1. Report on the ISSA workshop on electronic services Cor Franke ISSA IT Advisory Board, Marrakech, 23-05-2006

2. Reason for the workshop During the Montreal conference the presentations focused mainly on: u successes and results achieved and not so much on u pitfalls and problems encountered

3. Framework u organized by both ISSA and NL DSS u participation by a limited number of experts from 9 different countries u investigating deeply u pitfalls and problems encountered u best practices u dos and donts

4. Working method u pre-conference discussion paper u plenary discussion of problem statements u 3 working groups, each discussing a limited number of aspects u plenary discussion on the basis of reports from working groups

5. Aspects discussed u infrastructure u (national) data management u standards and responsibilities u client appreciation u flexibility u costs and benefits

6. Infrastructure u Current situation u Varieties within a public infrastructure lead to high maintenance costs u There is a strong risk of duplication of (expensive) infrastructural components between government agencies u Main question u How do we integrate the different infrastructures that are developing now into one public infrastructure?

7. (National) data management u Current situation u Citizens and employers suffer from the Governments information hunger u The quality of government data is low (which is partly caused by redundancy) u Main question u How do we implement data management (leading to broad re-use of data) at government level?

8. Standards/responsibilities u Current situation u No standards, no identification u No standards, no common infrastructure u No standards, no electronic interchange of data u Main question u How do we develop and maintain a set of standards that are common for the public sector?

9. Client appreciation u Current situation u Clients differ (in skills and equipment) u Clients are concerned about privacy issues u It is not clear what clients want and need u Public organizations have to set priorities in developing electronic services u Main question u How do we involve clients in the development of electronic services and how do we measure their appreciation?

10. Flexibility u Current situation u Policy, technology, customer requirements and the institutional environment continue to change u Large volumes and need for continuity u Old legacy systems u Main question u How do we manage the need for flexibility while also guaranteeing undisrupted going concern?

11. Costs and benefits u Current situation u Electronic services require substantial investments u It is very difficult to estimate and measure benefits u There is a strong risk of unequal distribution of costs and benefits between participants u Main questions u How do we set up an appropriate budget (for development, implementation and maintenance) u How do we keep track of both costs and benefits

12. The report of the workshop u The report tries to answer the aforementioned questions in a number of ways u Describing solutions (how to ….) u Addressing pitfalls (be aware of …..) u Listing dos and donts u Summarizing illustrative cases (what can be learned from …..)

13. Experiences u all experts involved contributed strongly to the resulting report u participating in the discussions u sharing experiences and problems u providing case studies and dos and donts u editing the report

14. The value of the report for you u it provides solutions for generic problems (experienced by developed and developing countries) u it lists dos and donts (to prevent you from making mistakes that others have already made) u it contains relevant case studies