News - E-services: where to from here?

E-services: where to from here?

August 2002

The panoramic view across government that the portal provides will undoubtedly highlight the relationships between the services various government departments provide. For example the provision of social services can involve agencies in the education, health, welfare and justice sectors. From the user’s perspective, having these related services bundled together and delivered electronically looks attractive. It also promises efficiency gains for agencies and outcomes that align with the recommendations of the Report of the Advisory Group on the Review of the Centre.

While technology provides a toolset that can achieve this, to integrate services properly you need to understand the whole life cycle of the services, the business processes that support them and the way they interrelate. With that in mind, well-designed e-services could solve deep-rooted service delivery problems by taking a more holistic view of service delivery, without necessarily needing any structural change within organisations. For example, e-services allow coordinated service delivery to avoid the problem of a person receiving Service B from one agency before Service A from another – getting a wheelchair delivered before a ramp is put in.

The second phase of the e-services project aims to support agencies in achieving more integrated and efficient electronic service delivery. Facilitating agency efforts to implement e-service solutions, the project will provide a definition and model for e-services in New Zealand as well as a guide to implementing them efficiently, drawing on overseas experience.

The services information already collected in the first phase of the project will be used to identify candidate services that can be integrated across agencies or within clusters of agencies.