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"The Government must bring about a fundamental change in the way we use Information Technology. We must modernise the business of government itself - achieving joined up working between different parts of government and providing new, efficient and convenient ways for citizens and businesses to communicate with government and to receive services."
Modernising Government White Paper 1999
"…local e-Government is more than just electronic service delivery, important though this is. Rather, local e-Government entails a 'root and branch' restructuring of local government services and democracy, that is both a consequence of reforming government and a major enabler of transformational change and improvement. Consequently, local e-Government should underpin and be tightly integrated into Best Value, Community Planning and the many other strategic initiatives that comprise the so-called 'modernising agenda'."
Local e-Government Now - SOCITM and IDEA 2001
The application of e-Government must be guided by our vision of a socially inclusive community where services are accessible to all and delivered in efficient and effective ways, taking full account of the differing needs, customs and interests of local people.
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The explosion of telecommunications and Internet technology is dramatically changing people's expectations about how and when they communicate with others on a personal and a professional level. These expectations will affect the way the Council plans and delivers local government services. The key processes that will be affected include:
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The UK Government has set a national target for full electronic service delivery by 2005.
By 2005, we are committed to providing access, whether by telephone, internet or other electronic methods, to all authority services that can be delivered electronically.
A new Best Value Performance Indicator (BVPI 157) has been established to track our progress towards this goal.
The services that will be delivered through our e-Government programme are interactions between people and the Council including
We have made good progress towards our e-Government goal with approximately 25% of services already available. We have committed to a target of 40% for the 2002/2003 financial year. To meet that target, we will actively engage with all Council departments and external partners to enhance our electronic information provision and consultation as well as introducing electronic payments, bookings and application services.
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The Council has emphasised the importance of e-Government by including it as one of the seven Key Issues for 2002/2003 in our Local Performance Plan. Another key issue, the 5 Point Plan for local regeneration, includes a commitment to Hastings as an 'E-City' "…creating a community, local government, health and educational network, and providing high speed internet access to homes, businesses and schools."
With these key issues and the government target in mind, we will build our action plan upon these broad development areas:
To create a sensible e-Government action plan that meets the needs and expectations of the community, we must be clear about what the public needs and expects, what Councillors require to support and enhance their roles as representatives of local democracy, and how we must support our staff as the key deliverers of the new agenda.
We have derived basic statistics about the use of electronic communications by residents and their preferred methods of contacting the Council from two Citizens' Panel surveys run in 2001 and 2002.
The 2001 survey found that about 50% of local people had access to the Internet either at home or at work. That figure had risen to 60% in the 2002 survey. In 2002, 61% of respondents (80% of people under 45) had used the Internet. 35% of those surveyed had visited the Hastings Borough Council website.
Respondents who have not yet used the Internet were asked why this was so. 49% said that they did not have access to the Internet with 31% saying they had no interest in using it. 28% said they did not know how to use the Internet while 26% did not feel that they had a need to use it.
95% of residents surveyed had a telephone and 83% had a television in their home.
In 2001 we were told that people under 35 tend to favour increased use of information technology in their dealings with the Council - 69% were receptive to the use of public kiosks with computer access and 76% wanted increased use of the Internet and e-mail. 75% of respondents indicated they would telephone the main switchboard to make contact with the Council. The Town Hall (24%) and the Hastings Information Centre (18%) were the main Council offices which people contacted.
When asked in 2002 what services they considered priorities for telephone or internet access, the top priorities were 'reporting problems' and 'requesting a service'. Other high priorities were 'information about Council services' and local events information.
Almost 60% of residents have had some contact with the Council in the last year. Most of those (72%) made contact between 1 and 3 times.
We can draw some preliminary conclusions from this:
In order to reach a fuller understanding of the needs of various segments of the community, further consultation will be needed to determine the priority to be given to electronic access to specific services. Information about who uses a particular service, the frequency and timing of use and the expectations for service delivery will inform our e-Government plans. Work being undertaken to support the Council's Equalities programme will also be considered for what it tells us about who does not use particular services and why not, as it may be that electronic service methods can address some of the needs or concerns of non-users.
We need the participation of Members as active proponents of new service delivery methods. Work is needed to ensure that members are fully supported by technology in their interaction with constituents and officers. We will consult with members to obtain their views on the use of technology in their constituency and executive roles. Our findings will inform the work of the Members' Training Group as it plans for enhancements to members' services.
The involvement of staff is of crucial importance to the e-Government programme as the staff who deliver a particular service are well placed to identify the needs of their customers and opportunities for streamlining service delivery. In order to visualise new methods of working, staff need to be made aware of the capabilities of technology and how pioneers of e-Government are using it to transform services. Staff must also be open to the possibilities of change; this is best accomplished by actively involving them in the debate and planning around electronic service delivery.
Best Value reviews and service delivery planning, where consideration of electronic service alternatives is an important component, offer a platform for staff participation in the planning and delivery of electronic services.
"… providing new, efficient and convenient ways for citizens and businesses to communicate with government and to receive services."
In practical terms, this means easy ways to contact us, available at convenient times, with staff supported by computer systems enabling the customer to complete his or her business with us quickly and efficiently, ideally in a single visit or telephone call or session on the Internet.
This streamlined public face may well require fundamental changes to the organisation, specifically to the way information, delivery and decision-making is compartmentalised in traditional departments. Such change requires a commitment to working across departmental boundaries and granting greater authority to front-line staff with the increased managerial responsibility that more flexible working arrangements will bring. The Council's commitment to new working methods will be demonstrated as the e-Government programme develops.
Similarly, changes to internal processes may be required in order to increase internal efficiency and redirect resources toward customer service activities. As a first step, we will undertake a comprehensive review of our administrative processes to determine where such efficiencies can be introduced.
The Council's staff and members must be comfortable with technology and able to grasp its potential uses or our progress will be limited. Those who establish and carry out Council policy are best placed to see how service delivery can be reshaped to meet the needs of their customers. We will assess the gaps in our IT skills through the new performance appraisal process. We will adopt the European Computer Driving License to create an IT-aware and IT-literate organisation. We will examine our use of technologies such as email, voicemail to determine whether we fully exploit the potential of these tools and whether guidance and protocols are needed to direct their proper use.
In the wider community, where we have recognised that the skills of local people will have a great impact on our ability to deliver an e-Government programme, we will forge closer links with community initiatives such as the ICT Learning Centres programme and emerging projects from the work of the SEEDA Task Force on the 5 Point Plan.
One of the most powerful resources of the Council is its information. The key to transforming the delivery of service is our ability to harness the information we collect and use it efficiently. This requires a corporate view of what we know, how we find it and how we use it, across the artificial boundaries of internal departments. We will begin to build the corporate view of information by auditing our information stores, agreeing standards for maintaining and handling information and setting priorities for making information publicly available where there is public interest or need. The Council's Archivist and Data Protection Officer are working together to build the corporate view of information to inform this process.
We are also planning to refine our use of transactional information from the Council's major business systems, such as Council Tax , Housing Benefits, Environmental Health and Planning, to monitor and measure our performance in service delivery. During 2002/2003, a performance management will be implemented within the Council to automate the process of gathering and reporting statistics on service performance.
How do we develop our activities with the partners we need to deliver the services the community wants? Certainly East Sussex County Council, Rother District Council, the NHS Trust, housing associations, 1066 Enterprise, Hastings College, Hastings Voluntary Action and the Police are all examples of organisations with whom we should be actively seeking to offer common service provision.
As a member of the East Sussex e-Government Group, we are committed to working with the County and districts of East Sussex to deliver a series of projects including county-wide shared public access points, a shared A-Z of services and internet portal. We are also involved in assessing the feasibility of a shared Geographical Information System and Local Authority contact centre.
In addition to our work with the East Sussex e-Government Group, we will undertake further work to identify and consult with key local partners, recognising the developing Local Strategic Partnership and the experience of the Neighbourhood Management pilot in Hollington, to:
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e-Government represents a major business change due to the critical need for cross-departmental working and non-departmental thinking. A formal structure is needed to reinforce the importance of this.
We have appointed a Member E-Champion and an Officer E-Champion. The E-Champions, together with a cross-departmental working group, will oversee our strategy and planning activities. They will ensure that the wider Council is actively involved in planning and that key projects are properly managed and coordinated into the overall strategy.
Recognising that cooperation with the wider public sector will be key to reaching our 2005 target, we will participate fully in the work of the East Sussex e-Government Group, consisting of East Sussex County Council and all East Sussex districts and boroughs, as well as Brighton and Hove and Sussex Police.
Within the Best Value process, the Council must consider how to deliver services to local people by the most efficient, effective and economic means available. When considering alternative means of service delivery, the potential for new uses of technology will be explored. The introduction of electronic services will therefore be seen as an integral part of the Best Value review process.
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In October 2002 we submitted out second Implementing Electronic Government (IEG) Statement to the DTLR (Our first IEG Statement was submitted in July 2001). As a result of our first statement, we were awarded the first of 2 annual grants of £200,000 to assist in our e-Government work. We will submit further statements charting our progress annually. The commitments in our 2001 statement were:
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This summarises our current thinking and vision for the future of e-Government in Hastings. Further details are contained in the following papers:
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Hastings Borough Council has given the Housing, Neighbourhood Renewal, e-Government & Marketing portfolio holder, Councillor John Humphries, primary responsibility for oversight of our progress towards meeting e-Government targets.
Hastings Borough Council's Executive Director responsible for Communications & Organisational Development is the officer e-Government champion with operational responsibility for ensuring the delivery of our e-Government initiatives:
Executive Director - Communications & Organisational Development,
Hastings Borough Council,
Town Hall
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This page last updated: 20/07/2005