Serving the 21st Century Citizen
E-Government: The Federal Opposition's View

E-Government Summit
Royal Pines Gold Coast
7 November 2002  

MEDIA RELEASE: 7 November 2002 - Government: Open source the key to security and innovation

This is e-government week, so it timely to ask how Australia is performing.

The findings of the United Nation’s Division of Public Economics and Public Administration Report titled Benchmarking E-Government: A Global perspective:  Assessing the Progress of the UN Member States, show that Australia currently rates second to the United States on their measure.

Another Study, released by research firm Taylor Nelson Sofres ranks Australia eighth in terms of our status as users of e-government services.  This study, which surveyed 31 countries also showed a 50% jump the use of e-government services in the last 12 months in Australia.

S how is Australia performing?  Pretty well it seems but like most things, it depends how you look at it.  If I were rating departments and agencies, I would give them a high ‘B’.  They have done a commendable job in quite adversarial circumstances.  However, if I were rating the executive government, I would give them a ‘D’ – a fail grade because of lack of policy devoid of vision and long term strategies.

I believe the Coalitions’ lack of  foresight has prevented e-government services from reaching their potential.  I say this because I believe that Australia could be the best in the world delivering e-government to citizens.

Australia has the pre-requisite strengths to achieve this goal: internet usage rates, connectivity programs, solid base of disparate online services within government at the various levels, and most importantly the creative talent and vision amongst our people.

It is worth having a closer look at what services are moving online and how successfully. Banks are the most interesting example. A massive 80% of bank customers who have the internet now use online banking. But before this feat is declared the ultimate model on how to achieve online success, the banks, as always, can do with a little more scrutiny.

There is an important social reality that makes banks an unsuitable model for e-government.  Banks can pick and choose their customers:  Government cannot pick and choose their citizens.  This means that while banking services online are proving a success, their growing popularity may just be linked to the appalling service that people have putting up with for years.

Or perhaps it is the fact that there just aren’t that many branches where people can do their banking anymore.  Or maybe its because the ATMs are such dumb terminals, or that phonebank is impenetrable, so of course bank customers are going to use the internet.  It certainly hasn’t come at the expense of profits, which are soaring.  So I am not generous in my congratulations to the banks about their online success.  I suspect it has come as a result of woeful service quality in other areas as evidenced by their less that enviable public reputation. 

Perhaps their success can be explained by the banks ability to alienating their expensive customers by shedding those who feel uncomfortable with technology.  Banks have virtually pushed customers not using new technology away by charging higher fees and reducing over the counter service to a minimum.  These customers cost the bank more, to service, so they are charged more, and served less.  And they are usually not customers with loads of money from which the bank can extract fees.

My point is that government does not have this commercial luxury to push customers that don’t suit their income generating business model. I have to say neither should the banks as an essential service, but that’s another policy debate that I won’t enter here.  Government must provide services to online and offline citizens alike.  Why?  Because they are citizens, not customers or consumers and they are entitled to service. 

So when I talk of innovation and being the best in the world in e-government, this has to occur in tandem with the traditional means of delivering services.  At least for a generation, whilst ever there are people who are not online.

This is a hard reality to many in government who are used to promoting technological innovation as a way to cut costs.  The temptation to take away the service desk in yet another town or suburb is compelling because of the reduction in recurrent costs.

The first lesson is to understand that technological innovation, like the internet, does not always equate to direct or immediate savings.  As I said, for at least a generation, there will need to be dual mode of service delivery.  This means the investment in a web presence is likely to add to the department’s annual expenses.

There is another issue as well.  Currently many agencies and departments are running their computing needs off legacy systems that date back a generation or more.  There is no plan to upgrade these systems within the large, laterally clustered vertically integrated IT contracts currently outsourced to mainly multinational vendors at the federal level. 

This is an appalling situation, particularly with the innovation occurring with grid computing and peer to peer applications.  These innovations mean that in many respects, the network becomes the computer, with computing power and data drawn intelligently and meaningfully together for the end user.

With another 2 to 3 years to go on many of these contracts, the federal government IT capability will be seriously behind the eight-ball.  Progress at the web interface level will be arrested by ancient proprietary architecture that prevents any real underlying technological innovation from taking place.

So lesson number two is: for a government to be truly visionary, and realistic about achieving that vision, there must be a commitment and a plan to tackle this issue of upgrading these legacy systems.  This is a significant challenge that requires policy makers to rise above the vested interests of current stakeholders and think and act ‘long term’.

With such a vision in place, the motivation for technological change should be enhancement, both at the agency level through the use of intelligent software and network innovation and at the citizen interface through the world wide web.

And such a vision creates the opportunity to get so many other critical issues sorted out, although many of them can’t wait. 

These include, from the citizen’s perspective:

From an agency’s perspective:

Firstly, I will address the issues from a citizen’s perspective. 

Ability to access the internet

The current statistics for connectivity in this country mean that the richer you are, the more likely you are to have the internet.  The spectre of the digital divide is real and with us and it is emphasising the gap between the haves and have nots. 

I believe that the country that resolves the problem of the digital divide will be the country that emerges from this era of rapid technological change with the most socially cohesive population.   Therefore this country will be best able to tackle the continuing challenge of living in a globalised world.  This should be Australia.   We are small enough in population terms to take on this challenge, and we are certainly smart enough – if we had the visionary leadership.

This is a call to action for closing the digital divide with a far higher degree of intervention than in currently occurring.  I believe there is an opportunity to target those who are least able because of socio-economic reasons to get online, but really want to.  But we need to go beyond the provision of public access points, although these are an essential part of any policy to close the digital divide.  For some people, we need to find a way to get the internet into their homes.

In particular, those seeking to upgrade their skills through a period of unemployment are quite often enthusiastic to learn about and use the internet.  I am convinced that a program could be designed to facilitate affordable access at home for those who find it difficult to use public access points.  These include people with young families, mobility problems or people who just live a long way from their library.

As part of the mutual obligation requirements for social security payment recipients, a program of online learning course could be designed to teach citizens how to communicate with, for example,  Centrelink and their case manager online.   This could go further and relate to other learning modules, all of which enhance computing and internet skills.  I think this would be far more useful for some people experiencing unemployment than filling time doing work for the dole. 

Labor is currently reviewing our policies in all areas and these issues are part of that dialogue.

Such solutions still need to be cost effective.  How do you create an opportunity for affordable internet connectivity in the home?  Well, there have been some developments that may assist.

There are some flat rate connectivity package, like that offered by Get on Board and Virtual Communities around.  These services essentially provide an internet connected computer where the installation, dial-up ISP charges and soft and hardware leases are rolled into one weekly or monthly flat-rate payment.  This payment could even be subsidised by the government for targeted constituencies, depending on policy priorities. 

Whilst this has the subtle benefit of allowing the department to continually explore and assess the use of the internet for communicating with their ‘clients’, it allows gradual efficiencies to emerge through the transfer of services online. Most importantly this occurs without alienating those most in need.  I would go so far as to say that if there were any efficiencies or savings that may be gained through this, they should be used to improve the current level of traditional over the counter services.

Confidence and skills to use the web

Such a program would certainly help upgrade the basic confidence of many citizens who had little previous opportunity.  But it also places a emphasis on improving the skills and confidence of citizens to actually use the internet.  Many states have funded skills programs and the one I am most familiar with is Skillsnet in Victoria.  The strength of these programs is their integration with the local community.

Different states have different models, different regions have different models and different local governments have different models.  Most have evolved over time and should be treated with far more deference than they currently are:  they are the key to unlocking the human capacity to adapt in a time of rapid technological change.

I would now like to turn to the
vexing question of the best model for a citizen’s portal

What is a meaningful portal for a citizen?  Are they still called portals?  Is there such a thing as an entry point that is easy on the eye, easy to get where you want to go and be personalised in a way that makes people feel special?

The work of e-envoy in the UK offers some inspiration.  Apparentlyon 21 January substantial changes to the ukonline.gov.uk site were launched. These changes were driven by feedback obtained since the first site went live.  The first tracking results from the UK online campaign show that whilst 40% of the population is now aware of the campaign, spontaneous awareness remains low at 3%, with 46% of people saying they are simply not interested in the Internet.

According to their website, ukonline has been improved to become more intuitive, and easier to navigate and search. The new infrastructure has improved scalability, which will allow the site to host content for multiple Government departments.

Sounds reasonable.  And there’s more: ukonline.gov.uk is the basis of a digital offering that will be rolling out across DiTV, mobile and other digital channels. It is, apparently, a world-leading product delivered on a new and scaleable infrastructure.

By comparison in Australia, the ABC is developing interactive content, but because of the stifling effect on the definition of datacasting in the Coalition’s plans for Digital TV, digital interactive services through a web environment on TV are a while away yet. 

There is no perfect model, but there are plenty of experiments.  I think one of the keys is using the tiers, or levels of government. It makes sense to me to start where the government is closest to the community.  In Australia, this means local government. 

With more than 680 local government agencies spending money on IT and the internet , the Australian Local Government Association recognises the importance of  local government participation in the planning and development of Online Service Delivery.  One project, the  State and Territory Association Technology Information Sharing (STATIS) Network, which will be made up of a web site and supporting infrastructure.

STATIS hopes to enable the sharing of project information between the state and territory Local Government Associations and individual councils. It will also promote the development of national standards and policies relevant to online service delivery.

Another project is focussed on interoperability from a technical, business and legal perspective.  This project will build on the current work being done in the local government sector and ensure that this work is consistent and compatible with work being done at the Commonwealth, State and Territory levels.

For state and Federal government, this means they are there on the second or third click through.  The two projects mentioned have received some federal funding and wisely focuses on the infrastructure issues, not just the bells and whistles.

Government is slowly working out that access to clear pathways to information, updated sites, well-organised back-end data, phenomenal technical support and real-time email query responses are arguably more important than beauty.  A quick look around confirms that beauty is not too highly rated anyway, but are the issues covered?  The most important question is:  are the sites citizen-focused?

Experience tells us that no, they are not.  The sites are just not compelling enough for people to want to do things differently.  People don’t have time to change for novelty value.  There has to be a real value proposition.

Is there anyone here who tried to download software from the Tax Office when the GST first came in?  What a golden opportunity to generate goodwill and support for online services and what a debacle it turned out to be.  It didn’t work.  All those small businesses trying out a small download fro the first time are now once bitten twice shy.

I would now like to turn to the challenges from an agency’s perspective:

Under the Australian Government Online Strategy, all Federal Government departments and agencies were required to ensure that all appropriate services were made available online via the Internet by December 2001.  Progress against these targets has been patchy at best.

However the real challenge lies beyond just migrating existing services into online services.  It is about transformation of government through the intelligent use of technology. 

This current government has been negligent in its slowness to realise that IT and the internet are completely central to the core business of government.  To make matters worse, the Coalition engaged in a particular style of outsourcing that not only transferred all the technology assets into the hands of the vendor, but managed to shed the corporate knowledge and essential technical expertise as well.

This rapid loss of capability in the public service has contributed to agencies and departments becoming ‘captured’ by their vendor.  This means that these contracts are so complex, involving asset transfers and a complete reliance on highly prescriptive service level agreements, that it is too expensive for agencies and departments to even contemplate back-sourcing or a more sensible strategic sourcing model. This is no accident mind you.  It is part of the business plan of the vendors to ‘lock in’ their client. 

Many Departments and Agencies trying to improve their online services are doing it in this environment.  They are having to build a web offering that sits autonomously from what are largely ancient main-frames.  There are no plans in sight to consider a strategy for upgrading these legacy technology systems that may date back thirty years or more.  I have heard that the tax office contract, worth $480m over 5 years, spends at least half this amount on simply ensuring that their vast array of old mainframes is kept alive and operating.

Further, these contracts lock in soft and hardware refreshes or upgrades at set intervals. In effect, this ensures that no matter how tailored such proprietary software may be to an organisation, in inevitably stifles innovation in an organisation.  In response to anecdotal evidence that the level of satisfaction with the big software houses is at an all time low, I believe that open-source software must be considered by all tiers of government.

Take for example, Microsoft’s latest licensing strategy for Version 6.0. I read an article recently in MIS magazine which trawled the proposed ‘software assurance’ maintenance plan that apparently dictates when customers must upgrade their software, at great expense, of course.

The article goes on to quote a US industry analysis firm, Giga, that of the third of Microsoft’s existing customers they had identified as refusing to sign the deal, 80% are installing linux, a type of open source operating system, somewhere in their organisation.  Meta Group, another firm says that this is but a stepping stone to the total elimination of perpetual licensing, which means customers will no longer have the choice of sitting on old versions of software.

In response to this trend, Labor believes that departments and agencies should required to immediately consider and assess the merits of open source software as part of their strategic approach to sourcing their information and communication technology expertise. 

There is no place for the touchy-feely approach that the Coalition is suggesting as they hesitantly encourage departments and agencies dip their toe in the open source ocean.  Open source might just be the key to unlocking the laterally clustered, vertically integrated shackles they are in.

To demonstrate the level of commitment elsewhere, the European Union has just spent half a million dollars doing a feasibility study into moving all of the European Government  onto a linux operating system with a significant motivation apparently being to escape the increasingly expensive Microsoft.

In general, the world has already moved on.  Governments or part thereof in China, Thailand, Taiwan, Philippines, Krea, Brazil, Peru, Germany, Finland, Norway, France, UK and even the US Department of Defense opting for open source software solutions.

If Australia does not move decisively, we are at risk of becoming the dumping ground for cut-price shrink-wrapped software as more forward thinking governments around the world take a long term view.

The irony is that Australia boasts the best small and medium sized enterprises in software and digital content creation and yet the opportunities for them to secure prime government contracts has been far too rare.  They deserve far greater opportunities, particularly as the ground is cleared for open standards and the interest in open source grows.  It would be a great shame if the only inroads for open source made in Australia were those driven by IBM, such as the Centrelink announced recently.

Labor has for along time now challenged the wisdom of long term contracts capturing government departments and agencies in proprietary software solutions.  To force technological ‘lock-in’ at a time when technology is changing so rapidly is bad policy.  But there is another very important reason to ensure open source gets some oxygen in government: its strengths in crucial areas such as security.

Open source software is backed by a system of peer review – the toughest test for building secure software is to have the code open and out there for anyone to try and breach it.  The source code can be scanned by anyone seeking to exploit security flaws, and it can be scanned and modified by anyone seeking to fix security flaws.  This in turn leads to greater trust by users in the software – they know what they are getting.

A testimony to the security credentials of open source is the fact that during the war against terrorism, the US Government has overseen the National Security Agency, NASA, CIA, White House and as I mentioned before the Department of Defense all turn to open source.

With the politics of security at the forefront of debate in some way at all levels of government, it is little wonder that e-security has risen fast in the priority list.  However, the sense of urgency to address e-security has not been matched by an incremental upgrade in understanding the why, what, where and how of e-security within management.  This is true of not just the public sector, but the perhaps more so the private sector.

In a blunt assessment about the security vulnerabilities created by the Coalition’s mishandling of IT outsourcing, the Department of Defence advised the Australian National Audit Office, in the course of providing comment on the audit report into the Coalition’s IT outsourcing debacle, that:

A conclusion to be drawn from the DSD experience and also from the report, is that given the present state of the industry in Australia, outsourcing the management of high security networks would be a risky and also costly business. 

External service providers are not experienced in managing networks to national security standards, as commercial risk drivers do not equate readily to government accountability requirements, let alone to managing counterintelligence threats. 

The identification and then oversight if contractual obligations would therefore be even more resource-intensive than for conventional government networks.  (Page 230)

As a result, the Audit Office recommended that, where appropriate in outsourcing IT infrastructure services, agencies develop, in consultation with the Defence Signals Directorate, an integrated security architecture strategy that addresses operational security issues, identifies the necessary security safeguards and the required timetable for their implementation by the external service provider.

The Department of Defence and the Department of Finance and Administration, on behalf of all other agencies and departments, agreed with this recommendation. 

To conclude:

Given that the Government has nominated this week as e-government week, it is appropriate for me to reflect on their announcements so far.  The Coalitions plans for e-government give no indication that they are thinking too far ahead.  That is why they get a ‘D’ rating.

The next phase to which the Minister has referred is online transactions.  Essential, but still miles away from looking at a more sophisticated transition to network-based data retrieval via the web, like that used in peer to peer applications to make e-government truly citizen-focused.

I want to reiterate the value of pushing the entry point for citizens as close to their community as possible and for Australia, this means to local government.

This must be accompanied by a clear social agenda to close the digital divide. Whilst the internet provides the 21st century interface between Government and Citizen, it is far from being a ubiquitous medium.  We need to work towards universal access, in particular broadband access if we are serious about preparing for the future and intervene where necessary to close the digital divide from the bottom up.

The Labor opposition in the Federal Parliament believes that information technology can be used to create greater opportunity and reduce disadvantage in society. 

And finally, we need to transform the management of public information in a way that addresses privacy, security and critical infrastructure protection.  We must invest in adaptable architecture and open environments designed for future needs.

This can be achieved by having a clear vision for a future Australia and understanding how central the innovative use of the internet and software will be to achieving this vision.