Beyond e-government - towards 2020
The growth of the Internet has been a catalyst for new ways of working, thinking, and interacting. People are able to take part in a world that both reflects their needs and allows information and knowledge to be collected about them.
Both education and our knowledge of our identity and heritage as New Zealanders stand to benefit from these developments. Our ability to join up information held by government and others, in ways that provide better services and user-friendly access to authoritative information on New Zealand issues, places, events and people, will have a significant impact. Better information will encourage public debate on issues and greater participation in the design of policies and how they are delivered. This will lead to better outcomes. The focus on government information as a public resource can also provide opportunities for business to develop solutions and products, ranging from software to entertainment to learning tools.
In this world, information access and ownership become key issues – who owns data, to what extent is it a public resource, and what are the risks to the privacy of individuals? Developing user-focused services gives us new ways of collecting and creating, integrating and sharing, and storing data and information. This promises a huge increase in the quantity and quality of information that is available to support the design and performance of policies. As a result, many information gaps could be filled, giving decision-makers and communities a fuller picture of the issues, risks, and opportunities they need to consider.
This evolution in the way government works, as a result of network technologies, takes us beyond e-government. In the digital future government will be a key agent of change.
Networking government clearly affects relationships within government. The values underpinning successful relationships, like trust, transparency, and horizontal accountability, cut across traditional organisational accountability. This will have a profound impact on agencies’ organisational cultures. If individuals are to work in teams, they need a collaborative culture – one that balances the needs of the whole with the needs of individual agencies.
Seamless government also cuts across boundaries between different jobs or activities. This blurring of roles and functions along with sharing information and tasks, puts pressure on notions of privacy and accountability. Frameworks and processes which protect privacy are needed to encourage people to interact with government. These should follow the social networking and ethics that have characterised the growth of web communities. Encouraging people to use increasingly commonplace technologies to interact with government will need and lead to a strengthened trust in government.
Transformed government will call for a different way of working – one where networks, not hierarchy, are the focus. This raises fundamental questions about the future. Does the ‘new system’ threaten the integrity of the existing one? More specifically, what are the implications for personal privacy or parliamentary accountability? Are there other ways of meeting these accountabilities? If so, what are they and how do they work? What is the balance of cost and benefit?
These questions arise from e-government, but their answers require discourse and a work programme that go beyond e-government.
