The proliferation of Internet and the World Wide Web is changing the way people live. It is also changing the way how government activities are organized in order to serve the citizens better. The trendy term "e-government" should go beyond providing official information and various application forms on websites; it should describe how governments deliver better and more efficient services through computer technologies. Barriers to e-government applications are often a combination of both policy and technology issues. Opportunities are when policy makers and technologists work together to develop a holistic understanding so that major progress can be made.
From the reports on e-government efforts in the US and in Europe, we identified six possible barriers that must be overcome in order to move forward with their e-government strategies. They are:
Standards (for interoperability)
Standardization is the pre-requisite for seamless information flow and cross-departmental process integration within e-government operations. The development of an infrastructure including networking and standardization components to support data exchange, synchronization and process standardizations will streamline intra-government and citizen-to-government communications. The problem, however, is how much resistance is there to overcome in order to achieve a uniform standard among different government departments while each of them is perhaps having its own system optimized to best serve its needs.
To have one standard within a government is already a challenge. How much is the barrier to have an e-government standard for citizen/business-to-government communications?
Intellectual property issues (for cost)
Depending on the contractual terms of an e-government project, the government would involve in one or more of the following IP right issues, each relating to cost consideration of different magnitudes.
non-exclusive IP licensing
ownership of IP right as a result of participating and paying the full cost for R&D
sharing IP benefit in direct proportion of contribution to the cost of R&D
The government must handle IP issues carefully in order to encourage the effective commercialization of R&D results.
Business re-engineering (for dealing with bureaucracy)
A successful e-government scheme requires re-engineering of both citizens (as consumers) and governmental departments (as service providers) to adopt new behaviors and to act out of usual practices. Customer adoption is depending on how advanced the new technology is and very often is also depending on unexplainable personal preferences that can add to uncertainty. Just like the economic environment will affect the decision for technology investment, the bureaucracy barriers that exist among government departments may also stop progress in making changes. A flexible mechanism based on business intelligence may be needed to handle dynamic situations.
Data sharing (for interoperability)
Efficient e-government operations require timely information sharing between functional departments within a government. Integration and messaging infrastructure software using open standards such as Web services, BPEL, ebXML, and others, need to be developed to enable application systems to interoperate and synchronize for genuine seamless information flow. The infrastructure should enable citizen's data collected in the front end to be integrated into other important infrastructure components such as family data, educational background, income status, criminal record, credit rating and other personal information.
Security and privacy (for data sharing)
When new information technology is introduced to expedite operations and enable integrative collaboration, the issue of privacy invasion often arises. Benefits of the new technology can only be enjoyed when the balance between the protection of privacy and operational efficiency can be achieved. A challenge in the progress of e-government applications lies in the design of an appropriate privacy scheme and access control system that use security tools to ease concerns about privacy invasion, while at the same time sharing information to some degree to expedite inter-departmental collaboration.
Web service development (for business re-engineering)
E-government services should move beyond the provision of information and application forms over the Internet. But how can one build a system that will enable cross-language, cross-platform, resource sharing, workflow optimization and perhaps outsourcing of some government services in the future? Currently Web service applications that are based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) are being developed along with e-government initiatives. However, challenges exist in both technical and organizational levels in relation to Web services development. Technically, there is the service fulfillment issue like how to do performance measurement and how to ensure quality service. Technical issues involve also IT infrastructural changes on the utilization of Web service protocols as well as the development of tools for e-government services. Similarly, organizational issues like the need for process re-engineering, teaming and reorganization are to be addressed in order to accommodate new and more efficient service delivery.
This workshop will attract attendees from government, business, and technology sectors. We shall invite senior government officials of major countries to report on the status of e-government in their jurisdictions. We shall invite technologists and business leaders to report on the identified barriers and opportunities. We hope through workshop interactions all may know the relative importance of each of the above barriers and the anticipated opportunities in overcoming them. Registrations are open to all interested.
We invite all participants to submit full or position papers which will be evaluated based on their originality and how they would complement each other to enrich the workshop's content. Evaluations will be by a committee including the workshop organizers and leading experts on e-government. Accepted papers and abstracts of invited speeches will be published in workshop proceedings.
Submitted papers may describe completed work (up to 5,000 words) or a position paper describing work in progress (up to 2,000 words) not to exceed 12 double spaced, 8.5 x 11-inch pages (including figures, tables and references) in 10-12 point font. Include an abstract, five to ten keywords, and the corresponding author's e-mail address. Format of submitted papers must follow the ACM conference proceedings guidelines, including no page numbers. At least one author of each accepted paper must register for the WWW2006 conference before 20 March 2006. Registration information is now available at the conference website: http://www2006.org/
Submitted papers must be in PDF format and send to shen@ cs.ust.hk.
10th February 2006: Submission of full and position papers
01st March 2006: Notification of acceptance
20th March 2006: Camera-ready copies due
23rd May 2006: Workshop day
Jinpeng Huai is Professor of Computer Science and Vice President of Beihang University. He is a member of Consulting Committee of the Chinese Government's Information Office, and Chairman of the Expert Committee in both the National e-Government Engineering Taskforce and the National e-Government Standard office.
Vincent Shen is a Professor of Computer Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He was General Co-Chair of WWW10 (2001). He was Science Advisor of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region during 2000-2003 and advised the government on e-government issues.
C.J. Tan is IBM Chair Professor of Electronic Business Technology and Director, Electronic Business Technology Institute at the University of Hong Kong. His organization is a provider of various e-business and e-government technologies to the public.
Last Modified: $Date: 2006-05-02 10:10:41+08 $