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The Markets, Technologies & Innovation
Team, is responsible for setting out the UK government's vision
and policy on online services.
It works jointly with the private and public sector and business.
Its projects and work fall into three overall areas:
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Technology policy
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Security and Authentication
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Creating a mixed economy for service delivery
Some projects are placed in a particular area although they
are applicable across more than one area, e.g. the work on
Smart Cards.
Technology Policy
Develops policies and frameworks
on infrastructures and standards needed for the delivery of
e-government services
Setting the standards:
Electronic service delivery for
joined up government requires information systems and applications.
Like those of other large organisations, government IT systems
have developed into fragmented and incompatible silos with
obvious costs and inefficiencies. The OeE is working on a
standards programme that attempts to provide vision, strategy
and coherence in systems interoperability, websites, government
IT, infrastructure and Open Source Policy.
e-GIF (e-Government Interoperability
Framework) is a policy framework which sets out the mandatory
policies and standards for connectivity and the seamless flow
of information across the public sector. Since its first publication
in October 2000, it is being implemented across the public
sector. The latest e-GIF, version 4, incorporates the Metadata
framework, which deals with the tagging and categorising of
information.
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latest e-GIF version 4
Many other countries are now following
a similar approach and the European Commission has projects
in hand under their IDA Programme to produce a European Metadata
Framework and a European Interoperability Framework.
A very important part of the e-GIF initiative is the GovTalk
website. This makes available all the documentation, standards,
XML schemas, etc associated with the e-GIF and also provides
an Internet based change control system for consultation on
all proposed new material.
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http://www.govtalk.gov.uk
Open Source
Software is software whose source code is openly published
and is usually available at no charge under a licence defined
by the Open Source Initiative. Its importance is growing and
it is starting to take a significant market share in some
specific parts of the software infrastructure market. The
European Commission supports the use of Open Source Software
in e-government and the public sector.
In July, the Office of the e-Envoy and OGC published a policy
on the use Open Source Software within the UK public sector.
The essence of the policy is that government is declaring
its support for a 'level playing field' in the procurement
of proprietary and Open Source Software solutions, acknowledging
the competitive viability of Open Source Software solutions.
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policy on the use Open Source Software
e-Democracy.
E-technologies have a distinct potential to enhance, support
and possibly benefit democratic processes. The OeE is leading
the development of global standards to support e-voting. This
is being done through a technical committee of the international
standards body OASIS. The OeE is also producing an UK specific
version of these standards to support future e-voting pilots
in local authority elections.
A Government
Gateway vision document is being consulted internally
and it outlines the government's vision for the Gateway. It
sets out the Gateway's role in joining-up and opening-up government
and achieving technical agility for future change within government.
It also describes the principles behind the Gateway and the
next steps for increasing the number of its functions.
Government Secure Intranet (GSI)
The GSI underpins e-government by providing secure, resilient
network services. It now has some 200,000 end users and handles
in the region of one million e-mails every working day.
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Government Secure Intranet (GSI)
Increasingly, GSI is being used
to support shared systems for internal and external service
delivery. For example, the Treasury recently led a shared
procurement for payroll services, provided via a link to the
GSI.
As more departments join the
service, they will be able to use their existing GSI connection
to access the system.
The GSI is now interconnected
to the European Union Extranet, TESTA II, which supports international
cooperation on trade, consumer protection and other services.
A single link to TESTA will replace multiple leased line connections.
The GSI succession project, which is led by the Office of
Government Commerce, recently conducted a consultation exercise
on the future shape of GSI. A procurement is now in process.
The long term vision for the GSI is for it be a true Intranet,
serving the whole public sector with a modern, high availability,
high capacity resilient infrastructure across which users
can communicate, find and share information and knowledge
throughout government.
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GSI succession project
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more information on GSI
Access Channels
A choice of attractive and inclusive
channels is one of the foundations of e-government and UK
online strategy. We need to provide access to government services
and the internet in different ways, whether people are at
work, at home or on the move.
The OeE has, so far, developed
policy frameworks on the overall Channels Strategy, Digital
television and Smart Cards.
The Channels
Framework document provides guidance on public sector
channels strategy development and co-ordination and includes
a decision framework for strategic planners. It discusses
the diversity of channels available and emphasises the importance
of an attractive mix to deliver e-government services to as
wide a range of the population as possible. The channels are
PCs, DTV, kiosks, call centres, and mobile devices.
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An introduction to the latest Channels Framework
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Latest Channels framework document (PDF 490KB)
Digital
television - almost everybody in the UK has a TV set.
Thus, this channel provides a huge potential for delivering
e-government services to the home in a socially inclusive
way. The OeE's 'DTV Policy Frameworks' outlines the importance
of this channel and the actions required across government
to use DTV as a key medium for the delivery of public services.
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DTV policy framework - consultation draft
Smart Cards
- around 1.7 billion smart cards are currently being used
across the globe and they are becoming a viable option for
access to and delivery of e-government services. There are
many smart cards implementation and plans across the public
sector, which are fragmented and face common challenges and
barriers. The Smart card work addresses, amongst other things,
the importance of standards, partnerships, data transparency,
digital signatures and providing a wider business case for
the roll out of smart cards. The aim is to bring together
a co-ordinated strategy across government to improve the efficiency
of smart card schemes within the public sector.
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more information on Smart Cards
Security and Authentication
which develops policies to deliver
the necessary authentication services and develops security
frameworks to ensure trust and confidence in e-government
services.
Authentication
Around 20% of government services
available to citizens (C2G) and the businesses (B2G) require
departments to be sure of the attributes of the parties involved.
Therefore a range of policies
and actions, developed jointly with the private sector and
business to deliver necessary authentication services, is
being developed.
There is also a need for government
departments to be able to authenticate themselves to each
other (G2G) and in order to enable departments and other public
bodies to become part of the same trusted infrastructure,
we are working to develop a Root Certificate Authority. This
will allow public servants in different parts of the public
sector to authenticate each other - provided they are authenticated
to their own organisations.
The main thinking behind this
work is that, as government business relies increasingly on
electronic systems, the need for public sector users to authenticate
each other will increase.
Security
To ensure that there is a widespread
take-up and realisation of the benefits of e-services, government
must create an environment of trust and confidence.
A common approach to security
becomes increasingly important, as more and more services
are delivered online. The security and authentication team
has produced a set of Security Policy Frameworks, which define
a set of security standards for electronic government service
delivery.
The main issues are:
- overall policy and security requirements for government
- standards for identification of individuals and business
to government
- integrity and non-repudiation
- continuity of business
- protection from malicious attack
- how to achieve assurance on system compliance with security
policy
The complete set of framework documents was updated in September
2002 and are now available.
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framework documents
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More information and new developments on trust and security.
Creating a mixed
economy
Creating a mixed economy for service
delivery is about opening up markets to private and public
sector intermediaries so that the government, private and
voluntary sectors can come together to deliver e-Government
services that better meet customers' demands.
The programme to deliver 500
government services online by 2005 is a huge task, and there
is no reason to assume that Government acting alone will have
the most successful result.
The strategy therefore is create
a marketplace where partners and players can come together
to deliver e-government services that meets the demand of
the citizens - a marketplace where consumers can engage intermediaries
from the public, the private or voluntary sectors to use public
services in the manner that suits them.
Our vision is that by creating
the right conditions, in five years, we will be able to establish
a mixed economy vital to maintain UK's role as a leading knowledge
economy.
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more information on creating a mixed economy is available
at http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk/intermediaries
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