E-government barriers and enablers

Technology can both enable participation in government and act as a barrier to it. It is useful to view barriers and enablers to participation from two perspectives:

• Access - the availability of the necessary infrastructure and hardware (e.g. broadband internet access; PCs)
• Accessibility - the relevance, readability, or ease of use of information or services provided through e-government.

Access

Technological barriers are being addressed on many fronts:

• Infrastructure: recent figures suggest Telecom's broadband is available across 85% of the country, BCLs' broadband wireless service will take that to 95% and that Telecom "will be able to provide broadband anywhere by next year, by its definition (of broadband)". ["Telco market to pick up", InfoTech Weekly, 1 December 2003] Project PROBE - a provincial broadband expansion, designed to ensure that all schools and their surrounding communities are able to access broadband by the end of 2004 - has improved online access as it is implemented. Broadband economics (and therefore cost) will, however, always be affected by 90% of NZ-accessed content being hosted (sourced from) offshore.
• Hardware: a concept of 'a PC for all' is now being supplanted by approaches that equip intermediaries such as community groups, libraries, schools etc with hardware and software, backed up by training etc. to provide broader ICT access. Coupled with the fast uptake of access media such as digital phones or digital TV, the hardware digital divide is being bridged.

Government initiatives to bridge the digital divide are referred to in the draft Digital Strategy. Examples of such initiatives are:

• the Connecting Communities Strategy - an all-of-government strategy to tackle the digital divide by improving the co-ordination of government support; developing cross sector partnerships; encouraging community innovation and community ownership for improved sustainability;
• the Education ICT Strategy, directed at building both technical skills and promoting the use of ICT to extend and enrich educational experiences across the curriculum, building digital and information literacy, so that all learners become confident and competent in using technologies to contribute to an innovative and thriving society;
• Project PROBE is an infrastructure delivering broadband to schools and their surrounding communities; and
• the National Library Digital Strategy: designed to preserve the nations digital heritage for future generations, and ensure that the national stock of knowledge is accessible for social, economic and scientific benefit.

In addition, the E-Government and E-Local Government strategies recognise the need to work with individuals and communities so that there can be full participation in digital life and work. There is also a very high number of voluntary and local initiatives, including public access centres, formal and informal training and business sponsored projects.

The e-government challenge is to ensure these efforts continue according to the key principles of participation presented later in this paper (inclusion and security, for example) while ramping up efforts to improve accessibility.

Accessibility

Accessibility refers to the relevance, readability, comprehensiveness, ease of use, literacy (including information literacy), and convenience of information and services. This definition includes accessibility to people from outside government who may not understand jargon or acronyms, or whose first language is not English, limiting their ability to comprehend complicated language.

Policies and statutes governing public access to government information underpin accessibility, as do standards for the presentation of that information. The Digital Strategy will also identify actions for government agencies that contribute to content discovery and access, with particular reference to promoting equitable access to information by print-disabled, such as people who have visual impairments or dyslexia, and economically disadvantaged groups.

The Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs commented on an earlier draft of this paper: "to entice people to participate in e-government, the online content needs cover issues that are priorities for Pacific people so that "they feel compelled to participate and provide feedback". In addition, the content should be translated into Pacific languages. Of great benefit would be the availability of language tools to enable multilingual translations of official documents."

Other barriers and enablers

The following table identifies some further barriers and enablers associated with participation through technology.