e-GOVERNMENT IN FINLAND - ePractice.eu

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Themes portal (e.g. environmental, education etc.) Specific user group portal (e.g. elderly, children, immigrants, small business etc.) Portal for a specific geographic area Source: OECD Government Portal (citizen portal) Figure 4.11. Connection to different types of portals 262. As with smart cards, organisations tend to want everyone to link to their portal in order to increase their visibility and recognition. The pressure to increase the number of portals is ultimately selfdefeating. The existence of a single government-wide portal, with broad ministry and agency participation, however, has helped to reduce the need for additional portals. Key Points - 40 x The consolidation of websites under a central portal brings together a broad range of information and services across government but is not a substitute for the integration of electronic services. While portals have increasingly gained visibility and popularity, service integration remains a remote goal in Finland. 4.5 Back-office changes 263. As the OECD’s The E-government Imperative (2003) points out, the successful implementation of e-government is accompanied by changes in organisations’ internal operations supporting core working processes. This section illustrates back office reform initiatives in the Finnish central government involving organisational change, leadership, central co-ordination and collaboration, management of public–private partnership, skills and monitoring and evaluation. 4.5.1 Promoting organisational change 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 264. Implementing e-government does not automatically result in organisational change. As mentioned earlier, if information is simply digitised and put online, traditional structures and practices are not modified. The impact of e-government on central government depends on how it is planned and implemented and how fully other stakeholders are involved. The OECD study shows that the introduction of e-government in the administration interacts with efforts to reform the administration by: 96 Ministry Agency
x Highlighting the need for internal change x Implementing organisational change. x Creating a culture of good governance 265. This part looks at these interactions to see the extent to which changes have actually taken place in Finland and whether additional changes can be expected. Highlighting the need for internal change 266. E-government is now at a crossroads. The OECD’s The E-government Imperative (2003) observes that, across OECD countries, support for e-government is waning, in part because it has not lived up to high – and often unrealistic – expectations, and, in part, because the relatively simple stage of digitising information and putting it online is drawing to a close and the next stage of action is less clear and more complex. To renew interest in e-government, governments need to look at how they can achieve the necessary changes in processes, structures and culture to make the most of e-government. 267. Until now, governments have generally tended to try to use technology as a patch to provide a seamless user interface for a complex administrative structure. All too often, ICTs are overlaid on an existing organisational structure without any thought as to how this structure can be improved. For example, since it is much more difficult to change agency behaviour and to establish a culture of cooperation, it has been easier to create national Web portals so that users can find everything they need by going to a single site. In this respect, compiling Web site links under a single portal resembles the earlier process of digitising information for Web sites – information is rearranged without a fundamental shift in processes or procedures. 268. Over time, however, can administrations continue to meet the challenge of proactive electronic service delivery using current practices and structures? The OECD’s The E-government Imperative (2003) argues that providing seamless services will require fundamental changes in hierarchy, decision making and interagency co-operation. 269. For the moment, however, there are few models to show where such changes have successfully taken root. As illustrated by the examples in Boxes 13 and 14, the rethinking of current structures is only now starting in Finland, and it is too soon to tell what the eventual impact will be. Figure 21 confirms this by showing that respondents to the OECD survey have not yet found that e-government has had a strong impact on the structures of organisations. Key Points - 41 x E-government represents a major opportunity for the administration to re-engineer existing processes and to gain the support of personnel for crucial reforms. Yet such changes demand an investment in terms of time and resources. Many Finnish ministries and agencies have found this to be a challenge, in terms of finding new ways of thinking and resources to support the re-engineering process. 270. Few respondents saw an impact of e-government activities on their organisation’s hierarchy or on reductions in personnel. Consistent with the overall trend towards privatisation and outsourcing, more than half of respondents found that e-government has had at least some impact on public-private partnerships and outsourcing of information management tasks (see Part 5.5.4, “Managing public-private 97
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OECD e-GOVERNMENT STUDIES e-GOVERNM
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Secretariat wo
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4.2.5 Managing multiple service cha
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This report provides a first compre
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Finland could reinforce citizen sup
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Technical issues have been recognis
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The central government, however, la
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E-government has helped improve pla
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OVERALL ASSESSMENT The first phase
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6. The constitutional independence
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6. As the first OECD report of its
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Box 1.1. E-government co-ordination
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x The central administration does n
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2 THE CASE FOR E-GOVERNMENT 25. The
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Key Points - 4 x Public administrat
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40. As a result of these earlier go
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is illustrative. An online transact
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Health care 50 29 21 Unemployment 8
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3 BARRIERS TO E-GOVERNMENT 61. E-go
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action unclear. In interviews, IT o
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80. As noted in Chapter 2, the Stat
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equired to provide e-government str
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Page 94 and 95: 255. At the end of 2002, the curren
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Page 102 and 103: Key Points - 42 x Structural impact
Page 104 and 105: Key Points - 43 x Change management
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Page 108 and 109: 297. Interviews with ministries and
Page 110 and 111: x Horizontal co-ordination: lack of
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Page 120 and 121: Box 4.7. Adapting E-Procurement for
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Page 124 and 125: 361. Moreover, the lack of opportun
Page 126 and 127: 372. The OECD report on the Finnish
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Page 130 and 131: 5 NEXT STEPS 385. In May 2003, the
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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 142 and 143: 6.3 Case study 3: The citizen porta
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Key Points - 60 x The citizen citiz
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7.2 Appendix 2: Reports, strategies
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x Public Management in Finland (200
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ought together government, civil so
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freedom of choice and availability,
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499. The Ministry of the Interior c
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decision requires it to provide net
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522. Contrary to former reports by
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x By comparison, the term Web site
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7.4.2 List of acronyms AFLRA: The A
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7.5 Appendix 5: Methodology 7.5.1 D
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2. Responses are not included in ov
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8 BIBLIOGRAPHY ACCENTURE (2001),
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JUSSILAINEN, M. (2003), “Knowledg
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OECD (1992), “ICCP Reviews of Inf
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“GOVERNMENT RESOLUTION ON HIGH-QU
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VISTI, S. (1998), “Electronic Ide
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