THE 5th FP - GOVERNMENT ON-LINE STRATEGIC REVIEW
BOARD
rapport et commentaires
|
|
THE 5th FP - GOVERNMENT ON-LINE STRATEGIC REVIEW
BOARD
|
|
Strategic Requirements Board for the Fifth Framework Programme
21.05.97
Note aux correspondants d'Admiroutes:
Ce rapport vient d'être rédigé pour le compte du Board for Administration Requirements and Strategies par les rapporteurs cités ci-dessous. Il est destiné aux instances consultatives et délibératives de la DG13 de la Commission européenne, en charge de la préparation du Ve Programme Cadre de Recherche-Développement. Il n'engage à ce stade que le BARS et les rapporteurs.
Dans la mesure cependant où des consensus nationaux sont nécessaires pour aboutir dans de tels domaines, il parait utile, de façon informelle, de vous présenter sans attendre ce travail, afin de vous informer et recueillir éventuellement vos réactions. Nous pourrons le cas échéant les transmettre à la Commission.
Au fil du texte anglais, l'on trouvera en français quelques commentaires dont je prends la responsabilité.
J.P.Baquiast.
Final Report
Rapporteurs:
Christine Ashby
James Cornford
Paul Van der Cruyssen
Chris Drew
Olov Östberg
Contents
Executive Summary
Introduction: government and public administration in the Information Society
Part 1- Present Situation and Trends
1.1 General situation and trends in government and public administration
1.2 User needs and interests
1.3 Achievements and lessons of current experiments in Europe
1.4 Specific roles of government and public administrations in the Fifth Framework Programme
Part 2 - RTD Action Lines
2.1 Public administrations: effectiveness and efficiency
2.2 Quality of public service provision
2.3 On-line democracy and public information
2.4 Integrating isolated services, including those from public and from non-public information services providers
2.5 Support for the widening and deepening of the EU: underpinning the four freedoms
Part III - Implementation Recommendations
3.1 Integration of applications
3.2 European added value
3.3 International co-operation
3.4 Socio-economic consequences and risks.
3.5 Flexible programme management
3.6 Technologies and technology application
3.7 Security, privacy and authentication
3.8 Citizens at the centre
Summary of Action Lines, Research Themes and Sample Technologies
Imagine this: Across Europe, public administrations all the way from single municipalities to national governments are viewed as lean, "user-friendly", responsive, accessible, transparent, and a model for excellence of results in the usage of Information Society Technologies. Public authorities share and make full use of all the information at their disposal to constantly monitor citizens' needs and to respond to them rapidly. Full and multi-cultural support is given for the freedoms of movements of people, capital, goods, services and information. With the help of technology and market mechanisms, information and services are affordably and securely available by anyone, anytime and anyplace.
The work of the Strategic Requirements Board has demonstrated that although there is a massive global RTD effort in Information Society technologies there is a need for carefully focused efforts in developing applicable technologies to sit alongside the organisational, process and cultural changes needed to equip government and public administrations for the information age.
Government, public administration and public services are central to the development of a efficient, effective, equitable, open and accountable Information Society in Europe. The public sector is central to creating critical mass, educating users and raising awareness. Public administrations and governments are central to extending the information society into the fields of democratic decision-making, accountability, community building, economic development and support for civil society. Last, but by no means least, public administrations are key players in protecting the weaker members of society and are therefore central to the prevention of a two tier information society.
NB: il faut noter ce consensus sur l'importance du rôle que le BARS, constitué tout autant d'industriels que de fonctionnaires, provenant de tous pays de l'Union Européenne, attribue à l'administration dans la perspective du passage à la société de l'information.
Information Society Technologies must meet users' and consumers' expectations and requirements and the need to provide them with access, at the lowest cost, to quality general-purpose and specifically targeted services. Citizens are no longer prepared to accept public services which are "mass produced" and unresponsive to individual needs; nor will they tolerate inefficiency or poor value for money; nor will they permit governments to make important collective decisions without public scrutiny, consultation and the opportunity for democratic participation. The availability of Information Society Technologies makes it possible to address these challenges, not by automating the same procedures and processes which they use today, but through a deep "re-engineering" of activity.
Research, Technology Development and Demonstration should be organised around the following five substantive action lines
The following issues will be addressed in the implementation of the programme:
The public administration and government strand of the Fifth Framework Programme cannot expect to solve all of the issues, but certainly must provide a critical contribution in this context, and must address its objectives with a clear view and understanding of the surrounding or related issues, keeping the interest of the citizen at the heart of its concerns.
NB: Rappelons que les Programmes de Recherche européens ne visent pas à définir des politiques publiques que reprendraient les Gouvernements ou la Commission, mais plutôt des principes généraux dans lesquels inscrire les appels d'offre et les projets. Nous pouvons cependant considérer que le présent rapport devrait aussi servir de référence aux gouvernements dans leur difficile quête d'une statégie nationale et européenne face aux enjeux de la société de l'information, et de la concurrence internationale.
Une autre remarque générale peut être faite à ce niveau: à une époque où les experts ne jurent plus que par Internet/Intranet, ces mots ne sont que peu employés dans le rapport. Cela peut tenir à une bonne raison: les auteurs incluent Internet parmi les diverses technologies qu'ils visent. Mais aussi à une moins bonne: habitués à raisonner sur plusieurs années, en tablant sur des technologies et usages évoluant relativement lentement, ils ont du mal à intégrer un phénomène qui peut, en 6 mois, changer la problématique entière d'une stratégie de RD.
Imagine this: Across Europe, public administrations all the way from single municipalities to national governments are viewed as lean, "user-friendly", responsive, accessible, transparent, and a model for excellence of results in the usage of Information Society Technologies. Public authorities share and make full use of all the information at their disposal to constantly monitor citizens' needs and to respond to them rapidly. Full and multi-cultural support is given for the freedoms of movements of people, capital, goods, services and information. With the help of technology and market mechanisms, information and services are affordably and securely available by anyone, anytime and anyplace.
We are only in the beginning of the Information Society and the fundamental industrial and social change which it entails. Information Society Technologies are permeating every kind of industrial activities and all aspects of society. Their economic and social impact far exceeds that of the industries which directly produce information and communications equipment and services.
Government, public administration and public services are central to the development of a efficient, effective, equitable, open and accountable Information Society in Europe. The public sector in Europe is responsible for over 40% of GDP and is therefore central to creating critical mass, educating users, raising awareness and spreading effective demand. As democratically legitimated bodies serving the public interest, public administrations and governments are central to building on the commercial and entertainment uses of information society technologies and extending the information society into the fields of democratic decision-making, accountability, community building, economic development and support for civil society. Last, but by no means least, public administrations are key players in protecting the weaker members of society and are therefore central to the prevention of a two tier information society.
The Fifth Framework Program must help the goods, services and methods made possible by the Information Society Technologies to contribute to the political goals of the Union and to the creation of a user-friendly Information Society. Excellence is the overriding criterion in the pursuit of:
In this process governments and public administrations have a key role due to their responsibility for both the distribution of publicly provided goods and services and for the formulation, implementation and safeguarding of society's rules. The intertwined relationship between information society, its governance, and its technologies, underlines the importance of the synergy between the Information Society Technologies support from the Fifth Framework Programme and the public administrations at all levels from individual municipalities to the national governments and European administrations.
The information society is, of course, still a society of citizens, not "virtual netizens". There are, and will continue to be, geographical connotations associated with the ways each one of us lives, raises a family, studies, works and retires. The governance and organisation of rural communities, towns, cities and regions/länder varies considerably between EU member states. And what is regarded as a core tax-funded government function in one member state may well be privately financed and operated in another location.
Systems and services for the citizens and society as a whole are the essence and raison d'être of government and public administration. The roles and scope of public administrations varies across levels of government and nations. And it is impossible to project what any public administration will look like ten years further into the Information Society. But there can be no question that governments and administrations need to perform their functions efficiently and effectively, fairly and equitably, and in and open and accountable manner.
NB: l'approche ainsi esquissée de l'administration européenne présente l'intérêt d'inclure la diversité, non seulement des traditions nationales, mais des collectivités régionales et locales. Malgré cette diversité, la nécessité d'une philosophie commune face à la société de l'information et aux déformations que peuvent en donner des approches purement marchandes, est caractéristique de la culture démocratique à laquelle l'Europe reste encore attachée.
Information Society Technologies must meet users' and consumers' expectations and requirements and the need to provide them with access, at the lowest cost, to quality general-purpose and specifically targeted services. Citizens are no longer prepared to accept public services which are "mass produced" and unresponsive to individual needs; nor will they tolerate inefficiency or poor value for money; nor will they permit governments to make important collective decisions with out public scrutiny, consultation and the opportunity for democratic participation. Public administrations are therefore in need of radically new ways to provide services to the citizens and the business community.
NB: cette revendication "citoyenne", à son tour, s'impose pour rappeler aux administrations européennes que, même lorsque l'on reconnait leur utilité, l'on n'accepte plus d'elles qu'elles ignorent les exigences minimum du public.
The availability of Information Society Technologies for infrastructure and support makes possible the implementation of these changes in an effective and user-friendly way. The challenge to the administrations is not to switch to new technologies by automating the same procedures and processes which they use today: rather a deep "re-engineering" of activity is oftentimes desirable, even mandatory. All such changes require political decisions and wide-spread acceptance by the staff involved: this requires time, a clear understanding of the objectives and the means to achieve them, together with an adequate set of accompanying measures to increase awareness and "train" both the end-users and personnel.
The public administration and government strand of the Fifth Framework Programme cannot expect to solve all of the issues, but certainly can provide a critical element in this context, and must address its objectives with a clear view and understanding of the surrounding or related issues. To fail to do so would lead to 'solutions' which cannot be implemented in the real world with which public administrations must deal. Elaboration and testing of the possible Information Society Technologies solutions which are designed to support the political options open for implementation at the various levels of the public administrations, must be a key objective of any research aimed at helping these administrations.
NB: l'appel est clairement fait aux gouvernements pour qu'ils définissent dorénavant une politique de la coopération administrative européenne au travers des réseaux. Le moins que l'on puisse dire est que cette politique n'existe pas encore.
We can outline the current trends in the field of government under a number of headings.
Public authorities are having to face these trends and challenges with an organisational legacy of monolithic functional or territorial bureaucracies. Increasingly, it is being recognised that greater integration of functions is required in order to have the flexibility to meet these challenges. However, such integration requires new management techniques which can meet stringent requirements for democratic accountability, privacy and security of information and equity in service provision.
NB: ce "cahier des charges" définit, peu ou prou, les contours de ce que devrait être, dans chaque pays, la Réforme de l'Etat, dont l'on parle beaucoup, mais que l'on fait peu.
Many groups can be regarded as users Information Society Technologies in government and public administration including:
NB: peut-être faut-il mentionner, spécifiquement, le quart-monde des exclus de toutes natures, dont l'indispensable réintégration exige des dispositifs spécifiques.
The needs interests of all these actors - as well as those of technology developers and telecommunications and telematics suppliers - will need to be addressed if progress is to be made.
For all categories of users, needs evolve in interaction with technical, economic and social possibilities - while a television or telephone was once a luxury, today it can increasingly be regarded as a necessity. Therefore, user needs cannot be fully specified in advance. Rather, they must be constantly monitored and evaluated. Nevertheless, a wide range of user needs can be identified now.
Citizens require simple seamless access to multiple sources of public information (combining services from local, regional and national level) and to communications channels to public administrations, elected representatives and direct service providers in order to manage their everyday lives on the basis of informed decision-making. This must include access to democratic decision-making processes including clear, timely, rapid and easy access to public information and opportunities for consultation, democratic participation and for forming new social networks regardless of their location within the EU. They require information and communication provision to be as user-friendly and consistent in look and feel as possible, to be available at a very low or no cost, to have alternative multi-media interfaces (including audio, graphical/iconic), and to have a multi-lingual interface capability.
Systems and service development need to take account of the specific needs of disabled, elderly people, and other disadvantaged groups throughout the development process. If systems and services can meet the needs of the disadvantaged groups, they will be better able to meet the needs of the majority.
Citizens require consultation in the design stage, as well as awareness raising, support, guidance and training in the demonstration and implementation stages to extract the maximum benefit from information and communication provision.
Public administrations and their employees, subcontractors and other partners need to improve their internal cost-effectiveness and efficiency. They need to improve the effectiveness of their internal systems, their responsiveness to citizens and other clients, and the general quality of their public services.
In order to achieve this, they need open systems for direct access by members of the public; they need to be able to eliminate redundancy and duplication in information collection, storage and processing; they need to be able to integrate service provision across functions and levels; they need training in the management and use of new technologies; they need mechanisms to ensure the security and privacy of interactive public teleservices and the authenticity and reliability of information.
Private firms and businesses share many of the needs of citizens and households - seamless access to multiple sources of public information and to communications channels to public administrations and direct service providers. However, a particular emphasis for private business and the voluntary organisations should be on the reduction of their administrative overhead in terms of interaction with public administrations (including formal transactions). Further, they require increasingly rapid responses to their requests for information and services in support of their economic competitiveness. They require secure and robust systems that can protect commercial confidentiality.
NB; c'est particulièrement le cas des PME/PMI, professions libérales et individuelles, dont l'on fait aujourd'hui grand cas pour relancer l'investissement et la croissance.
Public representatives may want to use the possibilities of telematics for strengthening the democratic processes. Many citizens are increasingly asking for justification from the political process. Other groups are becoming disillusioned with the political world. This can be overcome by installing procedures for direct communication between individuals or groups and politicians, through opinion polls, on-line voting, and better dissemination of information about decisions. Confidentiality (security, anonymity, etc.) is again a vital element. Universality and equality of access to the political process is a requirement for democratic legitimacy and therefore a high level of accessibility (i.e., some form of universal service) is required.
The needs of this sector, due to their dual role as both advocates of citizen interests and, often, as service providers (usually in partnership with the public sector) combine those of citizens themselves with those of service providers, public administrations and private businesses.
NB: l'association Admiroutes ne peut qu'apprécier ce paragraphe :-)
As a result of the Fourth Framework Programme and other actions we may expect, by 1998, a significant number experimental and pilot projects at local, regional, national and European level providing communications infrastructures on which to test a range of telematics applications related to governance and service provision. These infrastructures vary considerably in their sophistication and level of development.
While these various initiatives will have laid down a basis of experimentation in a wide variety of spheres, they remain limited in a number of respects:
NB: sans accuser personne nommément, il faudrait aller plus loin dans la critique. Du fait du manque d'implication des gouvernements et des administrations nationales, notamment, l'essentiel des programmes et des projets n'a pas eu de suite pratique, tout au moins en France.
At the same time, a number of key lessons can be learned from these experiments and demonstrations:
All of these issues will need to be addressed in the Fifth Framework Programme.
At a general level RTD related to public administrations under the fifth framework programme needs to be driven by social and organisational needs rather than technological possibilities. In particular, integration projects should be locally driven, including the active participation of all functional departments and territorial levels of public administration directly concerned, as well as relevant partners and subcontractors. They should place the ultimate needs of citizens in their economic, political and cultural roles at the centre. A key focus of action should be on the active demonstration of Information Society technologies in the domain of public administration in order to overcome the low levels of awareness of the opportunities and scepticism as to the ultimate benefits of Information Society Technologies for public administrations. Demonstration will also help to trigger the awareness of new needs and opportunities.
Part II - RTD Action Lines
The following action lines should be regarded as of equal weight and importance.
The goal of this action line is to improve the internal effectiveness of public administrations and the interaction between different levels and different functions within public administrations.
Public administrations are organised in large number of functionally and territorially focused organisations, leading to confusion (on the part of the public) and wasteful duplication. The application of Information Society Technologies presents an opportunity to drastically reduce such confusion and duplication while still respecting the constitutional and organisational concerns of particular tiers or departments and thus dramatically improve the internal efficiency of public administration as a whole.
Today, the citizen (and other organisations) are forced to interact with a bewildering profusion of government bodies, both those concerned with different functions (e.g, tax collection, street cleaning, health and safety, education and training, etc.) and different levels (local, regional, national and EU). Each of these functional and territorial administrations operates in a more or less discrete model, making little use of the wealth of information gathered by other tiers and functions of government and administration. The lack of interaction between different tiers and functions leads to duplication and confusion, for example the repeated provision of the same information by citizens and firms.
Studies, demonstrations and evaluation are required into the potential for a re-engineering of government, on the basis of Information Society Technologies, to permit a re-orientation of government away from separate and overlapping functional and territorial bureaucracies and towards a focus on the process of government interaction with citizens, firms and other organisations such that the citizen perceives government as a single organisation which collects information once and is capable of responding to his or her individual circumstances rather than providing a "one size fits all" service.
NB: il s'agit d'un des aspects les plus difficiles de la réforme administrative, qui se heurte à d'innombrables intérêts bien décidés à ce que rien ne bouge. Il est difficile d'envisager que des programmes de recherche, essentiellement proposés par des industriels ou universitaires, s'attaquent avec quelque chance de succès à de tels objectifs, sans le soutien de politiques gouvernementales déterminées.
Studies of the information requirements of various tiers and functions of public administration and of the issues relating to the distributed storage of such data (access, lifespan, media, responsibilities and control). Development, demonstrations and evaluation of cross functional and multi-tier archiving and warehousing of data and its retrieval are required.
Such models enable different types of information to be stored, indexed and accessed by professionals within public administrations or by "intelligent agents" acting on their behalf. Such models will need to specify the rules which control rights of access to information and the ability to communicate it to others, legal rights over information and other issues such as version management for documents and the accompanying human resource management issues. For the development of integrated applications, such a clear set of rules specifying the technical interfaces between various telematics systems is essential, the boundaries to data access for particular systems, the order in which complex tasks are processed, and so on. Such process and data models are, for example, a very important basis for even relatively simple tasks such as the use of workflow applications for the management of the electronic documents within a single organisation. For the development of integrated applications spanning a number of boundaries between a heterogeneous set of organisations, such models are even more important. Such models are also necessary if new procedures and processes are to be able to smoothly supersede legacy systems.
Administrative registers guaranteeing the telematic interchange between registers of the same/different administration(s). including: Identification and standardisation of administrative objects (identifiers, applications, cases...); Inter-organisations (administrations and others) workflow; certification of electronic transactions within public administrations.
NB: là encore, l'identification des entités (citoyens, entreprises) constitue un objectif heurtant de tels intérêts (ceux notamment de la fraude, sous toutes ses formes), qu'elle ne sera possible qu'avec la volonté de tous les Etats, sanctionnée par des accords diplomatiques précis.
Information Management including the capture and management of large data bases and of archive material (text, geographical information, images, audio, video) and distributed storage on various media so that information can be delivered to users without delay and in a form that matches their requirements.
Internal Training of the administrations needs to be addressed.
Single Business Number Identifiers for government to enable access to company information to be obtained from a single source. Uniform taxation procedures could also be addressed.
The goal of this action line is to improve the quality of publicly-funded services (whether delivered by public administrations themselves or by third parties) for citizens (including individuals, domestic households, enterprises, tourists, visitors, etc.) through sharing individual, aggregate and geographical data between various functions of public administration and their direct service providers.
The provision of public services is one of public administrations' key roles. Information Society Technologies provide an opportunity to undertake a step change in the quality of public service provision and increase coverage while at the same time maintaining control over, and ultimately reducing, the costs of such provision. Such an ambitious goal will require a wide range of actions.
Public administrations and their service providers already collect vast amounts of information which could be made much more available to the citizens, firms and other organisations which have provided it and paid for its collection. Many public services are primarily comprised of information. Other public services require citizen access to information if their usefulness is to be maximised.
Development, design, demonstration and evaluation work is required in the field of improving the accessibility (e.g. accessing the services in various languages), legibility and navigability of information relating to public services through integrated systems with a multi-platform capability.
Many publicly funded services cannot be provided, or fully provided, via electronic systems (e.g., in the fields of, health and safety, public transport, fire service and policing, education and training, physical planning, sanitation and cleansing, etc.). At the same time, the uneven distribution of advanced infrastructures and the costs of terminals and subscriptions mean that in many areas which can technically be delivered by electronic means, these will remain beyond the reach of many citizens.
Development, design, demonstration and evaluation work is required in the use of Information Society Technologies (e.g., mobile terminals) to support improved levels of service responsiveness and quality by providing much better support for those directly responsible for the delivery of services.
Many public services are presented on a "one size fits all", or at best "pret a porter" basis, based on averages or aggregates or citizen needs and tending towards the lowest common denominator. Information Society Technologies may be able to help to provide a much more flexible, personalised and 'tailored' services without increasing costs.
Studies, development work, demonstrations and evaluation should be focused on the opportunities for public services to become far more 'user driven', placing the individual citizen in control of the mode and timing of service delivery.
Wherever possible, integrated applications should be based on a conceptual model and business re-engineering process that develops a government on-line service which can run on any platform.
Actions should include the use of teletext, smart card usage, pagers, automatic digital telephone services and other low cost services, alongside existing public and private networks and high bandwidth services to enable poorer regions to benefit from the fifth framework.
NB: à remarquer la mention, qui aurait mérité d'être développée, à la carte à puce. (cf. Rapport Carte)
Improved efficiency and on-line access to electronic governmental services can only be achieved if the quality of the organisation and communication procedures of the involved public services are of sufficient quality themselves. The provision of Government on-line will therefore require a fundamental re-engineering of the whole service delivery process in order to realise the potential cost saving and quality improvements which telematics can offer.
If public administration and services are to be provided to citizens in a seamless manner, based around the everyday processes of citizens, firms and other clients, then new business processes will be needed to integrate various services and administrative procedures across a range of domains (health, social services, education and training, permits and licences, transport, etc.).
If some of the benefits of the market economy are to be captured for the administration, the citizen and commerce, effective electronic communication, information flow and service delivery must be established between the service providers and the consumer. This implies a change in the role of the administration, perhaps to one in which they specify minimum requirements in these fields, and conduct subsequent qualitative and quantitative audits of third party service providers.
A prime requirement for improving the delivery of public services and information is comprehensive data and process models to govern the exchange of individual and aggregated information between public administrations and those responsible for service delivery. Such models will need to specify the rules which control rights of access to information and the ability to communicate it to others, legal rights over information and issues such authentication and security. Such models need to specify a clear set of rules specifying the technical interfaces between various telematics systems, the boundaries to data access for particular systems, the order in which complex tasks are processed, and so on.
Integrated service information available via a variety of low cost platforms (kiosks, home or work computers, set-top boxes, hand held terminals, with audio facilities together with systems based on mobile terminals to support front line service providers. Low cost content creation systems are required to permit the rapid production and updating of service information. Remote monitoring of service quality should also be considered. Sharing individual, aggregate and geographic data across different functions should be encouraged subject to privacy and data protection constraints. Internal training and human resource management issues should be investigated.
The goal of this action line is to assist citizens to take a more active part in shaping the decisions concerning the use of public powers and resources which effect their lives.
Freely available information is vital to the healthy functioning of democracy and the public oversight of government activities. Information Society Technologies can be used to vastly improve the quality, quantity and navigability of public information. The focus must be on the provision of relevant information in a timely and accessible form to all citizens affected by decisions and providing the opportunity for a more continuous involvement in democratic processes rather than simply periodic ballot-box interaction.
Effective democratic decision-making requires easy interaction between private citizens, elected representatives and those who are charged with advising on, and implementing, decisions.
R&TD in the field of information society technologies should be oriented to helping to find better ways of permitting and encouraging citizens to actively participate in the management of political affairs. This could be particularly true with regard to creating new electronic mechanisms in support of a more direct democracy, allowing citizens to get closer to their political representatives and to the professionals in public administrations that advise them.
Decision-making processes can benefit from better, wider and more interactive consultation procedures.
Studies and demonstrations should explore the opportunities for allowing instantaneous electronic polls, hearings, referenda, "electronic town meetings", elections and so on, as a means of reinforcing democratic management of society.
Democratic decision making is predicated on the existence of a "public sphere" in which citizens can debate issues freely.
Technologies to support co-operative environments, support discussion and decision environments tailored to meet the psychological and sociological requirements for informed debate. Studies, development work, demonstrations and evaluation are required to explore the possibilities.
Tele-democracy experiments: development of platforms to facilitate widespread and direct participation in the democratic debate (public hearings, consultations and referendums, the organisation of elections, communication with individual parliament and council members, better dissemination of the results of decisions, information on the decision making process);
Platforms for virtual (distributed electronic) meetings involving democratic representatives (councils, committees, parliaments, working groups, etc.). Facilities for information sharing and multiple forms of virtual dialogue among members of local communities (new paradigms for human-machine interfaces, etc.); to encourage and to extend democracy participation; development of tools to support participation of citizens in moderated discussions and in joint planning and decision making processes, to support co-operative document and workflow handling; open government and the provision of electronic information regarding public management.
Development of very low cost platforms to facilitate widespread and direct participation in the democratic debate (public hearings, consultations and referendums, the organisation of elections, communication with individual parliament and council members, results of decisions, information on the decision making process).
This action line is devoted to the creation of integrated information and communication services, combining in a seamless way multiple services from all the levels of public governments, eventually integrating with services provided by non-public information providers.
The organisation and procedures of government and public administration should become transparent to the public. Instead of government being perceived in terms of a number of separate and unrelated entities, it should present seamless and personalised sets of services to their users. Such actions will bring an important added value, magnifying the external effectiveness and internal efficiency of individual applications as developed under the other RTD action lines. The creation and delivery of integrated applications is almost impossible without re-engineering the administrative organisation and procedures. Therefore, integrated applications are strong drivers and enablers of organisational change. Vertical integration and the integration with services of non-public actors (see below) should be designed to trigger and reinforce collaborations of multiple economical and social actors.
NB: ce thème de la coopération entre offre publique et offre privée , sous forme de "bouquets de services" d'information en ligne, est essentiel à la réalisation pratique de projets susceptibles d'intéresser le grand public. Il n'est pas assez développé dans ce rapport, sous l'angle opérationnel tout au moins..
Horizontal integration deals with seamless combinations of different services targeted at a geographically defined group of citizens (e.g. local, regional or national level) and should seek to integrate together all publicly funded services provided to that population, from what ever level of government they originate Typically, actions under this action line will be triggered and managed by one public authority (integrating all or part of its services) or by multiple authorities of the same level (with the purpose of creating trans-authority services).
Studies, development work, demonstrations and evaluation are required to facilitate such horizontal integration.
Vertical integration implies the combination of services from multiple government levels (e.g. an integrated tax-collection system including taxes from national, regional and local authorities).
Studies, development work, demonstrations and evaluation are required to facilitate such vertical integration.
Governments do not deal exclusively with their own administrations. They also try to realise public policies which involve all social and economic actors. Such public policy goals are not usually attainable by the mechanisms of the free market (e.g. the reduction of traffic, the protection of the environment, etc.). Legislation and the associated procedures are the most important tools overcome such market failure. But the success of these policies depends heavily on the involvement of a diverse set of community actors (public and non-public) and governments may therefore seek to facilitate the integration of services from both public and non-public providers. Integration of public services with commercial and NGO offerings also offers major opportunities for cost saving based on economies of scope and scale.
Studies and development work are required to establish the technical, legal and organisational requirements for such integration
It is likely that a particular service will become a building block for multiple integrated applications (e.g. a national service as part of independent integrated applications offered by different local authorities). In order to prevent multiple developments of tailor-made integration, individual services should have standard communication interfaces, guaranteeing interoperability.
Studies, demonstration and evaluation work will be required.
Integration is not the simple union of two or more simple applications. Integration must be simultaneously on all levels: infrastructure (i.e. networks, workstations, operating systems, etc.), logic (applications, rules, etc.), information elements (data), as well as management and work process.
Methodologies and standards will need to be developed to ensure that integration can take place smoothly at each of these levels.
In the context of the creation of integrated applications with public and non-public providers, it is important to prevent European funding being devoted to developing the services of non-public providers if they would emerge anyway from normal economic market mechanisms. In such cases, funding should be restricted to the development of the integration of the service as such.
The goal of this action line is to help public administrations to manage change arising from the Enlargement of the EU, from Monetary Union and to support for the four freedoms - the freedom of movement of labour, goods, services and capital - within the European Union.
NB: ce point devrait permettre de faire un lien, qui n'est pas fait au sein de la Commission, entre les Programmes de RD et les programmes opérationnels de coopération administrative, notamment IDA. C'est aux Etats-membres qu'il appartiendra, en priorité, d'assurer la continuité entre ces niveaux complémentaires de réalisation.
How the pressures for expansion (widening), and further integration (deepening) are designed will be of key importance in determining the future evolution of the EU. Policy deepening is likely to consider how the remaining barriers to free movement will be removed and integration arising from Monetary Union and enlargement of the EU. Institutional deepening will require many improvements changes in the decision-making framework and to the size and structure of public administrations at EU, national, regional and local levels.
As public administrations move towards further integration arising from closer economic and monetary union, the need for a smooth transition is essential. Public administrations will therefore require solutions to the problems created by closer economic and monetary union through the innovative use of Information Society technologies, services and products.
To identify and support the development of applications to support the free movement of people.
As industry seeks to establish new business opportunities within the EU and EU citizens increasingly travel across the EU for employment and leisure, there is a need for public administrations to improve the efficiency of the Internal Market in order to speed the movement of people whilst assuring at the same time adequate controls at national frontiers where this is deemed appropriate and to prevent crime in this huge market.
Today, the explosion in the mobile telephone and portable PC market, demonstrates the need and acceptability for access to information for citizens on the move. As citizen's expectations grow in line with access to public information, increasingly citizens will expect to be able to access public information regardless of distance and language via fixed and mobile terminals.
As competition grows through market forces and deregulation, public administrations will face an ever increasing "paper mountain" in response to advertisements in the Official Journal of the European Communities. Inevitably, this leads to costs and risks to businesses and public administrations through dissemination of information and processing of any resultant bids with delays in the realisation of benefits. Widening and deepening of the Internal Market will add to these difficulties. Therefore the public procurement process needs to be improved to enable public administrations to share information on purchased services and to accelerate the process of procurement whilst retaining public accountability, and maintaining industry competitiveness.
Widening of the EU will require the need to provide additional language translation facilities will add to the burden of delivery of official documents in member states' languages. RTD work, studies and demonstrations are required to enable access to translated public information to citizens across the EU to encourage and to extend democratic participation.
Development of methods and supporting tools for piloting business re-engineering in the EU Administrations this framework shall aim at ensuring consistency and uniform application of EU legislation, while dealing with the cultural diversity within the EU.
Banking Support: actions to encourage the banks and financial services of the enterprises to exploit the assets of Monetary Union and the Euro: On-Line payment in Euro, electronic Euro purse, standardised banking, etc.
Euro Conversion: Actions to support the conversion to the Euro the existing common applications (customs, statistics etc.) and to develop common tools for strategic analysis, re-engineering of applications, conversion and training.
NB: les exigences spécifiques découlant du passage à l'euro pour les systèmes informatiques et statistiques des administrations devront être précisées ici.
Support for the four freedoms: Multimedia systems to support the authentication/security/policing aspects of the Schengen and Maastricht treaties (e.g. identification and tracing of people and objects, digitalisation and archiving of items, networking and intelligence transfer; resource management, external borders, immigration, anti-fraud measures, money laundering).
Surveillance: All warning systems networks and surveillance of potentially dangerous phenomena and movements: medical, pharmaceutical, veterinary, environmental surveillance, etc.
The struggle against fraud and organised crime smuggling and forgery, fiscal fraud, illegal immigration, criminality, etc.
Voice Recognition/Vocal Interfaces to improve the electronic delivery of these services and to increase user friendliness
Electronic public purchasing: Identify the administrative electronic procedures which will oblige enterprises, among others the SME, to use the networks.
NB: ce point est essentiel pour assurer la contribution des administrations à la généralisation du Commerce Eectronique au sein des entreprises européennes.
Language Services: Enhanced systems addressing the enlargement of the Union (increase in the number of official languages and alphabets, protection of cultural identity).
For administrations to capture the cost savings necessary to fund the migration to the information society, it is necessary to re-engineer many functions by cutting out administrative layers and maximising economies of scope in service provision and provides a seamless inter-face to government for citizens and businesses. To achieve this will require a substantial degree of top-down integration.
For the Citizen to fully accept services platforms to complete the transition from primarily paper to a primarily electronic service delivery, it is necessary that the services are delivered in an integrated way which:
If the integrated services are not complete and available when and where expected, the citizens will not use them as the point of first call and the administrations will be left to support partial telematic services as an extra cost, which is not sustainable.
To ensure that all actors are involved, and thus that systems and services can be developed, demonstrated and ultimately implemented which meet the needs of all sections of society, actions could usefully concentrate on the local communication needs of particular communities as a starting point.
The horizontal transferability of applications is one of the most important elements in the development of integrated applications, in particular if European support for the development of such applications is made conditional on the production of before and after information flows, cost benefit analyses, business re-engineering plans, and measures for technical, linguistic and cultural transferability.
The structured integration of applications also provides the opportunity to begin to change the culture and behaviour of administrations, businesses, citizens and service providers to achieve policy objectives rather than gaining incremental benefits by simply providing passive information or automating existing procedures.
An important implementation issue is how to bring results out to the citizens and thereby get the only "real" evaluation impact of proposed solutions and in particular of the ways in which the impacts of a number of telematics applications interact with each other. Evaluation should be undertaken simultaneously with the development of integrated applications and not only ex post.
In daily life, businesses and citizens do not exclusively communicate with the public authorities. Governments and administrations must therefore go further than integrating only their own services, thereby creating artificial boundaries between the public and the commercial services. Integration with commercial or semi-commercial service providers should be the goal.
Pan-European research in this field is vital. Pan-European research can help to avoid the duplication of effort between and within Member States. It can also support the objective of a single European market in services, and the exchange of cultural values, increase European tourism, exchange good best practise, and develop markets for the European telematics industry.
European added value should be ensured at the programme level and all projects will contribute to this. There should, however, be a mixture of actions, some targeted at directly addressing a EU-wide agenda and others which are highly locally focused but which make a more indirect contribution to the European dimension of the programme.
Whereas the majority of international co-operation has in the past been undertaken at the governmental level, there is a compelling case for sub-national levels of government (cities, regions and other local actors) to build on the transnational co-operation established under the Fourth Framework Programme.
While focusing on European needs, international co-operation is essential in two aspects:
Collaboration should be established between the programme and others relevant to these goals such as the G7 Government on Line programme and the Phare programme.
The major changes in the organisation and processes of governments and public administrations, which are necessary to reap the full benefits of Government On Line, will inevitably have a range of effects, some of which cannot be foreseen. Experimental and demonstration projects will need to give a significant amount of resources to the monitoring and evaluation of the broader socio-economic consequences of the development of Government On Line
Some groups may be directly adversely affected by changes which are demonstrably in the overall public interest and will not necessarily accept those changes willingly. The existing public service workforce and professionals in administrations may feel particularly threatened. Mechanisms for incorporating and addressing these concerns must be included in projects.
The number of households connected to electronic information networks is set to triple world-wide between 1996 and the year 2000 to a total of 100 million, including 30 million in Europe. However, this means that there will remain many households which do not have access to new networks. The Framework Programme as a whole, and above all in the field of public administrations where equity is a prime concern, should also be concerned with ways of improving services to these households.
To allow specific underprivileged or disadvantaged groups to gain the maximum benefit, and to ensure high quality services for all citizens, actions should take these needs of these groups into account throughout their duration as well as addressing them through special actions.
It is not possible in resource terms to go for the "big bang" approach, and put all public services, at all tiers of government, on line at once, the development path for government on-line must therefore be very carefully market-researched to determine which services the public will regard as complete and coherent information set on a functional basis, and what the minimum access network requirements are.
Flexibility is the most important characteristic of the Fifth Framework Programme. This is stressed by the growing pace of change in technology and market take-up. Products, platforms and services in the telematics area become obsolete more quickly than ever before.
NB: ces paragraphes traduisent -sans doute encore insuffisamment- la prise de conscience du changement dans la vitesse des évolutions technologiques et des pressions de concurrence découlant du développement d'Internet.
The risk of the programme loosing momentum over time by or by drifting out-of-focus, is naturally linked to the flexibility aspects. To minimise this risk, in addition establishing management tools for the programme, specific requirements can be applied to projects, such as short term targets and results, integration with other programmes and initiatives, and partnership between public and private bodies who are outside the programme, but play a key role in the process of addressing the detailed needs.
In the context of the management of the programme, it is important that there is continuing broad representation from all interested parties, including public authorities at all levels and industry. Specific actions will be required to ensure that programme management can monitor the development of both technology and of the culture, skills, and capabilities of public administrations throughout the life of the programme.
The entire Fifth Framework Programme is required to operate in an environment of extremely rapid technological change. At this stage of development of the programme it would be foolish to attempt to tell too precisely which technologies will be available or emerging at the beginning, let alone the end, of the programme. We can however indicate the existing and emerging technologies would be appropriate today though the following non-exclusive list: compression algorithms; Geographical Information Systems (GIS); Geographical Positioning Systems (GPS); smart cards; mobile terminals; voice recognition technologies; automated translation technologies; workflow management technologies; multimedia Groupware systems; set top boxes; distributed database systems; knowledge-based systems; intelligent agents; extended Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) systems; encryption, privacy, authentication and security technologies; next generations of internet technology, etc.
It should be emphasised that projects should use the most appropriate technologies for the tasks in hand and not advanced technology for technologies sake.
The programme should make innovative use of technologies developed and developing elsewhere within the Fifth Framework Programme, and, on the basis of the user involvement in this area, help to guide future technology development in those areas.
While avoiding duplication and making the maximum use of existing and emerging technologies, it is vital that basic applied research is included within the government and public administration element of the Fifth framework programme in order to address the specific issues related to public administrations.
Government and public administrations hold a vast quantity of individually or commercially sensitive data. While much of this information can be made much more widely available than at present, it is vital for public trust in the security of government data to be maintained or even enhanced.
The delivery of public services and information will, in cases where services are not universally available, requires reliable and robust means of authentication and protection for the privacy and legal protection of both clients and service providers, the control of fraud, etc.
Actions will be required across the whole programme to develop, test and evaluate easy to use and robust systems for authentication and the maintenance of privacy and security of data. Studies on the legal and practical implications of improving the sharing of data between various government functions and tiers and issues such as Intellectual Property Rights, legal rights of access and data protection, authentication will also be required.
Projects should place the citizen (including the businesses and other organisations as clients of the administrations) in the focus of their developments, rather than technological goals or internal organisational issues. Project goals should be clearly defined in terms of less crime, more jobs, better education, quicker service, better decision making, faster adaptation to change, etc. rather than in terms of technological parameters.
The goal of this action line is to improve the internal effectiveness of public administrations and the interaction between different levels and different functions within public administrations.
The goal of this action line is to improve the quality of publicly-funded services (whether delivered by public administrations themselves or by third parties) for citizens (including individuals, domestic households, enterprises, tourists, visitors, etc.) through sharing individual, aggregate and geographical data between various functions of public administration and their direct service providers.
The goal of this action line is to assist citizens to take a more active part in shaping the decisions concerning the use of public powers and resources which effect their lives.
This action line is devoted to the creation of integrated information and communication services, combining in a seamless way multiple services from all the levels of public governments, eventually integrating with services provided by non-public information providers.
The goal of this action line is to help public administrations to manage change arising from the Enlargement of the EU, from Monetary Union and to support for the four freedoms - the freedom of movement of labour, goods, services and capital - within the European Union.
Content generation; multimedia databases; searching and navigation systems; language and translation technologies; GIS and GPS; Groupware and workflow technologies; On-Line payment systems; electronic purse, Multimedia systems to support the authentication/security/policing; digitalisation and distributed archiving of items, networking and intelligence transfer; resource management systems, remote surveillance and early warning systems; voice recognition/vocal interfaces; language engineering; mobile terminals, smart cards; set top boxes; next generations of the internet, etc.
Commentaire final: certains trouveront peut-être un peu loin des réalités opérationnelles cette énumération d'objectifs et d'outils. Il faut se rappeler que le rapport ne prétend pas constituer un projet politique pour le passage des administrations européennes à la société de l'information.
L'élaboration d'un tel projet n'en est que plus nécessaire, tant au niveau de chacun des Etats-membres de l'Union que des Institutions Européennes. L'on pourra consulter sur ce sujet les nombreux autres documents d'Admiroutes, publiés soit dans la rubrique Europe, soit dans la rubrique Politique.