European e-govt analysis a lesson for all

Capgemini Australia public sector head Shelley Oldham Source: theaustralian.com.au

AUSTRALIA can learn from benchmarking used by the European Commission to measure the effectiveness of online government service provision, according to a public sector consultant. Capgemini Australia public sector head Shelley Oldham says Australia could benefit from applying a "service cluster lens" to its analysis of e-government services.

The EC uses a ranking system to identify which member countries have implemented the most mature e-government services for citizens and business.

E-government services are split into four broad service clusters:

1. income generation (tax, employee social contributions from business, corporate tax, value added tax and customs declarations);
2. registration (births, deaths and marriage certificates, vehicles, change of address); 
3. service returns (entitlements for medical costs, student grants, unemployment and child benefits) and 
4. permits and licences (enrolment in higher education, passports, driver's licences).

Capgemini, IDC and others examined how countries fared in an EC-commissioned study, dubbed Digitising Public Services in Europe, during December 2010. It covers 27 member countries and Croatia, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey.

The aim was to assess how sophisticated government online services were based on five indicators -- information, one-way interaction, two-way interaction, transaction and "targetisation" or automation.

The study found that the overall online sophistication score was 90 per cent, up 7 per cent since 2009.

Top performing nations were

1. Ireland, 
2. Malta, 
3. Austria and 
4. Portugal (100 per cent), followed by 
5. Sweden, 
6. Germany and 
7. Italy (99 per cent).

Ms Oldham said the Australian Government Information Management Office’s most recent benchmarking of online government service usage broadly looked at channel access and whether people were accessing public services via the phone, over the counter, or online.

AGIMO explored people's use and satisfaction with e-government services and preferences for future delivery of government services.

"If you look at the AGIMO study, it might look like we're not doing very well in terms of transactions,” she said. "But if you take a service cluster lens to it, you'll find that we are actually doing really well."

Ms Oldham singled out the Australian Taxation Office as a "stellar performer" in terms of the revenue generation service cluster.

"Tax, for instance, has become quite a prominent (online service), permits and registration is another one working really well online but the Australian report isn't quite picking up those things as yet," Ms Oldham said.

"We've got 75 per cent of the transactions for tax being done online, but that isn't reflected in the local report because of the difference in focus. So we're kind of missing the benefits of the strength of our transaction capacity in some agencies."

According to AGIMO, options were currently being examined for a 2011 study, which would take place within the next few months.

-.theaustralian.com.au