E-Government in the UK - Essay Example

E Government in the UK The delivery of government services through the use of the Internet is most commonly ified as E-government. The introduction of electronic government in the UK during the last decade has created a more opportune environment for innovation and helped transform public sector institutions. This work will critically examine the influence of electronic government in facilitating the diffusion of public services to citizens. E government implementation in the UK includes the use of cards with smart chips for passes to pay for school meals, public transportation and for online voting and online payment transactions. Websites are setup for public consultation, paying parking tickets. E-government is big business in the twenty-first century, amounting to over 1% of GDP in most industrialized nations and around £14 billion annually in the United Kingdom, according to recent estimates (Margetts, 2010). The core factors that occur, when assessing national E government in the form of providing human resources, correspond with the ushering in of globalization and the internet and the balance this new era must maintain between the diffusion of ideas and innovation, as opposed to the replication of practices from one area to the next. As noted by Dempsey, “E-government is the delivery of online government services, which provides the opportunity to increase citizen access to government, reduce government bureaucracy, increase citizen participation in democracy and enhance agency responsiveness to citizens needs (Dempsey, 2001).” These are the ideal policy changes that E-government is set about to enhance government and private sector practices in the U.K. The problem is this implies E-government practices improve the quality of government practices, which some naysayers argue is not the case. In the Guardian U.K. article, “E-government is not a financial cure-all,” the author notes that advancements the internet has brought on to be utilized by local and federal governments, as well as private sector institutions in the U.K., does not necessarily mean enhanced quality of these services. The author says, “When all else fails, reach for the ‘e’. In the past week, both the prime minister and the chancellor of the exchequer have cited e-government to explain how they are going to cut the cost of public services, but not their quality (Cross, 2010).” The author then goes onto point out the key to petitioning for e-government initiatives can be traced to a specific term that dictates how e-government is identified in the public eye, he says, “The current buzzword is ‘smarter government’, but the basic concept has been policy for a decade, since Tony Blairs first e-envoy, Alex Allan, unveiled the national e-government strategy in April 2000 (Cross, 2010).” The author goes on to note that after billions of dollars invested in the 2005 E-government policies to improve public services placed UK on a European commission’s annual benchmarking survey as the leader in Europe of the electronic public services. The focus on education and the transferability of HR management within the educational corporate structure is widely overlooked globally, but in the U.K there were many reforms that came along with the advent of e-government services. Public service reform as it pertains to e-government in the education sector had many dissenters before the e-government policies were passed in 2000. As noted in the Guardian UK staff article, “There were many doubts in the quality of education produced pertaining to medical fields, which Tony Blair was forced to address. In answering those questions, it helps to set the reforms in education in the wider context of public service reform. In 1997, the public services were declining. Underinvestment was stark. This is not propaganda (Cross., 2010).” The author notes this is propaganda because, even before the introduction of e-government to provide law and medical students, as well as undergraduates with access to student loan and grant material online, these services were readily available through correspondence programs. In a Brookings Institute study in 2008, Great Britain’s e-government status was ranked 35 out of 197 (West, 2008). The author goes to Compare UK e-government services to those prevalent in the U.S. He notes that the British parliament site, the Office of Public Sector information is the British equivalent to the U.S. GPO. The most notable is commonly identified as the Bills and Legislation section of the site, as it informs U.K. citizens of all financial regulations passed in within new or amended legislative policies. A major obstacle for the U.K government to get beyond with e-government advancements has to do with the securing the privacy involved in data sharing. This includes the secure transfer of such information as social security information, financial and credit info, as well as criminal records. The issue of internet piracy, as well as cyber-terrorism becomes an issue. The expansion of the internet, and other technologies that enhance communication, have inadvertently led corporations to exist within a global market that demands them to be omnisciently connected to the evolving interests of their consumers. A trend in music piracy is the use of the CD-R format. This is the illegal procurement and sharing of copy-written audio or video material just through sharing on the web. This is a hurdle for the music industry and can be an obstacle for E-government entities as well. It is estimated that illegal music piracy in the U.S. cost the music industry 4.6 billion U.S. dollars in 2004, equaling a third of the CDs sold worldwide (Kennedy, 2005). The same technology record companies use to combat this level of corruption is the same technology adopted by e-government practitioners, leaving government factions equally vulnerable to hackers and cyberterrorists. The use of e-government has a long running history, and yet there are still many hurdles that must be overcome throughout the course of its natural progression. Margets mentiones that, “Looking at it one way, e-government—defined as the use by government of information technology internally and to interact with citizens, businesses and other governments—has been developing in Britain for far more than a decade—the last 50 years, in fact, since the first computers entered large transaction processing departments (such as the Post Office) in the 1950s (Margetts, 2010).“ As noted by Dempsey the valid authentication of individuals using the online services, “whatever ministers say, smarter government is going to hurt. For a start, its going to require the government to be braver about some challenges it has spent the past decade pussyfooting around. Issue number one is identifying citizens online (Cross., 2010).” E-government is the delivery of online government services, which provides the opportunity to increase citizen access to government, reduce government bureaucracy, increase citizen participation in democracy and enhance agency responsiveness to citizens needs (Dempsey, 2001). During the decade 1995 to 2005, the Internet virtually transformed the way UK citizens and businesses interact with banks, travel companies, shops, airlines, the media and a whole host of social groups, but it also made it necessary to adopt an entirely new level of security and defense hackers and cyberterrorists. The Symantec Corporation, founded in 1982, is an international corporation known for selling security and information management computer software.  For the companies 2003 security response titled Cyberterrorism? Sarah Gordon and Richard Ford assess all of the facts about cyberterrorism for the purpose of increasing common knowledge about prevention.  In the opening of the publication Gordon acknowledges that the term cyberterrorism has a very abstract identification in society.  She argues that, if you ask 10 people what ‘cyberterrorism’ is. You will get at least nine different answers! When those 10 people are computer security experts, whose task it is to create various forms of protection against ‘cyberterrorism’, this discrepancy moves from comedic to rather worrisome (Gordon, 2003).  Despite this there are still many innovations in place to advance the progression of E-government. Gordon goes on to point out that the lack of knowledge is even more detrimental in the hands of government agencies assigned with the responsibility of protecting national assets.  The lose nature with which many government entities are run, allows for human error much more so than internet based programs that don’t fall on the shoulder’s of individuals, but are undeniably resposnsible. Since many have diverging opinions on whether or not cyberterrorism is even a threat, and those who recognize it as one are also in disagreement over the extent of its power, this poses a very serious question.  Is it possible for cyberterrorists to access online accounts?  If so, this would pose a very critical threat to the stability of America. Gordon confronts what is unknown about the nature of cyberterrorism with what is known.  The first example she refers to of cyberterrorism in action is a circumstance in Delray Beach, Florida where terrorists made travel plans online.  They used public library computers to purchase tickets, and this is very similar to the method used during the September 11th attacks.       In their essay Statistics On Cyberterrorism Jimmy Sproles and Will Byars estimated that the majority of the people carrying out illegal activity online are classified as “amateur hackers” (Sproles & Byars, 1998).  They further found that The Defense Information Security Agency (DISA) carried out a series of its own online based-attacks on government defense computer systems to study the quality of our government’s security against cyber-terrorist attacks.  They found that of the 3,000 computer systems they attacked 88% were easily penetrable; 96% of their unauthorized entries were not detected, and only 5% of the few detected were investigated (Sproles & Byars, 1998).  Kable, 2004 estimates that 3-4 billion p.a. transactions are made with the local government. As noted here by ww.statistics.gov.uk, of the 19.2 million households with an internet connection in 2010, 73 percent of households with the highest level of internet access were located in London. All this shows that as e-government attempts to expand it’s reach the potential security threats will become more prevalent. In sum, e-government in the U.K. to provide human resources services for both the private and public sector have pluses and minuses. The core value of e-government services, such as The Office of Public sector information website, is that it makes government and the democratic process transparent in a way where it can be monitored by the public free of charge. While the programs first established by Tony Blair in 2000 and then amended funding for over a few billion dollars in 2005, attempt to improve the efficiency of government services, they don’t necessarily improve quality. Likewise, there are major obstacles that confront the progression of this system, such as security against the piracy of information as well as the threat cyber-terrorism poses to the success of the system on an international and global scale. All the information presented points to the fact that, e-government is more likely to be received positively at a local level, while on a more broad national scale, it can be very difficult to carry out efficiently. REFERENCES: Alan Collins (ed), Contemporary Security Studies, Oxford:Oup, 2006 (in particular chapter 4 by David Mutimer om Critical Security Studies p.53-74 and Chapter 7 on Securisation) Conway, C. and Steward, F. (2009), Managing and Shaping Innovation, Oxford University Press, Oxford, ISBN: 9780199262267 Cross, Michael (2010) “E-government is not a financial cure-all” Guardian.co.uk http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/apr/06/smarter-government-costs-services Green, J., (2002). The Myth of Cyberterrorism. The Washington Monthly, November 2002  Gordon, S., (2003). Cyberterrorism? Cyber Attacks During The War On Terrorism: A Predictive Analysis. Institute For Security Technology Studies at Dartmouth College, September 22, 2001  Hislop, D. (2009) Knowledge Management in Organisations: A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press Little, S., Quintas, P., Ray, T. (2002) Managing Knowledge: An Essential Reader. (editors). London: Sage Publications, 2002. Love, P., Fong, P.S.W. and Irani, Z. (2005), Management of Knowledge in Project Environments, Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann, UK, (ISBN 07506 6251 4) Margretts, Helen (2010). “E-Government in Britain—A Decade On” Oxford JournalsSocial SciencesParliamentary Affairs, Volume59, Issue2, Pp. 250-265 http://pa.oxfordjournals.org/content/59/2/250.extract Minow, Martha. (2006) Not Only for Myself Identity, Politics, and the Law. New P, 1997. Chapter 2, Identities. 8 Dec. 2006. No More Shadow Boxing with Online Music Piracy: Strategic Business Models to Enhance Revenues (2002) S. Bhattacharjee & R. D. Gopal, K. Lertwachara & J. R. Marsden. V K Narayanan (2001), Managing Technology and Innovation for Competitive Advantage, Prentice Hall. Best, M. (1990), The New Competitive Advantage, The Renewal of American Industry. Oxford, Oxford University Press. West, Darrell M. (2008). “Improving Technology Utilization in Electronic Government around the World” Governance Studies at Brookings http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/reports/2008/0817_egovernment_west/0817_egovernment_west.pdf Read More