Reviewing progress

The June 2003 update of the E-government Strategy stated the 2004 mission as:

• By June 2004, the Internet will be the dominant means of enabling ready access to government.

At the beginning of 2004, the E-government Unit began its review of the Public Service and non-Public Service departments' progress towards the achievement of this mission and alignment with the Strategy. This review, the first comprehensive assessment of the government's online presence, measured forty-one government departments' performance against the success criteria of convenience and satisfaction, integration and efficiency, and participation. These three outcomes were identified in the Strategy as the measures of successful e-government.

These goals are cross-referenced with the 2004, 2007 and 2010 missions to reflect a phased programme of achievement. The criteria by which success with the 2004 mission is to be judged are:

• Convenience and Satisfaction: People will be able to find details of a wide range of government services on the Internet.
• Integration and Efficiency: Agencies will begin to integrate services through use of common e-government "foundations" (technology, standards and policies).
  Agencies will be more citizen- and results-oriented in the way they design themselves.
• Participation: Government agencies will be making better use of the Internet to inform the public of what is happening in government, and of opportunities to be involved in government processes.
  Agencies will be learning ways to make use of the Internet to consult people about policy development, and service design and delivery.

The 2004 review had five components or modules: three focussed on the individual departments and two involving a more holistic evaluation of e-government to provide a context for interpreting the department-specific findings. The five modules were:

• assessments of the departments' websites by an independent contractor;
• an appraisal of the quality of the departments' metadata [Metadata is the structure of the descriptions that government departments apply to their information and services. These descriptions organize the data on web portals, such as www.govt.nz.] records used on www.govt.nz;
• extensive consultation with the departments;
• commissioning and analysis of recent surveys into e-government in New Zealand to measure the demand; and,
• a review of the E-government Unit's contribution to the Strategy's outcomes and targets.

The results of the first three of these modules were mapped against the three success criteria to determine the relative position of individual government departments to the 2004 mission, and to chart their alignment with the E-government Strategy generally. The results of the last two modules were used to inform the weighting of these considerations.

The results of this review were published in the report, Achieving e-government 2004: A report on progress towards the New Zealand E-government Strategy. When the Minister for State Services, Trevor Mallard, launched the report at the Public Sector Senior Managers Conference in Wellington, he described the findings of the report thus:

"Overall, we have achieved the 2004 mission ... Across the board, government departments are making good progress towards e-government goals.Obviously, there are some departments - particularly those with a more service-oriented focus - that are quite advanced. And there are some departments that are not as far down the road, generally due to the nature of their core business. What's important in the report is that the overall picture is a positive one.

Indeed, overall, the picture of e-government in New Zealand is a positive one. Of the departmental websites assessed [Two departments were not included because their sites were being redeveloped at the time of the review.] (comprising a total of 113 primary and subsidiary websites for 39 departments), 67% were categorised as of a 'high' or 'good' standard. The websites were assessed against criteria based on the Government Web Guidelines, an adaptation of the e-Gov Watch usability methodology, and the information and services provided online. Across the board, on this assessment, government departments deliver information online very well.

Best practice examples of government department websites were: Inland Revenue, Statistics New Zealand, and Archives New Zealand. IRD scored well in the Information Delivery and e-Services categories. Statistics was the top ranked site for Information Delivery, and Archives was the top ranked site in both the Required Government Content and Usability categories.

Best practice examples of individual websites were: The Growth and Innovation Framework, The Ministry of Tourism, and Climate Change. The GIF site was particularly strong across the Accessibility, Usability and Government Web Guidelines categories, Tourism rated well for Information Delivery, and Climate Change scored well in Usability and Web Guidelines.

Similarly, the metadata prepared by departments is generally of a high quality. The success of www.govt.nz, which is currently averaging more than 22,000 visitors a week, attests to the standard of the metadata being produced by departments. Best practice examples of department metadata records were: the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, the Education Review Office and the National Library of New Zealand. These departments, and many others, have accurate, well-written and up-to-date metadata that presents good coverage of the range of information and services they provide. This means people can quickly and easily access this information, either on the department's website, or via www.govt.nz.

In terms of alignment with the E-government Strategy, most departments have altered their information systems strategic plans and other organizational-wide plans to align themselves with the Strategy's targets. In fact, in some instances, departments are already well on their way to achieving the 2007 mission, that:

• Networks and technologies will be integral to the delivery of government information, services and processes.

However, as the authors of the 2004 assessment report note, many of the future goals and objectives of the Strategy are more applicable to departments that provide services to the public. The 2005 review of the Strategy will accordingly emphasise the distinction between departments that are service oriented and those that, for example, are more policy based. More extensive analysis and planning will then be devoted to those departments that fall outside the service model.

Of course, not all the findings were positive. The review also identified how departments could improve their web presence or areas where they could more closely align with the Strategy. In this respect the profiles of the 41 departments in the report are a valuable asset for identifying opportunities for improvement and development.

E-government is a progression, a series of steps building towards the goal of a transformed public sector. It is fundamental to the continued enhancement of government that the momentum developed to this point is maintained, and that even greater resolve, innovation and leadership is shown.