E-Governance in the EU

How essential are laws and regulations when the government connects with citizens over the internet?  How do they structure the release of information across departments; or into the great wide open?  How does federal policy shape state policy?  How do localities fit into the picture, and what role does executive leadership play in the process?  These are just a few of the questions posed by Krassimira Paskaleva-Shapira in her 2006  article, Transitioning from e-Government to e-Governance in the Knowledge Society.

Focusing her research on the EU, Krassimira believes that the legal and regulatory framework enabling e-governance is an essential element in advancing such initiatives.  Nations in Europe will need to strategically pursue a common ground for international collaboration and, most importantly, safety.  One large assurance, though, is that the European Union has foreseen technology’s impact on governance for nearly a decade.  This provides nations with some common directives for interpreting the schema of things to come, but it has not ensured coordinated collaboration.

The EU has embraced the idea, stating that it can improve citizen-centered services and government processes, advance the democratic process, and promote more inclusive decision-making processes.  The governing body also believes that e-governance is a “potential provider of major economic boost”, which means they believe there is a market for the delivery of new and old services (applications for permits, interactive bus schedules, etc.), and the government can become a regulatory power in that market.  Meanwhile, one of the most basic issues at hand is the definition of e-governance.

There is little consensus on the term’s exact definition but, there is general agreement on both the challenges that lay ahead and the terminology that will be used, so I guess that’s a step forward.  If we are on our way to more collaborative governance, will a more navigable international landscape catalyze international innovation?  I believe the answer is yes, but privacy, security, and the sanctity of our representative institutions need to be properly addressed.

The EU is working on some policy directives regarding e-governance.  Krassimira states,

E-Government now becomes an issue of not solely technology – it is also about reinventing the way in which service providers and customers interact and transform government processes, provide leadership, and enable economic development, and reinvent the role of government itself in society.

This is a lofty statement – that government will be reinvented thanks to technology – but it is not entirely unforeseen.  At least in the US, many government agencies have shifted from service delivery to service management, and streamlined approaches to coordination continue to evolve within the government sector.  What’s most important, though, is that the EU places a great deal of power into the hands of service providers and citizens.  In America, many scoff at the anti-competitive, pro-business track records of service providers – i.e. AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, Apple – and organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Harvard Law’s Berkman Center continue to champion the rights of individuals on the internet.  Perhaps this is one of the fundamental reasons why the EU has decided to include providers in their directives.  For instance, the basic need of access and the digital divide still needs to be mitigated through a partnership of these businesses and local governments.

Krassimira continues and addresses the different levels of coordination at play in developing an e-governance framework.  There are “a variety of impediments, including legislative and regulatory barriers, budgetary frameworks, digital divide, institutional traditionalism, bureaucracy, and lack of action.”  Additionally, successful implementation requires organizational restructuring (a major theme of this paper), ICT support, increased stakeholder involvement, and posturing of the government’s contextual role within the region.

How have federal, regional, and local governments navigated this evolving landscape?  Krassimira suggests that one building block is a reorganization of back offices.  There are roadblocks here, though: “Legal restrictions, for example on data sharing between agencies, can pose difficulties to data integration between administrative and regional entities.”  Governments haven’t been very successful navigating this issue, but some have come up with creative pathways, including Bremen Personal Documents, which shared birth and marriage certificates between federal and local governments, and the Citizens Portal in Denmark, which gave citizens the ability to access and combine their data, an activity the government wasn’t legally allowed to do on its own.

One local instance of reorganization is when the Mercer Island government went through a  in 1997 because of its inefficient construction and maintenance practices.  As a result of streamlining and digitizing its processes, the city has been one of the early founders of the regional eCityGov Alliance, an organization working to decentralize and facilitate web-based services throughout the Puget Sound.

The remaining roles of federal governments, in the author’s opinion, are: 1) public access to government information; 2) the protection of personal data; 3) providing information on its activities.  These can all be streamlined with new technologies, but there are many barriers to implementation that can cause political distress and mismatched priorities among leaders.  With diminishing budgets and upward costs of incorporating digital culture into their processes – such as writing policy and building software to accept digital signatures – local governments find themselves scrambling for action and, often as a result, avoiding e-governance as often as possible.

And so, Krassimira concludes, while organizational change is a major component of the move toward e-governance, the legal and regulatory frameworks that currently oversee our governments also need major overhauls.  Even more important, though, is that these changes are cohesive, inclusive, and thorough.  The author points out four main points of action for our legislators:

1. Legal changes facilitating fundamental human rights in the digital age;
2. Legal framework acknowledging the right to informational self-determination (are digital communications subject to the same principles as non-digital?  e.g. record of emails)
3. Providing access to all citizens
4. Protection of personal information

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