Government's strategy
Transforming
Government
Where
we are going
The Government is committed
to a fundamental reform of public services. People and
business need to be able to transact with Government
where they want, when they want, using the channels
they prefer - knowing that they will get a high quality
service they can trust. e-Government allows services
to be built around customer needs and aspirations -
services that are more flexible, more accountable, and
have increased levels of autonomy at local level.
Our strategy for transforming
Government continues to focus on providing quality services
at a national and local level, which are easier to access
and designed with the customer's needs at the centre
from the beginning. e-Government brings a unique opportunity
to break down barriers within Government, so that customers
can conduct business or access services without having
to worry about which department or agency they need
to deal with. Facilitating a mixed economy for the delivery
of services could also enable services to be developed
that better meet customers' demands.
Beyond
2005 - what's next?
We are making progress towards
meeting our target for enabling all Government services
to be delivered online by 2005, and so we need to consider
the direction service transformation could take beyond
2005.
There are two critical areas
in which e-Government provides a more powerful driver
for change than most others:
-
the internet
allows much greater flexibility than traditional
approaches to IT, a much greater responsiveness
to change, and a much more diverse approach to service
delivery;
-
putting services online,
creates real choice for service users, potentially
massively extended by a mixed economy in the supply
of public services. Exercising that choice gives
powerful signals to service providers which, sometimes
for the first time, are the first real expression
of market demand.
We can use these factors
and the reinforcing effect which each has on the other
to develop a framework for radical thought about where
Government might be and what it might look like 10 or
15 years from now.
The internet is a different
medium from any other, with different strengths and
weaknesses. Holding pieces of information in one place
and managing it effectively creates huge benefits, but
also real fears about privacy risks and "Big Brother".
There are ways of addressing those fears, partly through
ensuring that information is a property of the subject
rather than a property of the process, and partly by
allowing people to choose to accept the benefits rather
than imposing them - which brings with it the need to
make those benefits real, clear and compelling.
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