While putting together three key portfolios for growth and development is a very good start, the new vision is not immune from major risks, and it is key for the new government to deal with them earlier rather than later. Here are a few personal tips.

• Spend better, not more. Although funding is required to improve infrastructures (and indeed almost 70 million euro are already earmarked for broadband development in some of the regions), the government needs to engage the private sector from the very beginning. The development of smart city infrastructures and applications is an expensive endeavor, which is going to benefit commercial enterprises, ICT service providers as well as citizens. It is not fair that only the latter have to pay the bill (through taxes and public spending). The government should pursue he establishment of public-private partnerships, where the private sector demonstrably shares both risks and rewards on most of these investments. Public funding should be focused on improving the performance of government services and operations as well as on transforming them through technology.
• Challenge the previous wisdom. In a cash-constrained environment, the government will be tempted to leverage as much as possible from previous initiatives and services. However, as it is establishing a new, longer term vision, it should also look at some of them critically enough to check whether they are sustainable or if they make sense in the future scheme of things. In particular the so-called “certified email” (PEC in Italian) as well as programs like the identity card may need to be reconsidered, given the modest uptake and the questionable value in a future where people want to have choice rather that being given only one solution.
• Learn from leaders’ mistakes. Being a latecomer to some of these themes is an advantage and not a disadvantage, as many technology providers and consultants keep saying. All areas of concern – broadband deployment, smart cities and open government – are fraught with disillusionment: understanding both the critical risks and the key success factors is of the utmost importance. Learning from the issues with existing smart city programs and better understanding why open government is struggling in many places where it has been adopted early is key to prioritize scarce resources. Unfortunately lobbies from the local technology sector and academia seem to push toward a me-too attitude, trying to mimic what others have been doing, irrespective of whether they have been successful or not. .
• Develop internal skills, without relying too much on vested interests. Over the last few years there has been a gradual loss of competencies through downsizing and transformation of relevant agencies. Such competencies need to be rebuilt, and should not be outsourced. Also, the ministers and officials who have been tasked with the digital agenda should exercise extreme care in listening to the suggestions and proposals coming from organizations that have a vested interest in greater public spending on this sector. Proposals coming with a clear risk-reward sharing component should be looked at more favorably, while the less specific requests for building infrastructure or provide seed funding should be carefully scrutinized.

The government is certainly on the right path by stressing the importance of digital technologies to support growth and dramatically improve government efficiency. However both the strategic objectives and the execution plans need to be bold enough to create a clear fracture with the past, put capable government officials in the driving seat, and push the local technology sector to share risks and opportunities rather than enjoy public funding.

This is still far from being a full replacement of the current government portal Directgov, but gives a pretty good idea of how things will develop. At face value, it doesn’t look better than many other government web sites, although it is said to provide more effective search capabilities. It provides categories to browse from, popular terms or services and then, for each category, a mixture of information people may be looking for and some services. The style of interaction does not look dissimilar from many other web sites, and it does not even provide the ability for people to tailor it to their needs (like redbridge i does for instance).

But the beauty of Gov.uk is supposed to be under the hood. As a review on the FT Tech blog puts it

Early testing on 2,000 people by civil servants cut by a third the time it took people to find information or complete a task. In some cases, dozens of pages have been whittled down to a multiple-choice process to guide users to their particular destination

If this is confirmed, it is well worth a suboptimal (at least for now) user interface. Also, what is being praised is the unusual development style, which is definitely closer to a start-up or one of the tech giants in Silicon Valley rather than a traditional government institution. The profile and resume of most developers in nothing like the usual government IT person.

There is an excellent review provided by Alex Howard, who also hints to the technology used. One thing that is missing though .- and this also pointed out in Alex’ article – is a clear path to making sure services and information on the new site can be used by multiple intermediaries.

There seems to be an inherent contradiction. On the one hand the UK government is pushing for open data and working to gov.uk as a platform. On the other hand the effort so far seems to be focused on making sure that people only use it. But wasn’t this Directgov’s initial idea? And hasn’t time proven that – especially with evolution toward web 2.0 and social media – people want to be in control of the channel and application they use to interact and transact with government?

UK politicians and government executives keep talking about citizen-centricity, and yet they seem to miss what it really means.

Case in point: In the e-government space, the UK government said many times that intermediaries are important.

The first intermediary policy that I ever saw in the world came actually from the UK in 2003. It was assuming (well before the term web 2.0 was invented) that people may wish to choose a different entity than a government organization to conduct government business (e.g. an insurance for health care, a bank for tax returns, an association for applying for school, and so forth). However their portal development strategy did not really apply that policy.

More recently (in 2007) they have been at the forefront of what would become the government 2.0 movement, and when I met Directgov executive two years ago I was told they were planning to support intermediaries and not act as the only point of contact. And yet, there has not been any visible development. A little over a year ago a Directgov review confirmed the ambiguity between being a service wholesaler or a retailer

Now, with the government pursuing more savings, there is an even greater momentum to close down existing government web sites and consolidate everything into a single web site of sort, which I assume is what gov.uk is the beta version of today.

So, what happened to the idea that people may get greater value from choosing a more natural contact point to interact with government? If there is value in allowing organizations to leverage open data to create dashboards and applications, why shouldn’t it be the same for services and information hosted by gov.uk? Why should I use it to know my council tax (this is one of the services they provide), if I’d rather use my council web site more frequently?

I am pretty sure that the techies at the GDS will tell that the gov.uk architectures supports it, that they just have to define the API, and that as everything is open source and cloud-based, it is almost a “piece of cake” (well, of course they would be more cautious, but as they are young and cool I have no doubt they would pull it out).

The problem is that this is not just a technical issue. It is a design issue. It is about asking yourself from the outset “is my web site the best way to deliver this service to a citizen? And, if not, how do I figure out the best channels and engage them?”. From what I read, there has been a lot of user involvement in designing the site: but I am not aware that there has been much effort invested into looking at a broader set of use cases and options.

So, what is Gov.uk going to become, when it grows up? A platform or yet another government single-point-of-contact?

I am sure I am missing great things that happened in many corners of the world, and I could actually make it longer. My choice is based on topics, issues, individuals, jurisdictions that have “animated” my life as an analyst, through multiple interactions, dealing with several questions about them, and agreeing or disagreeing with what they are doing.

As usual, my thanks go to all professionals who, in different roles and capacity, inside or outside government, work relentlessly to help transform the public sector with (or notwithstanding) technology innovation. Their contribution has been essential to help governments around the world face their huge challenges and better prepare to deal with an often uncertain, and certainly even more challenging future.

As usual, the list is in reverse order, from number ten to number one.

10. Vendors trying to help with government clouds

With the US federal and several other governments hugely interested in cloud computing, several vendors have made significant inroads to meet government requirements for security and data sovereignty. Although most vendors tend to overuse the term “cloud” as an umbrella for a number of different services and delivery models, they have been listening more carefully and responding to their government clients’ needs. Examples include the development of specific federal clouds by Google, Microsoft, IBM and more recently Amazon; the issuance of IaaS blanket purchase agreements by GSA; the role of the vendor association Intellect in helping the UK government shape its own cloud strategy. While there is still room for improvement, things seem to be moving in the right direction.

9. Cloud Security research by the European Network & Information Security Agency

Largely ignored by clients outside Europe (as witnessed by the number of clients who had never heard about it), ENISA’s “Security and Resilience in Governmental Clouds” is one of the few substantial contributions that the European institutions and agencies have provided to the cause of greater use of cloud computing by government organizations. Very thorough, it provides a great list of criteria for anybody who wants to look beyond the surface of compliance issues, and to something a bit more international than what FISMA and FedRAMP give in the US.

8. How Queensland used social media to face the floods in January

This has been mentioned by many as one of the best examples of good government use of social media where this has often associated to riots and revolutions. Several state agencies opened access to social media to their employees, and started using platforms like Twitter and Facebook to reach out to the community affected by massive floods. Some of those uses have been exemplary and have gained the Queensland State Police, amongst others, accolades and awards. This great case also showed us how social media can serve a tactical purpose to face an immediate need, but may be difficult to sustain over time.

7. The many UK strategies

After a pause to let the new coalition government settle, the UK Cabinet Office did issue a Government ICT strategy in March, followed by a shared services vision and then a stream of documents about the implementation of the ICT strategy, covering cloud computing, end-user devices and more. These documents show that the idea of having foundational partners, i.e. IT leaders in large departments, in charge for different parts of the strategy is working. On the downside, though, some leadership changes in the Cabinet office, with executives moving to the private sector, may leave some void at crucial implementation time.

6. Alex Howard: great gov 2.0 blogger

Alex and I are often on the opposite side of the fence when it comes to debating open government. He is an enthusiast, although, being a reporter, he does not like this term. Actually, I mean this in a positive sense, as opposed to my analyst cynicism that makes me look at many open government endeavors as politically motivated, déjà vu, or “me-too”. I have often enjoyed comparing notes with him and certainly like the breadth and depth of his government 2.0 coverage. Probably if he were not working for O’Reilly, he could come to terms with the weaknesses in the “government-as-a-platform” approach: despite this, he is one of the most balanced bloggers I have been reading on this and related themes.

5. The US Federal CIOs: change and continuity

This year has seen the change in federal IT leadership with Vivek Kundra moving to Harvard and Steve Van Roekel taking his place. Vivek has been one of the most controversial and innovative figures in federal IT, dividing experts between enthusiastic supporters and dismissive critics. The former liked his very different approach, driven by transparency and the willingness to push change in various areas. The latter complained about his lack of experience with federal environment and processes and even accused him of caring mostly about self-promotion. Reality, as usual, is in the middle: he certainly was visionary for the federal environment and triggered some significant change; however he did not put enough emphasis on the sustainability of his many initiatives. Steven’s main challenge is to accomplish something that helps build political capital in a re-election year: he is doing so by building upon what Vivek did, rather than immediately looking at something else in order to impose his personal vision.

4. Australia: down under and down to Earth

During 2011 Australia published both its draft ICT strategy and its cloud strategy. While not perfect, these documents are very sensible and do not try to impose blanket approaches to all agencies. This has been much welcome in between a stream of more compulsory measures, from the shared service approach in Canada to Cloud First in the US. It is always refreshing to discuss about these topics with people at AGIMO:I do wish them to keep a stronger drive than what they did with the outcome of the government 2.0 taskforce, which made number 2 in my top ten in 2009 but apparently had little impact so far.

3. GSA: keeping their drive with tighter budgets

The tighter federal budget in 2011 has taken resources away from some of the innovative programs that the US General Services Administration have been leading under the Obama administration. Nevertheless they have kept advancing their agenda on both USA.gov and on cloud computing. On the latter, despite a change in leadership, they have finally published the blanket purchase agreement for IaaS, pushed a call for tender on email services through a GAO protest, progressed the complex FedRAMP initiative, while transitioning themselves to a new cloud-based email service. This is a group of talented and highly-motivated professionals who epitomize the great government employees that made number 1 in my top ten last year.

2. Women in IT: leading with grace

I have written in the past about how women get social media better than men do, and how I have had the pleasure to meet great female IT-savvy politicians and IT executives. The list goes on and on. Behind many of the successful achievements that I have been tracking there is a woman. People like Linda Cureton (NASA CIO and author of the excellent “The Leadership Muse”), Ann Steward (Australian federal CIO), Mechthild Rohen (Head of eGovernment program at the European Commission), Claudia de Andrade de Wit (CIO of the City of Amsterdam), Stela Mocan (Director of the eGovernment Center in Moldova) and many many others are all great examples: we’d better watch out!

1. New Zealand: the best social media guidelines so far

Analysts can’t help find little drawbacks even in the best product or strategy. That’s why I was so happy to find the social media guidelines from the New Zealand government: this is close to an almost perfect document (of course it’s not, analysts are impossible to please) and certainly one that I recommend to many to read. It is a great blend of common sense and actionable advice, and can be easily tailored to different contexts. The authors said they were heavily inspired by a document prepared by people in the UK government: however it does not look like the UK published one yet, so, while some kudos go to the unknown British employees who inspired this, the merit is all for our distant friends in the Pacific.

Thank you all for reading my blog through 2011. Let me wish you, your families and friends a Happy New Year.

10. Vendors trying to help

To watch in 2012

- SSC Canada

- FedRAMP impact

Of course during the last recessions enterprises have been investing in IT to increase productivity and competitiveness and accelerate a return to growth. As an interesting book that I am reading postulates (Race Against The Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy, by Brynjolfsson & MacAfee ), productivity increases made possible by IT may be one of the causes for high unemployment.

Transformation driven by technology has happened in the past already. The industrial revolution between the 19th and the 20th century has substantially reduced the number of farmers and increased the number of workers, also due to the automation of agricultural processes. Industrial automation has then progressively reduced the number of workers on the shop floor. Office and process automation have gradually replaced clerical roles, and employment moved from back office administrative tasks to more customer-facing roles. More recently the advent of the Internet, the web, new enterprise suits and the emergence of business process utility, have accelerated the rate of substitution of humans with automated processes at such a pace that finding new jobs and roles become very hard. So it is fair to say that IT may be playing a role in maintaining high levels of unemployment across many developed countries.

But IT is also having another major impact on what we are experiencing today. Following the global financial crisis of 2008 and what is happening today with the high volatility of stocks and the immediate reactions of stock markets to political events in European countries that are plagued by unsustainable levels of sovereign debt, I cannot help observing that the automation of investment processes is a significant contributor to instability. Buy and sell orders are today fully automated, and computer algorithms often take decisions concerning the instantaneous movement of vast amounts of money that can have a major – and sometimes nefarious – impact on the valuation of enterprises, entire industry sectors and ultimately nations.

Case in point, my country (Italy) is fighting with a confidence crisis from the markets, which has caused the resignation of a prime minister who has been ruling the country for a long time, urging the president to take measures that are at the very edge of our own constitution. Stock exchange indexes, cost of borrowing, spread between Italian and German bonds change very rapidly following almost by the minute how political events unfold but, at the same, influencing those events in real-time.

I would argue that the main problem is not IT as such, but the speed at which IT has been able to take processes that would require hours, weeks or months to complete in the past. Jobs disappear abruptly, as enterprises outsource processes to service providers over the Web. Established political processes, such as the confidence vote of a new government or a new set of austerity measures, cannot keep the pace of highly-automated investment processes that drive the financial markets today.

Public policy has not been able to either anticipate or manage the process acceleration caused by massive deployment of technology and continuous innovation. What we are witnessing today, with increasingly frequent emergency meetings of national leaders and international organizations, political struggles throughout many countries, banks announcing record losses and suddenly looking for recapitalization, might not be caused by IT, but is being made worse by IT.

I am no luddite and I have been working all my life to support IT-driven innovation. But now, for the first time in my life, I feel the need to pause, look back at what we have accomplished and reflect upon where technology might be contributing to making our way of living unsustainable.

Interestingly, this is a question we already ask for other technologies. Internal combustion engines, and most of the transportation industry, rely on fossil fuels or other non-renewable resources which we are clearly depleting (I would suggest a great book on the topic: Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization). Technologies used for farming or food processing lead to excessive exploitation as well as higher carbon footprint. Nuclear energy, besides depleting non-renewable resources, may have devastating consequences on the environment, and so does industrial chemical processing. And the list goes on and on.

But when it comes to IT, comments are always positive. IT helps people be safer, healthier, richer, happier. Consumer IT has become throughout the world the objective of people’s desire and self-realization. Occasionally we single out with a negative connotation the use of technology in weapon systems or for surveillance and espionage , but then we welcome that too as it gets transferred to civilian applications.

The time has come for us in the industry to recognize that IT has accelerated and amplified the critical situation that we are globally facing today. More efficient manufacturing, more efficient supply chains, more efficient trading, more efficient markets have all contributed to higher long-term unemployment and to financial, economic and political instability.

One could argue that it is nobody’s fault and everybody’s fault at the same time. But investigating the causes is not as important as exploring whether and how IT can get us all out of the mess it has helped create.

The natural reaction of many enterprises, including government, will be to deploy technology to increase efficiency even further, but this is likely to make things worse (such as increasing unemployment even further before opportunities for new jobs are created).

Technology can create entirely new businesses that do not exist today and that can generate new wealth, as it happened after the dot.com bubble burst. However previous technology advances have widened the gap between more and less skilled workers in terms of employment and average income, as well as decreased the relative importance of human labor vs capital, as described in Brynjolfsson & MacAfee’s book. Therefore a return to growth driven by IT-led innovation may cause further inequality.

All this raises fundamental questions about whether and how government policies can positively influence the role that IT can play in the future. Over the last couple of years I have seen several governments coming up with information society or digital economy plans, something similar to what we say at the end of the nineties and at the beginning of the last decade. These plans include infrastructure investments to provide broadband access to all citizens, grants scheme to help businesses, further development of e-government. However what these policies aim at is injecting more technology, more pervasively into economy and society, and it is not evident whether they would make things better by cushioning further disrupting effects. And, even if they could, they would probably take too long to have any discernible impact.

So, are we doomed? Are we heading toward financial meltdown, unmanageable social tensions, political turmoil, and all this mostly caused by our fate in information technology?

I do not know and I certainly do not hope so. But we need to realize, both individually – as IT professionals – and collectively – as an industry – that we bear a responsibility in understanding and cushioning the short and long-term impacts of the technology we love and sell.

We need to temper our engineering or marketing nature with softer skills, and care about the sustainability of IT-led innovation as much as we care for the successful outcome of IT projects and deployments.

We must discuss these issues in social networks as much as we discuss about the need for further digital economy investments.

We must apply the principles of corporate social responsibility to the use of IT as much as we do for enviromentally-impactful materials, processes and behaviors.

It won’t be easy. Many of us will remain in denial, trapped in the illusion that a healthy-growing industry cannot be but a driver for growth. Acceptance will require taking our share of responsibility for the problems that today we’d rather totally attribute to the greed of financial services executives and the incompetence of politicians.

Let’s make sure we start before it is too late.

Yesterday I was one of the millions of Italians who tried to fill their census forms online rather than on paper. I would have thought that the statistical office would plan for an easily foreseeable spike in demand or at least advise people that there may be availability issues and suggest how how to distribute requests across a more manageable period of time. Not at all, and all I and hundreds of thousands of Italians got was the “service unavailable” window, and apologies through the press.

Today I decided to file the request for disability benefits on behalf of my mother. This was supposed to be the last step of a long process:

1. Going to the GP to have a certificate indicating the type of disability
2. Initiating the procedure, through a not-for-profit intermediary (no way to submit the request unless electronically, so intermediaries offer that servicem since people who ask for disability benefits are unlikely to be online users)
3. Being called two months later for a medical exam (fixed date, fixed time, no way to reschedule in case of need)
4. Getting the results four months later, which is when one can actually file the request

At this stage I had to fill a form, go to my mom’s bank to get an official stamp and signature (although disability benefits would be paid on the exact same bank account where she received her pension), and then – with all necessary forms and copies – I showed up at the local branch of the Italian social security agency. To my surprise I was told that they could take in my request, but would not bear any responsibility for its successful transfer to their local headquarters (10 km far), nor would they give me a receipt. My best options in order to be totally sure were to either go to their headquarters or to use (again) a not-for-profit intermediary.

I queued for 90 minutes at the intermediary organization to then meet a friendly and very helpful guy who processed the request (electronically) in about 60 seconds, showing that my mother’s case was already in the system.

The irony is that the social security agency is known to be one of the best users of IT in the Italian government, with a suit of online services that requires – however – userid and password that a 80 year-old woman is unlikely to even think about asking.

In this process, the social security agency sent a letter informing us that the medical commission had authorized disability benefits for a person (my mom) they know everything about, as she already receives a monthly pension from them. Why does one need to place a request again?

As governments strive to be more effective and efficient, they aim at exchanging information across different departments and agencies. But, here, an agency that is deemed to be top-class in using technology, seems to be unable to even talk to itself.

This made me think about what happens today to city governments that promote and successfully deploy such an infrastructure. A few years ago, this very accomplishment would have been enough, by providing access to people at a moment in time in which there were not too many hotspots, and inexpensive 3G data plans from mobile operators were not in sight yet. Today, cities that want to be in a leadership position must think earlier rather than later how this infrastructure can transform the way the city government transforms its services and operations.

I do not know what are Taipei’s plans, but there are several areas that occur to me as being ripe for consideration for a totally wi-fi enabled city:

• Better connectivity for video-surveillance cameras: there are thousands of cameras in Taipei like in Singapore, London and many other cities concerned with public safety. New IP-enabled cameras could be deployed in new locations, with fewer cabling requirements (and solar-cell-powered ones would completely mobile), making video analytics applications more effective, by combining shots from multiple angles. The use of IP-enabled cameras to improve traffic light synchronization or to develop less expensive urban road charging schemes could also be considered.
• Some of the existing applications to provide real-time information about bus, train and flight schedules could be made more pervasive, and combined with the ability for citizens to report delays, disservices, incidents through their mobile devices, hence significantly increasing the accuracy of real-time information.
• Other citizen-reporter applications could be deployed, to gather collective intelligence about infrastructure, public safety and so forth. While these are not new, their pervasiveness could lead to the development of new business models, where citizens receive “points” to be redeemed when using public transportation or other public facilities, in order to create a virtuous circle and make the reporting applications more compelling for citizens.
• The deployment of electronic signage for traffic and parking information, as well as for advertisement purposes becomes easier, ranging from large screens for real-time information to special purpose kiosks.
• Parking meters could be IP-enabled to provide real-time information about actual and prospective parking availability to drivers through mobile apps.

These are just a few examples of what is or will soon become possible. However there is almost an obligation for cities that have accomplished the mythical “wi-fi for all” to think fast about near-future opportunities. Unfortunately this has not been the case for some of them, which have been sitting on the laurel of their free-for-all wi-fi, but have failed to plan for the next.

So, the real question is not “what can a wi-fi infrastructure do for our citizens?” but “how can the city administration leverage the wi-fi infrastructure to become smarter?“. A question that is better asked earlier rather than later.

Some of the statistics they shared with me, although I have not yet verified them, looked quite promising, and so was their reputation among most of the other agencies I visited. For instance, their payment engine is being used for purposes as diverse as collecting speeding tickets and business license fees, with individual agencies providing their front-end branding, and the payment process being centralized. Also, their portal looks remarkably well designed, with the same look and feel for content provided and managed by different departments.

The discussion was about the future challenges of supporting transactional services as well as the trend toward government 2.0 and engagement with the community. The problem the organization is running into is that, since they have been running their services quite effectively and efficiently, without either going over budget nor failing delivering on their service levels, they are having a hard time at proving the value of they are doing to the rest of government.

We are so used to read stories about projects that go over time and over budget, or simply fail, and about the excessive cost of infrastructure or application management in the public sector, that meeting people who are not causing any significant technical or business issue is quite refreshing.

On the other hand, they have become victims of their own success. As things have been running smoothly, there is an expectation that they will continue doing so, and their services are being seen as a commodity more than adding value.

How do you demonstrate the value of a commodity? This reminds me of a conversation I had several years ago with a portfolio manager in a government department in the UK. He  said that justifying the spending for infrastructure upgrades using their (pretty well developed) portfolio management process was so hard that they had to develop worst-case scenarios or other types of scenario-planning approaches to justify that. Otherwise, specific business applications or customer-facing initiatives would always prevail over department-wide infrastructure improvements.

Isn’t it ironic that complaints about government screwing up IT projects make the news that often give IT most visibility, while well-run services are given for granted and need to beg for further funding?

This simple statement, which was clearly expressed from a consumer standpoint (and I said so), triggered a reaction by the professor, who revealed he has been providing user interface consulting especially in the banking sector for many years, accusing me of wild generalization.

While reminding him that I had expressed my opinion as a consumer, I also gave him concrete examples of dubious usability, and said that – from a professional perspective – I had noted that e-government web sites were on average more problematic than in other countries.

At this point somebody else, who must have had a career in IT in Italy before relocating outside Europe, reinforced the professor’s point, pointing me to one particular web site from the Italian administration, which he said was a great example. I actually happen to know that site and, while it is pretty ok when you use it, it is hell if you have lost or forgotten your credentials and try to get your password or pincode back: I actually tried it yesterday, and indeed the whole process still reminds of a pre-IT (let alone pre-Internet) world.

My comment was that I had the impression they were defending their “little garden”, which drove even stronger reactions, to which I responded with what I thought was an innocent but indeed unfortunate metaphor: I said that rather than a little garden, they were defending a field, most likely a poppy field, as the opioid effect would show the field (or the little garden) larger than it actually was.

At this stage the professor got infuriated and accused me of calling him drug-addict, and actually calling me an idiot, which I probably was to get engaged in that conversation in the first place.

This experience made me reflect though about the difference between the kind of well-reputed experts we have in this country, and other countries that are equally plagued by slow innovation and less-than-ideal customer service, and the people I meet in countries where innovation and risk-taking and caring about the customer is the norm.

Professors, consultants, managers, senior political leaders in my country often exude power, experience, reputation, and their statements and actions are strongly influenced by who they are, who they have been, the (important) people they know or have been working with. Often they are so focused on the past, that they are ill-equipped to deal with a future that becomes increasingly uncertain and requires to continuously challenge one’s own assumptions.

People in similar roles that  I meet in countries like the US, Canada, Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, even in Singapore – just to give a few examples – are very different. They do like to be challenged and respond to the challenge, they do care about their clients because they know they would not exist without them, and they keep raising the bar and looking at the future, does not matter how uncertain it is.

I do not want to generalize, of course, and there are many people both in Italy and elsewhere who show different traits, but I would argue that meeting and talking to many hundred clients and probably thousand people around the world every year, I do have a reasonable sample at least for what concerns the IT world.

What is interesting is that countries that seem to be doing better in terms of economic recovery, growth, intellectual property creation, innovation, are also those where people I meet in my professional capacity do not give anything for granted, are happy to listen as well as to talk, do not get pissed off if you challenge them or offer a controversial viewpoint for reflection.

The professor’s friend who had moved outside Italy pointed out that my Facebook picture shows me on stage, interviewing a CIO, implying that I liked to be “on stage” in that conversation too. Funnily enough the reason for that picture is that the CIO I was interviewing exemplifies how innovators should be: a blend of competence, courage and humility. I hope the next generation will be like him in my country too.

I need to provide full disclosure here, for those who have not read my earlier positions on e-government benchmarking, be it EU, UN, or various consulting firms. I have always questioned the value of these surveys and ranking, although I acknowledge their political importance that they play in giving an impulse to countries where investments have been lagging behind.

This year’s survey is incredibly rich in data and detail, and makes a valuable attempt at looking at e-government maturity at the local level as well as at looking in some considerable detail to the important area of e-procurement (guess why? the European Commission is funding a major pilot on e-procurement – see previous post).

Evolved from its early versions where the report was looking only at the online service sophistication, the benchmark now looks at multiple dimensions, such as transparency, multichannel delivery, user satisfaction, ease of use, as well as – at the portal level – how well the one-stop shop approach is implemented, its usability, and the user focus of its design.

I have no reason to believe that the quality of this survey is not good, on the contrary. It is road-tested, people engaged are skilled professionals in the area, and the data collection and analysis cannot but have become better.

Unfortunately the whole exercise is not convincing.

Imagine my surprise, as an Italian citizen, when I have seen that Italy has jumped up to almost number one in full online service availability. Luckily enough, when it comes to user experience, Italy trails behind in the benchmark. Of course the press and the blogosphere in Italy celebrates the former and sort of understates the latter.

Let me give you a flavor of personal experience here. My mother suffers from age-related cognitive impairment and is entitled to disability benefits. However one can file for disability benefits only online or through a number of franchisees, such as unions or associations, that usually charge for their services. A high touch service, where people with disabilities or their relatives could clearly benefit from human interaction, has been turned into an online service, which usually forces people to rely on intermediaries, given the affected demographics.

Another example, coming from my professional experience, is Spain, which made very well in last year’s benchmark, and focused almost relentlessly on bridging the gap with respect to online leaders. In meetings with Spanish officials last year, it was clear that they could hardly justify and sustain some of the online service that they develop, especially in consideration of the tough economic and financial challenges for the country.

This is the benchmarking effect: pushing jurisdictions in the wrong direction, by ignoring their peculiarities and making those who lag behind – often for good reasons – run an often useless race.

The effort of the EU benchmark at capturing new metrics is certainly good, but suggestions for the way forward are disappointing. Here are a few highlights:

Build the findings of the recently launched Action Learning Group (ALG) on “Open and Transparent Government” into the 2011 monitoring framework: This ALG is reviewing monitoring practices within countries to seek a common basis. It can also explore recent developments in ‘cloud’ provisioning, and other aspects of the rapidly advancing technology landscape to recommend pilot activities as well as more table EU27+ monitoring indicators

This looks like putting together two hyped themes – openness and cloud – to replace online services (which were the hype at the beginning). But what would be actually measured and why remains unclear.

Increase the link between these measurements and the current CIPs pilots: Considerable benefit will merge through this in efficiency, commonality of approaches, communication with countries, and monitoring. This will inform the development from these more generic ‘key enablers’ and potential specific ‘common horizontal building blocks’ that can be used within and across Europe. This may result in recommendations in such areas as emerging new trans‐EU ‘platforms’, ‘gov as an API’, new business models (e.g. involving other sectors). Another consideration is to tighten the link between this measurement approach and the DIGIT ISA programme: There is considerable synergy potential through doing so.

CIPs are large scale pilots in areas like procurement and identity management (see previous post), while ISA deals mostly with European interoperability issues. According to this suggestion, the benchmark would be subservient to EU initiatives, potentially focusing even less on individual country peculiarities than it did so far.

Explore possibilities of launching studies to compare practices in EU with practice in other non‐EU regions to both influence global developments, and learn from leading practice: This can build on existing international collaboration (e.g. group of 5: US, Canada, UK, NZ, Australia), and consider developments in major economies such as China, India etc.

It looks like the report does not recognize that there is a need to better analyze country peculiarities, but wants to move to an even more general level (and – by the way – isn’t there already a UN-sponsored e-government ranking?).

At the end, the report promises the following developments

1. Stabilising the 2010 scope of measurement – and provide a new broader set of benchmarks for
countries (and regions) to compare and learn from;
2. Establishing Action Learning Groups (ALG) – a process for indicator innovation; piloting; and (leading) practice sharing. This is in process addressing: Open Government & Transparency, and Life‐Events;
3. Increasing reference to international leading practices – to ensure that Europe remains competitive on a worldwide stage

In a nutshell: (1) provide more metrics, (2) paint this in open government (which is indeed very fashionable, I can’t wait to see a ranking by number of published open data set), and (3) put this in a broader context.

I know there are plenty of great people and genuine efforts behind all this. But could we please pull the plug on EU benchmarking, and move on?

Almost all these conversations have some common elements:

• There has been a triggering event, raising the visibility of the topic among politicians. In some cases the event is the publication of one of those worldwide rankings (from the UN, the European Commission, Accenture, or Brookings) that I have been bashing on for many years.
• Prominent people in the economy and society (economists, journalists, popular bloggers, and the likes) believe that greater investment in technology will re-ignite the national economy, and that technology is a powerful weapon to modernize a bureaucracy that hinders progress and innovation.
• ICT vendors and consultants look for greater public sector spending at a moment in time when clients in other industry sectors spend more cautiously on technology.

Whatever the trigger, it is certainly important to take a deep breath and make a serious reflection about how technology can help.

As I have been critical to the latest call for an Italian Digital Agenda, readers may think that I have something against e-government and digital strategies. Not at all, I strongly believe that digital technology is the backbone for growth, innovation and transformation. However what countries, states, cities need is something more than an empty shell like the Italian initiative, something that is rooted in their context, looks at their priorities, has a laser-sharp focus on delivering on outcomes that make sense in that context and for those priorities.

In the current climate of financial, economic and political uncertainty, e-government and digital country-wide strategies cannot be based any longer just on infrastructure investments and large, long term programs and vague objectives about citizen service and satisfaction. Money is in short supply, societal change is accelerating pace, economy remains uncertain: this calls for a much sharper focus.

We have been providing consistent actionable advice on this for a long time, and still do. Glimpses of that are available on our many blogs, while clients have access to further resources. For instance:

• A useful resource for Gartner clients who want to take a critical look at their existing or draft strategies is the E-Government Assessment Questionnaire, which allows them to self assess how good their vision is and how well they can deliver (or are delivering) on that vision. I have been involved in sessions where I have run a part of the questionnaire with a group including business and IT people, and participants have gradually discovered their context and their priorities while trying to find the right answer to each question. They become very soon autonomous with using the questionnaire on their own, within their four walls. This is a tool for them and not for external consultants to perform expensive assessments.
• Another resource are the various analyses we publish on readiness rankings, to put those in the right perspective and help government executives distill the pressworthy elements that are of little use for planning purposes, from the useful data and nuggets in those reports.
• For people looking into the open government aspects, the Open Government Maturity Model helps match objectives, maturity, governance models to use open government as a tool for innovation and transformation, rather than an end in itself.
• Last but not least, the Hype Cycle for Government Transformation, which we publish every year in July, provides clients with a view about key technologies, their level of maturity, their adoption risks.

One great thing about being an analyst is that while you cannot be constantly engaged with clients on any of their projects, you talk to them at critical points in those projects, and you do so for hundreds of clients around the world. We happen to see a lot of different cases, and just looking at questions coming from people engaged on e-government projects we can detect patterns about what works and what does not.

This is why I can tell that supply-driven approaches like the Italian Digital Agenda do not work, because they lack focus. This is why some of those countries – like Spain – that did extremely well on climbing the UN or EU e-government rankings, are now struggling with justifying what they did and face systemic issues that should have been the focus of their attention, rather than bean-counting online services. This is why countries, like Canada, that once did very well on e-government, have been very close to missing new opportunities.

As I said, digital technology has a huge potential to help government transformation and weather challenges ahead. Let’s just hope people won’t waste it.