e-GIF Futures

e-GIF development has been, and will continue to be, at least partly reactive. Standards and products are continually maturing. A maturing standard becomes a candidate for inclusion in the e-GIF; it may also change what is technically possible and lead to demand for the business processes it can support. An extreme example would be the creation of the E-Government Unit which would not have occurred without TCP/IP.

The role of the e-GIF in this respect is to form a view on standards which are ready for adoption and make any necessary adjustments for the New Zealand government context.

Figure 3 - e-GIF Futures

There are multiple sources of advice about so-called emerging standards. Vendors have views which may be driven as much by their commercial objectives as by what is able to be delivered. Standards bodies can be driven by politics at an international or inter-vendor level. Industry analysts such as Gartner exist partly to help this, but while their input is valuable it is not infallible.

The e-GIF forms an interface between the abstraction of standards of various kinds and the people in agencies who are trying to implement them.