining an accountability relationship where no direct link is contractually provided (Mulgan 2002). Where direct service is being delivered to the public, private providers have often been required to establish complaints mechanisms to manage redress by the public, and the ability of citizens to gain access to their records has been assisted in the extension of the Privacy Act to the private sector. Anecdotally the Australian community has always been concerned about privacy, confirmed in 2001 by research commissioned by the Australian Privacy Commissioner (Roy Morgan Research 2001).8 In relation to the rights to information, there is little doubt that the private sector is less accountable than the public sector. The use of the commercial-in-confidence tag to restrict wider accessibility to information has been one of the areas brought to public attention by Auditors General.9 These initiatives have tested the private sector, challenging their traditional accountability models. In recordkeeping, significant attention was provided to the outsourcing issues in a pre-emptive manner, with influential guidelines developed to help agencies define appropriate measures to protect public interest in both records that already exist and those that are created during the course of an outsourcing arrangement. Again, one of the critical pieces of advice was that lumping records issues under consideration of generic assets would fail to identify the complexity of the issues that would require resolution (National Archives of Australia 1998).
Inter-agency collaboration
Inter-agency or cross-agency collaborative projects are becoming more frequent with increased impetus to better service delivery to the public. The Commonwealth Auditor General identifies two major projects within the Commonwealth as the Australians Working Together Policy Development and the Family and Community Services/Centrelink Business Partnership Agreement. In all jurisdictions, explorations of such linked-up, sectoral services are being explored, for example in the development of the Justice Sector Information Sharing Project within New South Wales. Many such initiatives are being explored, and many are underscoring the problems of incompatible technology infrastructures leading to significant attention within many jurisdictions on achieving appropriate technology interoperability frameworks as a precondition to enabling better joint service delivery initiatives. In terms of recordkeeping, where the agencies collaborating fall within one jurisdiction, the rules are quite clear cut and all are expected to meet the same levels of compliance with guidance and standards. Even where third parties are established to oversee the project, they still fall within the one jurisdiction and thus the applicable recordkeeping and other regulatory rules are clearly known. Responsibility must be allocated however, for the administration of records within such projects and this depends on the mechanism adopted for governance. In large formal systems, such as the justice sector initiatives in New South Wales, formal cross-agency memoranda of understanding are adopted, outlining commitment to collaborate and nominating specific individual agency responsibilities.10 The Family and Community Services/Centrelink Business Partnership Agreement project specifically addresses the issues of privacy,
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freedom of information and related matters (including cross-agency access to records) within the memorandum of understanding. Again, it is clear that the governance arrangements and the degree of formality invested in such arrangements is dependent upon the risks and financial commitments involved in the projects. In many cases, a lead agency is nominated to coordinate and manage the collaboration, thus making it the defacto owner of the initiative. A second set of shared services are commonly identified within this category. These are the cross agency cooperation to share the administration and management of common functions, such as human resource management, or information technology support. Such collaborations are formally documented and are accompanied by service agreements. They are usually entered into for fixed periods of time, and are aimed at cost reduction and increased efficiency. Issues arise, however, as to whether to maintain the records of individual agencies separately, or to integrate the records. Integration tends to make for more cost efficiencies in day-to-day operation, but in situations where the arrangement is terminated, or the organisations are restructured (a common occurrence in Australian public life) increasingly costly problems are being encountered in how to extract and reallocate records to follow the new structural/functional responsibilities. An eye on the longer term is required to establish the operating parameters of these issues, as the responsibility and ownership issues for the records which document the rights and responsibilities of a specific agency can be unwittingly compromised.
Integrated service delivery

Beyond the previously described models for shared services, electronic government initiatives are currently at the exploratory stages of introducing services to the public that transcend individual agency boundaries and in many cases seek to integrate services from all three layers of government. The private sector is also involved in these initiatives with various roles as partner and, in some cases, service deliverer. Examples of existing collaborative projects are available, but often these involve integrated portals or front ends to information resource discovery (for example, Business Entry Point, EdNA or HealthInsite). Such projects were the first to reach fruition owing to the relative ease of constructing information portals. Independence of the individual contributors for the information continues to be upheld. Cross jurisdictional adoption of information resource discovery metadata (Australian Government Locator Service) accompanied by deployment of specifically designed metadata harvesting tools has meant relatively non-intrusive involvement from participating agencies. Once the model moves beyond provision of information and moves to providing transactions and actual service delivery across organisational and jurisdictional boundaries, the complexity of some of the underlying issues is revealed as significant and requiring considerable attention to resolve. The intent of such projects is to experiment with different ways and methods of delivering services. In circumstances such as these, lead agency or principal/agent contractual arrangements are not suitable. Descriptions of such projects tend to stress alliances and partnership. The tendency is to be deliberately flexible so as not to stifle innovative outcomes. However, the fear is that accountability and guidance arrangements will be too loose and as inappropriate or problematic as those of the early learning-curve of outsourcing contracts. Certainly issues of recordkeeping as a part of accountability are not, at this stage, anywhere on the agenda. Such projects challenge traditional lines of responsibility, highlighting problems with non-compatible organisational cultures, different priorities, different assessments of effectiveness respective to
147
specific organisational goals, financing, commitment and sustainability. The barriers to cooperation are often high and in these circumstances specific incentive to participate in collaborative projects is needed. The Trials of Innovative Government Electronic Regional Services (TIGERS) project within the National Officer for the Information Economy is one such specifically funded incubation site. The TIGERS project has now concluded and issues of sustainability of the projects established have been temporarily resolved by formally allocating ownership of the initiatives with specific agencies in a variety of jurisdictions. One of the issues raised in the final project report was that of intellectual property (Croger 2003). A number of issues were subsumed within that category, one of which is the issue that the new services themselves create new products and (depending on their nature) new records. When action is taken on the new products, who is responsible? Who owns the records? As John Lalor of the National Officer for the Information Economy Online Access Strategies program acknowledged, this is a thorny issue. So who does own, or who is responsible for, these new products? The HealthConnect initiative is a complex project involving private individuals and organisations, state and regional health services and the Australian Government. The project is still in its planning stages but it illustrates the significant and knotty recordkeeping issues that arise in these environments.
Case: HealthConnect
The HealthConnect project11 proposes introduction of a shared electronic health record. What is submitted to the HealthConnect system and what can be accessed is subject to individual patient consent on an opt-in basis. The summary record will be sourced from independent systems maintained by practitioners in the clinical medical and allied health service delivery arenas. The summary record is created using agreed metadata fields describing the specific event. Summaries are lodged into the HealthConnect system, at this stage envisaged as a set of physically decentralised nodes accessible through a centralised access mechanism. Health providers then access the relevant health information on a patient according to a number of variables, for example, only those summary records relating to the aspect of the patients presentation problem, filtered by a set of predefined parameters which retrieve and combine the multiple existing summary records into an aggregated view. From this brief description some of the issues of concern can be derived. The source record from which individual event summaries are produced, remains the individual record within the clinical treating environment. These systems remain independent and are owned by the relevant authority, organisation or individual. The summary is not intended to replace the independent and more comprehensive local record as the responsible record of individual treatment or consultation. Thus at this level, the ownership and responsibility for the source information is unchanged and resides with the originating system. However, the summary is a new record. It is sourced from information within independent providers systems, however it is not the same as the original record. Mechanisms are being built into the system to ensure there is some validation, by the submitting health professional, of the information extracted from the source record. Similarly the aggregated view of the individual summary records presented to the enquiring clinician at the point of health service delivery is again a new record. This is the record perhaps of most critical concern because it is this one that provides the information within the HealthConnect system to decision-making health professionals. The HealthConnect business architecture is complex and envisages multiple options for the administration and management of the decentralised nodes or repositories of shared records, encompassing existing state or regional collaborative electronic health repositories, as well as future options for private
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management of such nodes. The technical mechanisms for ensuring access controls and for delivering the tailored views and reports are to be developed by the HealthConnect organisation itself. Similarly, the project envisages establishment of specialised boards an Access Authority to oversee and monitor access permissions and rules; and a Clinical Authority to establish and monitor the nature of information submitted to the HealthConnect repositories. Additionally, governance of HealthConnect will be managed by a HealthConnect board, proposed to be established by legislation. Implications from issues of ownership and responsibility for the summaries are unclear. Where will the liability reside in the case of clinical decisions being made on the information supplied by the system? For individual clinicians the issues are about whether the information in the summary and the view presented to them is complete and reliable. The information is at least two levels removed from the originating system where initial responsibility lies (that is, there is a summary record and a synthesised presentation of the relevant summaries). The HealthConnect summary records are intended to be longitudinal records that is, accumulating from all clinical events over the lifetime of the individual. Already the technical architecture has acknowledged that multiple versions of the metadata templates driving the extraction and storage of data will need to be managed. However, the anticipated longevity of the electronic records will require active and continuous management to achieve the stated aim. Ensuring the long-term existence and accessibility to electronic data is no simple matter and the subject of a number of international research projects. This is not an issue that can be sanguinely ignored but must be actively planned and implemented. Within the HealthConnect public documents there is some acknowledgement of this issue, but from a recordkeeping viewpoint the understanding of the complexity of the issue is superficial at best. HealthConnect is in development phase and there are many challenging issues involved in implementing the system. These issues include managing electronic patient consent, consistent identification of individuals, authentication and deployment of complex technical architectures. Issues of ownership and responsibility for the records within the system must also be acknowledged and addressed. The issues are thorny, and are acknowledged by the HealthConnect project documents, however the very complexity of the issues has led to postponement of seriously addressing them. So the concept of data custodianship has been proposed as the role of the distributed HealthConnect nodes. This is a neutral role, initially proposed by NSW Health who suggested that ownership of data is an outdated concept and by adopting this, the project seeks to deliberately limit responsibilities (HealthConnect Program Office 2003). Some of this is, of course, a problem of politics rather than a specific system problem. It is expedient to duck such issues. However, as discussed, the issues are too critical to be dismissed. Issues of liability for information have been raised constantly through the project development to date, and the issue has been referred to external legal advice. The irony is that a shared electronic health record system fails to meet recordkeeping requirements to keep records. This is a critical, make or break, issue.12
Conclusion
Accountability is a critical concept to all shared service delivery models. This is underlined in a recent New Zealand study on accountability which provocatively asked whether accountability arrangements really matter, we believe that the unequivocal answer to the question posed above is heck, yes (Anderson & Dovey 2003). New models of accountability are seeking to provide the flexibility, yet robustness, required in the shared services environment. Recordkeeping has a critical role in the ability
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to deliver appropriate accountability. Recordkeeping is not an outdated paper form of burdensome compliance but a critical aspect of the operation and long-term viability of electronic services. Yet it is often invisible in the mechanisms used to establish governance requirements. Those mechanisms that have lengthy planning cycles will reach a consideration of recordkeeping issues in time, but the timeframes for such projects may preclude their use in more dynamic, flexible models required for responsive electronic service delivery. Proactive advice in establishing groundrules for recordkeeping in outsourcing projects proved invaluable to the slew of enquiries by accountability bodies during the initial rocky phases of the outsourcing trend in the 1990s. New integrated electronic shared services are dependent on information and communication technology systems. Similar collaborative, proactive projects need to be devised to pay explicit attention to recordkeeping in the governance frameworks of all shared services. Innovative ways of building recordkeeping functional requirements into any the software systems delivering shared services are required to safeguard short-term vulnerabilities, protect all parties and serve the Australian public.
References
Anderson B & Dovey L 2003, Whither Accountability? Working Paper No 18, State Services Commission New Zealand, September, <http://www.ssc.govt.nz/wp18>. Australian Maritime Safety Authority 2002, Inter-Governmental Agreement on the National Plan to Combat Pollution of the Sea by Oil and other Noxious and Hazardous Substances, AMSA, Canberra, <http://www.amsa.gov.au/me/natplan/interplan.htm>. Australian National Audit Office 2002, Audit report on Recordkeeping, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, <http://www.anao.gov.au/WebSite.nsf/Publications/4A256AE90015F69BCA256BA5000C25D8>. Australian National Audit Office 2003, Cross Agency Governance Better Practice Guide, Guidance Paper No. 7, ANAO, Canberra. Australian National Audit Office 2003, Recordkeeping in Large Commonwealth Organisations, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, <http://www.anao.gov.au/WebSite.nsf/Publications/478B4A27724E193BCA256DA50074796C>. Barrados M 2003, Managing Accountability in the Public Sector, notes for an address, IPAC National Conference, 25 August 2003, Toronto, < http://www.oagbvg.gc.ca/domino/other.nsf/html/200308sp01_e.html >. Cameron W 2000, Accountability and the Auditor-General presentation to Master of Policy Program, Monash University, April, <http://www.audit.vic.gov.au/speeches/agspeech_01.html> Comptroller and Auditor General 2001, Joining Up to Improve Public Services, Report HC 383, The Stationery Office, London. Council of Federal, State and Territory Archives 2003, Guidelines for the Treatment of Records of InterGovernmental Agencies, Policy Statement 11, <http://www.cofsta.org.au/policy%2011.htm>. Croger Associates Pty Ltd, Stenning & Associates Pty Ltd & Appleyard G 2003, TIGERS Report, Project Summary, <http://www.noie.gov.au/publications/NOIE/tigers_report/download.htm>. Crompton M 2004, Light Touch or Soft Touch Reflections of a Regulator Implementing a New Privacy Regime, March 2004 <http://www.privacy.gov.au/news/speeches/sp2_04.pdf>. Fitzpatrick T 2000, Horizontal Management. Trends in Governance and Accountability, Treasury Board of Canada, Secretariat, <http://www.ccmd-ccg.gc.ca/research/publications/pdfs/Horiz-Trends-REV.PDF>.
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HealthConnect Office 2003, HealthConnect Interim Research Report, 3 Volumes, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, <http://www.health.gov.au/healthconnect/researchrep/irr.html>. HealthConnect Program Office 2003, HealthConnect Interim Research Report, Volume 2, Research Reports, No. 6, How Should HealthConnect be Governed?, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, <http://www.health.gov.au/healthconnect/pdf_docs/v2-6.pdf>. Hurley C 2004 (forthcoming) Recordkeeping and Accountability, in McKemmish S, Piggott M, Reed B & Upward F (eds), Archives: Recordkeeping in Society, Centre for Information Studies, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga. Iacovino L & Reed B, with Robert Meredith and Bernadette McSherry December 2003, HealthConnect Program Office, HealthConnect Systems Architecture Project, Phase 2 Systems Architecture Development, submission to HealthConnect Program Office. McKemmish S 1998, The Smoking Gun: Recordkeeping and Accountability, <http://www.sims.monash.edu.au/research/rcrg>. McKemmish S & Upward F (eds) 1993, Archival Documents, Providing Accountability Through Recordkeeping. Ancora Press, Melbourne, A simple shared Goal: Accountability through Recordkeeping Special Issue of Archives and Manuscripts vol. 21 no. 1, May 1993. Mulgan R 2000, Accountability: An Ever Expanding Concept? Technical Report Discussion Paper No 72, Graduate Program in Public Policy, Research School of Social Sciences, September 2000 http://www.anu.edu.au/pubpol/Discussion%20Papers/dp_72.htm Mulgan R 2002, Accountability Issues in the New Model of Governance, Technical Report Discussion Paper No. 91, Graduate Program in Public Policy, Research School of Social Sciences, ANU, <http://www.anu.edu.au/pubpol/Discussion%20Papers/No91Mulgan.pdf>. National Archives of Australia 1998, Records Issues for Outsourcing: General Disposal Authority 25, Archives Advice 12 Outsourcing, Accountability and Recordkeeping <http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/outsourcing/outsource_records/summary.html>. National Archives of Australia 2001, Transferring the custody and ownership of Commonwealth records, NAA, Canberra, <http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/outsourcing/priv_corp.html>. National Office for the Information Economy 2003, Collaboration Principles, NOIE, Canberra, <http://www.noie.gov.au/projects/egovernment/Better_Services/ISD%20Framework%20and&20Princi ples%20to%20Collaborate%20v12%20(final).doc>. ONeill O 2002, A Question of Trust BBC Reith Lectures, Lecture 3, Called to Account, <http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2002/lecture3_text.shtml>. Richards S 2001, Four types of joined-up government and the problem of accountability Appendix 2 to Joining Up to Improve Public Service, Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, The Stationery Office, London, <http://www.nao.gov.uk/publications/nao_reports/01-02/>. Roy Morgan Research 2001, Privacy and the Community, Office of the Federal Privacy Commissioner, <http://www.privacy.gov.au/publications/community.html>. Shergold P 2003, Been Down So Long It Feels Like Up to Me: Working in CommonwealthState Relations, speech to Institute of Public Administration Australia, 16 September 2003, Melbourne <http://www.pmc.gov.au/docs/shergold160903.cfm>.
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The Pathfinder Project 2003, Interagency Collaboration for Outcomes, Guidance on Outcomes Focused Management, Supporting Paper, vol. 2, 1 July, <http://io.ssc.govt.nz/pathfinder>. Trans Tasman Therapeutic Products Agency Project 2002, Fact Sheet: Guaranteeing voice and accountability in the joint therapeutic products agency environment, <http://www.jtaproject.com/Downloads/Key%20Documents/Comms%20strategyaccountability%20July%2002.pdf>. Weller P 2002, Dont Tell the Prime Minister, Scribe Publications, Carlton North.
Notes
1 Much of this literature is from Australia, for example McKemmish & Upward 1993; A simple shared Goal Accountability through Recordkeeping Special Issue of Archives and Manuscripts vol. 21 no. 1, May 1993 and other papers cited here. The criticality of this point is constantly repeated most recently in the Report of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit Inquiry into the Management and Integrity of Electronic Information in the Commonwealth, April 2004, <http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/jpaa/electronic_info/report.htm>. These words resound through the literature on new ways of delivering government services. Derived from Comptroller and Auditor General 2001; Fitzpatrick 2000; Anderson & Dovey 2003; National Office of Information Economy 2003; The Pathfinder Project 2003; Australian National Audit Office 2003. See for example, Inter-Governmental Agreement on the National Plan to Combat Pollution of the Sea by Oil and other Noxious and Hazardous Substances May 2002, which designates the Commonwealth body, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, as the administrative entity responsible for administering the national plan and in Appendixes to the Agreement clearly sets out specific responsibilities, in which recordkeeping is implicit <http://www.amsa.gov.au/me/natplan/interplan.htm>. This point has been reinforced recently by the Federal Privacy Commissioner, Malcolm Crompton, who states The evidence to date suggests that more attention has sometimes been given to the establishment of these bodies and associated working arrangements than to ensuring that corresponding transparency and accountability arrangements are in place ... This trend poses major challenges for all regulators operating in this environment. Light Touch or Soft Touch Reflections of a Regulator Implementing a New Privacy Regime March 2004, http://www.privacy.gov.au/news/speeches/sp2_04.pdf Material sourced from the Trans Tasman Therapeutic Products Agency Project web site <http://www.jtaproject.com>. In his introduction, Federal Privacy Commissioner, Malcolm Crompton, states Overall, respondents to the OFPC [Office of the Federal Privacy Commissioner] research, while exhibiting a low level of knowledge and understanding in relation to privacy, show a high and increasing level of interest in their own privacy. For example, see references in Wayne Cameron Accountability and the Auditor-General Presentation to Master of Policy Program, Monash University, April 2000 <http://www.audit.vic.gov.au/speeches/agspeech_01.html> re the concerns raised by his predecessors in the years 19962000 leading to the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee report Commercial in Confidence Material and the Public Interest, 2000.
3 4 5
7 8
10 See for example, the Memorandum of Understanding in Relation to a New South Wales Criminal Justice System at <http://www.comp.mq.edu.au/~mike/ictctr/CJSmou3.doc>. 11 This case study derived from a reading of the HealthConnect Office, HealthConnect Interim Research Report, 3 Volumes, 2003, <http://www.health.gov.au/healthconnect/researchrep/irr.html> undertaken for Electronic Health Records: Achieving an Effective and Ethical Legal and Recordkeeping Framework, Australian Research Council, Discovery Grant, 200204, Administering Institution: Deakin University, Chief Investigators: Associate Professor Danuta Mendelson, School of Law Deakin University, Dr Livia Iacovino, School of Information Management and Systems Monash University, Associate Professor Bernadette McSherry and Moira Paterson, Faculty of Law Monash University. Research Associates Barbara Reed and Robert Meredith, School of Information Management and Systems Monash University. 12 These issues have been directly submitted to the HealthConnect project, but with little acknowledgement. See Livia Iacovino and Barbara Reed, with Robert Meredith and Bernadette McSherry HealthConnect Program Office, HealthConnect Systems Architecture Project, Phase 2 Systems Architecture Development. Submission to HealthConnect Program Office December 2003.
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FUTURE CHALLENGES FOR E-GOVERNMENT

FUTURE CHALLENGES FOR E-GOVERNMENT

Future Challenges for E-government

Privacy and legal

Value and evaluation

Organisational and management issues

Impacts of information and communications technology: comparative perspectives

Future Challenges for E-government Overview

The topics researched

The main messages

Future Challenges for E-government Overview

Multi-channel service delivery

Privacy and legal issues

Collective accountability in a shared world

Future Challenges for E-government Overview

Value and evaluation

Organisational and management issues

Conclusion: connecting themes

Future Challenges for E-government Overview

Future Challenges for E-government Preface

Future Challenges for E-government Community Collaboration

Providing choice: The interactive component of e-government

Future Challenges for E-government Community Collaboration

New Public Management in the local government context

Management models for transforming to local e-government: geocentrism versus cybercentrism

Future Challenges for E-government Community Collaboration

Broad, hierarchical structure with vertical command.

Defined by competition and view of market structure as defined by physical presence.

E-government drivers and the cybercentrism continuum

Future Challenges for E-government Community Collaboration

Figure 1: The Cybercentrism Continuum

Mayor/Shire President Source: Stanton 2002

Testing the management model to support online service delivery

Results of a survey of Western Australian councils

Source: Stanton 2004

Future Challenges for E-government Community Collaboration

Figure 3: Overall paired response continuum map.

Source: Stanton 2004

Source: Stanton 2004

Citizen interaction, customer focus and cybercentrism

Future Challenges for E-government Community Collaboration

Trust and cybercentrism

Future Challenges for E-government Community Collaboration

Future Challenges for E-government Community Collaboration

ELEMENTS OF GOOD GOVERNMENT COMMUNITY COLLABORATION

* Deputy Commissioner, Ptax, Australian Taxation Office

Future Challenges for E-government Community Collaboration

Lessons from government community collaboration

Figure 1: Overview of the activities

Does the ATO currently listen and respond to the community?

Has Listening to the Community made a difference?

Survey A survey to measure the impact of the listening initiative.

Future Challenges for E-government Community Collaboration

Learning from these experiences

Principles for good government collaboration

Take a user-centred approach

Make the emerging design visible early

Work collaboratively in interdisciplinary teams

Future Challenges for E-government Community Collaboration

Figure 2: Three voices of design

Build a shared understanding of intent

Follow a disciplined yet flexible process