E-government: progress & long term implications
Video grab 1: Charlie Chaplin's 'Modern Times' (1 minute)
Thank you for inviting me today to address the closing of the GOVIS conference.
I hope you have enjoyed the conference. Thank you for attending and for participating in a spirit of goodwill ... and thank you to the speakers who have passed on their observations ... insights ... and a few complaints about policies.
The piece of film that you have just seen is from the 1936 Charlie Chaplin film 'Modern Times'.
It was a masterpiece of its era ... a satire on life working on a production line in the US between the wars.
My intention in showing you that film was not to induce pessimism or depression ... Charlie Chaplin presents a bleak view of life on the production line.
The piece of film that you have just seen is from the 1936 Charlie Chaplin film 'Modern Times'.
What is important in that piece of film is the symbolism. Chaplin wanted to show how profound is systemic technological change.
Ultimately, as you saw, he ends up inside the machinery. People and technology are subsumed ... in one, single being.
Chaplin's view of technology was pessimistic ... I can reassure you that we have no reason to be as fearful of change.
This afternoon - at the close of GOVIS - I would like to outline the shape of change that e technology will bring in the public sector over the next 10 to 15 years. And I'd like to talk about your role - the role of everyone in this room - in that change.
Let me show you something else.
Video grab 2: JFK, Jackie Kennedy, Margaret Thatcher, moon landing (40 seconds)
What you have seen there is the high point of the last great technological and media revolution - the television age.
For most of you here - who were born in the late 50s or the 1960s - the first wave of the television revolution was largely over by the time you were at primary school.
US presidential politics had become televisual, Afro-Americans were asserting their rights on national television, television had begun to mainstream rock and roll music from its roots ... in black music originating in the South ... Jane Fonda was becoming a lightening rod for the anti-war movement.
In New Zealand, TV had displaced radio as the 'hot' medium, and we were about to watch the apex of human achievement ... a moon landing ... on television. Keith Holyoake, Ray Columbus, and Peter Snell were beginning to master the new medium.
The first wave of the television revolution lasted no more than 15 years and it was over by 1970.
By contrast, the first wave of the e revolution probably lasted only seven or eight years.
By the time Team New Zealand won the America's Cup in San Diego, in 1995, the first wave was over ... on-line publishing was flourishing, you could buy goods over the Internet, and e-mail was replacing paper.
The point I am making is that the waves of technological revolutions are becoming shorter and more intense.
The first wave of the printing revolution, which began around the year 1455, lasted about 100 years.
Television lasted about 15 years .. the first wave of the e revolution in New Zealand lasted less than half that time.
So ... much of the future - the vaunted changes from e - are behind us. Indeed, the first wave was over before many organisations realised it had started.
Where are we headed now?
Historically, revolutions - like the one that you and I are part of right now - proceed into more profound stages as they mature.
The Industrial Revolution began in the late 1700s with the application of the steam engine in factories.
In the early 1800s, as the revolution matured, the real changes started to come.
Factory towns sprung up around new steam-powered factories. The railway was invented.
Mass labour gathered in the new towns.
In the United States, railroads carried immigrants westward.
People who had never met each other before now had the prospect of doing so.
In the cities, people began to perceive themselves differently. The working class emerged ... the mass circulation newspaper appeared, the modern postal service sprung up ... and commercial banking grew.
For the first time, large numbers of people earned their living by selling their sweat in factories rather than by working the land.
Work and society was changed forever.
It is that type of change that we are beginning to embark upon in the e revolution - the second and third rounds of change.
Except that change will come more quickly than it did for the people in 18th and 19th century Europe.
The big question for us, here today, is what this means for the organisations and institutions that we work in?
What will they look like in five or 10 years time?
How will we respond to citizens?
What sorts of problems are we going to have to solve?
Last week, at the Prime Minister's launch of the e-government strategy, the Minister of State Services, Trevor Mallard, identified the three main benefits that e-technology delivers in government.
They are:
Efficiency - that's doing things cheaper and or faster
Convenience - that's providing easier or quicker access for citizens
And participation - that's giving citizens a greater role in governing
Increasingly, organisations and institutions - like the ones you work in - will be organised around this trio - efficiency, convenience, and participation.
The immediate manifestation of convenience is the 'life cycle' approach to delivery on the Internet, as is practised by the Government in Singapore.
Under that model, people want to access government services according to their needs - that is, they are getting married, or they want a work permit - and they want services delivered around those life events.
They aren't interested in which department they should deal with - they just want the service.
That approach brings a type of integration across Government. Government agencies have a common customer, so services are supplied from a common point and through a common medium - on-line.
That type of integration points the way forward, too ... where central and local government have a common customer and provide services on-line.
In other words, there is integration within Government - between departments and agencies - and between levels of government ... local and central.
Integration within central government is high on the agenda in New Zealand. We will also face the question of local/central integration soon.
Integration underlines another question - do we brand institutions or do we brand services?
The future lies in on-line services that are organised around citizens' demands rather than departments. From the perspective of the citizen, the role of the department or agency is likely to be less important than the service that the citizen is receiving.
So, increasingly we must ask whether branding should apply to the organisation or to the service or product?
There is a further question, which we will face regarding integration.
This is the bigger question ... and the one that will throw us the toughest challenges.
Let me give you an example. I plan to go on holiday. I buy my holiday package over the Internet. The Internet retailer would also like to provide me with the visas and official documentation I need for the trip.
In other words, she would like to be the retailer of services that are supplied by the Government. Immediately, we raise the possibility of integration between the State and the private sector where they have common on-line clients.
Peter Drucker recently hinted at this point in an interview in 'Business 2.0'.
Drucker explained how one of the major Japanese corporations had realised that a big cost lies in distribution and delivery. Say people ordered and purchased on-line. Now, how to deliver to them?
The particular corporation that Drucker was discussing has been using 7-11 stores as its delivery agents. Order a Sony CD walkman on-line, and pick it up at the nearest 7-11.
This is a question we will face in the public sector. The costs of delivery and distribution are high, and they will be underlined as on-line service takes over from physical locations.
I don't imagine that we will be using corner dairies for delivery in New Zealand ... and nor do I advocate that. But we will be faced with maximising the potential of convenience and efficiency.
This provides special challenges for us in the public sector. The public has expectations of the standards of integrity and probity that are practised in delivering government services. How do we maximise e technology while still observing those standards?
Not surprisingly, the public has reservations about our ability to do some of this and still respect their privacy ... they demand transparency. Charlie Chaplin knew about this in 1936.
Video grab 3: Modern Times bathroom scene (35 seconds).
Chaplin was also worried about technology that gets out of control. Anyone here who is in IT customer support will know this feeling...
Video grab 4: Modern Times 'food machine' (35 seconds).
Thank you Mr Chaplin for a humorous view of serious, valid points.
Going back to Peter Drucker ... he observed, in the same article in Business 2.0, that he thought the corporation - both in the public and the private sector - as we currently know it, is in decline.
Drucker believes corporations as we know them will disappear over the next 25 years.
He also suggested that ... for the first time in history ... workers with highly-specialised technical knowledge will outlive the corporations that employ them.
Mostly, in the past ... when organisations disappeared, so did work.
So, for example, when the car assembly firms pulled out of New Zealand in the 80s and 90s, the jobs disappeared. Car assembly using manual labour was overtaken by robotics.
Drucker says the 21st Century knowledge worker is different ... corporations will come and go more quickly - but for the knowledge worker, work will always be there ... the knowledge that's inside your head can always be applied.
Knowledge work transcends corporations and particular jobs.
Now, let me show you something else.
Video grab 5: Seattle protests (30 seconds)
Those are scenes in Seattle - 18 months ago - at the Ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation chaired by Mike Moore.
Those protests were co-ordinated using the worldwide web and e-mail. Further ... cyber-protests ... by bombarding the WTO website ... were a conscious part of the protesters' plans.
The protests bought the meeting to a standstill.
From our perspective, what is important is that the protesters used e technology to bring a major public institution virtually to its knees.
I doubt we will see a Seattle-type of event here. But the underlying question is one we should consider.
E technology is likely to lead to a greater role for citizens in policy-making and in public decision-making.
Currently, policy-making - that's the way in which governments determine their role and interventions in our society and communities - is largely conducted in private, between officials and Ministers.
Twenty years ago ... in 1982 ... the Official Information Act allowed New Zealanders a window on that process, but the OIA hasn't allowed full participation.
E-technology has the potential to allow much greater participation.
It also has the potential to shift the role of the citizen from a one-way input - where she votes every three years and then waits to see what happens - to a transformative role, where she actually participates in the business of governing.
As officials, you are likely to face demands from citizens, for a greater role in policy advice - and an active role - sooner than we think - maybe within the next two or three years.
Consequently, the accountability of the departments and agencies in which you work will be redefined, and the relationship between the citizen and the agencies you work for will change.
The balance of power will alter. Where we currently draw the map of public management with Ministers and officials at the centre, we are likely to draw in citizens more assertively.
In many cases, citizens will shift from being customers or clients, to being participants in your organisations. Currently, citizens come into your office; quite possibly, soon they will come into your organisation.
Let's talk now about what this means for you - everyone in this room - and your personal role in these changes.
The scale of change that I have talked about here today could easily invoke pessimism. There is a lot of work to do ... and ... according to the laws of physics ... any force is met by an equal and opposite reaction.
However, I hope that the changes that I have outlined will inspire you to consider your roles as public officials more closely ... and to recognise the contribution you can make.
Everyone of us here has the opportunity to be part of a trailblazing endeavour.
Some of you will certainly have the opportunity to bring about major breakthroughs. That's because in any period of great change, the willingness to improve and improvise is often as important - or more important - than invention.
Take the example of the zipper ... that common device that holds together your clothes. Someone invented it to hold together bales of grain on ships.
Much later, someone else thought of putting it into clothing and it found its real use. It's never been seen again on grain bales.
This stuff here - number eight fencing wire - was actually made to keep things out - dogs and other people's livestock. Now we use it to keep things in - to hold things together.
There will be someone in this room right now who will ... over the next five years ... adapt an existing idea ... from somewhere else ... to 'e' and lead a breakthrough.
There will be pessimists about all of this. In 1974, Muhammad Ali faced his greatest test. He was due to fight George Foreman in Kinshasa in Zaire.
Foreman was a brutal fighter. Some people expected Ali to be humiliated, live on television in front of the world.
Video grab 6: ABC sports commentary (35 seconds)
Ali wasn't daunted. This is his pre-fight press conference.
Video grab 7: Ali press conference (1 minute)
Muhammad Ali ... who couldn't be beaten for optimism and confidence.
He won the fight ... and he sealed his place as one of the leading figures in 20th Century politics and sport.
Thank you for attending the conference ... thank you for supporting e-government ... ... most importantly ... thank you for the inspiration and application that I know you will exercise over the coming year.
Crown Copyright, SSC E-government Unit, 2001
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