Public Management and Administration - Owen E.hughes

198 Public Management and Administration
of credit cards are insufficient and there would need to be some form of digital
signatures implemented and other safeguards implemented before the payment
of fines or accounts over the Internet becomes more widely accepted.
A further issue with privacy and security is that of ownership and usage of
information especially with the widespread contracting-out of information
technology. According to Bellamy and Taylor (1998, p. 155), over 30 per cent
of Whitehall information technology was contracted out and such contracts put
a few companies ‘in a strategically powerful position in relation to information
age government’ and further:
They also expose important issues about the control and exploitation of personal data on
UK citizens which are now flowing into computer installations run by commercial companies.
These flows of information raise sensitive questions about data stewardship.
Especially data ownership and data privacy, but they also raise questions about the nature
and efficacy of control over the commercial value of customer datasets, questions which
have not been publicly aired or resolved.
Through data mining, and in combination with modern marketing techniques,
government information could be used to target particular kinds of products.
It would be possible if a register of births was in private hands for direct mail
to be used to sell baby products. Without safeguards it would be possible for an
agency involved in the delivery of health care services to on-sell its data to
insurance companies, who could then use patient records to determine risk.
It could be argued that governments could use their information for commercial
purposes themselves, but there is likely to be more concern over privacy in
government than if the information is controlled by a contractor. There will be
a continued need for legislative and ethical standards, but they will need to be
very tightly specified to stop the private sector using government information
in this way. This is a major problem for e-government, in general, as The
Economist argues (24 June 2000):
The one important reservation is that vastly more efficient governments will know vastly
more about each and every one of their citizens. The exponential increase in the ability of
government to gather, store and mine data about people will raise well-founded worries
about privacy and civil liberties. The price of happy e-citizenship will be eternal vigilance.
Already there are protocols for usage of information, privacy laws and such
like which governments have instituted, but the privacy and security aspects of
e-government are amongst the most worrying aspects of it.
Implications of e-government for politics
E-government may lead to changes in the political system as well as the internal
operations of government. Terms such as, ‘electronic democracy’, ‘digital
democracy’ or ‘democracy.com’ (Kamarck and Nye, 1999) are becoming more