Public Sector Transformation Through E-Government
Page 7
(both of which were addressed within the context of several years of minor-
ity Parliaments).
As noted above, the formation of a majority government in 2011 has to
some extent revived interest in digital matters—albeit seemingly in a way
framed by concerns around federal spending and defi c
fi it reduction plans. In
other words, IT and government are once again viewed as drivers of cost sav-
ings despite the limited success that governments have had in Canada or else-
where at realizing signifi c
fi ant savings in light of rapidly changing technological
infrastructures and, in the case of Canada, well documented concerns about
an aging and increasingly antiquated IT infrastructures in need of significan
fi
t
fi n
fi ancial investments. Thus, the creation of Shared Services Canada suggests
an inward focus consistent with pressures for effi
c
ffi iency and consolidation
but ill-suited to adaptation and innovation to newly emerging challenges and
potentials such as those identifi
fied by Flumian (above).
Additionally, and in line with the discussion of place based pressures, it
bears noting that despite the many international accolades stemming from
signifi
ficant national visibility (itself stemming from the centralized struc-
tures of Canadian fi
fiscal federalism), Service Canada was itself built upon
preceding models crafted at the provincial level. Today, consistent with a
longstanding North American tradition of public sector reform as a bot-
tom-up movement of subnational experimentation leading to federal (i.e.,
national reforms), it is once again municipalities and provinces leading the
charge on new innovations such as open data initiatives that seek to more
directly engage citizens in service design processes.
Yet despite the existence of a federal-provincial Council of senior manag-
ers responsible for respective jurisdictional service efforts (i.e., Service Can-
ada, Service Nova Scotia, Service Ontario etc.), itself an important vehicle
for cross-learning, joint research, and incremental innovations, the shared
view among most provincial officials is that Service Canada’s attentions and
resources are largely diverted inwardly toward federal government opera-
tions and priorities at the expense of signifi
ficant cross-jurisdictional reform.
The exclusion of municipalities from this body on the one hand, and the
absence of any formal political mechanism to underpin the sorts of shared
accountability relationships that would be required for a holistic public
sector perspective further underscores the limitations of the status quo.
The additional risk stemming from the inward focus of federal offi
fficials and
politicians on government-wide consolidation and new developments such
as cloud computing is an accentuation of this relative separation of federal,
E-Government and the Evolution of Service Canada 33
provincial, and municipal processes at the expense of planning for a more
holistic public sector architecture capable of crafting innovation solutions
to the challenges of process, paper, and place.
4 CONCLUSION—LOOKING
AHEAD
Since its creation in 2005 Service Canada has proven to be partially suc-
cessful. On the one hand, it is has facilitated both online via call centers
and online via its portal a government-wide informational dimension that
had not previously existed. On the other hand, the absence of more robust
governance made it impossible for this entity (that is neither a department
nor an agency in legislative terms) to extend much beyond its still con-
sequential role as delivery agent for the basket of programs and services
within the HRSDC portfolio. Yet this latter reality may well prove to be
a mixed blessing for two reasons: fi
first, it is questionable as to whether a
single entity could administratively consolidate and deliver “all” federal
government services; and second, and more recently, the more dispersed,
distributed and participative era of Web 2.0 now fully challenges even the
strategic rationale behind attempting to do so.
The present conundrum facing Service Canada and the public sector as
a whole, then, remains the existence of many “single” windows of service
providers: Service Canada, Service Nova Scotia (or most any province),
municipal portals and 311 call centers, along with a growing myriad of col-
laborative endeavours linking private and public agents (and giving urgent
rise to the need for a more robust identity management ecosystem to under-
pin such experimentation that eff
ffectively represents the struggle between
democratization of service innovation and the centralized security appara-
tuses of governments at each level).
The present mindset and culture of centralization inherent within federal
and provincial government models would thus suggest that Service Canada
become the face for public sector service to citizens for all governments (or at
the very least dictate the terms of any collaborative arrangements involving
other government levels). Such an implicit stance looms large in explaining
the current state of paralysis described above (since it is naturally enough
a non-starter for provincial authorities—leading to the dearth of political
collaboration required to underpin wider and deeper forms of concerted
action). Conversely, a refashioned Service Canada—more autonomous with
a corporate governance regime of shared governance encompassing federal,
provincial and municipal representation, could instead focus on spurring
the creation of a more open and shared backend infrastructure for the pub-
lic sector as a whole. Yet the manner by which Service Canada has recently
stalled and given way on the backend to the newly created Shared Services
Canada suggests that the dearth of collaboration seems destined to con-
tinue for some time to come.
34 Jeffrey Roy
NOTES
1.
Early parts of this section are drawn from the following article: Roy, J.
(2006). E-Service delivery and new governance capacities: “Service Canada”
as a case study. International Journal of Services Technology and Manage-
ment, 7(3), 257–271.
2.
These quoted captions are from internal MSC planning documents made
available to the other by MSC managers. They have also been used as a basis
for a case study focusing on the private sector’s role in collaborating with the
federal government’s lead MSC department (then HRDC) responsible for
MSC (Dutil, Langford, & 2005).
3.
See
http://www.ppt.gc.ca/consultations/articles/2010–05–20-csfi -e
fi ng.pdf.
4.
See
www.bizpal.ca.
REFERENCES
Chiara Ubaldi, B., & Roy, J. (2010). E-Government and Federalism in Italy and
Canada—A Comparative Assessment. In C. Reddick (Ed.), Comparative
E-Government (pp
t
.183–199). New York: Springer.
Coe, A. (2004). Government Online in Canada: Innovation and Accountability in
21st Century Government. Cambridge, MA: Kennedy School of Government
Graduate Research Paper.
Dutil, P., Howard, C., Langford, J.,& Roy, J. (2010). The Service State—Rhetoric, Reality, and Promise. Governance Series. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.
Flumian, M. (2009). Citizens as Prosumers—The Next Frontier of Service Innova-
tion. Ottawa: Institute on Governance.
Government of Canada (2005). Government Online 2005—From Vision to Real-
ity and Beyond (GOL Annual Report). Ottawa: Treasury Board Secretariat.
Available at http://www.gol-ged.gc.ca.
Langford, J., & Roy, J. (2008). Moving Towards Cross-Boundary Citizen-Centred
Service Delivery: Challenges and Lessons from Canada and Around the World.
Washington, DC: IBM Center for the Business of Government.
Roy, J. (2006a). E-service delivery and new governance capacities: ‘Service Canada’
as a case study. International Journal of Services Technology and Manage-
ment, 7(3), 257–271.
Roy, J. (2006b). E-Government in Canada: Transformation for a Digital Age.
Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.
Roy, J., (2010), Web 2.0 and Canada’s public sector: Emerging opportunities and
challenges. In B. W. Wirtz (Ed.), EGovernment—Grundlagen, Instrumente,
Strategien (pp. 469–494). Wiesbaden: Gabler.
Tapscott, D., & Williams, A. (2006) WIKINOMICS—How Mass Collaboration
Changes Everything. New York: Penguin Group.
4 Transformative E-Government
and Public Service
Public Libraries in Times of
Economic Hardship
John Carlo Bertot, Paul T. Jaeger,
and Natalie N. Greene
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
Over the past decade, public libraries in the United States have become
central to the delivery of e-government to the public. A recent evolution in
library e-government activities has been the creation of partnerships between
libraries, government agencies, and other institutions. Drawing from the
results of several ongoing research projects, this chapter will examine these
partnerships and their roles in transforming the ways government agencies
can serve the public, services are delivered to the public, and members of the
public can be included in government activities. Using both qualitative and
quantitative data, this chapter will provide insights into a rapidly developing
transformation of public libraries that is occurring because of the influ
fl ence
of e-government. The chapter will also discuss the ways in which the role of
the library in the provision of e-government has been central to the transfor-
mation of government in the age of the Internet.
1 INTRODUCTION
The technologies and capabilities of e-government have increased the ways in
which members of the public can reach and interact with governments and
government information and services, but gaps in access and technological
literacy result in many users needing assistance with e-government. The main
place that members of the public in the United States turn to help is the public
library. During the economic downturn, demands for e-government access
and assistance in public libraries have increased as greater numbers of patrons
are applying for unemployment and other social supports, seeking jobs, and
otherwise dealing with economic hardships. Yet, in this period of increased
usage, both the public libraries providing the e-government access and the
local, state, and federal government agencies providing the e-government ser-
vices have reduced capacity due to budget cuts.
36 John Carlo Bertot, Paul T. Jaeger, and Natalie N. Greene
E-government began to cause signifi
ficant shifts in the uses of library
technologies and the activities of librarians by 2005, as more govern-
ment agencies moved services online, closed physical offices, and created
new online-only services (Bertot et al., 2006a; 2006b). Through e-gov-
ernment, public libraries help patrons seek government support, enroll
children in school, fi
file taxes, take written driving tests, pursue continu-
ing education, apply for licenses, pay fi
fines, apply for government jobs,
recover from emergencies, and innumerable other functions of local,
state, and national government. In a few years, libraries have become the
backbone of e-government information, communication, and services
for all those who lack other means of access. Government agencies in
the early 2000s began to direct citizens to the library for help in using
the materials that the agencies had put online (Jaeger, 2008; Jaeger &
Bertot, 2009). These signifi
ficant new responsibilities of e-government
access, training, and assistance have become major responsibilities of
libraries at the same time that there are fewer community outlets where the
public can seek help with government information and services (Jaeger &
Bertot, 2011).
In between these pressures, public libraries and government agencies
around the United States have created partnerships based on e-government
to provide enhanced or entirely new services to members of the public,
ranging from social service agencies and libraries streamlining the online
process of applying for benefi
fits across agencies to libraries serving as cen-
ters for immigration applications. These transformative e-government-
based programs have evolved from a combination of economic hardship,
shifting government services to online only availability, and the lack of
Internet access and digital literacy skills by intended users of e-government
services. A mismatch often exists between those individuals most likely to
qualify for government services and benefi
fits and the high percentage of
those individuals lacking the required skills and access to use e-government
services (Pew, 2010).
These e-government responsibilities have signifi c
fi antly transformed
public libraries, necessitating changes in staff t
ff raining, resource creation,
collection development, and technological infrastructure. E-government
brings large numbers of patrons to the library needing access to and assis-
tance with e-government. To meet their needs, librarians must move from
information intermediaries to information-based service intermediaries.
2 DATA COLLECTION
The Public Libraries and the Internet n
t ational surveys began tracking the
growth of public library Internet connectivity and uses in 1994, just as pub-
lic libraries began adopting Internet-based technologies (Bertot, 2011). Now
part of the larger Public Library Funding and Technology Access study
(http://www.ala.org/plinternetfunding), this survey remains the one source
Transformative E-Government and Public Service 37
of detailed, longitudinal data about the relationships between the Internet
and public libraries. The survey provides both national and state estimates
regarding the public
access technology infrastructure, services (e.g., train-
ing, employment, e-government), and resources (e.g., content and materials,
particularly digital) that public libraries off er
ff . The study also explores fund-
ing and support for public access technology, services, and resources, as well
as obtaining data to conduct analysis using metropolitan status variables to
show access and service availability in diff er
ff ing communities.
The survey uses a stratifi e
fi d “proportionate to size sample” to ensure a
proportionate national sample. This sampling approach ensures high quality
and generalizeable data within the states analyzed, nationally, and across and
within the various strata. The study team uses the Institute of Museum and
Library Services (IMLS) public library dataset to draw its sample. Respon-
dents typically answer the survey between September and November of each
survey year.
The survey consistently receives responses from one-third or more of
the 16,672 public libraries, with response rates of sampled libraries above
70 percent. Weighted for both national and state level analysis, the high
survey response rate and representativeness of responses demonstrate the
high quality of the survey data and the ability to generalize to the public
library population. Unless otherwise noted, the survey data in this chapter
are from the 2010–2011 Public Library Funding and Technology Access
Survey (Bertot et al., 2011). The study results over time are available at
http://www.plinternetsurvey.org/.
Public library partnership data was obtained through a combination of
site visits and interviews. During the period of April–September 2011, the
authors visited nine library systems across the United States. Using a semi-
structured interview style, researchers discussed the programs with adminis-
trators, and in some cases, conducted observations of participants using the
services. In many cases, discussions led to recommendations of other part-
nerships occurring across the country. In addition, the authors interviewed
state library agency staff in fi v
fi e states to ascertain statewide issues and part-
nership initiatives. Interviews were also conducted with government agency
representatives, including those from the Internal Revenue Service and the
Government Printing Offi