01 Capitolo

Open Innovation for Better e-Services
Open Innovation Supporting the digital Agenda

Bror Salmelin, Policy Advisor, DG Information Society and Media, European Commission
Disclaimer: This report represents the views of the author, and is not the official position of the European Commission services. The Digital Agenda1 for Europe was launched on 19.5.2010 as the first flagship initiative under the very ambitious Europe 2020 strategy, guiding the work of the Commission for the future. It sets ambitious goals; such as creating an inclusive society, sustainable societal development and growth, based on advanced ICT infrastructures, like ultra fast broadband, and interoperable inclusive applications and services. The Digital Agenda interlinks technological and societal innovation. In the goal of reinforcing the Digital Single Market, it creates a framework for new kind of strong partnerships across all the actors in the knowledge society. ICT is a key enabler in all this, especially when we see the increased connectivity and interactivity new infrastructures provide. It relies on the next generation Internet which will be inherently interactive, genuinely broadband, mobile and strongly personalised, and thus will be the base for seamless, cross-border services. The European Digital Agenda is highlighting some of the key issues needing strong panEuropean actions in order to fully build on the potential this radical change of the value creation paradigms in the knowledge society brings. One of the most important challenges is the fragmented digital market and lack of interoperability for business and public services. There is a common understanding of the need of pan-European platforms for crossborder services, such as in the areas of eHealth, government services and commerce. Demonstrations and pilots under the CIP/PSP2 programme are addressing issues like electronic identity management, cross-border procurement, eHealth systems, and eInvoicing. Together with emerging legislation like the services directive, the work for the Single Euro Payment Area are all leading towards integration of these service platforms across the Member States. One question is whether these emerging platforms can be aligned under common principles, common architectures to build a genuine single market ecosystem for services, and whether this could lead with other appropriate measures to a springboard for future service innovation in Europe? Open, interoperable platforms and ecosystems are necessary for gaining a triple win in Europe. Simultaneously we need to develop affordable, personalised services, businesses to provide them, and which are able to tackle the demographic and inclusion challenges also addressed in the Digital Agenda, offering ways to respond to Europe's societal challenges, and creating opportunities for new businesses delivering services for the benefit of all.
NOTES 1 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/digital-agenda/documents/digital-agenda-communication-en.pdf 2 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/ict_psp/index_en.htm
Open innovation creates the necessary lively and continuous interaction between public sector actors, users and service providers which is critical in the transformation of existing businesses and public services towards sustainable ones in the citizen centric knowledge society of today and tomorrow. By acting together we can make the difference, not only in innovation quality, but also in the innovation speed. A vibrant digital single market based on next generation networks and platforms.
A new Generation Infrastructure for Innovative Services In the new generation of Internet that allows for a two-way communications new tools and services enable users, including non-technical, to post information, to share opinions, videos, photos, to tag content, etc. and with unprecedented participation. This provides an example of distributed intelligence based on the contribution of many users collectively that is fundamentally changing many of the models which had sustained the company and business so far. Crowdsourcing as innovative power is seen increasingly been used in services development and problem solving. The Digital Agenda thus sets as one of its key priorities fast and ultra fast Internet access to all, which is a prerequisite for bringing the collective intelligence together, in a spontaneous manner. Basic broadband should be available for all Europeans by 2013, and by 2020 all Europeans will have access to internet speeds of 30 Mbps or above, and more than half of European households subscribe to an internet connections above 100 Mbps. When the user is provided with the tools and building blocks upon this infrastructure and they can use them on need basis, they also can remodel and combine the basic blocks to create services tailored to their needs. But, again here the speed is not the only remarkable change; it is the bidirectional rich connectivity and high level of personalisation on the service platforms built upon this infrastructure which will make a significant difference, as services integration in highly context sensitive manner will be the winning key. The Future Internet of services is a characterised by much richer content accompanied by many interaction mechanisms such as wikis, blogs, tagging, mashups, etc. All these tools have come to call Web 2.0. But what Web 3.0 (adding semantics to the interactivity of Web 2.0) really means is not to introduce one of these tools in one site but to make the transition to a new model in which user participation is key, where high context sensitivity and personalisation will ensure the service quality for all.
Enhancing Cross-border Public Services Only by creating a true single market for this borderless exchange and trade of contents and services, and simultaneously having a careful consideration on the appropriate IPR approach, balancing content and service creator's rights and the users' rights we can achieve a fair, growing, and open playing ground for all actors, including citizens.
The citizens will increasingly have the opportunity to be microentrepeneurs in their various simultaneous professional and private roles in the digital society, creating a new entrepreneurship. For this to be catalysed a true European Single Market for services would be crucial. Here the policy debate should lead to pan-European policies and legislative actions for the single market for contents and services
Innovative environments, Open Innovation Open innovation environments, created in several Member States e.g. under the European Network of Living Labs3 can be very valuable development and verification environments for large scale pilots addressing technology-enabled societal innovation. They can help in finding out the borders of applications, e.g. what is societally acceptable, are there cultural differences, how we will achieve full inclusion in for all citizens. All are questions which require prototyping in real world settings to stretch the limits. We consider that the next generation Internet and its services are the computing and connectivity platform on which to build the user-based innovation and new business models. This activity performed by the networked citizens, businesses, governments and NGO's gives rise to new forms of business and it creates new ecosystems of innovation not seen before. Open Innovation goes beyond the traditional cross-licensing schemes, and beyond the collaborative projects needing to capture increasingly the creativity stemming from creative commons and societal innovation. We need to add to the ordinary Public-Privat Partnership, the PPP the fourth P the People. , Only this true PPPP can be called Open Innovation: to take innovation mechanisms outside of the domains where they have been so far, and especially in public services utilise fully the creative capital of the citizens for continuous development of services on open service platforms, enabled by the Digital Single Market. This user-centric and even partially user-driven innovation model will lead to better scalability of services, and higher success rate, too. One can say that we make the innovation a continuous process, allowing for several cheap mistakes, but not heading to the disastrous big one, as is often the case in traditional linear and often vendor-centric development processes. The bottom-up thinking with common conceptual approach top-down can lead to panEuropean solution across the borders, having the application platforms organically growing. For the Single market development it is important to have simultaneous topdown policy and conceptual approach as well as the bottom-up development, and verification on what works, what not.
NOTES 3 http://www.openlivinglabs.eu/
Open Innovation: It is extremely important for service development to build on the societal capital and creative commons, as this together with open innovation environments allows for real-world development, including the verification of results for rapid scale-up.
So what is the difference between user-driven innovation and open innovation? In userdriven innovation, the customers or partners are integral in the ideation, development and development processes from the early phases onwards, and not only as objects for service innovation. In most cases the user-centricity is however just a nice phrase and not really business transformation because one still goes through only internal innovation capabilities. It becomes open innovation when one not only gets ideas from external sources but also let external sources become key players in the process of turning ideas into a business. User-centricity can be true without open innovation, but open innovation captures the user-centric service development objectives most efficiently. In Europe the concept of user-centric service ecosystems comprising of all actors in the services developing open service platforms on pan-European basis is as such not new. However, the difficulty to implement this new model was highlighted in the Helsinki Manifesto from 2006 where the question was whether a new service industry ecosystem could be built by the various stakeholders working together, co-creating and building value. A remarkable tool driven by DG INFSO since 2006 is the European Network of Living Labs since it establishes a European platform for collaborative and co-creative innovation, where the users are involved in and contribute to the innovation process. The regional dimension is well covering Europe, and the time is now right to move to next level of collaboration along application axis.
There are so far good examples of success of emerging collaboration in areas like energy and rural development. The nodes in the Living Labs network have expressed their interest to collaborate strongly also in the forthcoming Future Internet PPP in various application areas, including public services.
Living labs are developed to a network of 212 sites now and continue spreading all over the world, and enable open and user-driven experiments and tests. This helps to create cross-border ecosystems where everybody can get involved in innovation. (www.openlivinglabs.eu)
In practice this is shown already; enterprises develop interaction platforms with their core products, opening up them for individuals and SMEs to develop their applications on. This boosts the market of the platform (and related equipment) but also creates opportunities for the SMEs and even individuals to enter the European-wide market with their offerings.
Interoperability by bottom-up process; in favorable framework Iinteroperability between the various functionalities common to all applications, like identity management, trust, security, mobility, service roaming (geographically and over different devices), financial cross-border transactions, IPR issues is a key element. Open Innovation models imply extensive networking in order to exploit the internal and external knowledge. New collaboration relationships and methods are required since networking usually leads to stronger and more spontaneous ties among partners like universities, public sector actors, users, and even competitors. In turn this leads to new enterprise creation options through venturing, entrepreneurships, and spin-offs and even through new business organisations like micro enterprises4.
NOTES 4 British Venture Capital Association and Library House, "Creating Success from University Spin-outs", 2005
Open innovation is essential for the service industry in order to get economic and social benefit it generates. It provides several direct benefits to service providers and, consequently, to its consumers by delivering products and services which are better adjusted to the market, more flexible cost structures, increased creativity, adaptability, easier access to knowledge, and quicker and cheaper innovation cycles. To have this rich functionality interoperability is essential, and not only on technical level but also on service convergence level.
Role for the EU, leading the vision and acting for it The EU has to take a strong lead for the trend of Open innovations in services since over 70% of EU employment is in the services sector and according to Eurostat, "services are the only sector of the European economy that has generated jobs in the last decades". In comparison the Japanese innovation strategy from 2010 states that in open innovation hubs the priorities are in integration and alliance strategies for issues like IP local , innovation environments, international collaboration on open platforms, standardisation, human capital development and outreach (scalability) of the results. From European perspective a strong interplay between the policy makers, legislators, and the application actors (public sector, vendors and citizens) is needed, to get the framework safe, but also effective for these new services. New technologies bring also new issues on the table which needs to be tackled on on the pan-European level. The list of examples of common functionalities are well addressed in the action points of the Digital Agenda, bringing together technology, society and policies all needed to boost the Digital Single Market development. Examples of actions mentioned are the new Telecoms Framework with regard to the protection of individuals' privacy and personal data, the European cybercrime platform, renew the eCommerce directive, likewise the eSignature directive, transposing the VAT directive by 2013 to support eInvoicing, proposing measures to foster the Single Euro Payment Area etc. Public sector has a significant role in the designing of the service reference architecture because it has the obligation of provide users (citizens, industries, companies, etc.) with open platforms and modular solutions, not locking them in to any single vendor. Public sector has also to enable effective joint development and exchange of best practise experience making services more affordable and inclusive for all in a panEuropean approach. Combining these responsibilities with the user-centric, participative and open platform based approach the outreach of development, towards full inclusion is also more easily achievable. In open innovation the development and deployment is seamlessly integrated in the "real world" with "real people", enabling higher quality services, but at the same time better scalability and faster innovation cycle for the services. Again, of course if the platforms for development are wide enough, as they can be when the ambition of the Digital Agenda is realized.
e-Government as driver for Lead Markets in the Digital Single Market e-Government services in the new ICT environments offer better quality, more affordable services for citizens and businesses, and can reduce the administrative burden and cost significantly. Despite the relatively high availability of e-Government services in Europe the take-up of these services are rather low. European governments have agreed to make user-centric, personalised and multiplatform services widely available by 2015. These services should be available in multiple environments, building on one hand towards the trend for open service environments. These services should be interoperable across boundaries and borders. Empowerment of users require openness and transparency of the services, but again on the other hand, as previously mentioned new thinking also on privacy and data security in general. Many public services do not work across borders not even across sectors to the detriment of mobility and location independent service roaming. Even if in many Member States the technology base is very similar, the actual applications in details make the services incompatible. Hence a common dynamic architectural approach, based on interoperable of services and functionalities is also of the interest to the public sector as service provider. However several single market initiatives and legal and policy instruments rely on the possibility to do business and interact with public administrations by electronic means. Examples of these are e.g the Services Directive or the eProcurement Action Plan. The Digital Agenda is thus proposing seamless cross-border e-Government services in the digital single market. To make this happen the CIP (Competitiveness and Innovation programme) and the ISA (Interoperable Solutions for European Public Administrations) are the most suitable instruments. For the Member States the Digital Agenda emphasises the importance of making e-Government services fully interoperable, again driving towards common pan-European solutions. For the purpose of defining the new user-centric approach by Open User-Driven Services Reference Architecture we have to consider as strategic drivers simultaneously: addressing societal challenges through open innovation in services; capturing societal innovation; social networks and social capital; building a single market for services in Europe.
The reference architecture is not based on technological convergence, but on focusing on services integrated and converged following the life cycle of a person (or a business), with recurrent events triggering the services to be provided. The Digital Agenda pushes the Member States to agree upon a common list of key crossborder public services corresponding to well defined needs for businesses and citizens.
These key services should be available online by 2015 bringing us a lot closer to a single framework for services, due to the generic nature of the key elements of the services mentioned. Looking at these services from the service convergence perspective, i.e. several service elements being integrated on event-basis following the life cycle of an enterprise, or life events of a citizen implies wide interoperability and common architectural approach across these modular services. To achieve a functioning business ecosystem delivering affordable user-centric services these platforms need to be open and fully interoperable beyond technology, European-wide. To increase the value of this interoperability we should think beyond the current vendorclient relationship towards interconnected ecosystems, where the users participate actively throughout the development process of the services, from ideation, development to the final deployment, all driving towards a strong European web based service industry. That new web service industry can truly be created in Europe, by acting together! It would bring the triple play into reality; flourishing industry, affordable services, and personalised inclusive services. User centricity in the services has well been recognised both by Ministerial meetings and e.g. on OECD level, very much in a coherent way. Now it is time to turn these thoughts into action, as will happen with the very practical Digital Agenda. The goals, from the Ministerial Declaration on e-Government, approved unanimously in Malm, Sweden, on 18 November 2009 are focusing on the citizen empowerment where users are centrally participating in design of the services. The fully fledged services landscape highlights the need of interoperability and mobility of services (service roaming) leading to strong back-office development too. High quality services in affordable way, in the changing societal landscape pose huge challenges to the public sector service providers, also leading to streamlining and simplification, and even in some cases total abandoning of the old service processes. New multichannel services need to be developed, enhancing the role of the citizen to be an active subject in the services, not only the object as until so far. Important is to also address the all-inclusiveness of the new service economy enabling all citizens and businesses to fully participate in the society and economy. Inclusive services with active user participation in all stages is the best guarantee to reach the normally digitally or socially excluded groups. A hot topic today is the availability of data in so called open data clouds. The public sector information should be reused to simplify the services for citizens and businesses. Even more far reaching is the approach to free information from public sources, enabling new services to be created by mash-up of that data. This leads to questions such as the security of the data, privacy, and dependency between services. As societal phenomenon it is also noteworthy that in 2010 the social networks are surpassing the search engines in popularity in internet! The behavioral change of the people leads also to new notion of privacy, and identity management.
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The Digital Agenda sets a milestone for these actions to apply the European Interoperability Framework on national level by 2013 and implement the commitments in the Malm5 and Granada6 declarations by 2013 as well. The European Interoperability Framework7 for Pan-European e-Government Services from where we obtain the following requirements, again very much in line with the previous ones. It can be clearly seen that developing these services in close PublicPrivate-People Partnership would not only meet the objectives better, but also reduce the risks, and last not but not least the developed user-centric services could better be deployed in wider constituencies. Services should be user-centered. Services can be easily found at web sites. Services should be easy to use and understand in terms of language and structure. Multilingualism. Services must be accessible to all members of the intended target groups. Accessibility.
NOTES 5 http://www.egov2009.se/wp-content/uploads/Ministerial-Declaration-on-eGovernment.pdf 6 http://www.eu2010.es/export/sites/presidencia/comun/descargas/Ministerios/en_declaracion_granada.pdf 7 http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/servlets/Doc?id=19529
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Electronic services should add value. Electronic services should be compliant with the existing legal data protection requirements and privacy compliant as well as privacy-enhancing.
Setting the perspective towards the full use of the societal capital, experience and userempowerment for better services the8 Services should be context-oriented. Services should have a one-entry-only Users want to see the administration as a whole. . Users want to recognize an official site and the services provided at first sight. Services should operate on the basis of a single data collection. Information known by the government not need be requested time and again. Users need to trust in the organization that collect and manage sensitive personal information, data and digital identities. There is big concern about privacy. Users want to decide for themselves which channel they wish to use to contact the government, in context and time dependent way.
Conclusions As seen from above, the ambition to create the Digital Single Market is well reinforced with multiple, and integrated actions stemming from interoperability demands from the public sector services across the member states. The user involvement in all phases of development and deployment in the services create an unique opportunity to capture value in new business models and service provisions, thus creating from that perspective favorable conditions for sustainable societal development and economical growth. Open innovation environments based on the open and neutral character of the internet highlights on its part also the need for openness of new and innovative business and societal models. The Digital Agenda is also very explicit in the need for the industry to have open and interoperable solutions to fully exploit the ICT potential, especially that of the next generation interconnectivity and clouds. Hence industry-led initiatives aiming at standards and open interoperable platforms will be supported by various instruments. The Commission will bring all stakeholders around a common table driving co-creative and participative innovation as the new European paradigm. Examples of this are e.g. the new PPP-initiatives, like the Future Internet PPP involving strongly the vendor and user communities.
NOTES 8 "Rethinking E-Government Services: User-Centred Approaches" OECD 2009
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When these PPP initiatives are developed and realized in real world settings we also can stretch the limits better, by getting strong involvement of the end-users, whether businesses or citizens. This in turn means a unique opportunity to see what is acceptable and on the other hand what is necessary, to fully exploit the possibilities the ICT enables from citizens or businesses perspective. The solutions will be easier scalable, and by strong multidisciplinarity and parallel resources also the development process will be timelier. In Europe we are well positioned with the new Digital Agenda to face the challenges of the sustainable societal and economical development, for a flourishing service industry, high quality services and affordable, effective public sector services. Under the leadership of the Commission integrating the policies, legislation and research actions for concrete actions for Digital Single market for services we can truly have the triple win.
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Open innovation model and the Belgian administration

Luc Gathy, Chancellery of the Prime Minister, Agency for administrative simplification, Belgium
Role of the administration The innovative capacity to be derived from cooperation has to be boosted to enable the administration to guarantee the future well-being of the business community and citizens while improving the operations of the administration itself. This change for the better is needed in view of the complicated nature of the tasks facing the administration. The interaction with external stakeholders is often confined to consultations for gathering information or seeking support. Contact points can be used to report any unwelcome occurrences if need be, while unexpected ideas have to be monitored as well. The principles underpinning open innovation also have to be applied to provinces, municipalities and private or public implementation bodies jointly developing ICT applications.
The Agency for Administrative Simplification (ASA) and its network have to boost their innovative capacity in addition to the efforts they have already made in this direction over the last 10 years. Towards this end, Belgium has to succeed in mobilising all talented people to ensure sustained innovation and improvements for our services and organisations. The administration (on a cross-departmental basis) has to help enhance the standard of services on offer, while cutting down on costs, for the benefit not only of itself, but also for businesses and citizens. We are perfectly aware that we are faced with an ever-more complicated and dynamic environment, while innovative ideas are increasingly arriving from unexpected quarters. A few examples will be considered below. A key component of each of the specific examples is a more efficient use of innovative ICT applications combined with legislative and regulatory adjustments.
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Close internal and external cooperation The shift to a more open system for innovation first of all implies the need for the administration to engage in close cooperation. The ASA promotes interdepartmental, multidisciplinary and cross-sectoral efforts. Knowledge acquisition is also deployed, such as: Including knowledge from specific interest groups, research institutions and relevant agencies. Defining knowledge requirements in a broad context. A steady growth in the level of knowledge such that no knowledge-related request is made but the "market" decides what knowledge is offered.
Innovators from various sectors may meet with representatives of departments along with their promising ideas, innovative proposals and projects for which a substantive agreement has been reached. Create seamless procedures for establishing experimental opportunities for all types of network services. Of crucial importance in this context is the ability to launch projects quickly with various stakeholders outside the administration and different departments, including a more efficient use of resources (seconding civil servants, deploying specific profiles, ). Coordination is platform-based (or involving joint project management under the presidency of the ASA), cross-sectoral, dynamically controlled with an assessment of the approach (via the ASA Project office) and the outcomes (via the ASA Measurement Office).
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The investment approach is based on public-private or multi-institutions co-funding, with a special effort by the ASA in the initial phase of a new project. The ASA offers some leeway in terms of regulatory adjustments in order to ensure smooth cooperation between the stakeholders.
Open innovation for better e-Services The Belgian administrative simplification initiatives are broadly focused on 5 areas: 1) Cataloguing administrative procedures, forms and sources of data; 2) Aggregating raw data into authentic sources of information; 3) Encouraging new players and external service providers to develop non-traditional applications involving government data; and 4) Mashing it up in ways that make it more meaningful to enterprises and citizens; 5) Maximising the re-use of data, re-use of electronic services and sharing infrastructures. The ASA uses a co-creative, user-centric approach in each area while boosting cooperation between government agencies or private organisations (breaking down barriers). In the case of co-design a key issue is the need to identify and select which stakeholders should, directly or indirectly, be part of the design. As no existing or static stakeholder is established in open innovation, stakeholder identification and commitment has to be an ongoing activity in the design process itself. A key role for the ASA here is the co-design leader or maestro balancing between being an artist, or more traditional designer, , and being a facilitator.
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The ASA makes extensive use of the Federal service bus or FSB. The FSB takes the form of a secured service-oriented architecture (see presentation entitled "Information society with absolute trust in the services" on my LinkedIn page http://be.linkedin.com/pub/gathyluc/3/961/662) featuring several web services. These services may be basic transactions in the direction of authentic sources of information or applications. The administrations offer these services to their partners. The most well-known authentic electronic sources at federal level are: Corporate identification data (source : Crossroads Bank for Enterprises or BCE). Annual accounts (source: National Bank). Corporate statute (source: Belgian Official Gazette - Moniteur Belge). Personnel identification data (source: National Register). Social data (source: Crossroads Bank for Social Security or BCSS). Tax data (source: Federal Finances Communication Centre or CCFF). Real estate documentation (source: Federal Public Service Finances). Judicial decisions (source: Central Criminal Records Register). Urban planning permit (source: URBAIN). Vehicle registration and driving licence (source: Federal Public Service Mobility).
Within the context of the FSB, web services are uniformly made available not only to users within the administration but also to outside organisations and companies. As Belgium is a federal state, federated entities have a similar data interchange infrastructure, while the overall strategy comprises a "Stepwise introduction of shared egovernment back-end services" (more details in the report of the SOA pushed to the limit workshop at http://www.epractice.eu/en/workshops/soa). Under this heading, the "one-off data collection, maximum (re) use" principle is also applied stepwise. Information is gathered from citizens or companies only once thus saving a great deal of time. Any application subsequently using the data invariably has the most up-to-date information. The application of the "one-off data collection" principle is always seconded by: The use of single identifiers. Disclosure to third parties. The discontinuation of approved certification.
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A few innovative federal "Administrative Simplification" projects
Authentic source Vehicles

The new registration procedure offers an advantage to various parties: the Vehicle registration department (DIV), the Federal Public Service Finances, insurers, brokers and whoever registers. A registration request used to be made on the basis of a document, whose contents were validated by DIV officials. Thanks to online registration, the data is interactively validated so the process is a lot less labour-intensive. Parties making a request can count on their number plates arriving in the post the next working day. Online registration reduces the risk of fraud as a result of the disappearance of the tax stamp, which can be forged resulting in less revenue for the FPS Finances. The online registration process means insurers pay the tax into an account belonging to the FPS Finances. The online registration system (http://www.mobilit.fgov.be/fr/index.htm) enables insurers to receive better quality information. In the wake of each transaction the DIV forwards the official data concerning the applicant and the vehicle. The data ensures the insurers receive the most up-to-date information so the premium calculation system is more precise, for example.
1a. Send fines for traffic violations 1b. Send Bank van de Post payments to FPS Justice 2. Vehicle registration via Web-DIV 2bis. More use of Web-DIV 3. Vehicle inspection 4a. Registration in the criminal register
4b. Send the fine to FPS Justice 5a. Send penal fines to FPS Finances 5b. Hard copy payment report 6. Update penal fines and driving licences 7. Register new driving licences in the Persons register 8. Report new driving licences to DIV
60% of vehicle requests are now made over the Internet by brokers and insurers.
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e-Notarisation and purchase/sale of real estate

This is a large-scale project for the automation of the notary office's core activity: drawing up the deed of sale for a property. This involves ASA/FPS Finances cooperation as a component of their STIPAD (integrated real estate document system) programme. The purchase/sale of real estate is a perfect example of an end-to-end multidisciplinary streamlining initiative involving cooperation in various phases (sub-project) with a huge series of multilevel stakeholders in order to achieve the result being sought: automated information transferred within a much shorter time scale. The project is based on the same approach as e-Depot (electronic creation of companies), see http://www.epractice.eu/cases/edepot.
1a. Transfer certificates from FPS Finances to notary (DER-VE apps) 1b. Transfers of deeds of sale from notary to FPS Finances (DER-VE apps) 2a. Consultation of survey plan at FPS Finances 2b. Sending land register plans 3. Submit building request
4. Consultation of Public Waste Materials Company, Environmental Management Institute, . 5. Exchange of mortgage information 5a. Check payments of existing mortgages 6b. Submit lease contract 6a. Consultation of land register plan
European Services Directive

The European Services Directive seeks to facilitate commercial transactions for companies providing or using services within the European Union. The ASA along with the FPS Economy was tasked with coordinating the process for transposing this European Directive into Belgian legislation. A non-domestic company keen to provide services in Belgium first of all has to seek the necessary authorisations and complete certain procedures. Towards this end, a company may get directly in touch with the relevant administrations or turn to one of the nine onestop business shops.
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The FPS Economy decided to allow all the relevant administrations and one-stop business shops access to the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (BCE) so they enjoy a trouble-free opportunity to register all the procedures and authorisations at just one central location. Prior to this decision solely Belgium-based companies were entitled to be registered in the BCE, hence the decision to revamp the database, so that non-Belgian-based foreign companies may now offer services in Belgium and be featured in the BCE. The BCE therefore takes the form of a central register providing each company with a consolidated view of all the authorisations sought and their status. The ASA's creation of a knowledge database referring to 374 administrative procedures allows for the remote consultation of all the statutory requirements. 43 drafting officials from all levels of governance were involved in drafting the files describing the administrative procedures. In late December 2009, the knowledge database or "Catalogue of procedures" was published for the first time on a provisional version of the site http://www.directiveservices.be (now http://business.belgium.be/fr/procedures/index.jsp). Consideration is now being given to the final version of the site, which will include the same information but offer additional features, such as a powerful search engine operating on the basis of the user's profile. The site is set to be incorporated into http://www.business.belgium.be , the general Belgian entrepreneurship site.
Electronic luncheon vouchers

Belgium is leading the way in Europe as a result of switching to electronic luncheon vouchers. Users may visit the Internet to see how much credit is left (according to the Home banking principle). They may also send an SMS or e-mail to report the imminent expiry of vouchers. The environmentally-friendly dimension of the scheme is reflected in the lower paper consumption and less risk of losing the vouchers. 250 million luncheon vouches are now being distributed every year to 1.3 million Belgian citizens. Sodexo has issued a standard electronic card for use at payment terminals (150,000 available in 20,000 stores). Accor (the other key player in the sector) has opted for the same electronic card plus a "Contactless" card. Small retailers with no payment terminal can therefore resort to Belgacom's "Ping Ping" technology allowing a mobile phone to be used like a wallet. The electronic luncheon voucher scheme was rolled out late last year and service vouchers are bound to follow suit via conversion into an electronic format.
Survey portal for structure surveys on the basis of XBRL technology (http://epractice.eu/cases/ses)
The FPS Economy has substantially streamlined its data-gathering activities via surveys. The ESE (or Structural enterprise survey) is the first survey to use XBRL technology (taxonomy defined). This enables both the business community and the FPS Economy to save a great deal of time and boost the quality of the information. Applied to business activities, employment, revenue, costs and investment in the previous financial year, the information gathered is used to produce statistics and European-level reporting.
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A company forwards one or more fully or partly completed forms in an .xbrl file, which is stored and validated. Error-free forms in the file are immediately earmarked for indefinite storage. Should errors be discovered in one or more forms after validation the company may view the ones with errors via the manual entry procedure where errors are shown in the form. The company can then make adjustments via manual entries or undertake a new upload operation.
Tlmarc and public procurement

The Tlmarc electronic application, for offer evaluation from the legal point of view, seeks the information it requires directly from the sources of this information (Crossroads bank for Enterprises, Social security, Fiscal databank, National Bank). The guide is available at http://www.fedweb.belgium.be/fr/services_en_ligne/online_digiflow.jsp. Administrative burdens are thus substantially reduced because companies taking part in tenders are relieved of the need to provide such information.
Videos have been produced about key ASA projects: Measurement Office, Tlmarc and public procurement, EDRL "Services Directive", Structure survey on http://www.youtube.com/user/99davasa#p/u.
Singly copyright declaration

Companies may submit a single declaration so as to be able to conform to all the copyright requirements for using music. The new portal, http://www.declarationunique.be, the outcome of cooperation between the management associations Sabam (copyright), Simim (producers) and Uradex (performers), features an information section, a price simulator and a declaration section.
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Employees' organisations such as the FEB, Unizo and SNI (non-affiliated trade union for the self-employed), were involved in the negotiations. The portal deals with all situations where music is used; in public areas and in locations earmarked solely for company staff.
Initiatives by municipal authorities

Under the scheme to develop a shared framework for communicating effectively with the regional and federal tools, the focus is on a description of the scheduled electronic interchanges and all the data these should feature. Two key components in the pipeline, involving the broad development of electronic interchanges on the basis of the municipalities, are: 1) An electronic signature procedure to be applied in the municipalities (just as straightforward as the manual signature now in use). An electronic registered item offering the same guarantees as a registered letter.
2)
Finally, mention should be made of some of the initiatives the municipalities are committed to: a) Environment: the regions are poised to create a centralised and computerised environmental permit register for the benefit not only of the municipalities but also companies. Regional planning: the regions are set to develop an ongoing territorial assessment system available to the municipalities. Rural character: the regions are due to roll out e-Government solutions to tackle the fragmentation of the public service provision in the rural environment (particularly with public multiservice centres or multiservice buses). High bandwidth: the regions should facilitate the development of very high symmetric bit rates for public networks, with municipal administrations being entitled to use these bandwidths. Compatibility: the regions should maintain a computer account follow-up system based on powerful, open and ongoing technologies.
b)
c)
d)
e)
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At federal level, A) Initiatives are being taken to upgrade the Civil status management system so an authentic source for electronically signed official civil status records is available in three years' time. Mention should also be made of the constantly evolving URBAIN system to allow municipalities to forward to the land register authority electronic building and subdivision permits (see figure above).
B)
Conclusions Progress has definitely been made in terms of a multidisciplinary approach, cooperationbased collaboration, the commitment of all stakeholders, the co-creative innovation process, new eServices in open environments and user-centric services. Another change for the better is the development of a new innovation model for public services. Rather than relying on large-scale, long-term projects that struggle to meet the needs of users, the innovation models are smaller, with rapid development cycles and short user feedback loops with (permanent beta). The technological costs are kept to the minimum as a result of the straightforward approach adopted. Failure-related costs are minimised. More resources are earmarked for usability. The open innovation model offers the administration (public services) opportunities to promote innovation. The ASA 2009 report on the evaluation of administrative burdens shows a decrease in burdens to the tune of EUR 93 million in 2008: EUR 71 million resulted from changes in legislation and EUR 11 million from innovative e-Government applications.
The Federal Planning Bureau's biannual surveys show the administrative burdens of businesses decreased in value from EUR 8.6 billion in 2000 (3.5% of GDP) to EUR 7.7 billion in 2006 (1.72% of GDP).
Trends in total cost of administrative burdens for businesses over the 2000-06 period.
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A Community for External/Public Relations Offices of the European Polices Forces to Communicate Security using ICT
Maurizio Masciopinto, Mauro Valeri, The state police, Italy
The Italian National Police has launched on 15th September in Rome, the new network/ community "Communicating security using ICT" developed with the European Commission. This work focuses mainly on the services offered by this new community/network.
Communicating security using ICT- An overview Communicating Security Using ICT is the first European community for External Relations/PR Offices of the police forces of EU Member States, a tool for sharing communication initiatives on policing schemes aimed at the public. The project dates back to January 2009 and is based on a proposal by the Italian police that was immediately and enthusiastically welcomed by all police forces. Communicating Security Using ICT has been launched on 15th September 2009 during a meeting arranged by the External Relations Office of the Public Security Department and attended by police representatives from some European countries, ie. Romania, France and Ireland, the European Commission, Europol and Interpol. The project is part of the e-government strategy of the European Commission and is aimed at improving the involvement in and sharing of communication practices concerning public security within each Member State. In order to facilitate the relationship between the public and the police, the communication schemes will be available to the European citizen at www.epractice.eu/community/comsecusingict. Communication tools that are shared by the police forces and the public are essential for enhancing integration among the countries participating in the community. Sharing the practices of each police force will improve the publics satisfaction in their relationship with the Police in each country. Till now the representatives of 18 countries of the Police forces of the European Union have already joined the network.
The community aim The new community/network is a network in which all colleagues of the European Police forces working in the External relations/Public relations field will be able to communicate in real time between them about the way used to communicate security to the citizen and
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to inform them about security issues. We'll be able to share suggestions, projects and best practices on how to communicate the security to the citizens and the initiatives taken for making feel them more secure using ICT means (our web sites, intranet, community, electronic newspaper, mailing list, advertising campaign about security and so on). The expected members of the network are the Heads of the External Relations / Public Relation Offices (Office with are in charge for relations with media, information, spokeperson, press) of the European Police Forces or colleagues appointed by them. The network/community is on invitation and Only members invited by the facilitator can join it. The facilitator maintains the aim of the community and provide it with a clear agenda and rules of engagement. He invites new members to join the community and can also help to plan events or a workshop for the group. Only the community members can contribute but the content published is public and will be seen by all. This will be very useful to the journalists and to the citizens too that will be able to see all the community content.
The Community services In the Communicating Security Using ICT community the community members can: Share documents, cases (written summaries of real-life projects based on actual experiences) events and news related to your topic of interest. Post a blog where community members can discuss common interests and issues. View a list of all the community members with their professional profiles and send them messages. Post library items for other community members to view and comment on. View workshops linked to the community activity and theme.
A view of the community
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Social Assistance Information System: Service at the Touch of a Button

Aziz Yildirim, General Director, GDSAS Cemalettin ourcu, Head of the Strategy Development Department, GDSAS Umut Yefi Lirmark, Supervisor of Management Information System Unit, Social Assistance Assistant Expert, GDSAS Samet Gunefi, Supervisor of Strategic Planning Unit / Social Assistance Expert, GDSAS Fiebnem Avfiar Kurnaz, Supervisor of R&D Unit / Social Assistance Expert, GDSAS Ahmet Fatih Ortakaya, Supervisor of Performance and Quality Criterion Development Unit / Social Assistance Expert, GDSAS Ersin Bcer, Social Assistance Expert, GDSAS Nevzat Firat Kunduraci, Social Assistance Expert, GDSAS
Introduction The social assistances offer an effective social policy tool in order to combat with poverty. Social assistance services are most commonly being implemented by General Directorate of Social Assistance and Solidarity (GDSAS) in Turkey. By means of Social Assistance and Solidarity Foundations (SASF), GDSAS provides direct assistances for meeting the basic needs of poor and vulnerable citizens, who do not have social security, and also provides project supports for making citizens, who could work, productive. Social assistance is a crucial area of service which presents humanistic and conscientious characteristics. Therefore, it is essential providing the services peopleoriented, fast, qualified and in the nearest places for citizens. These necessities require using information communication technologies for presenting the social assistance services. The base of the Social Assistance Information System (SAIS) Project has been laid by putting Identity Sharing System into the use of SAS Foundations in January 2009. At the beginning, the system has been opened only for receiving Identity Register Copy of citizens who apply for social assistances. However, after integrating other relevant institutions since February 2009, the system has become an e-government application which aims at assurance/determination of neediness and personal information of citizens, who apply for social assistances, from central databases; and which has been put into practice after a 6-month-work. The system is active already and 22 different interrogations from 8 different institutions are being done in a short period of time.
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Neediness-poverty interrogation of citizens who apply for social assistances has begun to be done by SAS Foundations itself by means of using the central databases after SAIS initiated; citizens have been unburdened from proving their neediness; it has been prevented that citizens applying for social assistances collect documents about their situation by going to public institutions one-by-one; it has been started to determine whether citizens deserve assistances or not by submitting only their identity cards; access period to assistances of poor citizens has been shortened; giving reiterated assistances has been thwarted; the workloads of public institutions and SAS Foundations have been decreased; 1 million document monthly averages have been removed; thus, 2 million TL have been saved and cutting off 251 trees have been thwarted. The importance of SAIS Project lies behind the fact that complex problems such as determination of neediness and preventing the reiterated assistance have been overcome with a simple e-government application. For, SAIS has been accepted by the personnel of SAS Foundations with a considerable amount. This situation shows itself on the application statistics of the system. Interrogation of 9.500.0001 citizens have been done on the system used by 3.251 SAS Foundation personnel since March 20092.
Online Data Exchange among Different Governmental Databases By means of Social Assistance Information System, following information is provided in electronic environment through databases of relevant public authorities with T.R Identity Number of citizens applying for social assistance: From MERNIS database of Ministry of Interior General Directorate of Civil Registration and Nationality information of addresses, copies of civil-family registration and information of incident. From the database of Turkish Labor Institution, information about whether or not the person has a record to Turkish Labor Institution, s/he receives Unemployment Insurance, Short-time Working Allowance and Job Loss Compensation. From the database of General Directorate of Foundation, information about whether or not the person has received Poverty Allowance. From the database of General Directorate of Social Services and Children Protection, information about whether or not the person has received Home care Allowance. From the database of General Directorate of Social Assistance and Solidarity, information about whether or not the person has benefited from Conditional Cash Transfer, Income Generating Projects and Other Assistances. From the database of Social Security Institution, information about whether or not the person has Social Security, s/he benefits from health services and receives Allowance (assistance) according to the law no. 2022.
NOTES 1 In many cases a person can be interrogated more than once. Thus 9,5 million indicates the number of process not the number of applied people. 2 Although system is active since February 2009, statistics are available since March 2009.
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From the database of Ministry of Health, information about whether or not the person has Green Card. From the database of General Directorate of Land Registry and Cadastre, information about whether or not the person has real property ownership. From the database of Revenue Administration, information about whether or not the person has Tax Liability and has motor vehicle registered to himself. From Institution of Scholarship and Dormitories, information of scholarship and From Farmer Register System of Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, information about whether or not the person benefits from Field Property, Planted Areas Property, Agricultural Supports and information about the number of bovine/ovine.
The system is active already and 25 different interrogations from 11 different institutions are being done in a short period of time.
What are the advantages of SAIS? After SAIS has been put into service; 1. Neediness-poverty of citizens applying the social assistances has begun to be interrogated by the state itself by using the central databases; citizens have been unburdened from proving their neediness. It has been prevented that citizens applying for social assistances collect documents about their situation by going to public institutions one-by-one; it has been started to determine whether citizens deserve assistances or not by submitting only their identity cards. Application period to social assistances of poor citizens has been shortened. Giving reiterated assistances by public institutions has been thwarted; it has been provided that social assistances are delivered to really needy citizens and larger masses. The workloads of public institutions from which the citizens request documents about their situations, have been decreased. The workloads of SAS Foundations have been diminished; the time, which the personnel of the Foundations allocate for social investigation, has been increased. Bureaucracy has been minimized by abolishing the correspondence between public institutions in order to prevent reiterated assistances and this contributes using the public resources effectively. Infrastructure for healthy statistical information necessary for developing efficient social assistance policies has been formed.
2.
3. 4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
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9. 10.
GDSAS has contributed to e-government process of Turkey with SAIS project. Since required documents reduced, paper consumption is reduced.
How was the process functioning before SAIS? In order to understand the added-value of SAIS, it is useful to look at the situation before SAIS. It was necessary for the citizens applying for social assistances to collect documents about their situation by going to public institutions one-by-one or to use Service Office at One Step before SAIS. Moreover, completion of formal written correspondence between public institutions is needed in order to prevent reiterated assistances. It was necessary for the citizens to spend at least 3-5 days for collecting documents from public institutions and to bear the transport expenses and it was also required at least 15-20 days for developing the procedures at the Service Office at One Step. After the initiation of SAIS, almost 1 million documents have been abolished, 2 million TL have been saved by the citizens and above all average application period has decreased to a couple of minutes from 3 or 15 days.
Which documents were required in determination of neediness before SAIS? As well as there are differences between SAS Foundations, following documents were required from the citizens applying social assistances according to the type of assistance before SAIS. With SAIS, it is adequate for the person to submit just T.R Identity Number. Family Register Copy. Family Identity Register Copy. Student Certificate. Identity Card Copy. Address Information. Document for Vehicle Owner. Document for Tax Obligation. Document for Land Ownership. Document for Agricultural Supports. Document related to Social Security Situation of the citizen. Document for the Allowance of Law No. 2022. Document for the Ownership of Bovine/Ovine.
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Document about whether or not the person receives assistance from General Directorate of Social Services and Child Protection. Document about whether or not the person receives assistance from General Directorate of Foundation. Document about whether or not the person receives Unemployment Insurance. Document about whether or not the person receives any scholarship. Other documents according to type of the assistance.
How long did it take to put SAIS into practice? The base of SAIS Project has been laid in January 2009 after the Identity Sharing System was opened for the use of SAS Foundations. The system, which was opened for receiving the Identity Register Copy at first, has turned into Social Assistance Information System after integrating relevant institutions since February 2009. In short, the system has been put into practice as a result of a 6-month intense work.
How intensely SAIS is being used? SAIS is being used by SAS Foundations actively and intensely. 3.251 users in 973 SAS Foundations (81 provinces and 892 sub-provinces) throughout Turkey are actively using the system. Since the system was opened in March 20093, 734.000 interrogations for monthly average are being done. In the period of mass assistance, the number of interrogation rises up to 1.200.000.
How is the security of the personal data of citizens provided on SAIS? SAIS depends on the basis of obtaining the personal data of the citizens, who apply social assistances, from relevant public institutions. There is no doubt that this situation creates need for providing the security of personal information of citizens. In order to provide personal data security, following measures are taken: A petition which consists of the citizens consent applying social assistance in order to do the interrogation is submitted. There are individual user names and passwords of all end users who are using the application. It is logged on the database when, with which information and by whom the interrogations are done. All interrogations are registered with barcodes showing by whom, when and with which information interrogations are done.
NOTES 3 Although system is active since February 2009, statistics are available since March 2009
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Due to the VPN (Virtual Private Network) backbone created between SAS Foundations and General Directorate, access to the system from the computers outside the Foundations is thwarted. Data flow provided over GDSAS is enciphered according to international standards and attaining the aforesaid data by third persons is prevented.
Which method has been followed for putting SAIS into practice? Without going out to tender to any private sector, the project has been developed by the personnel of the GDSAS and with its own resources. An interdisciplinary team, which consists of people who are suitable for teamwork, complete the deficiencies of each other, speak the same language, take quick decisions and implement, has been formed in order to put the project into practice. This team has received trainings about e-government, Management Information Systems and Project Management on TODAIE (Public Administration Institute for Turkey and Middle East), State Planning Organization and Secretariat General for EU Affairs before project development phase and awareness has been formed about successful projects on the project team. An efficient coordination has been provided between SAIS Project senior management, project management, project team and software team. Beyond formal and bureaucratic managerial hierarchy, the project has been concluded with a result-oriented and horizontal perception of organization. Before correspondence period for implementing the SAIS Project was initiated, meetings have been done with the institution at senior management level at first and a mutual agreement has been reached verbally. Data attained by the institutions and basis of cooperation have been determined. Then draft protocol text has been sent to contact persons of the relevant institutions and formal correspondence period has been initiated immediately after mutual agreement on the draft text was reached. This process has been followed by GDSASs personnel on all institutions with senior management support. In case extension risk of protocol period has been come up, all technical works and data sharing have been started for trial purposes without waiting for the signing of protocols.
An efficient risk and change management has been provided in putting the project into practice. Risks, which constitute impediment before interoperability and online data sharing, have been overcome swiftly. Accordingly: Due to the fact that institutions whose data are requested did not have experience in providing online data, web services, which were needed, have been written by the technical team of GDSAS. Hardware support (server etc.) has been provided for the relevant institutions in case they lack of necessary technical opportunities for providing online data.
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If data required from the institutions are not kept on a database, software support necessary for creating database has been provided and in some cases web based software has been created by GDSASs technical team. Data kept on different formats and on paper have been registered to database by GDSASs personnel in some cases and have prepared for online sharing.
In case of interruption on process about data request from certain institutions, works related to these institutions have been monitored in the background but works and procedures of another institution have been started without time loss. Thus this bottleneck could not endanger the success of the whole project.
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A new concept in online public services in France: mon.service-public.fr

General Directorate for State Modernisation, Ministry for Budget, Public Accounts and State Reform, France
Introduction The goal of mon.service-public.fr is to make it easier for citizens to access online public services by providing a single, customised point of entry. The first version went online in December 2008, and on 19 October 2009, mon.service-public.fr was officially inaugurated by Eric Woerth, the minister in charge of State reform. Right from the start, mon.service-public.fr was the focus of a great deal of expectation. Using ground-breaking technology, its ambitious undertaking was to provide users with a single Web portal and to make French governmental online services more accessible. This effort was based on close partnerships in the governmental, social and public spheres, as well as with local authorities and, for certain online procedures, private firms. Using identity federation, it provides a comprehensive range of online services, while ensuring the safety of users' data and offering a unified image of web-based public services. Mon.service-public.fr is fully a part of the French government's changing digital landscape. In fact, it stands at the end of a series of changes in the government's shift towards the digital world. This started with the dematerialisation of forms, access to legal and administrative information online, and then the very first online services. Mon.service-public.fr is part of the French government's third digital wave, and is considerably speeding its development. It is a crucial digital government project, and it has set itself the objective of having 3 million user accounts by the end of 2010, and 10 million by the end of 2011. This paper aims at a better understanding of mon.service-public.fr. By reviewing the history of the project, which was built around cutting-edge technology and which very quickly became a unifying project, we can analyse whether the site has lived up its original promises. It set itself the goal of becoming the single point of access to online government services based on three principles: a federated identity, private user storage space and assigning a central role to the user. With over 700 000 accounts created to date (June 2010), mon.service-public.fr has kept its original promise it is indeed a single point of access to online government services. However, tomorrow's administration will mean new issues and therefore new challenges to the portal. Indeed, in the summer of 2010, mon.service-public.fr has undergone a thoroughgoing ergonomic makeover in order to better meet users' needs. New partners are being sought both government departments and public and social organisations in order to provide the widest possible range of services and ensure that mon.service-public.fr retains its place as a unifying project.
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IMon.service-public.fr: a unifying project allied with cutting-edge technology a) From pilot phase to the present: high expectations
There was a strong political push to create mon.service-public.fr in March 2003. Very quickly, it became a pilot project, assigned to the General Directorate for State Modernisation. In December 2008, the first version was rolled out. Given the strong interest on the part of its partners, and the fact that it met users' expectations in terms of digital government services, it grew rapidly. By the end of 2009, it had attracted 300,000 users. Today, mon.service-public.fr provides users with comprehensive access to the growing range of online government services, and allows them to manage their relations with public services in a customised manner. Linkups between the various services offered by the site's partners mean that users can securely access these services with a single user ID and a single password. A single user account also means that users can see all of their pending requests and procedures via a dashboard. "Made-to-measure" information (based on a user's municipality and the type of service sought) is also available for each account, thanks to a close partnership with the website service-public.fr. Finally, mon.service-public.fr offers private user storage space for paperless official documents sent electronically to the user by the various partners. Today, with more than 700,000 accounts, and an ambitious objective of 3 million accounts by the end of 2010, mon.service-public.fr continues to grow and attract new users every day. This means it must continue adding new online services.
The changing face of e-Government in France There are three major phases in the development of e-Government in France. To begin with, until 2004, this mainly consisted of putting government-issued forms online in PDF format.This was based on two guiding principles: online access to information and downloadable forms that users could then fill out offline and send by mail to the appropriate government department. This phase of e-Government corresponded to the period prior to the arrival of Web 2.0, and was perfectly embodied by the website service-public.fr, which provided a single point of access to government information, in particular a guide to users' rights and online procedures, and a great many forms. The second phase came between 2004 and 2008, with the creation of the first online services, such as the site www.changement-adresse.gouv.fr, which allowed users to fill out a form online which would then be sent to all of the site's partners. Nevertheless, these online services were of very simple design, and only offered users one procedure at a time (and very often in connection with only one government department at a time). Using the initial version of the "form server" put in place by the General Directorate for State Modernisation, users could fill out and send forms online, without having to download them. Since 19 October 2009 and the publication of "15 Measures to Simplify Daily Life", eGovernment was given fresh impetus.
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Mon.service-public.fr now offers a full set of online services, based around the most common events in everyday life. Voter registration for example, or compulsory military registration by 16 year olds, can now be accomplished online from one's personal account. Another new feature is the possibility of accessing several online procedures (sometimes involving several government departments, in a way that is transparent to the user) from the same site, but also access to the services of the various partners.
b)
Three principles: a federated identity, private user storage space and a focus on the user
Mon.service-public.fr is based around three major principles. First, as mentioned previously, mon.service-public.fr has put a new face on French eGovernment by making multiple services available via the same personal account. This is made possible by a federated identity based on the Liberty Alliance Project, and which allows users to access services offered by various providers based on a single authentication procedure. With mon.service-public.fr, users may, using their personal online account and a single user ID and password (freely chosen by the user, who must comply with a few security recommendations), have access to the services offered by the site's partners. However, the Liberty Alliance standards that have been implemented by mon.servicepublic.fr and its partners also constitute a real technical success. These standards were in their infancy when mon.service-public.fr decided to make federated identity a key component of the project. The large number of partners that needed to be included in the "circle of trust" underscored the exacting nature of this project, which had simply set itself the goal of providing rapid, easy access to a unified set of online services. A private user storage space is part of the community aspect of the federated identity concept. By entering their personal details once and for all, users can benefit from prefilled-in forms whenever they initiate an online procedure. This electronic "strongbox" (20 mb are available free for every user) can also be used to store digitised receipts and documents that may be needed within the framework of a procedure. In the same spirit as pre-filled-in forms, a user's private storage space can be used to store documents that may be needed in a second procedure, without the user having to digitise them again. Readily accessible identity documents can, for example, considerably speed up the process of renewing passports or identity cards that have been lost or stolen abroad. Finally, one very important principle of mon.service-public.fr is that its online procedures and its operation are focused on the user, in full compliance with requirements for protecting personal data and in close cooperation with CNIL (France's independent dataprotection authority). The decision was made to build a structure in which the user "always retains control" (the choice to open an account, whether or not to activate his or her private storage space, whether or not to authorise the site's partners to place documents in that space and the choice to change these options at any moment) and, on the other hand, to take an event-based approach to personalise procedures that meet the needs of users.
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A project in compliance with the rules laid down by the CNIL In compliance with Act 78-17 of 6 January 1978 concerning computer technology and individual freedom, the terms and conditions of use of mon.service-public.fr stipulate a specific treatment for personal data supplied by the user within the framework of his or her procedures. A test phase was initiated. Working closely with the CNIL, mon.service-public.fr was able, during the design phase of the project, to take into account the provisions of the Act of 1978, even prior to requesting the CNIL's formal opinion. Practically speaking, the General Directorate for State Modernisation agreed to take all necessary measures to ensure the safety and the confidentiality of the information received. In addition, the Directorate informs each user, in application of Articles 39 to 43 of the Act of 6 January 1978, as amended, of his or her rights to access, correct and refuse the treatment of his or her personal data.
c)
Mon.service-public.fr and its partners
Mon.service-public.fr was set up in partnership with a wide range of organisations operating in the social sphere. As part of the federated identity approach, it allows users to benefit from these partners' services from a single account. Throughout the history of mon.service-public.fr, this community of partners has continued to grow. Today, seven major partners have connected their online services to mon.service-public.fr. They include: National Health Insurance Fund. National Pension Fund. National Family Allowance Fund.
Caisse des Dpts et Consignations (Deposits and Loans Fund).

Agricultural Mutual Insurance Fund. Union for the Collection of Social Security Contributions and Family Allowances (URSSAF): online services for the Child-Rearing Allowance and the Universal Employment Service Cheque. General Directorate for Legal and Administrative Information.
Currently, one of the primary challenges facing mon.service-public.fr is to increase the number of its partners in order to cover new areas and thus encourage more users to sign up. To this end, the site www.changement-adresse.gouv.fr has, starting on 1 April 2010, been given a complete overhaul. A new online procedure, entitled "I'm changing address" (Je change de coordonnes), will be available via mon.service-public.fr.
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Bringing in new partners, especially in the social sphere, is a priority. For example, in late 2010 or during the course of 2011, Internet users can use mon.service-public.fr to pay their taxes or look for a job. When it comes to registering to vote or compulsory military registration by 16 year olds, mon.service-public.fr is encouraging municipalities to sign up, so that their inhabitants may benefit from these online services. Currently, nearly 500 cities and towns, with a total population of more than 14 million people, have expressed interest in these procedures, and are in the process of providing their residence with access via mon.service-public.fr. This is an excellent example of how local authorities can be both beneficiaries and partners of mon.service-public.fr, with an eye to developing their online services and offer users a better relationship with their local government.
II Keeping a promise: a single-user account for all online procedures a) A single point of access to digital Government services
More than 700,000 users have opened accounts on mon.service-public.fr. With an ambitious target of 3 million users by the end of 2010, mon.service-public.fr is slowly becoming the single point of access to digital government services. The site receives more than 15,000 unique visits daily, with a very high rate of user satisfaction as measured by focus groups. This shows that mon.service-public.fr is able to meet users' needs, and that it is fully a part of the French government's digital landscape. This observation is underpinned by strong political rhetoric. On 19 October 2009, Eric Woerth, who was then Minister for the Budget, Public Accounts, the Civil Service and State Reform, officially inaugurated mon.service-public.fr, and presented 15 measures for simplifying administrative procedures (measures that frequently make use of online government procedures). On 9 December of the same year, mon.service-public.fr was the subject of a communication in the Council of Ministers the site must become, in the short term, the single point of access to online government procedures, which meant in particular that any new online services developed by government departments must be made available via mon.service-public.fr. b) A project in continual search of excellence
In June 2010, the entire site was overhauled, and a new version of mon.service-public.fr came online. This new version offers improved site navigation and simplified communication, because Internet users did not always understand the concept of mon.service-public.fr. It will be easier to use, and offer a clear, unique environment for all online procedures of any kind. This ergonomic makeover was designed on the basis of an extensive audit of the site in terms of ergonomics and accessibility. It used user focus groups as well as non-users of mon.service-public.fr, combined with a workshop with the site's current partners.
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Three major observations came out of this process, each one the basis for a specific set of improvements: First of all, it was noted that, overall, users "didn't understand what this was for". This observation was accompanied by several questions: What is this? What does it offer vis--vis existing sites? Why should a user create an account? Improvements in this area are mostly of an editorial nature the new version of mon.servicepublic.fr should more clearly express the added value of opening an account, it will provide more information on the site's content and functionalities, and should offer users both explanations and assistance. Secondly, it was observed that users "didn't know where to go or how to get there". Overhauling the navigation of the site should solve this problem; it will make navigating through mon.service-public.fr much easier, clarify the organisation and help users find what they need quickly. Finally, users found that the site was "too static". The site will be made more dynamic by spotlighting new and/or customised information.
Mon.service-public.fr is in compliance with the General Government Accessibility Guidelines (RGAA) In order to develop truly effective e-Government, and in compliance with the Equal Rights and Opportunities, Participation and Citizenship of Persons with Disabilities Act of 11 February 2005, public services must be accessible to all. To do this, the DGME drew up the General Government Accessibility Guidelines, with which mon.servicepublic.fr complies. For example, to improve the accessibility of various text elements, mon.servicepublic.fr uses adapted contrasts, and it offers the user the possibility of enlarging the size of the text.
c)
The challenges
If current users are to continue using the site without feeling lost in the face of the new structure and functionalities, they will need some support. An animated site tour is planned like the one currently available that, in just a few minutes, shows users how to create an account and take advantage of the services available online. Users will also be able to access online help. This is the same challenge that mon.service-public.fr faces every time it makes a new procedure available online. It was the case with "I'm changing address" following the closing of www.changement-adresse.gouv.fr. The goal was, first of all, to tell current users of mon.service-public.fr about the new procedure and invite them to use it if need be; they also had to be informed about changes to their account. In addition, regular users of the change of address site had to be helped as they transitioned to mon.servicepublic.fr. They were automatically redirected to mon.service-public.fr, and a page which presented the new online procedure. This page had a twofold objective: to explain the
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need to open an account with mon.service-public.fr in order to access "I'm changing address", and present just how this new online procedure actually worked. More generally, it was observed that the real issue for "I'm changing address" was, initially, to achieve the same usage levels as the old site changement-adresse.gouv.fr (nearly one million users in 2009). The short-term goal was to increase this rate, and to ensure that using the online service became second nature when people move house. Mon.servicepublic.fr hopes to capitalise on this procedure to attract new users and thus increase the number of user accounts. Finally, another challenge is to bring in new, large-scale partners to expand the range of online services available and to allow mon.service-public.fr to become a single point of access to online government procedures. The site has three types of partners: ministries, organisations in the social sphere and local authorities. The goal is not 100% participation by any of these groups, but rather to ensure that the various government departments that have a wide range of online services make them available via mon.service-public.fr, and thus become partners. In terms of ministries, by the end of 2010 the Public Finances General Directorate (DGFiP) and the National Secure Documents Agency (ANTS) should be online. Users of mon.service-public.fr will then be able to, using their personal accounts, submit their income tax returns online, as well as request issuance or renewal of their national identity cards and passports. During 2011, more ministerial partners will be joining mon.service-public.fr, and thus continue to swell the ranks of Government services available online. When it comes to social organisations, a great many of them have already connected their services to mon.service-public.fr. These may be accessed directly from one's personal account, without having to re-identify oneself. Starting in 2011, users will be able to access the online services of Ple Emploi (France's national employment agency), which itself is a partner of the "I'm changing address" procedure. Finally, local authorities are being encouraged to request membership for their communities in the online procedures for voter registration and for mandatory military registration of 16-year-olds. As mentioned above, nearly 500 municipalities with a total population of more than 14 million inhabitants have signed up. France's three largest cities Paris, Marseille and Lyon should be making these procedures available to their constituents this year, which should also provide impetus for use of all kinds of online procedures.
Conclusion With more than 700,000 user accounts already created, mon.service-public.fr has quickly become a part of the French Government's digital landscape. But the stakes are still high for this project. With the goal of 10 million accounts by the end of 2011, the arrival of new partners in the rollout of new online procedures, mon.service-public.fr although just barely out of the startup phase faces a new set of challenges. Since 2006, the site has been able to demonstrate the relevance of its concept and has therefore, over time, become one of the French government's major projects.
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Over and above the service provided to the user and the cutting-edge technologies that it employs, the success of the project also is a result of a "management by proof" approach. At the end of the pilot phase and an initial ramping-up period, it has proved that it can bring together Government departments and public and social organisations to make their online services available from a single account. It has proved that the French governmental digital landscape can be streamlined by creating a single point of entry. Finally, it has proved that it is possible to make the site part of users' daily life as long as one adopts their perspective and makes their life simpler. The site's new online services, which are developed by the Projects Department of the General Directorate for State Modernisation, are initially run by mon.service-public.fr. Later, they will be transferred to other departments who will be responsible for their long-term operation. Managing this transition is a real challenge for mon.service-public.fr. It has to convince, using feedback from both users and partners alike, that the services offered are relevant, that they work well and that they meet the needs of the citizens who use them. The maturity of online procedures is an illustration of the proactive concept embodied by mon.service-public.fr. By housing all of these procedures that, once they are mature, will be taken over by other Government departments, mon.service-public.fr shows that it is an interministerial project that provides both structure and stimulus for the eGovernment concept, as well as a single point of entry to the French administration for all Internet users uniting an ever-growing number of online services.
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User innovation for health care sector the story of sticks

Suvi Konsti-Laakso, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Lahti School of Innovation, Finland Antti Karisto, University of Helsinki, Department of Social Studies, Finland Juho Salminen, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Lahti School of Innovation, Finland
Introduction
You never know how people use your technology

The nature of innovation is changing. It is becoming acknowledged science is not the only force driving innovation. Cocreation, user involvement and environmental changes are also driving and stimulating innovation forward. (Fora 2009) The open innovation paradigm (Chesbrough 2003) emphasizes the importance of knowledge outside organizational boundaries. The shift from closed innovation processes to open innovation is originally emphasized between organizations but it opens up new possibilities also to user driven innovations and user innovators. The public sector nowadays faces as much pressure to innovate and renew its service production as the private sector. The open innovation paradigm has not spread out to the public sector yet. The public service production now faces severe challenges due to population ageing and financial difficulties of service producers (i.e. municipalities). In the near future population ageing causes also shortage of labour especially in caring occupations of health care sector. The e-Services play an important role in this renewal process and in this development process, user involvement is of utmost importance. Although Finland was one of the most developed IT -society in the beginning of the century, it has not anymore gained success in European information society -studies. The development of information society has slow down due to many reasons, one of them being the poor interoperability of different IT-systems. The e-Voting fiasco in last municipal election (the municipal election had to be renewed in three municipalities due to missing e-Votes) did not raise trust on information society either. According to report of Ministry of Justice, in the planning phase of e-Voting, the security and technical aspects were carefully investigated but the human factor was forgotten. There is a serious need to change this development. In this article we present a rather unusual way to develop e-Services. In this paper we discuss user driven innovation, the role of ordinary people in innovation and how a regional Living Lab can support user innovator. We present a case, where a user innovation for health care sector was developed in open innovation -style.
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User-driven innovation According to the literature, user driven innovation can be divided in three different types: user information, user involvement and user innovators. (Grapher 2008) The main difference between these types is the users role and the intensity of her/his involvement in product or service development processes. The intensity of user involvement ranges from passive objects of marketing surveys to active or even leading developers of services and products, e.g. specialized surgical instruments and mountain bikes (von Hippel 2005). In the case of user information, the user is the target of intensive knowledge sourcing. The knowledge is about the user, but (s)he is absent in the innovation process. In user involvement, users are co-creators: they are present and involved at least in some phases of the development process and they act as knowledge sources and creators. (Magnusson 2003, Grapher et al. 2008) The user innovator is close to von Hippels lead user concept, who participates in the product development, while the commercialization is taken care of by other stakeholders In user driven innovation, the users tend to be interest-driven instead of entrepreneurship-driven. Their main goal is to receive such a product or service as they need. (von Hippel 2007) The open innovation approach has been accepted in ICT industries and biotechnology. Those industries are labeled by the knowledge-intense fast changing environment and competition so there is room for open innovation strategies. As mentioned earlier, there are other sectors, like the public sector, which are facing challenges and need to be renewed. Could open innovation -approach help the public sector? The public sector innovativeness has not been studied enough (Hennala et al. 2007), and we simply do not know about open innovation solutions there. Anyway, from the point of view of user driven innovations, the users or customers of the public sector form a very interesting group. In the private sector, the customer pays the service provider to receive a certain service. In the public sector, the role of the customer is not that simple. In the Nordic welfare states, the public services are financed by taxpayers. The customer pays for the service directly or indirectly in the form of taxes, but the customer is always the owner and supervisor as well (Anttiroiko et al. 2003). These roles entitle the public to participate in the development work and even oblige the developers of municipal services. According to Ala-Yrkk (2006), the public sector organisations have lately become more willing to listen to the voice of the users. However, the means and methods to involve the citizen participation are still insufficient.
The power of people: Crowdsourcing According to Wikipedia, the term Crowdsourcing means that people or communities are asked and allowed to perform a task, which is normally performed by an employee. Innovations are increasingly developed in more horizontal innovation networks in addition to integrated, vertical development of organizations innovations. A horizontal innovation network consists of interconnected user nodes used for knowledge transfer. It is suggested that such a network consisting purely of users can flourish when three conditions are met: 1) at least some users innovate, 2) at least some users freely reveal their innovations to other users and 3) users can self-manufacture their innovations relatively cheaply. If these requirements are fulfilled users can produce their innovations independently without a need for separate manufacturers. (Hippel 2007)
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This definition is close to Collaborative Innovation Networks (COIN), which Gloor (2006) defines as a self-organized team of highly motivated people working towards a common goal and communicating with each other directly through the Internet. Main characteristics of COINs are innovation, collaboration and communication. Ideas and innovations are generated trough large scale collaborative creativity. Rules of collaboration are derived from a shared ethical code, which results in an environment of high trust. This enables open creating and sharing of information and gives everyone an unrestricted access to knowledge. Communication between members happens in directcontact networks. Loose and uncontrolled COINs may appear to be chaotic when looked from the outside, but their structure enables fast creation and exchange of ideas and can also be extremely productive, because every participant knows intuitively what needs to be done. (Gloor 2006, p. 11-12) Emergence of these new ways of developing innovations can be viewed as resulting from two interconnected economic forces. As described by the famous Moores law, the performance of technology is increasing continuously while the prices decrease (e.g. Kurzweil 2005, p. 70). As a result the costs of acquiring tools required for selfmanufacturing have become affordable for users on many new fields, increasing the possibilities for users to make new innovations on their own. At the same time the falling prices of technology have caused the costs of communication to fall rapidly, which makes more decentralized organizations feasible (Malone 1997). The low costs of communication then decrease the barriers of free revealing leading to increased sharing of innovations among users. The shift towards more decentralized and horizontal networks can be seen most clearly in open source software movement. Projects such as Linux operating system, Mozilla Firefox web browser and Apache server software are now classic examples of the success of the movements development model. Open source software production has evolved to a state, where various free platforms offer the users all the tools they need for their innovation activities. SourceForge, one of the biggest of such platforms, has supported over 230 000 development projects as of February 2009 (SourceForge 2010). Many of the projects die off when users lose interest, but the cost of failure is often small. Fogel (2007) lists many attributes that increase the success of open source software development project. Image of the project should tell the user that his time will not be wasted if he gets involved with it. Communication should be open whenever possible and every user should be treated as a potential developer. Prototypes are important in attracting commitment and delegation and substitution can be used to further increase it. Peer reviewing in all phases improves quality. With the decreasing costs of tools the above mentioned trends are now spreading fast to other industries outside the software development. Threadless.com produces design tshirts and has crowdsourced both product design and marketing processes. Users send their suggestions for t-shirt designs on the site where other users can vote on them. The company then selects a few from the most popular designs for production and rewards the designers of the winning designs. Marketing is taken care virally: designers promote their work for their friends in order to gain more votes and company grants discounts for users who post pictures featuring people wearing the t-shirts. (Howe 2008) InnoCentive posts difficult scientific problems that companies cannot solve on their own on its website and offers a reward for anyone who can develop a solution. Rewards range from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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Interestingly the solutions often emerge from a completely different field of study. (Handbook of Collective Intelligence 2010) Free video hosting services and cheap equipment have enabled the birth of growing amateur movie production community and internet has allowed even NASA to decentralize parts of its labor-intensive research trough Clickworkers, where amateur users help to identify craters from pictures taken by NASA (Howe 2008). It can be stated that people are nowadays a valuable source of ideas and creativity.
Living Lab as driver for user driven innovation It is however no simple task to acquire user knowledge or involve users in innovation activities. In order to support user driven innovations, several regional Living Labs has been established across the Europe. Living Labs are usually public initiatives with close relations to local innovation support systems. Living Labs are open innovation areas where users and developers are brought close to each other. (e.g. Almirall 2008, KonstiLaakso et al. 2007) Living Lab methodologies highlight direct contacts between the user and the developer as well as the co-creation perspective. It differs from the traditional marketing research mechanisms, which acquire user knowledge with the help of large-scale surveys lacking human touch Methodologies used in Living Labs are more sensitive to the user . experiences and information, that is acquired with the help of methods of qualitative social research. (Almirall 2008) The Lahti Living Lab operates in the Lahti region in Southern Finland. The special focus in its work is on how the users can be involved in the development of public services. Lahti Living Lab operates and gathers networks in very favorable environment because the members of the regional innovation system use the network facilitating innovation policy to support the innovative networks. The policy aims at producing practice-based actions to remove the obstacles, which decrease or inhibits the innovativeness, and import the necessary knowledge to support the innovativeness. The policy applies open innovation philosophy and encourages the users to participate in innovation production. Although the nature of innovation in the public sector is different from the private sector, the public sector organizations also use in their innovation work the main components offered by the regional innovation system (Pekkarinen et al. 2006). The regional innovation system consists of innovative networks within various social relationships. These networks can be characterized as loose, multi-actor networks. Networks usually consist of different stakeholders: universities, companies, technology centres and development organizations (Harmaakorpi 2006), each of which bring different knowledge and know-how to the innovations. Another interesting feature of the local innovation policy is the emphasis on promoting practice-based innovations, that is, innovations having their roots in some practical context referring to the knowledge exploiting subsystem. (Harmaakorpi 2006) However, this emphasis on practice-based innovations does not imply that the importance of scientific knowledge is not acknowledged. On the contrary, practice-based innovations can be and should be facilitated by bringing scientific knowledge into the innovation production. One of the aspects in a practice-based innovation is the user-centric
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development of existing services and the creation of service innovations and a new service system. The current or future users of the services play a vital role especially in the early phases of an innovation. The strengthening of open innovation and practicebased innovations in the public sector offers opportunities to develop innovative services. (Hennala et al. 2008) Next we will present a case, where the several actors of regional innovation system developed users innovative idea together in the spirit of open innovation.
CASE: User driven innovations for health promotion and reminiscence work In the silent shadows of pines and birches, many great thoughts have emerged. The starting point of the case depicted here was when a retired senior citizen, lets call him Kysti, got an idea about using ordinary memory stick (or flash drive) as storage for his personal health information. He presented his idea first to his friends and then also to health care personnel and other professionals. The feedback was positive although some ICT-experts were skeptical, perhaps thinking that USB-sticks already represent old technology and it causes all kinds of security problems. Kysti did not gave up; he gathered a group of about 15 other retiring or recently retired friends and they decided to arrange health evaluation and fitness sessions. The group was highly concerned about their own wellbeing and they wanted to follow their own health and fitness more closely. Many of the participants in the group had a background in industry and therefore they were experienced with technology. The issue was seen increasingly important, so it was quite natural for them to take on the task of testing and developing the stick concept further. Also researchers became curious and interested in Kystis idea. This is the point, when Living Lab was involved. The original idea was elaborated and extended, e.g. to deal with memory related issues (Karisto et al. 2010). A group of researchers was established which in its informal brainstorming sessions developed the stick concept further. Kysti also participated in its meetings, where practical reason was combined to academic knowledge. Now most of the concept development is done, and the sticks are ready for piloting and producing. Lahti Living Lab is continuously and increasingly systematically involved in the process.
The idea hStick The originally idea was named hStickThe hStick (health stick) is a modernised version . of the SOS Passport. Various health-related data may be saved in it; it functions as a safety device in acute illnesses or injuries, but also as a means for self-care and promotion of ones own health. The philosophy behind the hStick is that a human being is interested in her/his own well-being. The stick stimulates people to monitor and promote their own health. It also makes contacts with social and health care transparent.
The spinoff mStick The mStick (memory stick) is a memory and reminiscence stick; a biographical memory store, and a device supporting memory and testing it.
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Personal biographical documents are saved in it; its memory test and game applications serve those with memory problems, but it also serves active old people by providing meaningful entertainment. It is an excellent assistive device for care workers. The philosophy behind the mStick is that a human being is a biographical creature, whose memory never disappears completely let alone memories. The mStick prevents the owners world from becoming narrower, which easily follows the deterioration of functional abilities. Sticks are in the forefront of the developments in gerontechnology, because they represent user-driven technology that empowers rather than labels. They imply proactive and tailor-made rather than reactive and standardized solutions, and their focus is on quality of life rather than on health alone. The concrete starting point an ordinary USB stick (or similar gadgets) is simple and cheap. Its storing capacity is almost that big as that of a middle-sized public library, and the stick concept serves a wide range of options. Of course, there are also challenges and research and evaluation needs linked to the implementation and user experiences.
The network It was realized in the early phases of the project that all the required technologies are already available and the implementation of the concept is only a matter of will. Thus, the main focus in the development has been on the formulation of service concept and inventing of user needs, instead of technology. Due to the nature of the project, it was crucial to involve various traditionally quite separate stakeholders in the development process. At the moment, both public and private sector actors are involved in the project. They all have shown a strong interest, although some obstacles have arisen. Even though the local health centre is keenly involved and informed its medical doctors and nurses to support the idea of hStick in general, the actual implementation of it even at a prototype level has turned out to be challenging. The project-status is needed in order to test this concept. Due to concerns about information security, it is very difficult for users to gain access to their own health related information stored in health care organizations although they have legal access to it. The network building has been successful. Researchers with various background (social gerontology, social policy, health research, psychology, communication studies, industrial engineering, education, literature, design and aesthetics) have revealed interest to participate in the project. Only some ICT professionals tend to be quite reluctant. After two years of part time work (about a year of which in the Living Lab context) at the grassroots level and in informal settings, the development project is now starting to gain critical momentum. At the moment, a multidisciplinary research initiative has been built around the service concept and funding for a three-year research project is being applied for. The preliminary development network connects various research and education units and the group of lead users. When the idea was formalized as a project plan, it was presented to the biggest local health- and old age care organizations, of which all supported the project. The project will be funded, it has been approved by regional secretary and it will be proposed to be financed.
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Conclusions and discussion As it is stated in literature, ordinary users may not be able to develop technology per se. But they can be experts in using current technology in new and innovative ways. It is important to develop new technologies but it is equally important to find innovative ways to exploit current technology in order to make services that are easy for ordinary people to adopt and use. Work done in the Living Lab and in the informal network of researchers gave birth to the user innovation without entrepreneurial intentions, which also are likely to appear in some point of the process. The question is then to find the suitable entrepreneurs. In our case, the development was begun from the customer interface or terminal , which in this case is the ordinary flash drive. It is easy, familiar and cheap device, which can be used with ordinary computer skills. So that USB-stick can work as described in previous sections, there will be need for several more advanced technological solutions and there will probably be several problems for IT-professionals to solve. In future we will see how the organizations can adapt this innovation. We will see if the sticks will intensify individual health promotion and change working practices in health and old age care organizations. If so, the cost/benefit -ratio of the project will be low. This is small and rather economical way to improve e-Services compared to large investments and complicated projects that are often related to implementation of ICT-based services. The modest and minimalistic character of the stick project suits well to the open innovation -paradigm. The individual responsibility in health promotion is important topic and the health care professionals are constantly looking for new ways to activate people to take care of themselves. We believe that approaches like user driven innovation, crowdsourcing and open innovation are suitable and applicable approaches for this area too. The individual health promotion should be done together with individuals in bottom-up way. Open innovation requires open mindness to accept users as cocreators.
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References Almirall, E. (2008). Living Labs and open innovation. Roles and applicability. The Electronic Journal for Virtual Organizations and Networks. Volume 10. Available at: http://www.ice-conference.org/projects/264/Issues/eJOV%20Special%20Issue%20on% 20Living%20Labs%202008/eJOV10_SPILL3_Almirall_Living%20Labs%20and%20open%2 0Innovation_2.pdf Anttiroiko A-V., Haveri A., Karhu V., Ryynnen A., Siitonen P (Eds): Kuntien toiminta, . johtaminen ja hallintasuhteet. Kunnallisalan tutkimuksia. Tampereen yliopisto. Tampere. 2003 (in Finnish) Chesbrough, H.(2003) Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology. Harvard Business School Press. Boston. 2003 Fogel, K. (2007) Producing open source software: How to run a successful free software project. From http://producingoss.com/ FORA (2009). New Nature of Innovation. Available at: www.newnatureofinnovation.org Grapher, G. Ibert, O. Flohr, S. (2008) The neglected King: The Customer in the New Knowledge Ecology of Innovation. Economic Geography. Vol. 84 No. 3. pp.253-280 Handbook of Collective Intelligence (2009) [e-Document] From http://scripts.mit.edu/~cci /HCI/index.php?title=Main_Page. [retrieved May 27th, 2010] Harmaakorpi, V. (2006). Regional Development Platform Method (RPDM) as a Tool for Regional Innovation Policy. European Planning Studies, Vol 14, No 8, 2006 p. 1085-1104 Hennala L., Linna P Pekkarinen S.(2008) Julkisen sektorin innovaatiotoiminnasta. In: ., Harmaakorpi V, Melkas, H: Innovaatiopolitiikkaa jrjestelmien vlimaastossa. Acta-sarja. Suomen Kuntaliitto, Helsinki. 2008 (in Finnish) Howe, J. (2008). Crowdsourcing: How the power of the crowd is driving the future of business. Random House Business Books. London, UK Karisto, A. Melkas, H. Kempas, K. Salminen, J. (2010). Sticks Innovative Devices and Concepts for Health Promotion and Memory Support. Paper presented in AALIANCE conference - Malaga, Spain - 11 and 12 March 2010 Konsti-Laakso, S., Hennala, L. & Uotila, T. (2008). Living Labs: new ways to enchance innovativeness in public sector services. In the Proceedings: A New Wave of Innovation in Collaborative Networks. 14th International Conference on Concurrent Enterprising: ICE2008, 23 - 25 June 2008, Lisbon, Portugal Kurzweil, R. (2005). The Singularity is near: When humans transcend biology. Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd. London, UK. 652 pages Malone, T. (1997). Is empowerment just a fad? Control, decision making, and IT. MIT Sloan Management Review 38: 2, 23-34
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Magnusson, P R. (2003), Benefits of Involving Users in Service Innovation European . , Journal of Innovation Management, 6 (4), 228238 Pekkarinen S., Tura T., Hennala L., Harmaakorpi V. (2006). Innovativeness as a Challenge and an Opportunity for the Public Sector. Innovation Pressure, International ProACT Conference 15-17 March,Tampere. Finland. 2006 SourceForge (2010). From http://sourceforge.net/about von Hippel, E. (2005) Democratizing innovation. http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/democ1.htm MIT Press. Available:
von Hippel, E. (2007). Horizontal Innovation Networks - By and for Users. Industrial and Corporate Change, 16: 293-315
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An interactive site for electronic communication between the population and public administration institutions: e-Consultations
State regional Development Agency, Ministry of Regional Development and Local Government, Latvia
Introduction Latvia has chosen implementation of the one-stop agency principle as one of the driving forces for reforms in public administration and for increasing effectiveness, meaning organising work of public administration institutions in a way that allows the residents to receive services at a single location, without having to go to the person in charge in each of the institutions. In order to ensure an effective management of knowledge (information) that the public administration institutions require to prepare replies to questions and submissions from the general public, and to grant access for the people to previously provided replies, improve exchange of information between institutions in preparing replies and potentially support the functioning of the one-stop agency, an environment will be created where it will be possible to find the stored questions from the general public and the replies provided by the institutions, interlinked with the context of services provided by the institutions and the regulatory context. Questions and replies containing information that can be publicised will be available for reading on the Web in the unified Web portal for national and local government services managed by the State Regional Development Agency: www.latvija.lv (henceforth the Portal), thus reducing the need for the population to contact institutions repeatedly with the same questions; and it also will serve as a basis for the public administration institutions and staff of the one-stop agency for the list of frequently asked questions or the knowledge base.
1 Volume of submissions and questions from the population, electronic applications Processing of submissions from the population creates a significant work load for the public administration institutions. The total volume of documents received from the population in direct administration institutions exceeds 100 thousand documents annually (data from the survey of state and local administration institutions On document circulation processes and document management systems conducted by the project consultants SIA AA Projekts under the framework of the State Regional Development Agencys project Creation of integration environment for public administration document management systems co-financed from the European Regional Development Fund, July 2009). In June 2010 the State Regional Development Agency in their project Creation of integration environment for public administration document management systems co, financed from the European Regional Development Fund, carried out a survey of the population and public administration institutions regarding their experience in mutual communication (henceforth the Survey).
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The Survey showed that the majority of respondents 70% of state institutions and 66% local governments confirmed receiving submissions and questions from the population not only in conventional paper format but also electronically (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Does your institution receive questions from the population electronically?
Analysing replies from the population presented a trend that almost every other respondent has been communicating with state institutions or a local government electronically (Figure 2). This shows that at least half of the respondents surveyed have recognised the electronic communication with public administration institutions as being convenient.
Figure 2. Have you ever submitted a question for a state institution or a local government electronically?
From the point of view of the population, they can look for information on public administration services on the Web sites of institutions or other Internet resources. As the number of Web sites of institutions is large (there are 118 local governments in Latvia and according to the information available in the data basis of direct administration institutions http://tpi.mk.gov.lv/ui/ there were 241 institution registered as on 22/03/2010), people might find it difficult to make sense in such volume of information and find the answers needed. When the exact location of information is not known, people most often use Internet search engines like google, bing, yahoo, etc., while the search hits might be unrelated and not match the context of situations in peoples lives. The processing of written submissions in public administration institutions is an administratively burdensome process (way of handing in the submission or question, way of providing the reply, time) and the population usually chooses a different way of communication with the institutions, unless a specific request for information in required (e.g., a statement, an explanation of an administrative act, etc.).
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The views expressed in the survey confirm (Figures 3 and 4) that the population and the staff of the public administration institutions support creation of a publicly accessible free-of-charge Web site where: a. People could ask questions and hand in submissions to state institutions and local governments, as well as search through and examine questions asked by others and replies provided by the institutions. Collection, storage and updating of all questions from the population and all replies from the institutions would be technically ensured for the needs of the institutions.
b.
Figure 3. Population. If a publicly accessible and free-of-charge Web site would be created in Latvia, where the people could ask their questions to state institutions and local governments, as well as see questions asked by others and the replies provided by the institutions, would you use such Web site?
Figure 4. Public administration institutions. Does your institution support creation of a unified system for questions and answers that would be publicly accessible and free of charge, which would technically ensure collection, storage and updating of all questions asked by the population and all replies from the institutions?
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Although the Survey shows that for a rather significant part of the population surveyed it seems better to send personally their questions and receive replies from the public administration institutions, it is possible that with widening of range of e-services offered and making the state institutions and local governments more accessible for the general public, the number of people unsure and in doubt would decrease. A very large part of institutions 75% is interested in introducing e-Consultations solution. Upon closer examination of the replies from the 25% of institutions and local governments not supporting the introduction of the said solution a conclusion can be drawn that mostly these are institutions that already have an internal procedure in place for providing replies and have appropriate or customised technical solutions in place as well.
2 Features and benefits of the e-Consultations solution Upon conducting the aforementioned Survey a conclusion was made that a solution is required which would allow to systematically store and manage the replies provided by the institutions to the questions and submissions from the general public, and to ensure the availability for all parties involved, as well as provide for availability of this information on the Internet, at one single contact point. The e-Consultations solution will have the following features: 1) 2) Storage of questions and sorting by topics or life situations. Linkage of replies with regulatory framework context (integration with the Register of regulatory references), in which these replies were provided in order to avoid use of such replies that are outdated due to amendments to regulatory acts. Search in questions and replies by keywords, selected topics (life situations) and provided access for all parties involved (staff of institutions and one-stop agency, general public), subject to requirements of data protection regarding natural persons. Management of frequently asked questions and replies (preparing of replies and publishing on-line, based on typical questions asked by the population). Integration with the Portal, providing a single access point for the population to submit their questions and searching for replies. Identification and authentication of persons through Portal features. Integration with the record-keeping systems of the institutions, using the document integration environment to be created, so that the institutions could automatically receive and electronically register the questions for processing in their document circulation environment and to submit the prepared replies to a persons workspace in the Portal. Integration with Web sites of the institutions, thus providing links to features implemented in the Portal or automatic republication of information on Web sites of the institutions
3)
4)
5)
6) 7)
8)
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9)
A site for employee of the institution, using the workspace of the employee in the Portal, in order to provide administration possibilities of the solution on the institutions side, as well as access to the e-Consultations solution for those institutions that do not have their own record-keeping system. Displaying status for a submission and a reply in the workspace of a person in the Portal, so that people can track the step-y-step process of preparing replies at an institution, and sending messages to a persons e-Mail address indicated in his/her workspace in the Portal regarding changes in the status of preparing a reply. Handing in submissions on any service of a public administration institution published in the Portal.
10)
11)
Benefits to be provided by the e-Consultations solution: For the population: a) Creating a single, convenient and efficient channel of communication between the population and public administration institutions. Information related to public administration that is easier and faster to be found. People are involved in public administration processes, can express their opinion to the institutions more conveniently, get the overall picture of functions of the institutions and look up questions asked by other people. Reduced time for information exchange (handing in submissions and questions and receiving replies). Reliable data sources.
b) c)
d)
e)
For the public administration institutions: a) Reduced workload of institutions staff general public can find information themselves or standard questions can be answered by the staff of the onestop agency. Less time needed to prepare replies staff has organised information available on previously asked questions and replies thereto. Reduced flow of documents in paper format. Reduced costs and increased work efficiency.
b)
c) d)
For the public in general: a) b) More efficient functioning of public administration. Higher level of trust by the public.
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As currently there is no such solution available in Latvia that would ensure provision of similar functions, development of a new information system is needed for implementation of these functions. It is possible to create the e-Consultations solution by using the functionality already provided by the Portal, hub of state information systems and which will be provided by the document integration environment to be created.
2.1 Questions and replies available to the population in the e-Consultations solution The people will be able to search and browse questions and replies, as well as frequently asked questions and replies in the Portal. People will be able to search by Topic. Related regulatory acts (if possible down to articles of a regulatory act), if necessary, by indicating specific wording of a regulatory act. Institution. Search keyword. Text (one or more words, phrases) contained in a reply. Text (one or more words, phrases) contained in a question. Classifier of public service (phrase in the name of a public service). Date range. Status.
The following questions and replies will be available for the population: Questions they asked and replies to them (for authenticated users). Questions and replies not containing personal information and permitted by the person who submitted it to be published (for any user). Frequently asked questions and replies (for any user).
When a reply is displayed, related regulatory acts should also be indicated as links to the Web portal of regulatory acts. By clicking on this link the respective regulatory act would be displayed.
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2.2 E-consultations solution and FAQs The staff of the institution would regularly have to analyse the questions asked and update the list of frequently asked questions (FAQ) and replies. For each question and reply the following information would be indicated in the eConsultations environment in the Portal: Topic. Responsible institution. Related regulatory acts (if possible specific articles). Search keywords.
As time goes by the topicality of questions asked might change. It should be possible for the institution and the administrator of the e-Consultations solution to see statistics on how often people have viewed each question. In order to ensure an interactive communication between the population and the institutions it will be ensured that people can grade the replies received from institutions, thus providing a feedback for the institution on the quality and usefulness of the reply prepared.
3 Approach to implementation of e-Consultation solution It is planned to use in the e-Consultations solution a technical solution that is currently in development the document integration environment (environment for circulation of e-Documents providing a unified and secure exchange among the document management or record-keeping systems of various state institutions and local governments. The development is carried out under the project of the State Regional Development Agency Creation of integration environment for public administration document management systems co-financed from the European Regional , Development Fund), intended for efficient exchange of information among the institutions in electronic environment, as well as for improving the possibilities provided by the Portal for the population to communicate with the institutions. It will be possible to integrate the e-Consultations in the Web sites of the institutions, thus ensuring, for example, efficient republication of FAQs without the need for additional changes to the Web sites of the institutions. Initially the e-Consultations solution will be implemented as a pilot project and for the implementation thereof the State Regional Development Agency has attracted 12 cooperation partners, among them ministries, state institutions and local governments. Right from the start the general public will also be the users of the e-Consultations, they will have access to the solution via the Portal. Following the implementation of the pilot project, the developed solution will be assessed and a decision will have to be made whether the e-Consultations would have to be used by all public administration institutions, and in the future, also by the staff of the one-stop agency.
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4 Future outlook provision of functioning of the one-stop agency The goal of the one-stop agency is to provide the people with a convenient way of receiving services by improving accessibility of public administration services and providing consultations. Implementing the principle of the one-stop agency will ensure cooperation of public administration institutions in line with the principle of good governance, as a result of which the general public will be able to receive the required information and services at a single location. Currently a policy planning document (agenda) is being drafted nationally in order to implement the principle of one-stop agency in all local governments in each and every administrative centre of a city, town or local municipality, ensuring availability of municipal and state-level public services at a single location. The agenda for implementation of the one-stop agency principle stipulates development of access channels to state and municipal-level services, providing services also in the electronic environment, thus increasing their availability and decoupling the possibility to receive services from a specific geographic location and time, and following the equal opportunities principle for all residents of Latvia. The e-Consultations solution to be set up will be a universal tool for ensuring the functioning of the one-stop agency. With the e-Consultations solution in place the staff of the one-stop agency will be able to assist in person the population to find replies that are topical and are based on the regulatory acts, as well as assist in handing in submissions to institutions electronically by using the classification of topics, services and life situations offered by the solution. The staff of the one stop agency will have to be able to browse questions sent in by the public and reply to them instead of the institution or forward them for reply to a different institution, if the person sending it had made a mistake. The Portal, into which the e-Consultations tool will be integrated, was created back in 2006 and serves as a single contact point for information on state and municipal-level public services and for access thereto. Currently there is a catalogue of public services in the Portal that contains detailed information on all state and municipal-level public services, the possibilities, pre-conditions and channels to receive them. Up-to-date description of services is required to provide information on public services in person at the one-stop agency contact points (e.g., so that the staff of the one-stop agency would be able to identify a service that will meet the needs of a person, to obtain information on how to receive such service and what the conditions are), and to be able to advise people. The State Regional Development Agency plans to improve and develop the catalogue of public services, so that in line with the Directive 2006/123/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on services in the internal market, Latvia would be able to provide its residents with a single access point to most up-to-date, detailed and accurate information. According to the National Development Plan (2007-2013), which identified the key value in Latvia people, the State Regional Development Agency within its competence carries out and coordinates activities with other public administration institutions in order to more efficiently ease the everyday life of people and provide for more convenient accessibility to services.
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In so many words. Semantic interoperability across organisations and domains: an open perspective
Paul Oude Luttighuis, principal researcher at Novay Mariette Lokin, legal advisor at Logius, digital government service of the Dutch Ministry of the Interior
1. Introduction: getting a grip on meaning Many people consider semantic interoperability to be key for realisation of an effective and efficient electronic government. No doubt they are right: the co-operation between government agencies that is needed to effectuate adequate e-Services can never be brought about if we dont understand each other. Taking this into account, the Dutch policy on e-Government holds an important place for semantic interoperability. Before we go into this, it is useful to define the term semantic interoperability, as it is subject to different meanings itself. Mostly the term is used in computer science as a synonym for "Computable Semantic Interoperability". In this sense, it is the ability of computer systems to communicate information and have that information properly interpreted by the receiving system in the same sense as intended by the transmitting system. However, we prefer to use the term in its more general sense, as the ability of any communicating entities (not only computers) to share unambiguous meaning. In this broader sense, the sender (be it a person or a machine) must be able to reliably transmit all necessary information, the receiver must be able to correctly interpret it, and both must be aware of and agree upon each others behaviour or context for given interactions.1 Now, back to the issue of semantics in Dutch e-Government. The spine of Dutch e-Government is a substantive system of basic registries, e.g. on organizations (businesses), persons, land, geo-information, containing basic information needed in most e-Services. It creates an important condition for operationalizing Dutch e-Government principles such as single delivery, multi use, in which we see semantic interoperability clearly reflected. Still, the basic registries only represent the mere visible and tangible side of semantics in e-Government. In fact, semantics are omnipresent in this field, though often not explicitly addressed or even acknowledged. So even despite the focus on semantics in Dutch e-Government, there still tends to rise confusion on what semantic interoperability entails and how it can be brought about. One of the reasons for this is that semantics is an abstract subject. However intricate technology may be, it is at least tangible. Semantics, on the other hand, is hard to define and rapidly leads to semantic (!) discussions. In this paper, we try to lift (at least the rim of) the veil around semantics and we present an initiative on open innovation in the field of semantics, aiming at bringing semantic interoperability, and thus better e-Services, closer at hand.
NOTES 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_interoperability
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This article consists of the following: Section 2, Semantics: much more than data introduces semantics as an issue and addresses some important aspects. Section 3, Semantic interoperability: sharing meaning shows what is required when multiple parties have to agree on meaning. Section 4, Semantic models: describing meaning describes the implications for the way in which meaning may be described. Section 5, Towards semantic interoperability, describes lessons that may be learned for realisation of semantic interoperability in the field of Dutch electronic government and presents an initiative for a public-private partnership, aiming at turning these lessons into practicable solutions by means of open innovation.
2. Semantics: much more than data Half a word What is clear about semantic interoperability is that is has to do with data. And, since the objective is interoperability, discussion soon turns to standards. But semantics is much more than just data and standards. Rigid data standardisation may even diminish semantic interoperability. Information systems are not good at understanding. They even have trouble understanding entire words. When information traffic is left to communication between information systems, we have to make sure meaning comes across correctly. When this is done successfully, the systems and organisations are said to be mutually interoperable. The ambiguous phrase come across may be considered in all its meanings. Of course, information sent must first of all reach its destination via the technological means available: technical interoperability. The information must also be presented in a form that is legible to the recipient. Many people in the Netherlands will not be able to read a text in Cyrillic characters. Similarly, information systems rely on information in a readable form. Otherwise, they will be syntactically non-interoperable. But technical and syntactical interoperability are only preparations for the real thing. Electronic information still does not come across if the meaning and intention of the information are misinterpreted. In the end, semantic interoperability determines whether the information traffic is meaningful and useful. Lack of semantic interoperability may render such information traffic not only meaningless and useless; it might even turn out to be risky, because information that is readable but not understood may lead to incorrect conclusions. It is the ambition of the Dutch government to create an electronic government that to a large extent is based on communication between information systems. Basic registries must make electronic basic data accessible and maintain it for all government bodies, eliminating the need for citizens and businesses to provide the same information multiple times.
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In order to reduce the administrative burden, the volume of data and the frequency with which businesses are required to make it available to government bodies is growing. Citizens are increasingly urged to use government services via electronic portals to avoid being sent from pillar to post. Thus, virtually every field of Dutch electronic government development is affected by the need for semantic interoperability: the basic registries, electronic communication between businesses and government institutions, service portals and all kinds of inter and intrasector information chains. Within the scope of this article it is not possible to discuss the situations and implications in all these fields. In addition to taking up much more space, it would cause an awkward separation. After all, the term company used in the trade register may be related to the term employer used in the electronic payroll tax return, the term business used in the national system for environmental permits, and the organisation field in the electronic form used to report industrial waste. Data can be boxed, semantics cannot. It is for these reasons that demand for semantic interoperability within the field of electronic government is growing. In its Interoperability Agenda2, the Dutch Standardisation Forum an independent think tank consisting of representatives of either government agencies and businesses in the field of IT gives high priority to semantic interoperability. Concerning electronic information traffic between businesses and government bodies, the Wientjes Committee wrote in its report Regeldruk Bedrijven en ICT3 (Business Regulatory Burden and IT): [] government demand for information from business and the way businesses generate information are insufficiently aligned. The recently updated European Interoperability Framework4 also reasserts the relevance of semantic interoperability.
This is not a pipe
NOTES 2 http://www.forumstandaardisatie.nl/fileadmin/OVOS/InteropAgenda-en_website.pdf 3 http://www.gbo.overheid.nl/fileadmin/OVOS/FS21-09-06_bijlage_-_Advies_ICT_Commissie_Wientjes.pdf . The Wientjes Committee is an advisory committee on regulatory burden, appointed by the Dutch cabinet and named after its chair, Bernard Wientjes (chairman of the largest Dutch entrepreneurs association, VNO-NCW) 4 http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/servlets/Doc?id=31597 page 32 ,
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Yet, bringing about interoperability is difficult. Reasons for this will occur in several parts of this article. First, semantic interoperability is often considered a matter of data design. This is not correct. Semantics is about meaning not only of data, but also of content, processes, services, (life) events and even (or maybe: primarily) the wording of laws. For instance, the meaning of the term employee is relevant in the context of the interpretation of employee data, in income tax processes and in the event commencement of employment. The cartoon above shows what can happen if the meaning of business processes is not known. The unfortunate Native American duly follows the process (the dance), but it does not lead to the desired result (rain). He did not know the meaning of the process and therefore did not know what he was doing. This also is a matter of semantics. It may only seem like a detail, but too narrow a definition of semantic interoperability will place the entire subject in the domain of system designers and IT specialists. Hence our preference for the more general definition of the term we gave in section 1. Semantics provides the connection between data and the real world and between processes and their actual effect, regardless of whether they are automated or not. Data is only a reflection of the real world in an electronic mirror. Ren Magritte has demonstrated the difference between a picture and reality in La trahison des images5. His picture states This is not a pipe. And rightly so: it is a picture of a pipe and not a real pipe. Data is just as treacherous as a picture of reality. Confusion of data with reality can create Kafkaesque conditions.
Semantics is about reality; about the domain of knowing and acting. Semantic interoperability in electronic government can therefore not be realised without the involvement of domain specialists, process specialists and legal specialists. This creates a second hurdle, as it these groups are not generally accustomed to co-operate.
Context: communication in perspective The goal of interoperability is to make sure that electronic communication between multiple systems or organisations is useful and meaningful.
NOTES 5 The treachery of images
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If there is good reason to involve in (electronic) communication, there must be a common subject, problem or process that requires such communication: those involved share a context. But each person involved will also contribute a particular context a perspective that determines the meaning someone attributes to particular terms. Context determines interpretation. Five examples: A man received a summons for breaking a local regulation in the Dutch municipality of Heusden. It soon became evident that a reorganisation of local government was still in progress at the time of the supposed offence. At the time, the scene of the act was not yet part of the municipality of Heusden, and the local regulation was therefore not in force there. In this case, the point in time determines the meaning of the term municipality of Heusden. Are you a foreigner? For most readers, if they were asked this question at home, their answer would be negative. But the situation would be quite different if they were asked the same question by a local policeman while on a trip to the Far East. An example that is closer to home is the term salary, the meaning of which used to be quite different in tax legislation and in social security legislation in the Netherlands. In order to reduce administrative burdens, the term salary was harmonised in the so called Walvis Act6. This resulted in a common term for salary shared by the Tax and Customs Authority and the Employee Insurance Agency (UWV). Imagine you and your ailing adopted daughter go to the first-aid department of the local hospital. During the intake, you need to complete a form in which you are asked to enter the names of her parents. What do you enter? You may have parental authority, but if the question is asked in order to identify any hereditary correlations, this is not relevant information. Here, meaning is determined by the purpose for which the question is asked. The fire brigade receives a fire alarm: two dwellings are on fire. When the fire brigade arrives in the street, there is only one property on fire. It turns out that the alarm was raised for two addresses in the same property. From the residential (and probably also the insurance) perspective, the property does indeed consist of two dwellings, but for the fire brigade it is only one.
The list of examples could be made much longer, yet context is rarely stated explicitly. Often, one has to guess what the context is, and even more often an incorrect context is assumed, with all due consequences. People are sometimes aware of such ambiguities, but automated systems tend to just trudge on.
NOTES 6 Walvis is an acronym for Wet Administratieve Lastenverlichting en Vereenvoudiging In de Sociale zekerheid (Act on reduction of administrative burdens and simplification in social security) and the Dutch word for whale. This animal presented an adequate metaphor for the scale and impact of the project
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The reality of law Government bodies have legal tasks. The activities of businesses are also affected by legislation, particularly when it concerns the information relationship with the government. This makes legislation an important source of meaning. This is not only true for the definitions of terms, which are often included in the first paragraph of an Act. The provisions of subsequent articles and the explanatory memorandum usually elaborate this meaning in detail. Yet the wording of laws is not the final source of meaning for the processes and systems of government bodies. There are a number of reasons for this. Executive government bodies work with citizens, businesses and other real-world phenomena on a daily basis, and these do not readily comply with legal order. Even in the case of illegal conduct, it is not acceptable to ignore such behaviour or be unable to talk about it. Furthermore, legislation intentionally leaves room for interpretation and freedom to act, also for government bodies. Often, additional interpretation needs to take shape during the organisation of processes and systems. Finally, the wording of laws often contains the same terms for different concepts, particularly when laws are in different legal areas. Therefore the semantic role of legislation is also contextual. The meaning of many terms however zealous we strive for harmonization often depends on the Act describing them. Legal context is very important, particularly for more artificial terms that stem solely from legislation. But, the legal context is not the only or final context.
3. Semantic interoperability: sharing meaning Finding common sense Semantic interoperability is mainly a matter of uniting and reconciling the contexts of the parties involved. This involves their history, their legal tasks, their environment and their situation. It is, of course, not necessary to add up all contexts and let everybody cope with every body elses context. It is rather a question of looking for elements shared by all contexts, common factors. Next to common factors recognised, it is still possible to acknowledge aspects that are specific to a particular context. In the example of the term foreigner, this might work as follows. Two countries wish to communicate about foreigners, but attribute context-related and therefore different meanings to the term. Both countries find that the term foreigner is related to the term nationality. Based on this, they are able to establish a common meaning, for instance based on a table of valid nationalities. They then decide to communicate only about peoples nationalities. They no longer discuss whether or not the person is a foreigner. The ambiguous term foreigner was too specific. The term nationality is used as the common factor. In order to become semantically interoperable, parties involved must look for common factors. These might be outside of their own strict context, or, in terms of the illustration, they might be outside of your own box. Only if the scope is widened beyond a specific context, is there a fair chance of common factors being found. The only other options are to either force your own context upon the other party or decide not to communicate at all.
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Scale matters The greater the number of different contexts to be combined or reconciled, the more important it is to recognize and acknowledge these contexts. Many of the ambitions of the Dutch electronic government are indeed of a large or very large semantic scale. First of all, the basic registries. Their objective is to satisfy as much as possible the need for information of all bodies with legal tasks. This implies that the basic registries must be able to serve the contexts of many different legal tasks. In this case, semantics are therefore even inter-sectoral. On the scale of individual sectors, there are ambitions to establish integral client files, for instance for patients or students. On an inter-sectoral scale, the objective is to offer integral service portals to citizens and businesses, as a way to implement a no-wrong-door policy. This does not only involve the contexts of a wide variety of government bodies that might provide services, but also the contexts of users. A recent development is that attempts are made to grasp these user contexts in terms of so-called life events, a user-centric approach which takes us even further away from the traditional government stove pipes. Some individual information chains also operate across sector borders, and therefore often also across different laws. For instance, consider the information chains between the Tax and Customs Authority (acting in a tax context) and the Employee Insurance Agency (acting in the context of social security). Other information chains will operate within one sector, but across multiple layers of government. For instance, the Wabo Act7, which regulates environmental and spatial permits (e.g. for building, disposal and recycling of waste) issued by either central government, provinces and municipalities. All these situations require a perspective that transcends the specific business processes of the parties mentioned. In other words, this calls for an increase in the semantic scale.
Diversity unites Attentive readers will have observed that the word standardisation has not been used since the introduction. This may seem strange. Isnt standardisation the perfect means of achieving interoperability? Above, we described semantic interoperability as a problem of reconciling contexts. This may have given rise to the idea that all the various contexts must be respected. You might think this will never work: if every party is allowed to retain their peculiarities, interoperability will never be achieved. It is correct that, at least with technical and syntactical interoperability, there are few reasons to allow deviating choices. Data traffic will be more efficient, transparent and error-free if a standardised process is used. In many cases this is possible, since technology by now has become a flexible commodity that may be tailored to specific processes and environments at will.
NOTES 7 Wabo is short for Wet algemene bepalingen omgevingsrecht (Act on general provisions for environmental permits)
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But an attempt to standardise semantics would be an attempt to standardise reality. This is not just a technical choice; it is a step with far-reaching consequences. The aforementioned standardisation of the term salary had real financial consequences for businesses, citizens and the treasury. Legal tasks are about the real world. The real world and the legal tasks are not uniform. They are characterised by variety. Often, such variety cannot be avoided and may even turn out to be desirable. And again: the larger the scale, the greater the variety. Being able to handle such variety is a condition for successful organisation of semantic interoperability in the field of electronic government. Consider, for instance, the term employer. The Dutch Tax and Customs Authority and the Employee Insurance Agency (UWV) share data on employees, provided by employers. The Tax and Customs Authority uses this data for payroll tax, while the Employee Insurance Agency uses this data to execute social security schemes. These differences in use of the data lead to considerable differences in the definition (or interpretation) of the term employer, dependent of the context of the user. A party considered an employer by one body may not yet be treated as an employer by the other, and a party treated as a single employer by one body may be multiple employers to the other. This does not mean that there is no common factor. There is variety, but at the same time a connection.
Efficient or ective? Semantic interoperability is not a matter of choosing between either standardising or not standardising a term. It is rather a matter of identifying the differences as well as the similarities. Usually, these both exist at the same time. Similarities may offer possibilities for standardisation. Differences first of all need to be acknowledged. Next, there can be a discussion as to whether it is worth maintaining the differences. Eliminating them often makes processes simpler and more efficient. But there is also a risk that the processes will become less adequate and effective. Finding a balance between efficiency and effectiveness is a matter of tailoring and cannot be handled in one go. With respect to efficiency, an important objective is reduction of the administrative burden for businesses resulting from their obligations to provide information to the government. In this context, standardisation of electronic information traffic is obviously an important subject. However, the semantic variation to be overcome is enormous. This not only concerns variations resulting from legal government tasks; variations are at least as much a result of the differences in businesses operations. Also, introduction of a standard does not automatically result in efficiency. Variation is hard to get rid of. In cases where variety is maintained, irrespective of the reasons why, intermediary processes might be implemented to connect the particular process and the standard, as semantic adaptors. However standardised a situation may look from the outside, standardisation does not actually save costs; costs are only moved elsewhere8. The polluter pays principle makes sense. But, what is considered pollution depends on what is seen as the standard.
NOTES 8 See for instance: Rex Arendsen, Geen bericht, goed bericht Ph.D. thesis, University of Amsterdam, 2008
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On the other hand, not every variation is effective in itself. Sometimes, being different is a strategy in its own right. With businesses, this is often part of their competitive strategy, but such strategies are also found in government organisations, often related to task boundaries and allocation of tasks. Therefore, there is no fixed answer to the question whether to vary or standardise. Virtually every communication is characterised by a combination of both. What is crucial is that both aspects are acknowledged and open to discussion. A taboo on either standardisation or variation is counterproductive. A taboo on standardisation will rob organisations of the opportunity to look for a common factor and cooperate effectively and efficiently. If variation is rejected beforehand, standards may not catch on, and if standardisation is forced upon an organisation, it may even lead to additional costs and problems. It is only after variation is acknowledged that common aspects suitable for standardisation can be identified. So, semantic interoperability involves standardisation and variety. In reality, however, the discussion almost exclusively focuses on standards.
4. Semantic models: describing meaning Relations make sense Meaning is relative to context. Context can comprise anything: time, a role, an event, a law, a task, a goal. In fact, what cannot function as a context? There are few things that cannot act as the context of a term. As a result, the distinction between a context and the term that derives its meaning from that context is blurred. Each term can both be inside the context of other terms, as well as provide the context of other terms. Because context determines meaning, we can also state that the meaning of terms lies within the relationship with other terms. This does not come as a surprise. Dictionaries always express the meaning of a term by using other terms.9 These other terms can also be looked up, etc. Eventually, we will return to terms already encountered, or terms that are so general that they are almost impossible to describe clearly. That way, a web of related terms unfolds. This type of terms network is probably about as close as we can get to the meaning of terms, both on paper and electronically. Let's go back to the term employer. This term owes its meaning to its relationship to terms such as employee, work, and employment and vice versa. If you start with one term, you will inevitably start discussing the next one. There is therefore no point in addressing individual terms solely. Semantics is like spaghetti: if you pick up one strand, the rest will follow.
To implement or to complement; thats the question Meaning lies in the relationships between terms and is therefore often represented in models as nodes (the terms), which are interconnected by lines (the relationships). In such models, two different approaches can be recognised. Let us call them the implementary and complementary approach.
NOTES 9 Or by providing examples of the context in which a term is used, thus expressing the existing variety in meaning
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The implementary approach takes a main term and analyses it step by step into its components. These components are then arranged hierarchically below the main term. In very general terms, this approach would analyse a car as follows: a car consists of a chassis, a body, the wheels, the engine, the drive mechanism, the interior, a year of construction, and an owner. Each wheel consists of a hub, a rim, and a tyre. The owner consists of a name, an address, and a driving licence. A driving licence consists of an issuing body and an issuing date. An issuing body consists of The complementary approach places all terms next to each other and then focuses primarily on the relationships between the terms. In very general terms, this approach would analyse a car as follows: there are cars, there are chassis, there are bodies, there are , etc. A chassis, a body, a number of wheels, an engine, a drive mechanism, and an interior can have a relationship called car. A person can have a relationship with a car, called owner, etc. Both approaches are important and are co-existent. However, the distinction between the two is crucial for semantic interoperability. The implementary approach has a closed nature because the meaning of all terms is enclosed within the meaning of the main term. The complementary approach is open, as all terms are first-class citizens. These meanings are interconnected, but could also be connected to other terms. However, the implementary approach is important as well, in particular in the realisation of information systems. At some point, a decision must be made as to which data group will be combined to form a database, message, table or system card. These choices should not be made too early, though. A dominant implementary style will turn a model into a data model instead of a semantic information model, which happens all too often. A model that is supposed to be a semantic model is then in fact a data model, which means that various implementation choices (including storage and administrative decisions) have already been made. That does not meet the requirements of a semantic model, particularly not in large-scale environments. One possible explanation may be that these models are created by system designers instead of by domain specialists. But there are also more fundamental causes: the development of the electronic government in the Netherlands is largely executed per facility or system. The facility concerned is identified, defined and allocated before the semantic interoperability with users and other facilities is secured. It is then developed as part of a project or programme, which must implement (!) it. The context and scope, ownership, and project or programme agreement defined in this way then obstruct a complementary approach. The facility solidified too early, or does not solidify at all. Parcelling has taken place too early.
Roles, identities and authorisation One of the crucial issues where context plays an important role is authorisation: assigning rights to use functions or to participate in interactions. The assignment of these rights is based on a person's role within an organisation, event or situation. This role is in fact a relationship of a person to that organisation, event or situation. Or, the role is the person within the context of that organisation, event or situation. Persons almost always fulfil roles temporarily.
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In the complementary approach, a role itself has its own raison detre, and therefore its own instances and identities. A student is a role within the context of education, a director is a role within an organisation, a biological parent is a role within the context of an adoption, a surviving relative is a role within the context of death, and a witness is a role within the context of an (alleged) crime. These roles have their own identity in addition to the identity of the person performing the role. Authorisations are assigned to the role, not to the person performing the role. This means that any reasonably sized authorisation system cannot do without a proper model of these roles. This type of model is nothing less than a semantic model of the domain.
Variation-proof The Standardisation Forum has prioritised semantic interoperability in its Interoperability Agenda10. It has aimed at testing an approach that does justice to the enormous semantic scale of the ambitions of the Dutch electronic government. This approach must make context explicit, allow for a complementary style, and leave room for meanings that transcend the scope of individual facilities. In 2009, the Forum tested such an approach the Metapattern approach11 of Pieter Wisse. The most important, and in fact only, construction in this approach is called contextual specification. The approach provides such a rigorous account of context-dependence, as well as a complementary modelling style, that it formed a good basis for testing. The same qualities can also be realised with other complementary modelling languages including UML, OWL and ERD. However, these languages grant the modeller more flexibility compared to Metapattern, requiring additional modelling agreements to be made in order to realise the same quality. The rigorous nature of Metapattern suited the tests very well. In the spring of 2009, the approach itself was assessed for its ability to improve the semantic interoperability within the field of the Dutch electronic government. Three cases12 and their semantic relationships to four basic registries were analysed. The conclusions of the analysis were favourable13. By rigorously addressing context, the approach becomes a leverage to shift focus from owners to users of basic registries. Furthermore, the approach commands a complementary, open style that simplifies the expansion, modification and combination of models. Two more extensive tests were performed in the autumn of 2009. One of these tests14 involved the related persons (children, partners) in the basic registry for non-residents (RNI). First of all, due to the shifting context, the RNI cannot simply copy the concepts of child and partner from the basic registry for residents (GBA). Contrary to the population of the RNI, the population of the GBA is restricted to Dutch residents, which provides a particular context. The test also showed, partly based on a legal analysis, that an alternative interpretation of the term partner that could be used by bodies obtaining information from the RNI, would comprise such a wide variety of meanings, that inclusion in the current setup of the RNI is inadvisable. This variation would also largely apply to partner data of residents.
NOTES 10 See note 2. 11 P Wisse, Metapattern: context and time in information models. Addison-Wesley, 2001. .E. 12 The three cases were: applying for a disabled parking space, the assessment of property, and the transfer file of students. 13 http://www.open-standaarden.nl/fileadmin/os/documenten/Pub_Semantiek_rapport-semantiek-op-stelselschaal.pdf. 14 http://www.open-standaarden.nl/fileadmin/os/documenten/Rapport%20Analyse%20en%20harmonisatie%20gerelateerdengegevens%20RNI%20%201.0.pdf.
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The second test involved the term employer in the payroll tax return chain15, in which as stated above several agencies16 were supposed to share data in carrying out their legal tasks, for their own efficiency as well as to achieve reduction of administrative burdens for employers. As part of this test, the above-mentioned approach was used to expose the variety of meanings assigned to the term employer by the chain partners involved from the perspective of the requirements of their own legal tasks. This variety was one of the reasons why the payroll tax return chain did not work properly.
Yet another method? The analysis and tests provide a favourable picture of the power and value of a contextual approach.17 In its present form though, it presents us with another hurdle to take, because it appears to be positioned outside of current design practice. But this is actually not true, because of the fact that it is just an approach, a way of thinking, or looking at things, if you like. This means it can be applied using existing modelling languages and that we can also benefit from the tools already available for these languages. And it will also allow designers18 within electronic government to more easily incorporate the approach in their own processes. But attention must not be diverted from the main issue. The heart of the approach is in the complementary aspect, not in the language. This must not be impaired, even when languages and tools provide more freedom.
5. Towards semantic interoperability A marathon across hurdles In this article we have identified a number of issues that need to be addressed before semantic interoperability in the Dutch electronic government will become reality. Below, we briefly list them as hurdles, suggesting how they may be overcome. Hurdle Approach Place semantics at the beginning of the policy, legislation, process and system design process.
Semantics is considered a technical issue.
Domain specialists, process specialists, legal specialists and IT specialists are not yet cooperating across their professional boundaries. Context is rarely made explicit.
Organise shared development of semantic models across these groups.
Make context visible in semantic models, for finstance by means of contextual specification
NOTES 15 http://www.open-standaarden.nl/fileadmin/os/documenten/FS23-12-02%203%20praktijkmodellering%20werkgever.pdf. 16 Tax and Customs Authority, Employee Insurance Agency (UWV), and Statistics Netherlands (CBS) 17 This was also the conclusion of a review of the approach by Jeff Rothenberg, RAND-Europe, March 2010. His review and the English translation of the reports mentioned above are available at Standardisation Forum (forumstandaardisatie@logius.nl). 18 Business administration specialists, information specialists, legal specialists, IT specialists
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In the context of interoperability, priority is given to standardisation.
Make variation in meaning visible. This will also show where standardisation is possible. Limit variation, if necessary, based on a considered effect analysis. Develop semantic interoperability by (limited) domain. Use critical business interfaces as a starting point and keep models open for additional relationships. Make the results available in a systematic register for reuse and extension. Let models grow and adjust. Promote a complementary approach to modelling. Semantics is language and language that is owned ceases to develop. Organise development of language between parties, not within parties. Point out the relationship with common modelling languages, tools and development processes.
Semantics is handled term by term.
Semantic models are often closed due to an implementary approach.
Semantics is secondary to a facility or an owner.
Contextual specification has not yet been incorporated in existing methods.
First jumps This article may give the impression that the Dutch electronic government still has a long way to go on the path to semantic interoperability. This however would not do justice to what has already been achieved. In several places, semantic standards have been established and applied, although often fragmented and not always geared to the scale of electronic government. There is also a model for the semantic core19 of the basic registries, and recently a semantic catalogue20 has been compiled. The approach to semantic interoperability described in this article is also closely related to service orientation. Service orientation promotes external orientation of service processes and information systems, just as this article promotes external orientation of semantics. Therefore the hurdles described in this article are also valid for service orientation. But service orientation is already an accepted principle for the Dutch electronic government. Some of the large executive bodies, such as the Immigration and Naturalisation Agency (IND), the Social Insurance Bank (SVB) and the Tax and Customs Authority (Belastingdienst), are actively reorganising their data systems and processes based on semantic models and service orientation. These models describe their business, using legislation as an important source. With this approach, they hope to regain the ability to quickly respond to changing legislation by amending processes and systems, as that is what a semantic approach does: decoupling business and technology.
NOTES 19 Vladimir Grafov and Ren van Hove, Architectuur van het stelsel: architectuur en doorkijk. ICTU/RENOIR. Version 0.6, 29 June 2006. 20 http://www.e-overheid.nl/sites/renoir/producten_en_diensten/stelselcatalogus/stelselcatalogus.html
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This also enables them to organize their services around life events. These are used in an attempt to grasp the environment of citizens and businesses as a basis for organising and structuring their (shared) services in a user-centric way. Life events are, like profiles, part of the context of citizens and businesses and should therefore also be used in semantic models.
A second and bigger leap The promising results with a semantic approach based on contextual specification in the tests we described above and the need for such an approach to further deploy electronic government in the Netherlands, call for an initiative to make this approach scalable and practicable. As interoperability is not only of interest to government, but equally important to businesses, the Standardisation Forum aims at open innovation. The concept of open innovation was introduced by Chesbrough21, assuming that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as they look to advance their technology. Though the concept initially focused on firms, the same goes for government. Just as the boundaries between a firm and its environment, the boundaries between government and society have become more permeable. Innovations on either sides can easily (and must) transfer inward and outward. Knowledge is no longer proprietary, nor to businesses, nor to government. Futhermore, the need to optimize semantic interoperability not only arises with respect to the achievement of primary goals of government (such as in e-Government), but also of market sectors. An example can be found in the financial sector, specifically insurance companies and pension funds. They are faced with important changes such as mergers and take overs, new products and activities (e.g. distinction between asset management and execution in the pension sector), new (electronic) services and increasing regulations, especially on compliance. This calls for substantive change in their information-household, not only within companies, but also at chain level. Without a good semantic basis, the required changes will be achieved later or less good, and companies will see their position weakened, which may cause serious negative effects for their customers as well.22 In this respect, the Standardisation Forum launched the idea of sharing its knowledge on contextual specification to achieve a broad adoption and implementation of the approach, not only within government, but also in the commercial field. The ambition is, in short, to stimulate the market (in the broadest sense of the word) to further develop, apply and exploit the approach of contextual specification. This idea takes the shape of a precompetitive co-operation in a consortium with public and private parties, called Essence23, working together at open results that can be used by market parties.
NOTES 21 Chesbrough, H.W. (2003). Open Innovation: The new imperative for creating and profiting from technology. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, p. xxiv. 22 Similar cases can be found in the cure/care and education sector; coping with e.g. growing demand as a result of aging, implementation of new (digital) learning methods and lack of (qualified) personnel, parties are urged to enhance their capacity to co-operate. 23 Essence is an acronym for Expressing, Structuring and Sharing ENterprise ConcEpts. See also www.essence-project.nl.
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The consortium welcomes participants from three main target groups: ICT user organizations, primarily from the government, finance and utility sectors, because they are the primary holders of the semantic interoperability issue; collective organisations, such as sector organizations, chain and network organizations, and standards organizations, because they often represent the semantic interoperability issue for their sector, chain, or network; ICT service and tool suppliers, because the market success of the approach builds on them embedding it in their commercial portfolios.
Essence will work on the following results: a shared language (metamodel and notation) for applying contextual specification in semantic models; an approach for establishing such models together with users and domain experts; an approach for combining and reconciling such models from different sources; an approach for implementing such models, via their transformation to existing modelling languages; an approach for evolutionary maintenance of such models;
tooling for support of these four approaches;

real-life case applications of the approach for each of the consortium participants; valorisation of the approach by means of education, commercial exploitation models, dissemination and methodological standardization.
Participation in the consortium requires a cash investment of the participating organization. In return for this contribution, the consortium will carry out a project for the partner, based on a case from its own practice. The project can either be at the front end (analysis of the existing practice of the partner, collecting wishes and demands for a change in this practice), or at the back end (a pilot application). The results of the project are for the benefit of the consortium partner. A generalization and anonimization of the results will be part of the consortium approach. Thus the consolidation, further development and open accessability of knowledge and tooling will be guaranteed. The approach in the case-projects will be strongly iterative (agile in terms of software and systems development), working in cycles of three months, concluding every cycle with an evaluation by the users. Every cycle will lead to a (new) version of (parts of) the results, mentioned above. Coherence will be guarded by continuous maintenance of the architecture of the approach. It should be very clear that all Essences results will be placed, from the start, in the context of the overwhelming amount of existing semantic modelling approaches. Most,
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not all, of these contain considerable value that is reused by Essence. Yet, Essence adds a crucial element, or even missing link, to standing practice. It is called contextual modelling and is indispensable for large-scale semantic interoperability.
Why so much hassle? This is not an advertisement for semantic interoperability. It is not very attracting: semantics is abstract, context-specific and cannot be simply allocated to some party. Not even legislation provides a definite basis. Nevertheless, the value of information systems is in the meaning of the data stored, moved, transformed and presented. Information systems are not just gadgets that make life easier and more pleasant; they manipulate our daily reality. There's nothing that can be done about that. Accepting this, the risks of ignoring the context-dependence of meaning are not to be ignored: Central electronic government facilities may not be suitable for the intended users, particularly if the group of users is large and varied. Misunderstandings in information chains.
If definition and meaning are placed specifically with one party, there is a risk of meaning being limited to the context of that party and therefore not suitable to other parties. What this means for the achievability of e-Government principles such as single delivery, multi use and user-centric services will be clear. However, the solution should not be sought in standardisation alone. The risks of strictly and exclusively aiming for standardisation of meaning are: A common factor between parties may not be found. No cost reduction will be realised, but costs will be moved and increased, while effectiveness of processes will be endangered. An intervention in reality can have undesirable effects.
When data models are accepted as semantic models too soon, meaning may be defined in system structures rather than in reality structures. Such a reversal places the system above the context and is therefore contrary to service ambition of the Dutch electronic government and service orientation. An additional risk is poor adaptability and maintainability of the models. If interoperability in the Dutch electronic government would involve no more than a few bilateral connections, perhaps all this intricacy would be unnecessary. But, as we have pointed out in the above, ambitions go far beyond this. Semantic interoperability is therefore a problem at e-Government scale. It is this scale that inescapably makes semantic interoperability rear its tricky head and calls for scalable solutions. We hope and expect to realize these in the approach of public-private partnership and open innovation: the Essence consortium. The first signs are promising and we hope to be able to present even more tangible and appealing results in the near future.
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A step towards innovation and user-centric e-Government services for job market in Italy
Grazia Strano, Daniele Lunetta, Ministero del Lavoro e delle Politiche Sociali DG per lInnovazione Tecnologica
Introduction A recent unanimous Ministerial Declaration on e-Government [1] states: European governments are recognized for being open, flexible and collaborative in their relations with citizens and businesses. They use e-Government to increase their efficiency and effectiveness and to constantly improve public services in a way that caters for users different needs and maximizes public value, thus supporting the transition of Europe to a leading knowledge-based economy . The declaration also reports the main policy priorities for 2015 and one key point is: Mobility in the Single Market is reinforced by seamless e-Government services for the setting up and running of a business and for studying, working, residing and retiring anywhere in the European Union . In this context the Public Administration of the European Countries have to improve their e-Government services to cater for the different needs of users and deliver them in the most effective way and in particular has to start actions to develop user-centric services that provide flexible and personalized ways of interacting with public administration. It was also suggested that the e-Government has to exploit the use of information & communication technologies (ICT) to make public administrations more efficient and effective and to make a practical difference to the daily lives of all citizens [2]. ICT and e-Government services for Public Administration are keeping changing and improving procedures in and shortening time to citizen e-Government services. Each European Country is adopting the best solution according political, historical, geographical, etc. background. In Italy, in 2005, the code for implementing electronic procedures for public administration electronic Codice dellamministrazione digitale [3] presented the public administration as an interconnected system in which the Central Government, the Regional Administrations, and Local Administrations have to guarantee the availability, the access, the communication and storage of information in an electronic format and have to use and exploit the best available Informatics and Communication Technologies . In response to Community recommendations, and in particular in accordance to the Lisbon Agenda and i2010 initiative for jobs and growth [4], the Italian Ministry of Labour and Social Politics started issuing new regulations in order to liberalize the labour market and related services, and to innovate and make available electronically public services, and now is keeping improving on-line services to make them more efficient, closer to Italians needs, and to make the services more and more accessible to companies and third parties.
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The Italian Ministry of Labour and Social Politics main goal is to develop and provide a complete electronic infrastructure to close the gap between people and administration, and put the citizen at the centre of the political agenda. In turn the continuous effort the Ministry is putting to keep improving its e-Government services is improving the both the job market performances and the welfare models efficacy.
The Job Market electronic Services: methods and objectives The main goal of the Italian Ministry of Labour and Social Politics is to create a network of e-government services for helping the end user (i.e. the citizen). Any development has to guarantee public-to-private and private-to-public interaction and cooperation. Furthermore, in accordance with the Community recommendations, the Lisbon Agenda and i2010 initiative for jobs and growth, any development for e-Governemnt services for labour market and related services has to exploit the best ICT technology, facilitate citizens, companies, and the job supply and demand, and it has to: improve the efficiency and velocity of information; improve the inclusion and active participation of both citizens and companies by means of on-line services for accessing to information and giving feedbacks; give practical ICT tools for evaluating and monitoring the performance of adopted political strategies and action plans; Implement in an easy way the match of supply and demand for job, including and forwarding information and notice at Regional, National and European level, in order to provide the best service and without leaving anyone behind.
The fulfillment of the proposed objectives is going to be achieved by means of the Rete dei servizi per il Lavoro (RSL) i.e the Italian network for Job Services, which implements , technological and operational actions for the development, the governance and the job market analysis in Italy. The RSL has to guarantee a qualified support to the user and it is an open system used to implement the match of job supply and demand and providing the best efficiency and transparency of the job market. The RSL integrates the most common and diffused search engines, it defines interoperability communication standards among different entities that have to manage information about job market and implements operational procedures that make information available at both Regional, National and European Level at once. One of the primary results is the Comunicazioni Obbligatorie e-Service (CO) i.e. , compulsory communication - an innovative system for managing job market information (i.e. hiring, contract renewal, cessation, etc.) [5] that, interacting with older system already in use in the different regions in Italy, and since 2008 it contributed to the reorganization, simplification and reduction of redundancy of many administrative processes. The CO e-Service is based on applicative cooperation and is formed by a regional junctions network, interconnected by a central coordinating junction.
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This system is an effective instrument to simplify administrative actions, reducing the bureaucratic actions and, as a consequence, saving time and costs. Because of its social impact, it took the iG2.0 award at the ESIIG meeting in October 2008 [6]. Based on the good practice already implemented during the CO eService development, the Ministry of Labour and Social Politics is now designing and developing its innovative RSL. Different e-Service for job market is going to be connected and integrated, and citizens, companies, and anyone who takes part in the job market activities can access to and interact with information in an efficient and accurate way. By means of the authentication system (Single Sign On) the new portal for Job Market e-Services is going to give the user the possibility to access to any implemented online service. From that the virtual gate, the user is able to register, authenticate and activate access to services, read notice, send information, all in all get involved. The new webportal also guarantees accessibility according the most recent standards, and implementing interoperability with other public systems it reduces the digital gap and insures that nobody is left behind. The new portal for Job Market e-Services is going to be the primary access point for user to interact with: The Comunicazioni Obbligatorie eService the eService for the management of job market information such as hiring, extension, transformation, cessation of working relationships, etc. The Lista Italiani allEstero eService the eService for managing information about Italians who are working abroad. The Unimare eService the eService for managing information about job market information for people working in the Maritime sector. The Flexi eService the eService for matching job offers from Italian companies to extra-EU citizens who are trained for that job and want to work in Italy. EURES European eService for employment. The Albo Agenzie del Lavoro - Italian Register of private Job Agencies a search engine for browsing of the registered Job Agencies in Italy. The Cassa Integrazione Guadagni Straordinari eService the eService for monitoring the requests of extraordinary lay-off from work. Informative Prospect the eService for providing yearly compulsory information about disable people who work in a company. The Job Centers a search engine for browsing the public Italian Centers for Labour.
The new eService Job market and interoperability with existing eServices The Ministry of Labour and Social Politics is going to publish the new web portal to provide a unique access point for accessing to any eService of the RSL. The proposed portal home page layout is presented in the following picture.
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The new eService is going to substitute the system Borsa Lavoro (Italian for Job Market) providing new features in a more efficient and accessible way. The portal is based on the latest web technologies and developing methods: it automatically matches information about offer and demand for job by exploiting the potential of a search engine that works on more than 500 public and private websites, portals and blackboards for job market. Any person who is looking for a new job can have the opportunity to get any job-offer notice in real-time from anywhere in the European Economic Area, he can study the company profile, get more details about offered position, etc. The citizen has the opportunity to be more included, get more information and data, and take the best decision, at the same time any company can have the best visibility for advertising positions and interact with candidates profile. The research is supported by specific technologies that Google is developing, in particular new features are going to allow real-time indexing of thousands items and real-time connection with the most diffused social network, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and the results of the users search are going to be more accurate and personalized. Personalization is one key point of the innovative eService, in fact once the user has logged in, he can configure and save most important information, data, links, etc and at the same time the eService keeps memory of last searches, recent activities and actions (e.g. curriculum or job offer inserted), etc. The new eService is going to be directly connected with the EURES network (European Service for employment) and thus it implements actions to maximize the chances for people and companies to get in contact, it better integrates the Italian and European job market, and it facilitates integration, experience and skills circulation at European Level for the growth of the Europe. The figure shows the global architecture of the eService for managing the match between offer and supply for job, as well as interoperability and integration with other public eServices.
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The match instrument is integrated with the other e-services already published by the Ministry any available eService is characterized by an unambiguous technological approach: Homogeneous and coherent graphical settings. Simply and intuitive user graphical interface. Use of classifications and data structures shared and standard based. Unambiguous access credentials for the different subjects.
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The capability of improving in a concrete way the efficiency of Public Administration has been already demonstrated with the CO eService, which now is one of the eService the user can access to from the new portal. The figure reports the eServices recently developed and published by the Ministry ofLabour and Social Politics. Any of the listed eService is accessible from the new portal and they provide the following services for private and public users. The CO eService, as already presented the CO e Service manages in a punctual and updated way information and data about employment, and thus extracted statistics on the National job market are very accurate and up to date. Since its publication (August 2008) the Unimare is collecting and processing information about Maritime Job Market. The UNIMARE deals with communications, notice, and information sent by ship owners for people who works on the ships. The Flexi eService implements an innovative tool for helping extra-UE citizen to get a job in Italy. This innovative eService makes Italian companies able to find expert workers in extra-UE Countries (e.g. Ghana, Tunisia, etc) in real-time and trained people who live in these Countries can have the chance to work in Europe, and in particular in Italy, enhance their training and transfer European good practice. The Flexi eService was initially developed under the AENEAS project and promoted by the European Commission. It has already started in many African, namely Ghana, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Senegal e Nigeria. The idea behind the Flexi eService is to develop and consolidate a network between the Italian and foreign entities, and thus facilitating information, people and cultural exchange. By means of the intermediation, data filtering and processing of the Italian Ministry of Labour and Social Politics, the Italian companies can search foreign workers according their skills, education, and training. The Flexi eService is a brilliant example of bidirectional communication to encourage in a concrete way the match of job supply and demand bypassing geographical barriers. With Flexi, The Ministry of Labour and Social Politics want to propel and encourage collaboration with African countries, consolidate the Euromed partnership for migratory cooperation, act the Rabat Process on migration and development, and optimize the UE-Africa agreement for mobility, migration and employment (as signed in Lisbon in December 2007). The new on-line service also integrates the Register of the Job Agencies, the electronic register of the job agencies authorized by the Ministry of Labour and Social Politics. This eService provides six thematic sections for an easier content search: specialist or generalist agencies, intermediation agencies, agencies for staff research selection, and professional relocation. One further tool provided by the new portal for job market eServices is the List of Italians who are working/willing to work abroad Lista Italiani allEstero (LIE) . The service is able to put in contact the different parties that have to deal with the hiring process of Italian workers abroad, it simplifies the bureaucratic course, applies standards and facilitates accessibility, inclusion, and data sharing in a supervised manner.
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Discussion and Prospective During last years the Italian Ministry of Labour and Social Politics has invested in the development of new e-government services for job market to contribute and make the public services more efficient, more accessible, and simplify the Public Administration activities. The recent economical crisis has pushed politicians and administration to develop innovative tools for a better analysis of the job market. The performance evaluation is only a primary step for better actions and in parallel innovative tools for making prediction and anticipate workers and companies needs and fluxes are fundamental for supporting in a modern and efficient way the economical and social growth of Italy. The new web portal for on-line services for job market is developed from the integration of different modules that have demonstrated the efficacy and efficiency in the management of a high number of users, different communication typologies, management of different standards and normative references, management of data coming from both Italy and Europe. In general take-up of participatory and open government initiatives is not large, especially for government-led initiatives. A project often is considered successful when it reaches the order of few thousands of users, and it makes a difference in their lives. In case of the eService for job market developed by Italian Ministry of Labor and Social Politics the story is different: the table reports data to give an idea of the potential and social impact of the presented innovative eService platform for job market (data are updated to 06/07/2010).
System CO
Starting Date January 2008
Results Number of received Compulsory Communications: 51.273.195 Number of accredited subjects: 43.977 (transitory) Number of received Compulsory Communications: 457.979 Number of accredited subjects: 3.046 Number of received informative prospects: 52.415 Number of registered CVs of non-EU workers: more than 600
UNIMARE
August 2008
Prospetto informativo disabili (PID) FLEXI
January 2009
April 2009
Besides the management of steady systems e.g. the CO and the Unimare the new service has to improve the efficiency of the match between job request and offer, and for this goal the Ministry of Labour and Social Politics is dealing with any actor and party involved in the Italian job market.
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The new portal for job market steadies the modernization and simplification action undertaken by Public Administration towards a service that starts implementing the so called government 2.0 in particular it goes beyond traditional eParticipation, including , Open Government, citizens-driven services, and adoption of social tools. The Ministry of Labour and Social Politics is actually implementing actions that are based on strong evidence of take-up and impact, and at the same are aimed at answering citizens expectations and actions.
Acknowledgments Authors wish to thank the ETT team (www.ettsolutions.com) for their support and useful advice for writing of the paper and developing the eServices.
References [1] [2] Introduction to 5th Ministerial e-Government Conference, Malmo 2009 European Commission Putting citizens first (http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/soccul/egov/index_en.htm) Italian law: D.Lgs 82 - Codice dellamministrazione digitale European Commission Growth and Job Lisbon Strategy (http://ec.europa.eu/growthandjobs/index_en.htm) ePractice vol.4 August 2008 - http://www.epractice.eu/en/cases/coeservice ESIIG2 - http://www.esiig2.it/esiig2/pagina.php?cat=23
[3] [4]
[5] [6]
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Open Innovation the old new way to transfer knowledge?!

Norbert Gronau, Gergana Vladova, University of Potsdam, Chair of Business Information Systems and Electronic Government
1. Introduction Nowadays the importance of knowledge has been recognised in companies and the resource-based perspective is developing into a knowledge-based perspective (Tidd 2006). According to this view, performance differences between companies are described as resulting from their different knowledge bases and capabilities to develop and absorb knowledge (Bierly, Chakrabarti 1996). Knowledge as a resource and knowledge management as the way to handle this resource are of vital importance for the development of enterprises and the national and global economies. In order to remain capable to compete, enterprises rely increasingly not only on their existing knowledge but also on the capability to increase internal knowledge and develop new forms of it. Furthermore, another major factor of success is the capability to open up enterprise borders in order to gain from the knowledge and experiences of external partners (cf. Sveiby 1998; von Hippel 1987; Tidd 2006). Especially the innovation process, the process of development of new products, services and business models rely significantly on the management of internal and external knowledge (Chesbrough, 2003, 2006). The key role of innovation has been recognised since it was introduced by Schumpeter in his theory of economic development (Schumpeter 1934). Shorter product life cycles, globalization, new market players, escalating R&D costs and increasing heterogeneity of consumer needs nowadays put considerable pressure on the innovation activities of the enterprises. These factors have led to the erosion of the closed innovation paradigm, where companies focused on their internal resources to innovate. Chesbrough responded with the approach Open innovation which represents an eclectic approach , regarding the opening up of innovation processes (Chesbrough 2003). Currently, companies conduct their innovation process more and more co-operatively (Chesbrough, 2006; Gassmann and Enkel, 2006; Gerybadze and Reger, 1999; Tidd, 1997) and rely increasingly on external knowledge to get returns on their investments. The open innovation approach underlines the importance of building up interactive relationships with external partners along the phases of the innovation process. Thus, company boundaries can be viewed as permeable towards the external environment, which allows for an increased knowledge flow between the company and the outside partners.
2. Open Innovation as a new paradigm In the closed innovation approach all activities concerning the innovation process are performed solely using internal resources. Thus, enterprises can control every step of the innovation process, from the development to the distribution. They can benefit from cost advantages in the fully integrated in-house process and on the other hand can easily protect their intellectual property and keep competitors from copying and imitating the innovation (Motzek 2007).
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The new open innovation approach has to be understood as a comprehensive model incorporating already existing research streams within innovation management (West, Gallagher, 2004). The concept encompasses different themes such as customer integration, spin-offs and R&D collaborations, etc. (von Hippel 1986; Kogut, Zander 1992; Tushman, 1977). Open innovation shifts the focus on the innovation process to permeable firm boundaries and creates a concept of how innovations can and maybe should be carried out in the future. Whereas earlier innovation concepts did not perceive external partners as equivalent, open innovation points out the importance of the cooperative character, which is central to motivate innovation (Acha, 2008; Chesbrough,Crowther 2006; Chiaromonte 2006; West and Gallagher, 2006). According to the research of Gassmann and Enkel (2006), open innovation paths can be divided into three groups: outside-in processes, inside-out processes, and coupled processes (see figure 1). The outside-in process targets the integration of external knowledge, know-how, products and technologies within the firm, whereas the insideout process exploits externally the internally developed resources. The third open innovation path, coupled processes, describes cooperative innovation projects with complementary partners, who exchange and build up knowledge and other resources in strategic alliances or network structures. Firms choose their strategic partners within the same or across different industries. Depending on the innovation project, they can be customers, suppliers, research institutes, or even competitors. Consistent management along the entire project supports the success rate of the three described core open innovation processes. Figure 1: Three Innovation Paths in Open Innovation
Source: Open Innovation, Gassmann; Enkel, 2006 The external partners act within a wide horizontal and vertical network of universities, start-ups, suppliers, customers, and competitors (Laursen, Salter 2004). In the literature, increasingly the importance of direct contact with customers and knowledge of the user firms or individuals who expect to benefit from using a product or a service have been underlined (von Hippel 2005; Prahalad, Ramaswamy 2004; Motzek 2007).
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These partners can be a more useful source of knowledge and information for the company than a market research. The more the innovation process changes from close to open the greater the importance of users and customers participation. Reichwald , and Piller (2005) describe the change of the customers role following the path of open innovation and identify six important steps (from close to open) as follows (cf. Reichwald, Piller 2005; Motzek 2007): Indirect collection of market/customer information. Customers as passive target of information. Manufacturer-initiated dialogue with customers. Customer-initiated dialogue with manufacturer. Customers as equal partners of the organisation. Customers as independent innovators.
The last two phases are characterised by very close cooperation between the company and the user (e.g. jointly innovation process), and assert a strong influence of the user on development (e.g. community innovation, open source). However, when engaging in open innovation, knowledge leakage becomes a big threat and companies fear getting fleeced by their business partners (Chesbrough et al., 2009). The openness to the external environment required by the open innovation paradigm means also risk for the companies. Against this background, it has turned out to be essential for companies to develop a well-balanced innovation strategy representing both closed and open innovation approaches. In order to develop the necessary know-how and practices, companies first have to overcome their concerns and suspiciousness. Knowledge and intellectual property management competences are crucial to implementing and executing the open strategies successfully. According to the open innovation literature, SME prefer to gather information from external partners and show reluctance to share information (Braun and Mueller, 2009). Thus, firms have to find the right balance between enough and too much information and knowledge drain. Consequently, partners who do not have something to return could be discriminated against during the knowledge exchange process (Vladova, Adelhelm 2009). This behaviour and the lack of experiences and competences regarding the protection of own intellectual property can negatively impact strategic partnerships with other firms. Furthermore, the development of open innovation strategies carries risks in terms of specific costs for information, negotiation, communication and coordination. At this point, the differences between large and small and medium-sized companies is to be addressed: Whereas multinationals and large companies have usually enough resources and skilled personnel to execute such open innovation approaches, small and mediumsized enterprises (SME) often lack the managerial competences to attempt these strategies and often have limited records of inter-firm collaborations.
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3. The importance of external knowledge in knowledge management The innovation process is a knowledge-intensive business process. During the different phases from the idea creation to the distribution of the innovation, knowledge and information are intensively exchanged within the organisation. Thus, appropriate communication- and knowledge- and information-transfer environments are of particular importance for the success of the innovation process. From the knowledge management point of view, in order to create a successful (open) innovation strategy and process, three important perspectives influence the well-balanced knowledge management strategy and are to be taken into account: the organisation, the technology and the individual.
Organisational challenges and benefits As mentioned before, the difference between big and small and medium-sized enterprises is to be pointed out. For SME in particular, the lack of structure for knowledge creation and exchange with the participation of external actors is compensated by informal relationships (Vladova, Adelhelm 2009). Conway stresses that "informal mechanisms were often employed to transfer ideas and information () during the idea generation" and highlights the importance of informal boundary-spanning relationships (Conway 1995). Even competitors are appreciated as knowledge sources despite the imminent knowledge drain (von Hippel 1987). Consequently, to establish ties with other experts in similar topics, e.g. interpersonal contacts through networks, means a competitive edge for a company: reduction of expenses, access to information and to new knowledge, and the possibility of gaining tacit knowledge through experiences (Bougrain, Haudeville 2002). Also within the company, the importance of informal relations should not be underestimated, though they can rarely be formalized and the exchanged knowledge is mostly of a tacit nature (Porschen 2008). The obtained tacit knowledge remains almost exclusively with the individual key persons (Porschen 2008; Eppler 2007; Ettlie, Elsenbach 2002). Hence, to establish an appropriate communication environment turns out to be an important factor for knowledge sharing and organizational learning (Cohen, Levithal 1990). In particular, relationships between experts and decision makers are important to avoid communication- and idea-development barriers which can threaten knowledge transfer (Eppler 2007; Ettlie, Elsenbach 2002). The importance of knowledge transfer in an organisation and between the organisation and its external environment is beyond dispute. But in order to be able to efficiently integrate the potential of external knowledge, companies first need to structure their internal ties and processes. The most important topic from the knowledge management point of view is how to establish the appropriate structures in the organisation, which allow the development not only of the personal knowledge base of the individuals but also of the organisational knowledge base.
Challenges and benefits from the individual point of view In order to understand the importance of open innovation from the individual point of view, to answer the following question is relevant: What are the benefits for the users who participate in open innovation?
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For the manufacturer, direct contact to the user means much easier and better access to information than through market research. Furthermore, the input of new external approaches and ideas has a positive impact on organisational learning and knowledge development. Thus, the positive effects regarding the openness of the innovation process are more related to the organisation. The same motives are to be expected from external partners such as suppliers, business partners etc. (Motzek 2007). In contrast, for the end-user the benefit is much more personal and includes the possibility to influence the product development and product diversity and to implement his owns needs and ideas. Motzek (2007) describes, according to different innovation and motivation literature, the activities and participation of users as being a result of intrinsic motives (positive expectation such as fun and creativity), extrinsic motives (such as the low-cost or free of cost use of the innovation) or social motives (participation in a group and the reputation within this group). In order to develop a successful open innovation process, the organisation has to take into account the different motives of the users and to include these motives in the framework of its innovation process.
Technological challenges and benefits Modern information and communication technologies fundamentally improved the possibilities for users to play an active role during the innovation process. Enterprises increasingly make use of the new, easy way to interact directly with customers and to integrate their solutions and ideas into the innovation processes (Motzek 2007). Furthermore, the importance of web2.0 application is not to be underestimated: In many companies different tools e.g. wikis, weblogs, yellow pages are already implemented and used as communication platforms. With more or less structure the employers also use these tools in the innovation process (Durst, Stang 2010). Especially during the phases of idea creation and selection, knowledge transfer and knowledge exchange can be implemented by these tools. Given the different possibilities of these applications, their implementation in enterprises and their shared use from internal and external partners is an important factor organising the open innovation process. However, apart from the positive effects from the use of the information and communication tools, the company has to consider also the risks of information and knowledge losses. Thus, appropriate protection measures, e.g. sensitization of the employees or codification of the information are important.
Cite note: eServices Nowadays electronic services (eServices) as in eBusiness and portal sites are an inherent part of the Internet (Amor, 1999). Currently many companies are using Internet-based eServices as a platform for sharing business information with their customers and business partners (Torre and Moxon, 2001). Furthermore, companies have started using eServices as a means of direct relations with their customers and are allowing customers to joint use company databases and information management systems (Lu 2001).
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(Rowley 2006) describes eServices as deeds, efforts or performances whose delivery is mediated by information technology. Such e-service includes the service element of etailing, customer support, and service delivery The advantages of the openness of the . innovation process, such as co-creation, dynamic, multidisciplinarity in research and practice, (open) dialogue make eServices best suited for the new innovation approach (cf. Salmelin 2007). Open innovation as a user-centric paradigm puts another complexion on the relationship between the service provider (e.g. an enterprise, a public agency or the government) and the service receiver (e.g. the customer or the citizen). On one hand, the most important benefit for the service receiver is the increasing and easy access to the communication channels, which results in the possibility to play an active and pivotal role in the service and product development and delivery. On the other hand, the service providers obtain the following potential benefits: they are able to access a greater customer base; broaden their market reach; lower the entry barrier to new markets and cost of acquiring new customers; gain competitive advantages; and pursue the potential for increasing customer knowledge (cf. Lu 2001).
4. The role of appropriate internal and external conditions In reflection on the described nature of the open innovation process as a new approach, the general question is less whether open innovation is a new way of knowledge transfer than how to structure this method. Enterprises big as well as SME have always taken advantage of the possibilities to integrate and use external knowledge and ideas. However, this use of knowledge, ideas, and information must be well structured. Furthermore, the transfer of the experiences from the individual to the organisational knowledge base is to be guaranteed. In order to create a successful open innovation environment, the enterprise has to find the balance between the implementation of information and communication tools, the development of appropriate organisational structures and answers for the motives of the users. DeJong et al. (2008, p. 4 ff.) suggest that in a world of Open Innovation, policies must be aligned with the behaviour of innovating enterprises and/or the external conditions which motivate enterprises to practice Open Innovation, and they identify as key behavioural aspects of Open Innovation: Networking and collaboration as a source of specific knowledge needs and new business partners to commercialize internal knowledge. Corporate entrepreneurship venturing activities, including intrapreneurship, external participation and the creation of spin-offs which can positively influence the inflows and outflows of knowledge. Proactively managed intellectual property (IP) in the open model and giving enterprises the opportunity to acquire external IP and to profit from their own unused IP by licensing it to others. R&D (research and development) including internal and external activities and sources.
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Furthermore, the external conditions are of vital importance and trigger enterprises to engage in Open Innovation. Three major external conditions can be identified (cf. DeJong at al. 2008): Large stock of basic knowledge and a wide availability of knowledge throughout society. This situation must be preserved and possibly expanded. Highly-educated and mobile labour force. The result is the increased knowledge exchange between organizations as well as improved enterprises absorptive and collaborative capacities. Good access to finance and the availability of external financing. Especially for small, challenging enterprises this could be critical in order to realise or not their innovative ideas.
The success of open innovation as a process in an enterprise as well as a new paradigm in research and society development depends on both internal strategy and organisational structure and external framework conditions. However, given the fact that the existence of knowledge depends on persons, the most important factor in the process of idea creation and development remains the individual the employee in an enterprise, the external partner, the citizen or the user.
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References 1. Acha, V. (2008): Open by Design: The Role of Design in Open Innovation. http://publications.education.gov.uk/eOrderingDownload/DIUS-RR-08-10.pdf, accessed July 2010. Amir, Y., Awerbuch, B., Borgstrom, R.S. (2000): "A cost-benefit framework for online management of a metacomputing system", Decision Support Systems, Vol. 28 No.1-2, pp.155-64. Bierly, P Chakrabarti, A. (1996): Generic Knowledge Strategies in the U.S. ., Pharmaceutical Industrie. Strategic Management Journal, Vol 17, pp. 123-135. Bougrain, F and Haudeville, B. (2002): Innovation, collaboration and SMEs internal . research capacities. Research Policy. Nr. 31, pp 735-747. Braun, A.; Mller, E. (2009): The Role of Trade Secrets in Open Innovation: Examples of Pharmaceutical SME, Paper at the 2nd ISPIM Innovation Symposium Stimulating Recovery - The Role of Innovation Management New York, 6.-9.12.2009. . Chesbrough, H. (2003): Open Innovation, Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Chesbrough, H. (2006) Open Innovation: A New Paradigm for Understanding Industrial Innovation, in: Chesbrough, H.; Vanhaverbeke, W. and West, J. (eds.) Open Innovation - Researching a New Paradigm, Oxford: University Press, 1-12. Chesbrough, H.; Crowther, A. (2006): Beyond High Tech: Early Adopters of Open Innovation in other Industries. R&D Management, 36, 3, 229-236. Chesbrough, H.; Enkel, E.; Gassmann, O. (2009): Open R&D and Open Innovation: Exploring the Phenomenon, R&D Management, 39, 4, 311-316. Chiaromonte, F (2006): Open Innovation through Alliances and Partnership: Theory . and Practice, International Journal of Technology Management, 33, 2/3, 111-114. Cohen, W. and Levinthal, D. (1990): Absorptive capacity: a new perspective on learning and innovation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35, pp. 128 - 52. Conway, S. (1995): Informal Boundary-spanning Communication in the Innovation Process: An Empirical Study., Technology Analysis & Stategic Management. Vol. 7. No. 3, pp. 327-342. De Jong, J.P .J./W. Vanhaverbeke/T. Kalvet/H. Chesbrough (2008), Policies for Open Innovation: Theory, Framework and Cases, Research project funded by VISION EraNet, Helsinki: Finland. Eppler, M. (2007): Knowledge Communication Problems between Experts and Decision Makers: an Overview and Classification. The Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management. Volume 5. Issue 3, 2007, pp 291 - 300 . www.ejkm.com, accessed July 2010.
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E-administration and Citizen Relationship Management in the City Council of Madrid

Francisco J. Lpez Carmona, Deputy Director General of Citizen Services The City Council of Madrid
Summary: Citizen Relationship Management (CRM) has become a relevant concept in the public administration. Both the cost and the quality of the management of citizen contacts suggest the need for an integrated process, that also enforces the citizen view of a complex set of public bodies and agencies. The city council of Madrid has undertaken the goal of implementing an integrated CRM process within the framework of its Lneamadrid multi-channel citizen services. Keywords: Electronic Administration, CRM, personalization, efficiency, citizen services, multi-channel services, City Hall, Madrid, Lneamadrid. 1. Introduction The City Council of Madrid has undertaken during the last 10 years the task of providing all kinds of citizen services through a coherent multi-channel service infrastructure named Lneamadrid, that integrates the provision of services in person, via the telephone and via telematic means, enabling citizens to approach the City Hall via any of the available channels in accordance with their needs and resources. Services are provided in person via the Citizen Services Offices, the telephone service is facilitated via the 010 system and the telematic service is afforded via the City Hall of Madrids web site, www.munimadrid.es. Over the course of 2009, Lineamadrid has dealt with almost 12,000,000 website visits, 3,000,000 telephone calls (010 service) and 2,700,000 in person consultations and procedures via the 23 Citizen Service Offices that are present in each of the capitals districts. The services provided via Lineamadrid include the provision of information on municipal services and procedures, the issue of certificates of registration and processing of new registrations, removals and modifications in the registry, the issue of Regulated Parking Service permits (including payment of the corresponding fee), payment and issue of copies of receipt of payment of municipal taxes, the registration of documents addressed to the city council and other Public Administrations, the issue of transportation benefits such as the blue card for the elderly and the disabled, and the processing of suggestions and complaints relating to municipal public services, amongst a wide range of other services. Thus, we are dealing with a veritable multi-service network that at times also takes on responsibilities charged to other Public Administrations (such as the General State Administration) through collaboration agreements. The strategic bases of this service include: The unified content management process, which supplies one single general information repository to fulfil all requests regardless of the service channel involved.
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The service management process, that includes the definition of service level agreements (SLA) with the requesting units within the City Council or from other public bodies, the definition of service protocols, the deployment of new services and their evaluation and continuous improvement. The channel management process, responsible for the capacity, efficiency and readiness of the existing in person, phone and Internet channels. The suggestions and complains based improvement process.
Lneamadrid involves not only the availability of citizen service channels and the provision of specific services, but also the management of a usually long term relationship between the City Council and each citizen. Since the beginning of 2009, a fully integrated Citizen Relationship Management system has been in place in the personalized service channels of Lneamadrid (the 010 phone service and the 23 citizen service offices), therefore setting the base for the management of citizen relations.
2. Citizen View and Public Efficiency One of the most prominent issues concerning public administrations is the wide range of different services provided to the citizens, and the multiple agencies or public bodies that hold all kinds of contacts with them, from the mere one-way general or nonpersonalized information to very specific and detailed personalized interaction, many times on a one-to-one basis. This is also related to the complexity of public Administrations and the accumulation of government levels (local, regional, national, European) which tend to be simplified being qualified as the public administration but that, in fact, follow different priorities and not always act as a coherent ensemble of service providers. From a citizen (client or customer) perspective, it is therefore not easy to understand receiving messages from different public bodies or even government levels, many times in very short time spans, which sometimes emphasize the same public policy goal (for example, communications aimed at fostering a responsible tax behaviour), perceived as an unnecessary redundancy and waste of public resources, and others aim at different and even somehow contradictory purposes or means (for example, one public body promotes full use of on-line transactions while other still uses much more traditional contact means such as citizen service offices or postal services). Furthermore, the accumulation of messages can foster a perception on the citizens part that the public administration is practising some sort of spam even when each public , body or agency may be very careful on the frequency and contents of its own communications. For other bodies or agencies the problem looks quite dissimilar. In many cases, an individual agency lacks the resources or expertise to carry on a well defined and correctly executed citizen contact policy. A carefully planned citizen interaction policy requires a highly professionalized approach trying to avoid both silences (information that should be communicated to a specific citizen and it is not) and noise (communication addressed to persons that should not be receiving it).
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In a sense, personalization is the key concept, meaning in particular that even in the realm of general communication, not every message fits every citizen (i.e. a highly tax responsible citizen does not probably need a personal communication fostering general tax awareness, but mostly specific communications to remind her specific tax related obligations). It seems necessary as well an integrated approach of all communications using different media (ads, websites, RSS and other subscription services, letters, emails, SMS or MMS, phone and any other). One of the issues to discuss concerning this formidable challenge is the efficiency of public spending. Here is our bet which, naturally, is yet to be verified with further research: considering the enormous amount of money that public administrations are spending in communication initiatives using all cited means, an appropriate integrated management of citizen contacts would probably pay-off the amount requested to implement and manage such an approach in most environments. This proposal may seem attractive but, even at the scale of a single public administration (sometimes inside a single public body), it looks like a formidable endeavour for every minimally experienced public manager. Our two basic pillars, personalization and integration, account for huge investment needs in every single organization both in the Information and Telecommunications Technology side and in the organization aspects of every public body or agency, not to mention tougher challenges such as a whole City Council in a big town or a regional government with tens of thousands public employees and hundreds of different organizations. What are the sources of these savings that should pay-off the enormous investments needed? We believe that there are many but, in a sense, all of them can be reduced to a not very popular word both for citizens who demand a highly responsible and efficient use of public money and for public managers who will not easily accept neither that they are not performing at a very efficient level, nor that their relationship with citizens is going to be intermediated by a third department or body to which she will have to transfer at least part of the resources currently at her disposal for communication purposes. Such thrilling word is waste. Therefore, the financials of this project involve the identifications of the different sources of waste that can be reduced by implementing an integrated and personalized citizen relationship management policy, and they include: Unnecessary contacts, which can be prevented by knowing the citizen. As we pointed out before, a highly responsible citizen on one specific issue may not need to be addressed very general messages concerning such issue. For example, should we really send a letter to an excellent driver (having driver for twenty years, never a single fine, all the car and driver documents perfectly updated) to remind her the new penalties for drinking and driving? Unsuccessful contacts, steaming from contact information, such as phone number, address, e-mail, and others, that is not up-to-date. Unwanted contacts. Sometimes some citizens simply do not wish to be contacted by a public body or agency, at all or for specific issues. Certainly there are legally compulsory contacts which cannot be refused by a citizen, but most of the communications
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issued by public administrations do not fulfil this requisite, and therefore can and on the grounds of the Data Protection Legislation should - be avoided if the citizen wishes so. Respecting citizen preferences on contact channels: setting up a contact infrastructure that allows every citizen to choose her favourite contact channel and reception policy Once again it would probably lead specially if the communications . marketing mix includes some kind of advantage for the users of the much cheaper electronic means to the saving of unnecessary resources. At the same time, this would probably be seen as a service in itself by the citizen, and approach the overall panorama to a not only legal but also fair treatment of personal data. Using the contacts initiated by the citizen herself (i.e. an incoming phone call, website visit or online transaction, or visit to a citizen service office) not only to respond to the immediate demands of the citizens but also to provide extended communications on the same or other subjects, and so preventing the need of a new contact with the citizen in the near future (and its cost). The proliferation of citizen contact databases not only in different organizations but, many times, in different departments within one single public body of agency. Each of these databases is resource-consuming.
3. Citizen Relationship Management CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management and refers to a business process that , aims at plan, operate and control all contacts between one certain company and its customers, regardless of the purpose of each one of them (commercial, service request, or others). The key issue concerning CRM is its identification as a single and separated business process different both from traditional sales and marketing activities and from customer service, but certainly highly related to them. This process is putting the customer at the very centre of the communication activities, and therefore its mere existence guarantees one certain customer orientation even though, as it is clear, performance may vary substantially among different organizations. CRM is then a concept that was born in the private sector and its extension to public bodies and agencies is not as easy as it may seem. In particular, the idea of customer or client has been criticized when applied to the public administration, considering that it reduces the role played by citizens which should be the starring characters in the public arena. Some authors, specially in the Political Science field, argue as well that sometimes the customer view of public service is in conflict with different and maybe broader public policy goals (i.e. tax collection or the users of a subsidized service vs. the general taxpayers who bear its costs). We will not assess this issues any further in this paper, but simply admit that the customer concept is probably short for the public sector, at least in most cases, and use instead the term Citizen Relationship Management for every contact to be made not only for public service purposes but also for the involvement of citizens and other stakeholders in public policy discussion.
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Many public bodies and agencies manage their relationship with citizens (and other stakeholders). They send letters or e-mails, publish information in their websites, make and receive phone calls and SMS/MMS, and perform other communication tasks. Nevertheless these activities are most of times not citizen-centred but focused on other processes and initiatives (internal view).
4. CRM in the City Council of Madrid As we have stated in the introduction, the City Council of Madrid has created a citizen services infrastructure named Lneamadrid in order to make it easy for Madrid citizens to contact the local services through different contact channels. Every citizen performs the channel selection for every single interaction. That means, in particular, that following the whole logic of a set of interactions aimed at the same purpose requires full integration between different service channels. For example, a citizen can go to a citizen service office to file a request for a change in her tax related information, and a few moments or days after check the website or phone the 010 service to make sure that her request has been correctly processed. The main pillars of the Citizen Relationship Management process in the City Council of Madrid are: Organization: the existence of Lneamadrid and its unified management by the Direction General for Quality and Citizen Services. Process: the protocols and instructions prepared for all channels of Lneamadrid which include specs related to CRM: who to contact, for what purposes, how to use incoming contacts i.e. incoming phone calls or visits to citizen service offices to promote specific services or provide predefined information, etc). Technology: the use of a commercial CRM product to support the relationship process.
Both the telephone service (010) and Lneamadrid citizen service offices use one single CRM product which has been adapted to the rules and operating standards applied by Lneamadrid. This product is CRM-Siebel v8, that records more than 20.000 interactions with citizens everyday, including details on the Lneamadrid agent that carried on the service request, the office or facility, the phone number that originated the phone call, the kind of service provided, and sometimes the citizen identification or the voice recording of the conversation held on the phone, among others. As we have mentioned, not every interaction requires the identification of the citizen involved. It would seem highly disproportionate that for a general information such as the opening times of one city museum, or the itinerary of the Three Wise Men parade the Lneamadrid agent required to the demanding citizen her name, ID number or phone number. In fact Lneamadrid CRM system allows the operator to set up the compulsory request of personal data as a parameter of the kind of service provided. Particularly, the interactions concerning tax payments or the request of certain social services have been defined as identifiable services and therefore request some personal data that will be stored in the CRM contact base in order to allow further contacts with the same citizen or to support any further service request.
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Lneamadrid CRM system also allows outbound contacts, usually related to specific services. The include tax reminders (i.e. a usually responsible taxpayer has forgotten to pay, during the voluntary period one specific tax and afterwards she has to pay it with , a surcharge. Next year she receives a phone call to remind her and avoid her any inconvenience), appointment reminders and others. Every agent at Lneamadrid can check the records of identified transactions performed by one specific citizen, to make sure that the services have been properly managed and to provide any information requested. This possibility has revealed itself very useful particularly for the management of suggestions and complains.
Deeper integration with the Internet service channel and with backoffice systems remains as the main challenge in the IT side.
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5. Partner Integration and CRM A huge citizen service network requires the participation of multiple suppliers, both private companies and other public bodies and agencies. This is also true in the case of Lneamadrid where the participation of third parties is essential for the success of the process. Some of these suppliers participate as real partners in the provision of citizen services. At Lneamadrid, it happens with the main supplier in charge of the production of the 010 service and for covering one big part of the services at the citizen service offices. This partnership is based upon a set of Service Level Agreements (SLA) binding for both parties and covering all aspects of the provision of the service including both qualitative (i.e. user satisfaction) and quantitative (i.e. average waiting times) items. The availability of an IT based CRM process allows the City Council to explore the possibilities for new SLAs and payment methods directly related to the added value that every different kind of service provides to the citizen and to the City Council. Every kind of service included at the CRM can be assigned specifics costs or service levels. For example, the value added by a transaction such as the payment of a tax or the arrangement of an appointment may be considered greater than the value generated by a general information, specially when there are alternative sources for the citizens such as general media.
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Open Innovation for e-Government

Roland Traunmller, Johannes Kepler University Linz
Keywords: Knowledge Society, Innovation, e-Government, Digital Government, Public Governance, Participation
1. Knowledge Society, Innovation and e-Government Governments are largely driven by the hopes and perspectives which the new wave of technology has prompted. There are close connections with ICT as a dominant driver. Impacts are broad, such as developing a competitive economy, contributing to job creation and enhancing productivity. In a corresponding surge, E-Government has become a meaningful agent of transformation. All these developments have to be considered within the broader scope of the Knowledge society. Innovation has become a key link relating Government and Knowledge Society. Therefore is worth to regard the mutual relationships between these forces. Due to the vast amount of literature only some paradigmatic citations are given. So on innovation and e-Government ([1] and [2]) is cited. For eGovernment in general some overviews on the state of affairs are referred, so the eEurope Awards ([3], [4], and [5]) and the recent EGOV Conference Proceedings ([6], [7]).
2. Knowledge Society and Innovation Starting with the Nineties the word knowledge has become a common adjective; and we have entered a stage named as Knowledge Society. Knowledge is judged as merit in itself, yet not easy to take hold of, as to cite John Naisbitt: We drown in information but we are thirsty for knowledge. The Knowledge Society creates, shares and uses knowledge for the goal of prosperity. In principle, all societies are dependable on knowledge and that is not a new occurrence. Many indigenous societies included social capital of the community based on skills and know how. In the last centuries libraries have been regarded as prime asset for progress. Now there is a leap in expectations as current technology offers much more options for sharing knowledge. For knowledge there are merely negligible constrains by geographic proximity, volume of archiving and know how for retrieving. Knowledge Society is one of many labels that indicate that we have crossed the threshold of a new phase of society. Entering into the knowledge era has significant implications on all fields of society - be it the economic, social, cultural and political realm. A mighty driver is competition which is growing among countries, companies and people. Consequently, growing pressure is perceived and high importance is ascribed to knowledge. But it is not only knowledge in general that is sought after; a strong accent is put on the connexion to knowledge leading to innovation. It is generally assumed that in the new century innovation has become a key driver for productivity. In recent times the nature of innovation has changed as well it has become more open and self-organizing in a multidisciplinary way.
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Discovery and development combine easily with delivery and diffusion. In enterprises openness for innovation means rethinking the enterprise business models, changing organisational structures, adapting pricing models and the conduct of businesses. Further, innovation is a multiplier and may catalyze much other advancement. Sharing and reusing knowledge plays an important role also dispersed knowledge has to be leveraged. Users play a growing role in innovation processes and innovation by users and consumers creates new ideas and products. In that way social networking can become a key aspect of innovation.
4. Linking the Findings on Innovation to Government Turning from the private to the public realm, ongoing innovation is vital for Governments as well. It ensures that the state has the ability to meet societal needs, such as they are posed in welfare, health, education, environment etc. So it is appropriate that results on innovation found in enterprises (as stated above) are adapted to the public sector. Making such a transfer of findings from enterprises to the domain of Government will raise various issues: rethinking Public Governance, giving citizens more saying in development, promoting e-Inclusion, exploiting ways of institutionalized knowledge transfer, improving collaboration between agencies, establishing repositories for service knowledge, etc. Some key aspects on bringing innovation to Government are treated. Several topics of relevance are dealt with in the following sections: The state as a promoter of knowledge. The state as a user of knowledge. Putting effort in e-Inclusion. Improving Public Governance. Enhancing e-Participation. Offering e-Services. Building Online One Stop Government. Making e-Government smart. Fostering knowledge transfer and management. Going for innovative solutions.
5. The State as a Promoter of Knowledge The state spurs a lot of activities hoping that these endeavours will give leverage to social and economic progress. Generally, ICT is high on the agenda as it is regarded as key factor for economic and social success. Various economic and technology policies are started in order to spur ICT investment.
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In addition Government plays further roles so it acts as catalyst, may be as facilitator, convenor, and matchmaker. The state fosters a knowledge supportive infrastructure. This includes building a digital infrastructure, establishing precompetitive consortia, building clusters and fostering Public-private partnerships. Also hubs and clusters are created. Note that there is a paradox of geographical location; despite all connecting technologies in innovation proximity of persons still counts. Then the state has to establish framework conditions and to adjust regulations. Sound economic policies and a sensible taxation foster progress. Also, the state may influence the labour market with promoting skills, educational level and professional flexibility. As red tape still inhibits innovation such obstacles have to be reduced. Technical and economic development will need new regulations and existing regulations have to be checked as well on compliance. Further on, the state promotes knowledge in exerting its core capability for providing public information. This ability includes a lot of repositories: official registers on land, persons and income; juridical norms and decisions in legal data bases; data on economic affaires and diverse statistical matters; repositories for planning purpose as for instance in urban planning, citizen information and referral systems.
6. The State as a User of Knowledge All things considered, Government is both, a big producer of knowledge and a big user of knowledge. The state itself has to keep up with the Knowledge Society as governing needs self-reflection as intelligence organization. Governing is quite knowledge sensitive task as the feedback cycles need a lot of of information as input. The vital importance of information and knowledge as a resource of the administration action is obvious; it is owed to a fundamental necessity all decisions need the right information at hand. If one considers the great variety of administrative and political decision processes running information has to be quasi ubiquitous. Into the administration processes several diverse knowledge kinds flow in. The type of knowledge is related to the basic pattern of the processes of the preparation of the administration services. As to name basic classes - there are repositories on registers, management information and legal norms; then there is a lot of service knowledge that has to be made explicit. Resulting is a space of varied knowledge types; so knowledge about clients, standards, regulations, stakeholders, measures and modalities of action, the internals of the administrative system etc.
7. Putting Effort in e-Inclusion E-inclusion or digital inclusion is a term used to encompass activities related to the achievement of an inclusive Information Society. ICT play an essential role in supporting daily life in today's digital society. The state is quite interested in that issue hoping that an increasing ICT usage will give leverage to common progress. Technology is used at work, in day-to-day relationships, in dealing with public services as well as in culture and entertainment. In any country there are economic and technology policies spurring ICT investment.
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Using these as basis, the states promote as next step uptake and usage of ICT and eInclusion is a main label used for that advancement. Government policies target a mutual supportive circle: ICT should empower citizen; then, these citizens may participate in the Information Society. Consequently, active usage will improve the citizens social and economic status. There are several general policies for inclusion and they include diverse actions making access easy available. Such activities comprise giving computers to schools or building kiosks at municipality premises. There are a lot of particular promotions as well. Such efforts concentrate on counterbalancing deficiencies and starting promotions for special groups. Expanding access to ICT for marginalised groups is likely to reduce their social exclusion simply through facilitating access and participation. There are several groups of addressees: rural areas, traditionally under-served communities, ethnic minorities, elderly people and persons with special needs. Currently, two main groups are target of the recent EU e-Inclusion programme activities, namely elderly and handicapped persons. Concerning persons with special needs the crux is not availability of ICT; more it is accessibility to ICT. Accessibility depends on the physical availability of appliances but also on the provision of an adequate assistive technology. Assistive technology includes assistive, adaptive, and rehabilitative devices for people with disabilities. They promote greater independence by enabling people to perform tasks that they were formerly unable to accomplish, or had great difficulty accomplishing.
8. Improving Public Governance E-Transformation has changed nearly every sector of performing work. Transformations take place for many kind of relationship. Examples include such relationships as sellerto-buyer, teacher-to-student or administrator-to-citizen. So transformation of the public sector means changing fundamentally the way Government does what it does. The ongoing discussion is broad as Public Governance covers three different zones. First, there is an inner zone with Public Administration as the machinery of Government, then follows a middle zone encompassing the policy cycle with its diverse sections. Finally, there is an outer zone covering the shifting balance between the public and private realm. Improving Public Governance has attracted a lot of interest and so the European Parliament states three main issues for action: the perceived democratic deficit requiring new relationships between state and citizens; reconnecting Europeans with politics and policy making; competing with the complexity of decision making and legislation. Public Governance comprises the following activities: citizen involvement, participative policy formulation, legal drafting, implementation of policies, evaluations etc. With focus on enhancing policy making some issues draw increased interest: e-Participation, eVoting, ICT assistance of collaborative work, evaluations of progress, etc. It is obvious that such activities are highly affected by networking and can be improved by the means of social media. Typical applications are giving suggestions and feedback to agencies, collecting and disseminating knowledge, assisting all kind of participative activities (petitions, campaigning, planning), etc.
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9. Enhancing e-Participation As Government wants to reconnect citizens with the political processes it favours eParticipation as to give an extra drive. E-participation is aimed to improve public responsiveness and to enhance public satisfaction and brings several advantages as to cite: political and administrative systems become more transparent; planning processes get more input; the expertise of citizens is being tapped; decisions become better and more sustainable. In concrete, the e-Participation process is supported through the use of different communication channels such as special portals, collaborative platforms, discussion for a, mailing lists etc. Social networks will give more and more help for Government. In terms of social media it is the wisdom of the crowd that is exploited. The We-Think ideology is according to Leadbeater a cocktail of three ingredients which combines post-industrial networks as well as a revival of pre-industrial collaborative working modes. As third element, antiindustrial thinking of the counter-culture is added quasi as a grain of salt. This element becomes apparent in open systems and collective processes where individual persons contribute to common knowledge without centralised editing and control. In e-Participation particular applications have been developed, such as e-Petitions, eCampaigning, e-Monitoring, e-Planning, etc. Here we focus on three examples. One is eCampaigning. It is about raising awareness about issues as well as engaging with people. So it channels the power of public opinion to advance a progressive force. So, citizens may become quite active in supporting their representatives at elections. It is a new style, so citizen-based, decentralized and individualistic. Another example is ePlanning. Here consultation systems and modelling facilities may support actual decision making. So, in the city of Cologne the city portal engages the users to making decisions on budget allocation for recreational spaces etc. Such virtual budget decisions guided by budget modelling are an example of the concept of policy modelling. Summing up, one finds success cases as well as instances of shortcomings; just as to cite missing sustainability or a lack of connection with other activities on same public-policy issue.
10. Offering e-Services Offering e-services is a starting point for progress. Many e-Services aim at citizens and should improve the quality of life for citizens, households and families; they should make a real difference to citizens lives. Examples are registration, changing address, needing child allowance etc. Other e-Services are directed towards enterprises supporting the development of economy, contributing to job creation, enhancing productivity and market access. A service should give clear benefits to businesses of all sizes, such as reduced red tape and reduced costs of dealing with agencies. Usually, the development of public services is stepwise, so starting giving access with web presence and gradually providing particular services online. Then continuously follows automating steps and integrating and reengineering the processes until an integrated e-Government is reached. There are a lot of organisational procedures open for reorganisation. BPR methods provide a good instrument for reorganisation. There entail important marks, so a radical questioning of activities involved or an omitting of legacies and taboos. However, it has
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to be stressed applying BPR to the field of Government needs some precaution. Administrative structures have a lot of additional functions that have to be considered whenever one wants to carve out unnecessary working steps. Just to cite some aspects: protecting the rights of citizens; ensuring procedures bound to the rules of law; safeguarding legal validity. There are goals which cannot be sacrificed for the sake of process optimisation.
11. Building Online One Stop Government
For a successful Online One-stop Government there are some essential requests. As a general pattern, before an administrative decision several documents have to be checked that may be located in different agencies. Then, after a decision was made updates on documents (often residing in different locations) may be necessary. This needs interoperability which denotes the ability of ICT systems and of business processes that they support to exchange data. Interoperability starts at the conceptual level with ensuring interoperable platforms and establishing a common understanding of administrative processes. Then interoperability needs on the technical level defining formats for data interchange. Interoperability calls for an advanced integration such as the institutional sharing of information. Integration has several additional advantages, so improving efficiency and effectiveness as well as enabling an automatic case handling. This will bring tangible increases in effectiveness. Another prime feature required is usability which stands for the user-friendliness of the system. Usability is a leading factor for up take of public e-Services. Grievances on unsatisfactory systems include several points such as an insufficient structuring and inconsistent design, lack in targeting the audience or an inadequate translation of the administrative jargon to the everyday life world. Further some adaption of systems to users and their personal preferences is sought. Examples of desirable attributes are plenty, so they may include semantic conformity of notational primitives, a malleability of mechanisms, as well as indicators reminding the basic status when managing subtasks simultaneously. Thus design of Online One-stop Government becomes crucial. What is needed is a holistic approach. This means bringing together several aspects, so users, technology, organisation, law, knowledge, culture, society and politics. Redesign efforts are comprehensive they concern public services, processes, cooperation and knowledge management. The result is a real transformation of the institution as it defines from anew the central features: providing administrative services, running work processes, and modes of cooperative work.
12. Making e-Government Smart: Knowledge Enhancement and Mobility Improvements based on knowledge enhancement become a realistic goal and lead to better applications. We take two examples, so citizen information systems and novices learning. Citizen information is a core part of an integrated service access management as envisaged in Online One-stop Government. As organisational mode several forms such as kiosks, access from home and mobile access are possible. Many particular
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functions are included such as: citizen information at various stages, choice of the favoured access channel, aid for filling in forms, matching of the citizen's demand with the administrative structure etc. The goal is an automatically routing either to relevant knowledge repositories or to the agency with competencies in the legal sense. A second example for knowledge enhancement is assisting beginners in their work. The general foundation is having process repositories which continuously gather service expertise. Such collections with process knowledge provide the basis for building more intelligent applications, so as e.g. giving assistance to novices in work. In essence, administrative work is knowledge work and officials are knowledge workers par excellence. Regrettably, administrators are not always conscious that in their agencies repose respectable and extensive riches of knowledge. The conviction has to be to spread and to become common: Work in agencies is expert work. In a first step administrators have to conceive themselves as knowledge workers. Their type knowledge is a hard-to-define blend of different kinds of knowledge; so it includes knowledge about the policy field to be influenced, about the own means and modalities of action, about the stakeholders, about the internals of the administrative system, about one's own capabilities to act, etc. Max Weber addressed such knowledge in his notion of Dienstwissen, a term which may be called domain knowledge, process knowledge or more general service knowledge. Further on, new modes of communication between citizens and bureaucrats emerge in e-Government. Using mobile devices is a trend which marks the way how advanced systems work. Already a decade ago the Generation Wireless was declared (Business Week, November 2000) and since that time devices enabling a mobile lifestyle have become ubiquitous. Multimedia is a further option and it may be needed for citizen advice, negotiation, consensus finding, and planning. An advanced system for citizen information may use multimedia as well for client contact as for a multimedia link between the service outlet and back-offices. So in case the issue is rather complex it is possible to invoke further expertise from distant experts at the back offices.
13. Fostering Knowledge Transfer and Management Transferring and managing knowledge is essential for success and comprises many features. Here we touch four issues, so exchanging professional experience, establishing good practice collections, managing administrative knowledge and KM-systems in Government. Experience shows that an effective exchange of practice experience is viable. Starting with sharing experiences a demand-driven virtual knowledge network may evolve. In the end this may develop in a virtual forum. Learning journeys give participants the opportunity to explore first-hand innovative governmental programmes and their implementation. Knowledge transfer has to be complemented by organisational learning. Success of an organisational learning process depends that the involved persons collaborate with an open mind. For them a portal may give help of diverse kind: advice, solution to a problem, referral to a source of information, recommendation of experts, etc. For the community interested in e-Government the European Commission created a portal www.epractice.eu. The possibilities of this portal are ample: sharing documents, cases, events and news; posting blogs and commenting; viewing tags to content; viewing members with their profile.
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A particular form of professional exchange of practice experience is establishing good practice collections. So the e-practice portal cited above contains good practice cases as well many of them collected by the e-Europe Awards competitions. These cases provide a valuable and sufficiently detailed list of advice, which can be given to others. Ideally a model case study shows that the underlying principles can be adapted by others, may be used as inspiration and give a basis for further development. The criterion of transferability circles round the two questions: who can learn and what can be learned. So a particular question is whether the model case offers in support to others to learn. Often help and advice is sought from experienced partners and such forms of mentoring will be discussed later on. Managing administrative knowledge has become an important part of e-Government. This means collecting and disseminating knowledge as an ongoing and adaptive interaction with the instrument of a knowledge base. It entails organized transfer of know-how, skills and expertise in a proactive way. Nearly all administrative tasks are informational in nature and so exists a cosmos of varied knowledge types with registers, management information and legal norms as basics. Further, there is the ample variety of process knowledge. Knowledge dissemination in Government is a rather intricate task and a lot of options and conditions have to be considered. Here some parameters are listed that shape a concrete design, so tradeoffs between push- and pull-approaches, meta-information on supply and demand, knowledge cartographies for matching, balance of human and software knowledge bearers. The learning organization is the goal and KM-systems are the means. A KM-system comprises several elements, so domain ontologies, content repositories, content integration, knowledge dissemination, and actor collaboration. KM-systems are rather complex as they handle collections of rather heterogeneous data repositories. They will contain data of diverse type format that are originated from different sources. It also involves conventional ways of keeping data, as files, databases and legacy information systems. The diversity of knowledge sources, types and containers give create a need for meta-information at best moulded directly into the system. Basically, bringing together different content may be problematic due to slight variations in the semantics context. Problems may accrue in automatic processing as in data mining. A further difficulty is posed by the fact that repositories may contain hard and soft data, so figures drawn from controlling or figures provided by opinion polls and estimations. Consequently, skilled interpretations and a lot of experience are required when using KM-systems.
14. Going for Innovative Solutions There are several ways of including novel solutions. One possibility is creating alliances with various partners. Working with alliances starts already in the small, so with bringing together all stakeholders of a project such administrators, politicians, advisors and others. Other alliances go in the broad with big powers. Public-private partnerships are a very important form of alliances. They offer opportunities for the collaborative development of projects and may open new ways for funding as well. A further way of alliances is going for mentoring institutions and creating twinning projects. That involves a special relation between two institutions with the more advanced partner acting as mentor. The author can draw on personal experiences in two
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cases. One project was a Migration Information System for Lithuania - a rather big project sponsored by the EU and Austrian institutions having roles such as coordination, mentoring, systems analysis etc. The other case was working as expert on German cities having cooperation status with Russian cities, in concrete the cooperation Stuttgart and Sankt Petersburg. In addition grass-root approaches should be fostered and integrated. Social media are such an approach and several were referred in the previous section on citizen participation. Another example is given by mobile phones. Mobile phones become multipurpose tool of ubiquitous nature bringing low-cost and sustainable solutions. Especially, in the Developing World SMS applications are a common way used to provide e-Services. People, knowing the phone number associated with the service, send a message and get back the answer.
References [1] Traunmller, R. (ed.), Knowledge Transfer for eGovernment. Seeking Better eGovernment Solutions, Schriftenreihe Informatik 20, Trauner Druck, Linz, ISBN 385499-177-0, 2006. Gieber, H., Leitner, C., Orthofer, G. and Traunmller, R. Taking Best Practice Forward, In: Chen, H. et al (eds.), Digital Government: E-government Research, Case Studies, and Implementation, Springer-Verlag New York Inc., ISBN 978-0387716107, 2007 Leitner, C. (ed.), eGovernment in Europe: The State of Affairs, presented at the eGovernment Conference in Como, EIPA, Maastricht, 2003. Millard, J. (ed.), European eGovernment 2005-2007: Taking stock of good practice and progress towards implementation of the i2010 eGovernment Action Plan, presented at the eGovernment Conference in Lisbon, EC Brussels, 2007 Leitner, C./ Traunmller, R./ Haase, M.: The State of Affairs of e-Government in the European Union, in: Makolm, J./ Leitner, C./ Orthofer, G./ Traunmller, R. (eds.), Eastern European e|Gov Days 2008: Tangible Results and New Perspectives, Conference Proceedings 2008, pp. 391-400. Scholl, J./ Janssen, M./ Traunmller, R./ Wimmer, M. (eds.), Electronic Government, Proceedings EGOV 2009, LNCS Springer Verlag, Berlin et al., 2009 Wimmer, M./ Scholl, J./ Janssen, M./ Traunmller, R. (eds.), Electronic Government, Proceedings of Ongoing Research, General Development Issues and Projects of EGOV 2009, Trauner Verlag, Linz, 2009
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Practical examples of citizen-centric e-Services

Colin Whitehouse, Independent Service Transformation consultant and Government Advisor
Introduction Whilst comprehensive e-Government programmes have delivered significant benefits in terms of improved capability and enhanced infrastructure, many improvements have focussed on back office services to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Whilst such benefits should not be underestimated the true long term legacy of e-Government should be improving services to enhance the quality of life of citizens. To do this technology should be introduced in a seamless way, using methods of access already familiar to the citizen wherever possible, so that the citizen sees the use of technology for government services as a natural part of their lives. When used in this way technology is perceived as a life-enhancing enabler rather than a government led barrier or hurdle which has to be overcome, bringing advantages to citizens in ways in which they clearly understand. This paper describes two separate initiatives where intelligent application of existing technology brings real benefits to the people of London: LoveCleanStreets enables citizens to easily report incidents which they encounter in their daily lives which can then be more quickly resolved. Prepaid cards help young people leaving care to deal with their move back to mainstream society.
Love Clean Streets Background The London Borough of Lewisham introduced a website called LoveLewisham in 1998 dedicated to so-called environmental crime where citizens had by their actions, such as creating graffiti and littering, caused a degradation of their surroundings. It then worked to launch a new London-wide reporting service called LoveCleanStreets, a portal which enables people who live and work in London to report both bad and good examples in their local areas by using a variety of technologies to submit reports and locations and upload photographs. The portal also allows citizens to monitor how their local councils have responded to the incident. As Councils are able to find out about incidents and respond more quickly the environment for the citizens is kept at a higher standard which in itself encourages citizens to take more care of their own neighbourhoods. Complaints about graffiti have fallen by around 30% since the portal was introduced, and clean up times have been cut.
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The Solution The solution is based on an implementation of Microsoft Silverlight technology. Citizens who use the service can do so in a number of ways. Incidents can reported directly via the web portal, and free Windows Mobile and Apple iPhone applications have been developed to enable reporting linked to location using the phones GPS capabilities. Reporting can also be done by text message. This is a screen shot workflow of the iPhone or Windows Mobile reporting app
And an example of the portal reporting application
Reports on the portal can be searched, shared via social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and their progress reviewed.
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Most importantly APIs are being developed so that reports can be fully integrated into the back office workflow and customer relationship management systems of the local authority and its delivery partner organisations so that issues are forwarded quickly to the most relevant people and dealt with smoothly. Behind the scenes a web based administration tool allows team members to assign jobs to other staff who can then update progress and submit after photographs once the job has been completed. Photos can also be added onsite from iPhone and Windows Mobile device applications to show that work has been completed. Other public bodies integrating the reports into their workflow include the safer neighbourhood teams of the Metropolitan Police and the London Fire Brigade.
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Major Benefits to local authorities and citizens 87% reduction in the time taken to process an issue reported on LoveLewisham/LoveCleanStreets. compared to a standard casework service request or complaint. LoveLewisham/LoveCleanStreets was designed to move resources away from administrative activities and focus instead on quickly resolving the reported problem. Cleansing spend held at 2002/2003 levels. 2002/3 4,268,975 2003/4 4,094,603 2004/5 4,179,408 2005/6 4,082,731 2006/7 4,052,747 2007/08 4,210,348
Increasing citizen satisfaction with Street Cleaning saying good/excellent 2003/4 53% 2004/5 56% 2005/6 60% 2006/7 61% 2007/08 63%
2002/3 48%
Improving standards Reduction in % of land at unacceptable standard. 2004/5 21% 2005/6* 28% 2006/7 24% 2007/08 15% 2008/9 10%
2003/4 33%
Improving Graffiti performance Reduction in % Graffiti 2006/7 16% 2007/08 9% 2008/9 8%
2005/6 14%
Improved Graffiti removal times From 2.78 days in 2003 to 0.5 days now
Reduced overtime to collect missed waste bins from 300,000 in 2006 to 0 today Crews are expected to post photographs of blocked access Crews are expected to revisit within normal work hours to collect missed bins
Improved fly-tip removal times From 2.5 days in 2004 to <1 day now
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Evidence of effective partnership working; Approved by Home Office, used by Police Safer Neighbourhood Teams Fire Service use service to improve Community Fire Safety (report potential arson targets etc) Used by Street Wardens, Town Centre Managers etc.
Improved Relationships with Elected Members and enhanced Councils reputation. Elected Members can see council responds to issues they report Seen to be open, accountable and democratic Residents feel we are making it easy for them to report Builds reputation within social-networking community Won several awards and frequent references in external assessment and good-practice guides
Futures Report It integration The next major improvement is to integrate the reporting facilities of LoveCleanStreets with the multi-agency reporting capability of Report It. This pan-London initiative will allow a far greater degree of workflow automation so reports are routed to be relevant agency more quickly. This should lead to further improvements to response times and reduced costs.
Quotations This is an excellent development. Improving the physical environment of a neighbourhood makes an enormous difference to the quality of life for those living in it. Due to a lot of hard work and advances in ICT, Lewishams new service will make a real difference to the lives of Londoners The Mayor of Lewisham, Sir Steve Bullock We are delighted that LoveCleanStreets has been rolled out across London. Encouraging citizens to get involved and report the problems they see will not only help councils provide better street care services, but it will build public support for their work. The adoption of smart solutions in this way will help keep London tidy and lead to cleaner, greener places Phil Barton, Chief executive of Keep Britain Tidy The success of the LoveCleanStreets portal has led to many other cities and regions of the UK becoming interested in the benefits it might bring to their local environments and further afield Toronto City Council is investigation launching a similar project.
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Using prepaid cards for young people leaving care Background Increasing numbers of Local Authorities are using prepaid cards in response to the practical and bureaucratic challenges presented by service users having individual budgets. Opportunities for significant efficiency savings through reduced administration processes, improved care monitoring and protected delegation of care commissioning to service users are some of the key benefits being realised through effective prepaid implementation. Issues and Problems A significant challenge to the delivery of Individual Budgets for Local Authorities has been the need to establish the infrastructure and staffing required to support the initiative. This extends beyond social workers, care practitioners and clinicians through to finance officers, administration staff and ICT personnel. For these clerical personnel in particular, the administrative burden involved in assessing, delivering and monitoring payments has frequently proven to be problematic and inefficient. Whilst careful monitoring of care services spend through reconciliation is essential in ensuring the integrity of an Individual Budgets programme, paper-based reconciliation has proven both unwieldy and costly. Typically this involves collecting receipts from service users, processing them manually and matching them with corresponding bank statements. Reconciliation may in some cases involve having to contact the customer to query specific transactions, sending a social worker to further assess a customers needs or attempting to retrieve money from a service users allocated funds if an individuals purchasing behavior warrants such action. Many Local Authorities have faced further problems: A light-touch approach to monitoring Individual Budgets, whilst lessening the administrative burden through reduced emphasis on reconciliation, may not provide the requisite scrutiny, assurance or support to the customer that are essential to ensuring the care aspect of Individual Budgets. Furthermore, intermittent monitoring of customer activity may fail to identify spending patterns that could indicate a rapid decline in a service users condition. Councils have no means of calculating immediate care needs based upon spending activity, resulting in unnecessary overpayments when a customer has used only a fraction of a previously disbursed amount. Recovering funds, often due to a cessation in the requirement for care, has proven extremely difficult, especially in the event where a customer has passed away. Poor money management by clients, who may lead chaotic lives and have poor credit histories, can lead to funds disbursed for care commissioning being redirected for other purchases unrelated to their care needs. Customers unable or unwilling to open a bank account are unable to receive funds via BACs, which is a necessary condition for receiving Individual Budgets.
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These challenges are only set to become more acute as social and demographic changes place more pressure on an already overstretched system. An aging populace (20% of the English population will be over 65 by 2022) can only add to the pressure on authorities to find a practical, cost-effective solution to the challenges presented by Individual Budgets.
The Solution Delivering Individual Budgets effectively and efficiently can be achieved through the adoption of prepaid cards, which allow care providers to disburse payments and monitor their clients transactions at a detailed level, significantly reducing the bureaucratic demands on resources. Prepaid cards work differently to normal credit or debit cards, as money is pre-loaded onto the card by the council, with the cards then issued to social care clients in receipt of Individual Budgets. The cards can be topped-up at regular intervals or for one-off payments, and the funds are available to spend with any organisation able to accept card payments, or can be programmed to permit service users to withdraw cash from any ATM. Through implementing prepaid, the infrastructure of disbursing payments can be transformed into a valuable tool rather than a bureaucratic burden, and Local Authorities and their clients are increasingly reaping these benefits as prepaid adoption proliferates amongst councils and other public sector organisations nationwide.
Benefits to citizen and councils More Efficient Operations A significant advantage of prepaid cards in the context of Individual Budgets is the reduction in time and effort associated with reconciling customer transactions. Card statements can be securely accessed online, reducing both manual intervention and the time spent reconciling expenditure with paper receipts, while also reducing the margin for error. The time saved enables councils to operate more efficiently, and can lead to reduced wage bills, or a reduction in the reliance on temporary staff. Managers can always be aware of what a client has spent, including when and where purchases have been made. This knowledge helps social care staff to identify clients who may be struggling to adapt to Individual Budgets and also helps finance staff gain a clear understanding of the financial health of any particular scheme. Full visibility of spend is important from an audit and control perspective and helps to reduce the risk of fraud, whilst still allowing the assessed individual to make their own choices on how they spend their Individual Budget. Should a Local Authority seek to integrate different funding streams into the Individual Budget, then the prepaid card can receive funds from a number of different sources to accommodate this. The card can be cancelled at any time, and any funds remaining on the card will be returned without a potentially lengthy recouping process.
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The following graph illustrates projected annual Adult Social Care administration cost savings across ten Local Authorities, with the average anticipated saving at 36%. These figures stem from business cases completed by Ticon UK which analyse the likely savings that each council would achieve by switching service users from bank accounts to prepaid cards. Projected savings depend heavily on existing processes and is the reason why there are large discrepancies seen between some councils.
Figure 1: Projected prepaid savings (%) per annum across 10 Local Authorities (A-J), when compared to current costs.
Better Care Monitoring Local Authorities can also gain more control over social care spending as they are able to specify how the cards are used. So, whilst Individual Budgets demand flexibility, there would be certain categories (such as bookmakers, for example) where the cards could be legitimately blocked. The withdrawal of cash using the card could also be restricted if all likely purchases could be made via a card transaction.
Improved Customer Choice More than one prepaid card can be used to draw monies from a single allocation of funds; it is therefore possible to issue cards to the clients carers, thereby allowing their carers to transact on their behalf. Service users can commission their own care and pay for it online, over the phone or at the point of sale, as well as being able to withdraw funds at an ATM if authorised by the issuing Authority. Choice, and the ability to self-direct support, are the two key facets of Individual Budgets; prepaid cards place the selection of care in the hands of the service user and enable choice in a practical way.
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Enabling Customer Empowerment A recent report by HM Treasury cites evidence that those without access to a bank account are likely to be on a low income, the unemployed or long-term inactive, the elderly, lone parents and council and housing association tenants; this adds up to 1.75 million UK adults without a transactional bank account1. Prepaid cards do not require a banking relationship or credit approval and can therefore be used by individuals who would not normally be able to access banking or card facilities. Prepaid cards can therefore give access to the electronic economy and start a banking relationship for many disadvantaged citizens, promoting financial awareness and social inclusion.
Added Security, Reduced Fraud Risk Chip and PIN security ensures that only authorised individuals are able to use prepaid cards. No monetary value is actually stored on the card itself, so loss or theft of the card does not result in loss of funds, and all funds on the card are automatically insured by the issuing bank. Cards can be remotely blocked if required and funds re-credited to the main account, which enables overpayments to be reclaimed quickly and efficiently.
Case Study Prepaid cards experts Ticon Uk worked with a London Borough and Citi to introduce prepaid cards for young people leaving care. Young people leaving the councils care at eighteen receive a weekly allowance to support them as they continue in education or look for a job. Previously, care leavers had to journey to Lewishams offices each week to collect their allowance in cash. In some cases, people needed to travel for up to an hour; whilst the council had to store and transport cash to offices across the borough. Different sites used different procedures for making cash payments and staff had to manage large amounts of cash at each site. The process was expensive, inefficient and staff were exposed to risk. It was also inconvenient for the young people. Receiving cash in one lump sum did not help them with their budgetary management, and they could only use their money over the counter in shops. Solution Young people now receive their money on a secure and convenient prepaid card issued by Citi on the Visa platform, so it can be used at Visa merchants. The cards can be used at point of sale, over the internet, over the telephone and at ATMs to withdraw cash.
NOTES 1 Source: HM Treasury, Financial Inclusion Taskforce Annual Report, October 2009
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Young people no longer need to come in person to the councils offices as the cards are automatically and remotely credited by the council. Council staff do not have to transport cash and administer cash payments. This reduces staff workloads and allows them to focus on the young peoples needs. This innovative scheme is expected to reduce costs for processing payments by over 60%. As an additional benefit, the council receives collective reports on the use of the prepaid cards. They therefore gain an understanding of where money is being spent on the cards, and can be confident that the cards are being used. Benefits Financial Benefits Delivery of up to 62% per annum efficiency savings through the use of the prepaid card. Impact on Targets The prepaid scheme will positively contribute to a number of key performance indicators. Reduction in Risk Risk will be reduced from having less cash on-site and less movement of money between sites. Recouping Funds When a prepaid card is lost or stolen, money on the card can be recovered. Monitoring Card scheme reports ensure the cards are being used, and better understand how the young people are managing their allowance. Ease of Use Prepaid cards are simple for the council to setup, use and re-load, providing a solution that is easy to manage, and extremely cost-effective. Social Inclusion The prepaid card gives users access to electronic payment methods and provides them with a product which is common among their peers. By giving them this access, the young people can feel more included in normal society. Convenience Young people no longer need to travel to get cash. Their cards are toppedup remotely by the council and they can withdraw cash from any Visa ATM, 24 hours a day. Information Young people can check their balance statements online, by telephoning Citis call centre, or at any cash point displaying the Visa logo. Choice The card offers users the ability to make online payments, telephone payments and point of sale payments to Visa merchants. Future Opportunities Ticon UK, Visa and Citi share the belief that prepaid cards could be used in place of a bank account to allow payments from any Government body to citizens. The cardholders will then have the ability to make cashless transactions, use local facilities and pay for travel - all on a prepaid card.
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Quotations It is reassuring to know that our young people no longer have to collect cash each week; this is much safer for them. Being able to withdraw only small amounts at a time, as well as making purchases in shops, enables young people to practice budgeting skills Leaving Care Services Manager. I really like using the card. I can take out a small amount of cash when I need it and then use the card to buy things in shops without having to take out more money. I particularly like that I don't have to go all the way to the Town Hall to get my money - Cardholder.
Conclusion These two practical examples demonstrate how technology is being used in a transparent way to improve the quality of life of UK citizens whilst improving the efficiency of the councils and reducing their costs of service delivery. Acknowledgements To Microsoft and the London Borough of Lewisham for information on LoveCleanStreets To Ticon UK Limited for case study information on the use of prepaid cards.
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