Tasks
Where we stand for
Developing egovernment-related knowledge and skills
- Determining strategic aims and priorities for eGovernment
- Taking part in eGovernment in an advisory and supportive capacity
- Offering a methodological underpinning for back-office organisation
- Backing eGovernment initiatives with the Authorities of Flanders, as a result of offering support for formulating business cases, performing business analyses, tackling legal constraints and lending support to the project approach
- Lending support to the services of the Authorities of Flanders as regards the use of information from authentic sources (national register, for example) in respect of other authorities and third parties
- Creating, coordinating and facilitating consultations between the various policy areas to do with the eGovernment approach and the roll-out of eGovernment and integrated services
- Following up eGovernment developments in the European Union and amongst foreign authorities
- Regularly assessing and notifying the state of affairs with regard to integrated services and eGovernment within Flanders
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eGovernment programme management
- Programme management for initiatives related to the implementation of e-government within the Authorities of Flanders;
- Creating an overall information structure and an overall information management system for the Authorities of Flanders;
- Examining co-funding systems for the general aspects of e-government projects (such as feasibility study, implementation, exploitation, maintenance,..)
- Lending support to the development of business cases for the implementation of generic components and the creation of cross-policy domain services
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eGovernment-related awareness-raising, co-operation and reporting
- Starting a strategic mental process with the senior management of the Authorities of Flanders about the middle and long-term aims of eGovernment
- Formulating eGovernment advisory opinions
- Coordinating the procedures for extracting data from authentic information sources (such as the national register and the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises ) with the federal government
- Participating in inter-administrative eGovernment consultation bodies with the federal government, provincial and local authorities
- Notification and awareness-raising about eGovernment within the Authorities of Flanders In-house and out-house communication of the outcomes of the integrated service initiatives within the Authorities of Flanders
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Following up to progress of egovernment projects
The eGovernment coordination unit is due to develop a scorecard for monitoring the progress of eGovernment within the Authorities of Flanders in the light of the various target groups (such as citizens, companies, institutions and associations). Key items due to be assessed are: use, availability, familiarity, value for the customer, confidence, price (once-only investments and recurrent exploitation).
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Mission: structure of the back-office
Past eGovernment policy gave priority to front-office applications (Flanders portal site), with comparatively little attention being paid to the underlying "back-office applications", even though they are vital for the development of effective eGovernment.
The Flemish eGovernment co-ordination unit was created as a separate entity, that needs to work in partnership with the Flemish Info Line, the regulatory management unit and the ICT Management and Control service. Co-operation is also underway with various entities responsible for eGovernment implementation within the Authorities of Flanders. The Flemish eGovernment co-ordination unit's main activity is developing the back-office dimension of eGovernment. Against this background, it is tasked with co-ordinating and providing incentives, while creating a generic infrastructure to facilitate co-operation between the administrative entities at the various eGovernment administrative levels.
The eGovernment projects are currently too often confined to "bureaucracy digitalising". Such projects are based on existing administrative processes, investigating how they can be made more customer-friendly and straightforward with the help of ICT resources. This is a necessary stage in the short and medium term, but the genuine value-adding qualities of an eGovernment project will emerge only when the entire underlying process has been completely reconsidered. An extensive information architecture should enable the authorities to exchange in-house information so there is no further need to seek information from citizens time and time again. Administrative simplification should help to ensure the processes are redesigned to be faster and more efficient in the future.
Ultimately, an investigation will have to be made of how modern ICT applications can help the authorities to achieve their aims more effectively. ICT may form the basis for making the markets for certain goods and services more transparent or for achieving a better match between the supply and demand for specific public services.
Effective use of new technologies also offers opportunities for improving the way rules are enforced and for achieving a (significantly) more efficient system of governance.
ICT developments boost the opportunities for the authorities to cater for social requirements and expectations. Another advantage is less administrative burdens for citizens and businesses. Suitably deployed, ICT resources offer key opportunities for simplifying the obligatory information provision system.
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