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e-Government: From In Line to Online Public Services
By Lyle D. Wray

Around the world the Internet and related information and communication technologies are being used to dramatically improve public services to citizens, to better provide licensing and regulation of businesses and to provide public servants with better tools to do their jobs. E-Government is being spurred by a desire to both reduce costs and to improve public services.

So what do citizens and businesses want from e-Government? According to a recent survey, citizens wanted to renew drivers licenses (47 percent), file state taxes (34 percent), obtain park information (31 percent), review accident reports (29 percent), pay parking tickets (28 percent) and review real estate records (28 percent). Businesses wanted to be able to search federal or municipal court records (47 percent), obtain or renew a professional license (43 percent), access one-stop shopping for opening a new business (39 percent), access criminal background record checks (34 percent), and apply for a business permit (36 percent) (Source: Momentum Research Group for www.nicusa.com).

Clearly the field of e-Government is large and varied. One way to organize these various aspects is to look at who is initiating an action - government, business or citizens - and who is reacting to requests for action - government, business, or citizens. This simple framework yields six different areas of e-Government activity that will be described briefly in Figure 1.

Government-to-government. Coordination of criminal justice, emergency services and land-use planning across many levels and peer governments is being done with e-Government. E-Government takes the form, for example, of coordinated geographic information systems. Integrated emergency services communication systems are being tried to improve coordination and cooperation across government agencies.

Lyle Wray serves as executive director of the Citizens League. Headquartered in Minneapolis-St. Paul, this citizen-based public policy organization was founded in 1952. Its website is at www.citizensleague.net.

Licensing and regulation. Streamlining and facilitating compliance with regulations are a major thrust in e-Government. One quite sophisticated example is the Software Advisor program at the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (www.osha.gov). It uses an expert system that asks a number of questions and helps guide employers to identify the appropriate steps to take to protect worker health and safety in, for example, removing lead paint. Around the country, licensing and regulation systems from building permits to restaurant inspections are being assisted by web-based information systems.

One emerging trend is to organize websites around what the citizen wants rather than how government departments are organized.

Providing information, public services, seeking input. To most citizens, the most visible part of e-Government is a city, state or federal government webpage. While most cities now have webpages, a recent analysis found that the vast majority of webpages are "electronic pamphlet racks" with limited services to the public (D. West, 2000 at www.insidepolitics.org/egovtreport00.html). Much can be done to improve sites with consistent graphics, providing for an index and search function, and clearly indicated e-mail and telephone numbers on these sites. An early favorite e-Government service in many states is driver's license renewals where sharp reductions in transaction costs and decreases in time to complete a renewal have been produced by these efforts.

One emerging trend is to organize websites around what the citizen wants rather than how government departments are organized. A main site in Singapore, for example, has a "road of life" graphic with icons for such things as "starting a family," "establishing a business" or "preparing for retirement" as entry points to more detailed information. Each of these areas cuts across a variety of government departments, for example, but a single organized face is presented to the citizen. A second trend is to try to use "intelligent voice recognition" via the telephone instead of a keyboard to provide greater and easier access. In Indianapolis-Marion County, for example, an advanced voice recognition system is being used to assist claimants for child support in securing information on payment status, upcoming court dates and appointment scheduling. The system produced a dramatic increase in the level of funds collected for child support.

It is important to remember that complex systems are not always required to make the web useful to citizens. Simple efforts such as customized email mailing lists to citizens in a given community around such things as changes in hours of service, available recreational opportunities and new program information can be a virtually "no cost" way to provide more timely and targeted information to citizens. Web pages offering public service are in rapid evolution. Making webpages easier to use, and more valuable to citizens, will be an ongoing effort for some time.

Goods and services sales to government. Transactions in federal, state and local government amount to about a trillion dollars a year. Only about 1 percent of these transactions are carried out online currently. There is a scramble on many fronts to put more transactions online from bid management systems for procurement, to outsourced bill payment systems, to excess public property auctions to name only a few. These systems have shown significant savings in securing supplies and have shown significant reductions in the cost of transactions in the early going, and the field is accelerating rapidly. Many different "business models" are being pursued in this area of e-Government from private-public partnerships, to franchises to internal operations to shared services among peer governments.

Citizen relationship management. State and local government often go to great lengths to respond effectively to citizen complaints and inquiries. This is no small feat in large organizations with many elements often linked in responding to a single inquiry or complaint. Internationally, in Australia and Germany, for example, integrated call centers are providing one telephone number service for accessing government services and addressing complaints. A customer service representative in a call center equipped with a web-enabled system fields complaints with a minimum of call transfers with the citizen. The web is also being used directly in combination with internal citizen relationship management software systems that link all elements of an organization in providing coherent and timely responses to citizen concerns.

Community organization, and citizen self-help. One other category of activity that might be included under e-Government is citizen organized self-help and community organizing. Citizens can also organize crime watch and other community building activities. Providing web access to volunteer resources and opportunities is often promoted or facilitated by local governments as an adjunct to paid public services.

Each of these six areas presents opportunities for state and local government to carry out their missions. E-Government initiatives may well be included in the future as an important topic to consider in regular strategic planning and management processes.

The future of e-Government
As 76 million American baby boomers begin to retire from the paid workforce over the next decade, the resulting labor shortage may provide the impetus for increased use of web-based public services to a greater extent than today. Although there has historically been a reluctance in many quarters of the public sector to invest heavily and quickly in advanced information technologies, this looming labor shortage in public service, improved technologies with demonstrated track records of performance, and heightened expectation of citizens about public service delivery could combine to support a major push toward e-Government.

Already there are signs of public support for this direction. Almost 70 percent of Americans surveyed supported investing public funds in e-Government as a priority, but two-thirds of Americans also want it to be developed cautiously to address privacy and security issues, as well as lack of Internet access in some parts of our communities (www.excelgov.org).

A key challenge moving forward will be to use the opportunity of e-Government to transform the way government does business and to provide better value for citizen tax dollars. Although there are promising early signs for better public services, most of the work lies ahead in working through private-public partnerships, security and privacy issues, and in securing access to needed capital and expertise.