Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Searching net today, I have found an interesting site named e-Government Good Practice Framework contains a lot of practical exemples of how digital business enhances public sector. Unfortunatelly in the section top 10 cases per country, I have not seen Poland. Does it mean there are no such projects in Poland. I will check this address more detailed.

posted by dkepowicz @ 4:58 PM 1 comments

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Due to their size and multi layer composition, IT projects at public sector require from their owners significant cost involving as well as human resources. Even this, they are quite often exposed to fail. Failures in public projects happens so often as in private sector projects, however they are more visible and attract public opinion much stronger. In other hand successful public projects very often pass without an echo. Let have a look into some successful one. Alan Cane at his article (Lessons from business among the hits and misses) analyzes the UK government's Vehicle and Driver Licencing Agency project to let British drivers to license their vehicle online. The system was built in cooperation with IBM and today over 3 milions drivers have used it successfully. But there was something additional but licensing. Due to licensing authority has to be sure a vehicle is insured and that payment has been made before a licence can be issued, the DVLA data base had to be linked to the motor industry insurance and a special payment engine with the links to the banks had to be created. This gives us a good imagine of project complexity and effort for its implementation contributed by 80 IBM staff and 20 DVLA IT specialists. The key success factor regarding A. Rhodes - planning and peformance manager, was the ensure that what was delivered, was what customers just required. In other words: "the secret is defining a product your customers will want use". In that case those 3 million drivers that have used the system so far, proof that digital business positive affects public sector and anable him to fulfill our (citizens) requirements in more efficient way.
Another example how technology enhances public sector comes from US. The State of Illinois found the opportunity to use new solutions for improving its knowledge management system which allows government agencies associations and universities to exchange information and share knowledge on common platform. E.g. "procurement officers in all agencies save time planning and preparing procurements by puling up invitations to tender or RFPs (request for proposal) issued by other agencies or states", says S. Martin (One-stop shops and seamles public sevices by S. Murray, FT, October 4th 2006). In addition to that the state purchasers can acces financial data, prices benchmarking, performance analysis, as well as court documents about potential supplier. The state of North Dakota use File Net, an enterprise content management platform to have all state files accessible on line. This solution save citizens time waiting for document processing from departments as tax, welfare or vehicle licensing. The system is used by 13 agencies from tax, transportation to education and pilot for state court system is being tested. Due to share of information is a fact, documents of one agency can be accessed instantly by others. E.g. tax office can monitorize motor vehicle records to check sales taxes. This kind of flow of information of course rise a question about how departments coordinate their efforts and about personal data protection, when dealing with the personal information of citizens.
Seems that US public sector has noticed the need of being competetive and successfully utylize the opportunity that digital business can contributes to their activities.
Another intersting programm is held by IBM and Cisco. They have collaborated on a Digital Communities solution to provide public sector customers with the services and technologies they need to connect people and communities in both rural and urban areas. Combining IBM's application integration, business process, and service excellence with Cisco's wireless and networking leadership, the companies can provide tightly integrated solutions that may help increase service efficiency, reduce maintenance costs and increase workforce productivity. IBM and Cisco are collaborating in four key areas for a Digital Community solution:
1. Workforce Mobility: Municipal and campus wireless networks that, among other benefits, can help increase workforce productivity, accelerate field workers' access to information, and increase first responder capabilities.
2. Networked and Sensor-enabled Surveillance: fixed and mobile digital surveillance capabilities to aid public safety officials in making informed decisions and improve response.
3. Wireless Campus for Healthcare: combined indoor and outdoor wireless connectivity for educational institutions to help mitigate security challenges and improve communication through a converged network infrastructure for voice, data and video using open architecture and a phased approach.
4. Wireless Campus for Education: combined indoor and outdoor wireless connectivity for hospitals and health providers to improve employee satisfaction, productivity and access to information.
The practical use of digital technology at public sector can be examined based on example of: Cisco Wireless Technology to deliver innovative e-permitting process that has been introduced for the city of Cleveland and Cisco Solutions for Nevada's Clark County and Public Services and Safety In Las Vegas.

posted by dkepowicz @ 8:59 PM 0 comments

Monday, October 16, 2006

Living in the competetive environment, nowadays even governments institutions face rising pressure to offer more for less. Public administration that is usually not a pioneer in the field of implementing advance information technology, seems to be aware now on its customers /citizens (who pay their salaries) needs. Citizens who are used to interact digitally with commercial world, require similar opportunities of public administration. "People see what's available on the commercial side" said Tim Dowd from Sun Microsystems in Sarah Murray's article (One-stop shops and seamless public services). Obviously, they have fully right to expect the same approach of governments agencies. Fortunatelly, a lot indicates that the public sector has started to look for chances to better satisfy citizens demands - with the still shrinking budgets - through improving internal efficiency, safety and security.

posted by dkepowicz @ 10:02 PM 0 comments

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Late, better than never. Hope, it is last moment to make up for lost time, no matter what reasons occured.
This weekend - after long break - I met my colleagues from MBA course and asked them for their blogs advancement and how they picked the topic up. Seems that I'm the last one - fortunatelly registered, so I can start right now.
Disscussing the topics they selected, I was supprised that some of them have'nt selected real DBE subject. This is of course not my problem, nevertheless, I will keep the guideliness and stay with DBE.
Almost two weeks ago I was flying back home from Prague. Entering the aircraft I was delivered with some nespapers, among other by Financial Times. While I was reading the issue, I noticed they had added an additional (or special report) called FT Digital Business. I found the lecture quite interesting, even so, to decide to select one of the presented topic as a subject for my blog.
On page 4th Sarah Murray describes how technology supports public services in US. So, why not to check how it looks from a closer perspective? What are the experiences in US so far? Are there any similar solution in Europe exist? What about Polish agencies? Are the Polish agencies aware of the problem, are they see any synergies at their processes? What are their latest achivements?
Lets check this out.


posted by dkepowicz @ 8:16 PM 0 comments

Monday, June 12, 2006

Welcome,

I'm a little bit confused about results, but lets try... This registration is like a first step to explore tools for digital business enhancement I guess. The begining is hard (no earlier experiences, late evening) but who said it will be easy?

Hope it will work, next step is to register my blog at Bloglines user. See whether it works. By the way, I not sure to which group I belong to.

posted by dkepowicz @ 11:22 PM 5 comments