Policy recommendations on Public Services for Business

Bottlenecks and policy recommendations

The bottlenecks and policy recommendations presented below are the result of the discussion at the Brussels workshop on ICT and Public Services.

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The bottlenecks to greater impact

In this section we summarise the key findings emerging from the discussion at the first workshop. Participants first discussed the bottlenecks faced by the public services for business initiatives in translating research results to marketable products; and later worked on the clustered bottlenecks to derive consensual policy recommendations.sentence permalink

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Bottlenecks groups

Bottlenecks: 1. Governance, policy and strategic support

A first set of bottlenecks is related to one aspect that is also probably the most understood and at the base of the majority of the initiatives for the simplification of services to businesses: the complex environment the companies have to deal with when they interact with the public sector. This complexity is due to the high number of relations between the different elements (norms, bodies, responsibilities, systems, and so on). And of course it’s “layered”, being the complexity present at legislative level, at organisational level and at technical/standards level. Legislative complexity is a quite common element in interaction with the public sector and it is not only connected with services to businesses. Quantity, and somewhat incoherence, of norms and regulations is still perceived as one of the main bottlenecks from the stakeholders in the workshop. Probably one of the reason of that is the “stratification” of legislation, i.e. the adding up of new norms not always followed by the needed revision of the complex of regulations. A second level of complexity relies in the responsibilities being distributed among different agencies and organisation, in most case not properly connected to streamline administrative processes. This can be a consequence of incoherent and fragmented legislation, but it can also be the difficulty in bringing “down” the reforms from the legislative level to the organisational one. In the workshop was clearly highlighted that in some cases the approach to innovation is too often regulatory than operational. The negative consequence of this organisational fragmentation is that the burden of reconcile it is all left on the shoulder of companies. Another level of fragmentation is related to the technical and standard level, especially for ICT systems. And it is seen as a huge obstacles in reaching the full inter-organisational integration and the consequent streamlining of processes. The issue of “standards” was on of the more often referred in the workshop.sentence permalink

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Complex legal and technical environment disturbs usability sentence permalink

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Difference in legislation sentence permalink

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Complex and fragmented administration sentence permalink

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Difference in standards sentence permalink

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SMEs related issues also have been highlighted in the workshop. They concentrate on two aspects. One is the need of support to SMEs in finding opportunities in the internationalization of their activities. SMEs are very concentrated, due to the dimension, on their core business and so don’t have resources and capabilities to engage in international markets. Another issue is related to the potential of innovative procurement (in particular Pre-Commercial Procurement) for SMEs. It is generally said that the PCP should provide a easier way for SMEs to participate in procurement for innovation from the public sector, because it provides mechanism for sharing risk in developing innovative solutions. But how this really happens and how SME can really benefit of PCP is not yet well investigated and understood.sentence permalink

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SME need to be supported in finding opportunities in the international markets sentence permalink

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Pre-commercial innovative procurement: reference sites/applications for business, how will this happen? sentence permalink

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Political support is considered a very important issue in promoting better services for businesses. And the lack of it is seen as a serious bottleneck. Political support is always important because it ensures that the related themes are maintained high in the political agenda. But it is also important because it enables the continuity of financing in time and in particular after the project development phase. The participants in the workshop unanimously recognised that the processes to develop better services for business take time, and consequently needs money. The absence of continuity in financing is a serious risk for the successful implementation of these initiatives.sentence permalink

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Lack of top-level support sentence permalink

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Continuity of finance beyond projects sentence permalink

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One last set of bottlenecks in this group concern the legislative aspects of digital signatures and digital documents from one side, and the inhomogeneity across Europe of tax and VAT legislation. On both these subjects the participants in the workshop pointed out that the different rules across European countries can seriously undermine the development of a coherent framework for companies that want to do cross-border business. Even when EU legislation exists, its implementation in the different countries is not well coordinated or aligned.sentence permalink

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Lack of legislation on digital documents sentence permalink

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E-signature implementation status and costs sentence permalink

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Different rules on tax make cross-border trade difficult sentence permalink

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Support to streamline VAT legislation sentence permalink

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Bottlenecks: 2. Culture change and uptake

Cultural change needs to be taken into account as much as the other component of the “change” process when innovation in public services is concerned. The workshop participants observed that this is not always the case, or at least that more effort should be done in this area. Sometimes the expectations from innovation introduced in public services is not very clear, especially in terms of benefits for the stakeholders involved. This unclear expectations may provoke, if there is not strong motivation, a drag to the innovation. Companies can be afraid of innovate if the overall framework is not well defined especially in the medium-long term. An additional issue, when cross border services and internationalization are concerned, is the language issue, that is still considered a barrier for full-extent usage of opportunities to expand the businesses in extra national markets.sentence permalink

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Unclear expectations sentence permalink

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Afraid to innovate sentence permalink

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Language issues sentence permalink

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In term of cultural change, the most critical actors are the SMEs. The workshop participants highlighted that still a lot of work has to be done in this area. In general, information and services availability is always a problem. For SMEs this become a huge problem because they do not have resources (human and financial) to dedicate in scouting opportunities and looking for the right information or the availability of needed services, if this search is difficult. Also, SMEs would need cheap legal support (again because they do not have too much financial resources to dedicate to this). In general the workshop participants agreed that SMEs need a particular attention when considering public services, and they cannot be considered at the same level of bigger companies.sentence permalink

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Lack of info availability to SME * Hard to reach the SME and to make them aware of the available services * Lack of cheap legal support for SME sentence permalink

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One large set of bottlenecks concerns trust of and from the public sector. Public sector is still largely seen as a kind of “bureaucratic” entity not able to detach from its usual role (regulator and service provider) to become a trustful advisory for companies (again especially SMEs). Participants in the workshop consider this an important issue in terms of cultural change: what is needed is not only a cultural change in companies mindset, but also, and maybe mainly, the need for the government to reconsider and reinvent its role when dealing with services to businesses. When this change will happen a new mutual recognition will take place between public sector and businesses.sentence permalink

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Mutual recognition issues sentence permalink

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Mistrust among governments and between governments and SME sentence permalink

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Little online support for SME (e.g. in terms of discussion fora), governments are not used to the advisory role sentence permalink

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SME have the perception that the public sectors is just there to deliver services, and not for helping sentence permalink

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With respect to uptake, in the opinion of workshop participants the easy of use of services is still considered a crucial element. Services are considered still not easy to use and do not encourage uptake. In most cases the services are not self-explanatory and this is probably the consequence of a very limited engagement of the end users in the services design. A number of services are not yet fully transactional (so still including an off line component) and this discourage usage and consequently take-up. Some of the key enablers (e-Identity, e-Signature, Interoperability infrastructure, Open specification and Open standards) are not always implemented in a coordinated way across different organizations and this limits the possibility for these technologies to really become enablers for innovative services.sentence permalink

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Services are not self-explanatory and end-users are engaged to a limited extent in the service design sentence permalink

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Keep it simple: it skills are lacking in some SME sentence permalink

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Services are not fully transactional sentence permalink

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Key enablers are not implemented in a coordinated way sentence permalink

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Difficult download procedures for documents sentence permalink

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Documents are often in pdf and not easy to fill sentence permalink

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Bottlenecks: 3. Implementation, standard and technology

Implementation, standard and technology are often considered secondary to cultural and organisational change. Yet participants agreed that this often is due to the difficulty in “opening the black box” of technology to policy makers that are not technologists. There is a general overarching bottleneck in enabling joint strategic leadership that cuts across technological and non technological aspects in an integrated way.sentence permalink

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Lack of common technical standards makes it expensive for IT-vendors to develop the relevant IT-systems sentence permalink

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Lack of standardization for specific online systems sentence permalink

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After many years of e-government implementation, it is clear that users demand integrated services and that seamless user experience should be driven by strong consistency in processes and interfaces. E-government is typically not used often enough to deserve learning how an interface is designed. In order to achieve impact, it is necessary to provide integration at scale, beyond the individual silos. Yet the plurality of decision centres within government remains the main obstacle to large scale deployment of solutions, and best practice in service delivery often come from a highly structured approach (Estonia) or from approaches that are highly inclusive towards the need of the final users as well as the external IT vendors (NemHandel). However, these remain the exception rather than the rule and as a result fundamental principles such as “once-only” provision of information are still far from being achieved.sentence permalink

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Digital identity issues sentence permalink

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The reason for this bottleneck is that too often government considers itself as the central player. In reality, to generate real impact it is necessary to reach out to external actors, namely users and IT vendors. For both these groups, government is just one potential provider and client, and often not the main. Users access many different online services such as e-banking more often than e-government, and government is therefore one provider among others. IT vendors serve similar needs to a wide range of clients, and government is just one of them. In both cases, in order to achieve impact, it is necessary to acknowledge this and engage “as a peer”. Too often, rather than behaving like a platform and truly engage with the wider ecosystem (including users and vendors), government focus on internal discussion between the different silos. Standardization is the key concept to be used, and not only with respect to the different centres within government, but also as much as possible towards the external ecosystem.sentence permalink

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Prototyping and sufficient analysis sentence permalink

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Inability to gather info about opportunities sentence permalink

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But standardisation should not be understood as a top down centralised approach: it is instead a goal to be pursued through incentives, such as cost-benefits, funding, regulation, assistance.sentence permalink

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The other bottleneck that raised significant debate was public procurement. Participants expressed their concerns about the ineffectiveness of procurement , which remains accessible mainly to those who have specialised skills and department. Too often SMEs which could provide better value for money are put off by the rigidity and bureaucracy of the process. Bidding implies a too high investment in proposal-making. Moreover, the information about procurement plans and opportunities is often unavailable, leading to difficulty in planning especially for SMEs. The process itself is often characterised by weak strategic approach, and does not include more open and flexible approaches such as prototyping, dialogue with providers, and even alternative tools such as prizes.sentence permalink

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Procurement plans and not only tender procedures should be published in advance by public authorities sentence permalink

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Taking part to a bid is very expensive especially for SME sentence permalink

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Bottlenecks: 4. Feedback and service re-design

Feedback and service re-design have become very common topics in e-government policy over the last years. Almost all e-government strategies include emphasis on the adoption of public feedback on service redesign, as a tool for co-creation of public services. Yet, it appears from the discussion with stakeholders that this is more a goal than a reality. There is a lack of strategic approach to feedback: too often it is considered as a goal in itself or as a target to achieve. This leads to inappropriate usage of feedback data and distortion of public policies to achieve predefined targets (such as % of positive feedback). Instead, it should be clear that feedback is one tool for service improvement, that should be gathered and used strategically and using professional techniques.sentence permalink

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Ability of authorities at different levels to understand the SME perspective, especially at really small levels * Digital divide * Clash between personal and digital relations sentence permalink

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There’s a misunderstanding about the different aspects of feedback: it is not the same to obtain operational feedback on an interface, or general feedback about a service received. These differences are typically not accounted for, leading to feedback becoming either a pure compliancy matter or a fundamental determinant of strategy development. Both approaches are mistaken. Feedback is not treated as part of strategic approach to service re-design. There is a problem of governance of feedback, so that it is clearly linked to operations. As part of this holistic approach, feedback should be considered in a wider sense as co-creation process. This is particularly challenging in the context of public services to business. It is difficult to involve SMEs in the development phase of e-government services, as authorities typically struggle to understand and engage with small business.sentence permalink

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Feedback to whom and for what reason? Who leads feedback and why? * Feedback at strategic level requires a broad approach: what is the big problem? At the operational level feedback usually focuses on: what is the usability? Does the system work? sentence permalink

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One of the reasons of this difficulty is that feedback is mostly considered as an online tool, while many SMEs have low technical capacity to engage. Digital divide therefore limits the effectiveness of feedback and co-creation. Yet SMEs are precisely the target that don’t use public services: there is therefore a vicious cycle where SMEs don’t use public services and to engage in the design and feedback about public services, so that services are ultimately can’t be improved in line with the needs of SMEs.sentence permalink

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Most systems have to be developed by external consultants, coordination can be difficult sentence permalink

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Beware of ‘lock-in’ sentence permalink

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Policy recommendations

At the workshop participants worked in separate groups, one per each of the main issue identified in order to suggest specific actions that should be carried by European Commission and by stakeholders (themselves). Here we present the key recommendations that emerged from these groups. Necessarily, because of the method of open engagement, the recommendations do not stem directly and logically from the identified bottlenecks as in a traditional study. Instead, recommendations are logically related to the identified bottleneck but are built around the experience of each individual stakeholders, and later enriched through open discussion. Such recommendations are therefore expected to be methodologically less rigorous than in a traditional study, but more diverse because of the range of stakeholders involvedsentence permalink

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Policy recommendations

Policy recommendations: 1. Governance, policy and strategic support

As first, the workshop participants noted that legislation should take into account the particular nature of SMEs, and that at EU level legislation should be checked with the SMEs in order to make it more “appropriate” for them.sentence permalink

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European Commission SME-check of the legislation sentence permalink

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One large set of recommendation is related to the need of providing as much as possible evidence and comparison to show where initiatives have achieved good results. The workshop participants continue to believe that the most effective drivers in adoption of good public services for business is the sharing of lesson and the demonstration “by example” that to engage in innovation of public services, for businesses in particular, is worthwhile. In this set they suggested that it should be given evidence of costs of fragmentation. Having responsibilities spread in different bodies and agencies has a cost. This cost has to be quantified and shown clearly. Essentially it is the cost of “doing nothing” with respect to improvement of public services. This cost should be compared with the cost of innovation initiatives. Similarly, we should be able to provide quantification of benefits per users for government to create leverage in order to improve public services. It means to give evidence for the government to justify investment when improving public services. In particular should be given evidence that the large use of innovative services is the one enabling the highest financial gains for the system as a whole. Another suggestion concerns the capability to give evidence of the monetary justification of stronger integration between agencies (for example in Estonia has been calculated that improved public services brought 1 week of saved time per year per citizen).sentence permalink

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Give evidence of costs of fragmentation sentence permalink

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Provide comparisons with other systems sentence permalink

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Quantify benefits per users for government to create leverage in order to improve public services: the higher the number of users, the higher the financial gains sentence permalink

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Give evidence of the monetary justification of stronger integration (e.g. in Estonia 1 week per year per citizen is saved) sentence permalink

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One further set of recommendations concerns the need of giving evidence to businesses that the public sector has put in place all the possible measures to simplify and reduce businesses for them. Two main measures are foreseen here: to allow the electronic submission of all the required forms, and to use already all the already available data from other agencies to reduce as much as possible the need of further request. Only when these two measures are put in place, the public sector can ask for further information providing at the same time all the explanation of why those information are needed.sentence permalink

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Explain to enterprises why info is asked and give back statistics in an usable way sentence permalink

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Electronic submission of all required forms sentence permalink

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Use already available data in order to reduce forms sentence permalink

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One final set of recommendations explored the possible measures to promote, from the legal and political perspective, a wider adoption of e-government services for businesses. A prerequisite for this is considered to be the presence of high level support by the politicians. As noted in the identification of bottlenecks this is seen as an important factor to ensure long term support also in term of financial resources availability. Two tentative recommendations have been identified here. Some participants suggested a quite “hard” approach, making the use of e-government services mandatory. Other participants proposed a more “motivational” approach, that may consist in giving financial incentives for those who used intensively the e-government services. In this respect, those financial support can be also “indirect”, for example in terms of tangible benefit provided to those who adhere to innovative services (a nice example was given by one of the case presented in the workshop, that used a quite convincing argument to push SMEs to use e-invoicing system: “go to digital invoicing and you’ll get paid faster!”).sentence permalink

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Consider a mandatory use of e-government sentence permalink

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Provide financial incentives for the use of e-government sentence permalink

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Provide high level support by politicians sentence permalink

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Policy recommendations: 2. Culture change and uptake

Awareness is one of the first think to address if a good policy for take up have to be implemented. It’s not unusual that successful service implementations fail in providing the needed awareness building, in part frustrating the whole process of innovating services. Dissemination and awareness raising should be considered an integral part of the innovation process and proper budget should be allocated for that. This dissemination and awareness building process should also include an informational and educational effort on the business side. Successful take up of services is based not only on awareness building and dissemination, but has to include proper design of services that take into account the diversity of potential users of the services. This means build a multisided strategy in which different answers are given to the different needs of the users. Needs that can change over time. In services for businesses this means do not consider the “business sector” as composed of a single type of actor, but consider the diversity among them (the basic ones being the distinction between large companies and SMEs).sentence permalink

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Awareness building * Informational and educational effort on the business side sentence permalink

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Mutual recognition issues sentence permalink

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Allocate budget for dissemination and awareness raising on all government level sentence permalink

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Another key for success is to identify the right driver to uptake for the different actors (this bring back to the need outlined above of not considering the business sector as composed by a single type of actor). Driver can be economic (like providing discount for companies using the digital services), but can be also indirect, i.e., given in term of benefits deriving from the use of digital services (an exemplar case was given during the presentation by NemHandel, where a good driver was considered the benefit for the companies to be paid earlier if they use digital channels. Some workshop participants proposed also a more “strong” approach, envisioning stricter regulations to discourage face to face relationships to boost use of e-government services. Even if this may seem a feasible approach it has to be noted that “mandatory” use of technologies has always to be reconciled with the need of providing inclusive and non discriminating services.sentence permalink

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Multisided approach to take up (e.g. NemHandel with e-invoice) sentence permalink

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Identify right driver to uptake (case of NemHandel: if you do e-invoicing you will get paid faster) sentence permalink

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Provide discounts for online services sentence permalink

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Stricter regulation discourages face to face relationship and boosts e-government sentence permalink

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Support SME in finding business opportunities in international markets sentence permalink

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The third “leg” on which successful take-up have to be built is the easy of use of implemented services. Administration should always use simple language and to provide simple text and structure of the information provided. To ensure this “easy of use”, public sector should engage the users from the beginning and keep the relationship with the users alive after the deployment in order to get feedback and ensure to maintain focus on users’ need as they change over time. Public sector should be “customer oriented” from the beginning, and maybe even the “customer” paradigm should evolve towards a more collaborative and “partnership” relationship. Simplicity is also a key aspect when one takes into account the service provided in mobility, considering the continuously expanding demand for mobility in e-government services. In the end, the key reason for an increase in uptake is the capability of service provided (public sector) to give evidence of the enhancement of “ease of use” of digital services when compared with the traditional, face to face way of providing them. Only in this case the users (i.e., the businesses) start to perceive the ICT as a really enabler and source of benefits, rather than an additional burden.sentence permalink

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Administration should use simpler language sentence permalink

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Simple text and structure (e.g. data.gov.uk) sentence permalink

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Involve users from the beginning and keep interaction open after launch sentence permalink

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Be customer oriented from the beginning and maintain the relationship after the deployment in order to get feed-back sentence permalink

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Single login number can make things easier sentence permalink

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Think mobile from the beginning, forces simplicity sentence permalink

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A key reason for an increase in uptake is an enhancement in ‘ease of use’ over existing service provision sentence permalink

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Policy recommendations: 3. Implementation, standard and technology

Most of the recommendations on this bottlenecks focussed on measures to favour the adoption of common standards. The lack of adoption of standards is seen as a major bottleneck to impact: in the words of the speaker from the Austria, main bottlenecks to integration are government agencies, not companies. Participants agreed that a strategic approach should imply using the full range of possible measures, rather than a simple imposition from the centre. As the speaker from NemHandel put it, “legislation is not enough, you need to provide easy solutions to small vendors”. There should be a “standard strategy” that involves all relevant stakeholders, from the public and the private sector. Government should act as a platform by setting the right incentives for the involvement of different stakeholders, including removing the barriers to engagement for SMEs both as suppliers and as users. In this sense, the experience of NemHandel is a recognized best practice to be recommended: they created open dialogue with vendors and included SMEs through an online forum, and focussed their effort on increasing the adoption of e-invoicing by SMEs. In this way, they were able to create market opportunities both for suppliers and users. This strategy should, first of all, link public funding to the adoption of standard that are already there. Too often e-government projects fund the reinvention of the wheel. Reusing existing standard solutions and adopting open standard should become a pre-requisite to obtain public funding. Standard should be conceived as a dynamic process and there should be competition between standards. The agreement on standards should be accelerated, and existing best practice and front-runners should be clearly identified to enable other agencies to learn from it and adopt similar solutions. This analysis should include best practices from the private sector, such as e-banking. Political support should be gathered to support standard, mainly by providing good evidence on the benefits of it. It’s time to provide a ready-made evidence toolkit in support At the same time, the process for establishing standard should take into account the local situation and context, avoiding a one-size fits-all approach. The debate on the standard should be clearly and openly framed, and should be multi-stakeholders, including different institutional levels, private and public sector.sentence permalink

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Avoid top-down standards that do not account for local problems sentence permalink

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Identify front runners for technical standards (e.g. European standards for e-invoicing called e-priors) sentence permalink

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Allow competition between standards sentence permalink

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Link funding to standards sentence permalink

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Speed up the agreement on standards sentence permalink

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Get critical mass to politically support standards sentence permalink

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Create standards in open data sentence permalink

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More stringent guidelines on reuse, based on funding, consensus, regulation, critical mass, awareness raising, with emphasis on open standards and including IT vendors sentence permalink

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Standards, and in particular open standards, are particularly important when it comes to public procurement. Participants suggested a better coordination of information about procurement opportunities. The existing databases appear still too complex to browse for most SMEs and include only part of the procurement. This would go together with better long term planning of solutions procured, and a more open and iterative approach that involves potential bidders through different phases of definition of the solution.sentence permalink

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Create a platform containing all the procurement opportunities at all levels sentence permalink

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Copy solutions from banks

Policy recommendations: 4. Feedback and service re-design

The key recommendations regarding feedback and redesign cover both strategic and operational approaches. Basically, the recommendations cover the strategic role of feedback, how to obtain it and how to use it. At the strategic level, governments should clearly integrate feedback and co-creation as part of the public service delivery. This includes first of al the identification of clear responsibilities for feedback design and management with the e-government governance structure. Co-creation and early involvement of users should be mainstreamed across all e-government services, so that feedback is not simply devoted to ex-post interventions. But feedback is often hard to obtain precisely by those users that don’t use e-government services. This is why it’s necessary to exploit alternative ways. One of the main recommendations is to systematically involve intermediaries (such as Chambers of Commerce) in the collection of feedback and in the co-design of the services.sentence permalink

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Be sure to include all size of businesses in collecting feedbacks by using dedicated organizations sentence permalink

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Increase the contact with business by using chambers of commerce at all levels (e.g. Belgian case) sentence permalink

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The second recommendation is to use implicit data, rather than explicit feedback. This implies a stronger focus on indicators and metrics that report actual user behaviour without asking explicit questions. One of the challenges to be addressed is the lack of standard metrics for measuring usage of e-government services through administrative data.sentence permalink

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Clearly define who is in charge of managing the feedback processes sentence permalink

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Include in the design phase user testing and feedback services sentence permalink

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Consider co-creation as a way to include feedbacks in the process sentence permalink

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This emphasis on implicit metrics would also open the way to designing next generation public services, which should focus on predictive personalised services that invisibly provide the users with the right information at the right time. These services to not necessarily have to be provided by government itself, but by third parties using innovative business models and thereby leading to further market opportunities.sentence permalink

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Indicators for measurement, measure the bounce rate of services sentence permalink

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Automatic, invisible provision of services, permission-based predictive services (outsourced) sentence permalink

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