Andrea Di MaioYesterday Capgemini announced that it was awarded by the European Commission a four-year extension of its seven-year e-government benchmark. From the announcement it looks like it will still be a supply-side assessment, applied on a regular basis to 31 countries.
I have not seen any further information about the details of the benchmarking methodology and how it has evolved with respect to the original one, which was looking at the degree of automation of 20 selected services. In its latest report in 2007, Capgemini had highlighted areas where measurement indicators could evolve, and there have been many calls (see here and here) for updating the measurement framework to take into account demand-side indicators as well as some of the issues that are challenging the traditional view of one-stop-shop government portals.
Will the new e-government benchmark measure to what extent government services are evolving toward a “government 2.0” model, where information and services can be composed by users and intermediaries? Will it consider a high level of service automation and integration (currently rated very high) a potential liability rather than a success factor?
I am looking forward to gathering more information from both Capgemini and the European Commission about this, but I am somewhat skeptical. Sometimes I find that the strenuous defense of the old, portal-centric e-government approach comes from the most surprising corners.
Further, the whole principle of benchmarking against a uniform set of metrics across countries that are fundamentally different from each other in terms of maturity of technology use in public sector, propensity to innovation, government-wide IT governance does make little sense. I do appreciate the political value of doing this but, unless this benchmark really help identify discontinuities and valuable path to service innovation, it will remain one of the many we have been criticizing over the last several years.
Category: e-government Tags: EU, European Commission, ranking
7 responses so far ↓
1 Mick Phythian July 3, 2009 at 3:20 am
Couldn’t agree more! What a waste of public money…
2 Why IT Could Derail Government 2.0 July 3, 2009 at 6:33 am
[...] we too) who have been relentlessly advising about the virtue of e-government? What about all those e-government rankings, from all corners of the world proving that the greater the “e” in e-government, the better off [...]
3 david osimo July 3, 2009 at 7:10 am
The problem is the obsession with longitudinal data. Like we could any kind of econometric analysis on such qualitative data. So they don’t want to change – although there will be some pilot which are potentially interesting.
4 Web 2.0 May Harm E-Government Leaders August 28, 2009 at 11:08 am
[...] so much so that it has been ranked number one in the EU e-government benchmark: some of you know my position about benchmarks in this area, but still it is the recognition of significant progress. With a solid, [...]
5 ¿Tenemos las señales correctas sobre qué hacer en el Gobierno Electrónico? « Apuntes electrónicos September 26, 2009 at 12:52 am
[...] además establecer una dirección de avance. Otros han recogido previamente también esta carencia (Di Maio, Osimo, ..). Un resumen de estas carencias [...]
6 A Year in Review: Top Ten for Government 2.0 in 2009 December 29, 2009 at 7:41 am
[...] This being said, the declaration articulates a rather compelling vision, pressing all the right buttons, from user-driven services to the importance of public information and open government. Unfortunately the suggested implementation mechanisms are the same we have seen in previous declarations and there is no clear attempt at trying something new. Studies, best practice exchanges, R&D activities, call for open standards and open source are all good things, but should we judge their potential from the lack of EU e-government accomplishments in the past, I would not hold my breath here. At most, we’ll see another round of questionable EU-wide e-government benchmarks. [...]
7 Web 2.0 and benchmarking « The Great E-mancipator March 16, 2010 at 5:22 pm
[...] other July post from Andrea picks up on the issue of another contract from the EC to CapGemini to do yet another round of [...]