e-GOVERNMENT IN FINLAND - ePractice.eu

More documents

Recommendations

Info

6.3 Case study 3: The citizen portal 440. Finland’s national Web portal, the citizen portal, is a recent, high-profile effort to simplify and facilitate citizen access to government services. While it provides information and search facilitation services, it is primarily an e-enabler that can improve access and take-up, and eventually the interoperability, of all e-government services and e-engagement efforts. 6.3.1 Background 441. In the summer of 1996, the Ministry of Finance initiated a project aimed at bringing online the Citizen’s Guide, a handbook which provided citizens with basic information pertaining to different life situations. The Citizen’s Guide was first published in Finnish in 1992 (in Swedish the following year) as a printed document and presented public administration services of use to citizens. It was later made available on floppy disc. 442. In creating a portal, the MoF sought to increase citizen access to this information as well as to be able to update the information more frequently, since updating, printing and distributing the paper version was a resource-intensive process. The idea was to transfer as much as possible the responsibility for the accuracy and quality of the information to service providers. 443. The decision to opt for an online version was supported by a Citizen’s Guide user survey carried out in the summer of 1996. The survey showed that a large majority of orders for the guide was for professional use rather than for private consultation. In addition, the survey revealed that a large majority was in favour of having the information available on the Internet. Experience in other countries also suggested the need to create a channel of continuously updated information for citizens. 444. The Citizen’s Guide was launched on the Internet in 1997. While the electronic publication was less comprehensive than the printed book, it had the advantages of speed and flexibility. At the outset, the Swedish version also did not contain complete and accurate information. 445. The Electronic Citizen’s Guide on the Internet included essential information that citizens need at different stages, and it was organised by themes (emergency, children, families, legal information). Retrieval of information is free of charge. The guide was available in Finnish and Swedish and also featured an English section. 446. Statistics on use of the guide were compiled in 1999. The total number of visits to one of the guide pages varied between 34 500 and 60 000 and reached 4 000 to 5 000 units a day. The guide’s search engine was used by an average of 15 000 users a month. Links to 120 information suppliers were included in the guide. 447. The views of guide users were analysed by examining user feedback and by undertaking a customer survey in February 1999. The survey examined a total of 62 responses collected over the twoweek survey period. Of these, 29 were first-time users. Comments on the guide’s conception and comprehensiveness were largely positive, but users expressed a desire for more detailed and up-to-date information on procedures to follow in various situations and stressed the difficulty of using the search 142
engine. An assessment of the guide’s format, service index and search engine has been carried out, and ways to improve and develop the guide have been identified. 63 448. In 2000, a project was carried out to determine the purposes of a national public-sector portal, to plan the portal’s content and functions and to create a pilot portal for purposes of discussion and feedback from users. After user feedback about the pilot portal was received through a questionnaire, a project to build a portal on the basis of the experience of the pilot was started. 449. In April 2002, the Finnish public-sector portal (www.suomi.fi), the citizen portal, was put online with information based on the Citizen’s Guide. At the same time, the MoF decided to adopt a single channel strategy, completely eliminating the Citizen’s Guide and moving towards using the citizen portal as the unique channel of information for citizens. 6.3.2 Goals and content 450. From the outset, the government set out to make the citizen portal the best-known public-sector Web resource. To achieve this, the portal was designed to provide comprehensive and up-to-date information and services to citizens and to promote interaction among citizens, authorities and private businesses. The project focused its initial efforts on analysing and determining the purposes, functions and desired content of a national public-sector portal and created a pilot portal to encourage discussion between citizens and authorities. 451. By increasing access to the portal, the government hopes to increase overall take-up of online services. The initial short-term target was to double usage of the Citizen’s Guide soon after launching of the portal. In April 2002, the numbers of pages requested a day reached the 17 000 mark (against 4 000- 5 000 pages requested a day for the Citizen’s Guide). In addition, the MoF set several specific goals: x To improve the quality of public sector Web services by providing information based on customers’ needs. x To promote common standards among public-sector Web services (i.e common metadata standards). x To minimise overlap in the work of the authorities on Web services and to develop the services together. 452. The portal provides access to all government sites as well as municipal organisations and links to other services (i.e. a citizens’ electronic forms service, a public-sector contact directory and a forum for online discussion with the authorities). The search engine only provides results for information contained in the portal. It does not allow for searching for the information behind the links, this function having been criticised by users of the Citizen’s Guide. It also does not provide, for the moment, the possibility to personalise single user access, for example, through the use of cookies. 453. The portal now offers its service in Finnish, Swedish and English. The English section, which provides information for immigrants and expatriates, is, for the moment, a condensed version of the full portal and will be extended in the future. The information menu features different core areas organised around citizen needs, including: housing and family, education and library, culture and leisure, traffic and 63 See the Citizen’s Guide to living in Finland: important information and services available on the Internet”, Ministry of Finance, 1999 at www.vm.fi/vm/liston/page.lsp?r=3534&l=fi&menu=3744 143
Page 1:
OECD e-GOVERNMENT STUDIES e-GOVERNM
Page 4 and 5:
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Secretariat wo
Page 6 and 7:
4.2.5 Managing multiple service cha
Page 8 and 9:
This report provides a first compre
Page 10 and 11:
Finland could reinforce citizen sup
Page 12 and 13:
Technical issues have been recognis
Page 14 and 15:
The central government, however, la
Page 16 and 17:
E-government has helped improve pla
Page 18 and 19:
OVERALL ASSESSMENT The first phase
Page 20 and 21:
6. The constitutional independence
Page 22 and 23:
6. As the first OECD report of its
Page 24 and 25:
Box 1.1. E-government co-ordination
Page 26 and 27:
x The central administration does n
Page 28 and 29:
2 THE CASE FOR E-GOVERNMENT 25. The
Page 30 and 31:
Key Points - 4 x Public administrat
Page 32 and 33:
40. As a result of these earlier go
Page 34 and 35:
is illustrative. An online transact
Page 36 and 37:
Health care 50 29 21 Unemployment 8
Page 38 and 39:
3 BARRIERS TO E-GOVERNMENT 61. E-go
Page 40 and 41:
action unclear. In interviews, IT o
Page 42 and 43:
80. As noted in Chapter 2, the Stat
Page 44 and 45:
equired to provide e-government str
Page 46 and 47:
most important way to fund e-govern
Page 48 and 49:
obtain (38%), followed by funds for
Page 50 and 51:
Figure 3.4. E-government technologi
Page 52 and 53:
113. Not surprisingly, the OECD sur
Page 54 and 55:
3.3.2 Types of barriers 119. Respon
Page 56 and 57:
x Technology neutrality in legislat
Page 58 and 59:
“backbone” of the government ne
Page 60 and 61:
egional authorities is decisive, ev
Page 62 and 63:
Box 3.5. The development of mobile
Page 64 and 65:
x Improving the public administrati
Page 66 and 67:
political leaders to impress upon t
Page 68 and 69:
showed that top management commitme
Page 70 and 71:
levels of government. In particular
Page 72 and 73:
home and school, every business and
Page 74 and 75:
E-government Imperative (2003) list
Page 76 and 77:
Key Points - 31 x The proportion of
Page 78 and 79:
Key Points - 32 x Basic online info
Page 80 and 81:
Key Points - 33 x Interactive infor
Page 82 and 83:
of using more efficient electronic
Page 84 and 85:
Key Points - 35 x The proportion of
Page 86 and 87:
233. The Finnish Vehicle Administra
Page 88 and 89:
citizens’ access to information i
Page 90 and 91:
4.3.2 E-engagement at the ministry
Page 92 and 93: Key Points - 38 x E-engagement init
Page 94 and 95: 255. At the end of 2002, the curren
Page 96 and 97: Themes portal (e.g. environmental,
Page 98 and 99: partnerships”). The most signific
Page 100 and 101: job satisfaction enquiry and models
Page 102 and 103: Key Points - 42 x Structural impact
Page 104 and 105: Key Points - 43 x Change management
Page 106 and 107: Figure 4.17. E-government leadershi
Page 108 and 109: 297. Interviews with ministries and
Page 110 and 111: x Horizontal co-ordination: lack of
Page 112 and 113: Figure 4.22. Government-wide leader
Page 114 and 115: catalyst as well as formal or infor
Page 116 and 117: operation of the Ministry of Social
Page 118 and 119: development of Internet service del
Page 120 and 121: Box 4.7. Adapting E-Procurement for
Page 122 and 123: strategies but also the ability to
Page 124 and 125: 361. Moreover, the lack of opportun
Page 126 and 127: 372. The OECD report on the Finnish
Page 128 and 129: x E-government plans are important
Page 130 and 131: 5 NEXT STEPS 385. In May 2003, the
Page 132 and 133: completely new architecture for gat
Page 134 and 135: 399. Brokers receive revenue from t
Page 136 and 137: 409. In 1998, the government agreed
Page 138 and 139: Figure 6.3. Finnish electronic citi
Page 140 and 141: 430. For both municipalities and KE
Page 144 and 145: tourism, immigration and emigration
Page 146 and 147: Key Points - 60 x The citizen citiz
Page 148 and 149: 7.2 Appendix 2: Reports, strategies
Page 150 and 151: x Public Management in Finland (200
Page 152 and 153: ought together government, civil so
Page 154 and 155: freedom of choice and availability,
Page 156 and 157: 499. The Ministry of the Interior c
Page 158 and 159: decision requires it to provide net
Page 160 and 161: 522. Contrary to former reports by
Page 162 and 163: x By comparison, the term Web site
Page 164 and 165: 7.4.2 List of acronyms AFLRA: The A
Page 166 and 167: 7.5 Appendix 5: Methodology 7.5.1 D
Page 168 and 169: 2. Responses are not included in ov
Page 170 and 171: 8 BIBLIOGRAPHY ACCENTURE (2001),
Page 172 and 173: JUSSILAINEN, M. (2003), “Knowledg
Page 174 and 175: OECD (1992), “ICCP Reviews of Inf
Page 176 and 177: “GOVERNMENT RESOLUTION ON HIGH-QU
Page 178: VISTI, S. (1998), “Electronic Ide
show all

e-GOVERNMENT IN FINLAND - ePractice.eu

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?