EURIM Working Group Minutes

Working Party:	Theme 01/ Working Group
Ref:	03-T02-Min06
Minuter:	Emma Fryer
Date:	01/07/03
Circulation:	Attendees and Apologies
Queries to:	Emma Fryer, Tel: 0191 384 0282 Mob: 07714 803 650 Emma.fryer@eurim.org

Minutes of EURIM’s Modernising Government Group

Plenary Meeting:- Reviewing progress and agreeing forward activity.

1^st July 2003, Committee Room 21, House of Commons,

kindly hosted by Brian White MP

Summary

Meeting Purpose

The purpose of this meeting was to enable members to catch up with the recent progress of the various subgroups and the findings of the Steering Group and to agree group deliverables and a forward programme of activity.

Meeting outline

The findings of the Steering Group were reported to the meeting. Progress reports were received from the Open Source group, the e-Government Strategy group, the Social Exclusion group and the Programme Management group. All four groups were planning papers for publication in September.

Main points of agreement

1. Forward activity would be kept in line with the priorities suggested out by the Steering Group.

2. It was agreed to limit the Open Source paper to an overview of the debate and not use it as a vehicle to make recommendations to government.

3. All comments on the Open Source paper would be tabled and considered at the next drafting meeting, in the interests of accuracy, whether from attributed or unattributed sources.

4. The E-Government Strategy group would produce a short paper giving Industry’s overview of progress against the e-government agenda and providing a checklist of questions for Select Committees to ask departments.

5. The current Social Exclusion draft document was to be shortened and re-focused for publication in September.

6. The programme management group paper would be revised in line with comments received for publication in September.

Actions agreed

1. JT agreed to start off the e-government strategy group paper by producing an initial draft for group review.(4.5)

2. KC agreed to produce a short paper from the social exclusion scoping paper produced by Richard Sykes, but changing the focus to legal and economic issues. (5.4)

3. TA agreed to revise his draft checklist in line with comments received. (6.8)

4. All agreed to provide input to the checklist if they had not already done so (6.8)

References

Ref 1 – Cabinet Office Service First website – see: http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/servicefirst/index.htm

Ref 2 – Booz Allen Hamilton Report: The World’s most effective policies for th e-Economy, Nov 2002. See http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk/Resources/ITReportsArticle/fs/en?CONTENT_ID=4000004&chk=R7qwkr

Next Meeting Date

The next meeting was scheduled for Tuesday 16^th September, from 2-4 pm.

Meeting Notes

			Action
1		Chairman’s Introduction
	1.1	TA welcomed everyone. The meeting had been convened to review progress and plan forward action for EURIM’s Modernising Government Group. The group comprised four active subgroups on the following topics – Open Source Software, A Strategic Framework for e-Government, Social Exclusion and Programme Management. There were also two associated sub-groups which operated independently:- Medical Records and personal Identity.
	1.2	The overall group strategy and ToR had recently been examined by a small steering group which had met to assess how well EURIM’s modernising government group was meeting members’ expectations and suggest some revised terms of reference for activity.
2		ToR for EURIM’s Modernising Government Group
	2.1	EF reported that the steering group comprised representatives from across the EURIM membership – parliamentary, corporate, associate and individual, who identified why EURIM was valuable to them, what their priorities for action were, whether these were being delivered through EURIM and whether changes were needed.
	2.2	The group identified EURIM’s main benefits as:
		i. The ability to bring together parliamentarians, officials and industry. ii. The ability to command a powerful consortium of organisations, whilst remaning a flexible vehicle. iii. The ability to make observations and recommendations that others were not in a position to make publicly.
	2.3	The group identified their main areas of concern as:
		i. Waste of resource and lack of professional standards in central government. The need to educate those civil servants responsible for briefing Ministers. The need to view e-government as an integral tool instead of an end in itself. The lack of a coherent framework for continued e-government delivery. Looking ahead beyond 2005. The danger of slippage against targets. vii. The lack of inter-departmental co-operation and the gulf between Central government and the departments.
	2.4	Current activity fitted member priorities partially but not wholly: · The proposed work on a Strategic Framework for e-Government could incorporate issues such as delivery beyond 2005, targets and slippage. · The gulf between central governments and the departments had been addressed by the Programme Management group. · There was currently no activity underway to address the need for professionalism and professional standards in government and the ICT industry, although Intellect was working on a code of best practice for Suppliers.
	2.5	TA proposed that forward activity should be kept in line with these ToR and this was agreed.
3		Open Source
	3.1	CG, the chair of the Open Source sub-group, reported that a draft document was in circulation and was currently being reviewed in line with comments received.
	3.2	The paper aimed to give a reasonably objective overview of the different perspectives and the state of debate with a view to informing parliamentarians. There were clearly divergent views and EURIM’s role was to identify the areas of agreement and disagreement. It was a complex and controversial subject and progress was slow but satisfactory.
	3.3	PV reported that three possible areas for recommendation had emerged from a recent meeting EURIM had been involved with in Berlin:- one related to a transition guide based on experiences to date, the second was a guide to licensing structures and the third was a German project to produce a licensing structure for the public sector. TA suggested that they restrict the paper to setting out the debate for the moment rather than making recommendations. This was agreed.
	3.4	PV noted that he had received a negative review of the paper with a number of criticisms from a contributor who wished to remain anonymous. EF noted that it would have been more helpful if the contributor had corrected the paper rather than simply pointing out its inaccuracies. Others felt that unattributed comments did not have credibility. It was agreed that the most important thing was to ensure the paper was right, so the comments would be tabled along with all the others at the next drafting meeting, and would stand or fall on their merit. The Open Source perspective would be represented at that meeting through OFE (Open Forum Europe).
4		e-Government strategy
	4.1	JT reported that a sub-group meeting had been held, and had been very well-attended with good discussion which had identified a number of issues. The primary concern was that as a result of the widespread progress that had been made on modernising government and e-government over the last few years the 1999 and 2000 strategies were no longer valid and a new strategic framework was needed to reduce confusion, avoid duplication and take modernisation beyond 2005. He had suggested this idea in a meeting with Douglas Alexander and Lawrie Quinn but they were sensitive about the concept of an external body examining progress and were unenthusiastic about the proposal.
	4.2	JT felt that there was little point in setting out to do something the government had explicitly discouraged, but there was perhaps scope for EURIM to produce an internal document that took stock of where the e-government agenda had got to and set out some of the scrutiny questions that ought to be asked of government via its Select Committees.
	4.3	BW observed that Douglas Alexander took the view that by now modernised government should be embedded in daily processes so it was no longer appropriate to continue to consider it as a discrete add-on. However, a checklist of questions or a note, from the industry perspective, of progress against objectives could be very useful to the Select Committees (such as the Public Administration Committee) tasked with examining what the departments were doing.
	4.4	BW continued that there was no longer any need to convince government of the need for programme management, for instance, – it was now a key concept being promoted to senior managers in civil service training courses. It was now the role of the scrutiny processes to ensure those messages were being implemented in the Departments, not the role of EURIM, but EURIM could assist and encourage them in that role.
	4.5	It was agreed that the group would produce a short paper over the next few months that gave a checklist of questions that the Select Committees should be asking departments to assess implementation against targets. JT agreed to get the ball rolling.	JT
	4.6	Issues that might be relevant to this checklist
	4.6.1	IB asked whether it was appropriate for EURIM to look at some instances of implementation from a business case perspective. AH felt that it was not EURIM’s role to get involved in project remedial advice. EURIM’s role was good advocacy. If departments chose to ignore it then it was up to the Select Committees to ask why.
	4.6.2	MJ noted that government had focused on making the machinery more efficient at the expense of service delivery and that targets were too much about means of delivery rather than putting the citizen at the centre Only 25% of citizens transacted online with government. Uptake and usability should be the focus - the first principles of the citizens’ charter.
	4.6.3	FG noted the there was a tendency to underestimate what was going on at the user end. Guidance was due out, UKOnline was providing help, skills councils were involved, many voluntary sector organisations had e-gov teams tasked with roll-out to client communities. IB agreed. These would provide good case studies of how e-government was working.
	4.6.4	PV noted that there were some excellent lessons to be learned from gateway reviews and suggested OGC be approached.
	4.6.5	JS noted, from a civil service perspective, that much work had been carried out on the assumption that a PKI infrastructure would be in place to facilitate all the services, but this had not materialised.
	4.6.6	NS observed that one Cabinet Office website announced that it was closed because Modernised Government had been delivered. His perception was that the initiative was nearer to its beginning than its end.	Ref 1
	4.6.7	JS suggested that comparative statistics of progress in the UK as opposed to the rest of Europe might be instructive. CG noted that the e-Envoy’s summit was based on a report by Booz-Allen which could be sourced, and the ONS were positive about looking at statistics of take-up as well as investment, though Cabinet Office was less taken with the idea.	Ref 2
	4.7	JT noted that a number of topics had been raised that could form part of the scrutiny questions and thanked members for their input.
	4.8	TA summarised – it was now accepted that e-government was a given and would be used by every department to support new ways of working. It was suggested that the group should go back to the fundamentals and look at what government had achieved against original objectives, in terms of service and quality of life for citizens. If reality had fallen short of expectations then some questions should be raised.
5		Social Exclusion
	5.1	KC reviewed progress to date. These were big issues and two scoping meetings had been needed. The resulting paper was a broad overview rather than a focused brief. The group needed to address legal and market oriented issues rather than moral and ethical ones.
	5.2	Legislation was increasingly pushing for inclusion and there were good economic reasons for this – 80% of government transactions were with the 20% of people who were not online.
	5.3	Currently about 50% of the population was excluded in one way or another. Only the lowest compliance standards were met. Websites were being designed around departmental structures rather than citizens needs.
	5.4	There was plenty of case-law[J T1] building up on these issues. The disability discrimination act required a programme of forward compliance rather than retro engineering.
	5.5	KC agreed to edit the document to focus it on legal, market and economic issues for circulation to the group who would be invited to give feedback in the normal way.	KC
	5.5	PV reported that Richard Sykes planned to be active over the Autumn. A September delivery date was planned for the document.
6		Programme Management
	6.1	TA reported that he was tasked with wrapping up the programme management group with a final paper that set down a few questions that parliamentarians should ask when involved in programme review, whether in Select Committee or in debate in the House. He had circulated a two page draft which started by setting out the recommendations endorsed by the Cabinet Office for procedures to ensure future success of ICT programmes and then translated them into more common language He invited comment.
	6.2	SP suggested that a question on Gateway Reviews be added that asked which reviews the project had been through, what were the results, and had the recommendations been implemented.
	6.3	IB noted that all too often projects moved on regardless of missing major milestones en route. For instance the NHS system was based on electronic patient records, which were not ready or accessible yet.
	6.4	PV noted that the Gateway process was designed to stop this kind of thing. TA observed that the OGC published some of the best guidance available.
	6.5	FG noted that transforming society was a moving target and managing change was the important thing. User involvement was the key, and this was demonstrated by the success of the Cybrarian project which was an interesting emerging model. Suppliers needed to work very closely with customers to develop successful new products, as e-learning initiatives had demonstrated. Underlying standards were vital for this.
	6.6	KC noted that the proposed electronic patient records would be unusable by over half the users of the health services. Genuine stakeholder involvement was vital, both patients and practitioners.
	6.7	It was agreed that the checklist should be available in September.
	6.8	TA thanked everyone for their comments and asked that any additional feedback be emailed to him within the next week to enable him to keep the document on schedule. He agreed to revise the document and circulate it before summer.	ALL TA
7		Any Other Business
	7.1	MJ asked whether the group was involved in broadband issues since this underpinned modernising government. PV replied that EURIM activity was funnelled through the BSG aggregation group which was trying to ensure enough demand was collated to ensure the rollout of infrastructure.
	7.2	EF agreed to put the current outputs on the group website.	EF
8		Next Meeting Date
	8.1	It was agreed that the next meeting would be held on Tuesday 16^th September from 2-4pm to review the progress of the various documents and give the group time to present their outputs to Council in October.

Attendance – 1^st July 2003

F name	Surname	Organisation	Email/
Tom	Abram	Mantix
Sam	Baglioni	Intellect
Ian	Bruce	SEMTA
Kevin	Carey	HumanITy
Emma	Fryer	EURIM
Fred	Garnett	BECTA
Chris	Godwin	IBM
Nig	Greenaway	Fujitsu Services
Andrew	Hardie
Mike	Jenkins	Fujitsu Services
Matt	Lambert	Microsoft
Sarah	Pearce	POST
John	Riley	Computer Weekly
David	Rippon	BCS
John	Smith	DTI
Neil	Sutherland	OS
Jonathan	Tamblyn	LogicaCMG
Philip	Virgo	EURIM
Brian	White	MP
David	Wright	EURIM

Apologies:

Sue	Bide	DTI
Jane	Chittenden	OeE
Steve	Doughty	NAO
Roger	Gale	MP
Nick	Kalisperas	Intellect
Elizabeth	Kanter	Nortel Networks
Lord	Renwick	EURIM
Rick	Smith
Richard	Sykes
Henryk	Trzebiatowski	Royal Mail
Kay	Withers	Researcher

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[J T1] Is this a new salad?