Reference no: EM132320064 , Length: word count : 2000

Task

Case Study: Connected Government

Connected government enables governments to connect seamlessly across functions, agencies and jurisdictions to deliver effective and efficient services to citizens and businesses. The United Nations (UN), in its Global E-Government Survey of 2008, used connected governance as its primary criteria by which to evaluate and rank national e-government programs.

In continuation of this theme, the UN Global E-Government Survey of 2010 takes the concept of connected government even further, adding “citizen-centricity” as the watchword. This approach to government service delivery requires countries to shift from a model of providing government services via traditional modes to integrated electronic modes wherein the value to the citizens and businesses gets enhanced.

Government transformation is a long term endeavor that is seldom impacted by any short term technology trends. In their transition toward connected government, all governments typically traverse through the four primary stages of e-government capability and maturity, each stage representing a progressively higher level in the government transformation continuum.

The four widely used stages of e-government capability and maturity are: webpresence, interaction, transaction and transformation. Furthermore, connected government is the desired state that countries strive to reach as part of the transformation level of egovernment maturity. However, there is no straightforward way to describe what exactly connected government means and its implications to countries.

Based on the current state of practice and available literature, connected government is expected to entail certain characteristics and capabilities. These characteristics and capabilities, described below, are clearly stated to be the key contributors to e-government development according to the UN E-Government Survey 2010, and in turn contribute to national development. These characteristics and capabilities, structured as dimensions, allow connected government to be viewed as a multi-dimensional construct. These dimensions of
connected government include but limited to:

Citizen centricity: This refers to viewing the governments from the outside in, i.e. understanding the requirements and expectations of the citizens becomes the preeminent guiding principle for all government policies, programs and services. In short, this represents the service-dominant logic which requires the governments to operate as one enterprise and organize itself around citizen demands and requirements;

Common infrastructure and interoperability: This refers to the use of standards and best practices across governments to encourage and enable sharing of information in a seamless manner. Interoperability is the ability of organizations to share information and knowledge within and across organizational boundaries. The underlying foundation for effective interoperability comes from standardized common infrastructure;

Collaborative services and business operations: Connected government requires ministries and agencies to collaborate. It is not difficult to uncover success stories about integration and interoperability at the technology level. However, to collaborate at the level of business services and functions requires political will. This is because collaboration at this level leads to shallower stovepipes, elimination of redundant or overlapping services and discovery of common and shared services, which in turn lead to loss of authority and control for some;

Social inclusion: This refers to the ability of governments to move beyond horizontal and vertical integration of government service delivery to engaging the citizens and businesses at relevant points in the policy and decision-making processes.

E-democracy and social inclusion ensure that delivery of government services is not a one-way exterchange. Innovative ways of using technology to facilitate constituent participation and building a consultative approach is imperative for the success of connected government.

Assignment Task

You are to prepare a preliminary report for the Australian Federal Government describing the benefits of intelligent enterprise design and Enterprise Information Architecture Reference Architecture (EIA RA) for developing a national E-Government system.

The intended audience for this report are government officials who may have knowledge of the government operations but limited computing knowledge.

Your report should follow the following template:

Executive Summary

Table of Contents

Table of Figures

1.0 Introduction

2.0 Intelligent Enterprise Design

Discuss the business vision for the future intelligent E-Government system. Use two example functions from the “Focus Area” in (Week 1) Information Analysis Evolution discussion file to explain the benefits of evolving from “Historical Reporting” to “Anticipate and Shape”.

2.1 Function 1

2.2 Function 2

3.0 Enterprise Information Architecture Reference Architecture

Discuss the benefits an EIA RA approach can provide to guide development of an EGovernment system. This discussion should expand on at least three of the identified benefits and should include at least one diagram providing an overview of the proposed system.

4.0 Conclusion & Recommendations

References

Report Format

Your report should be around 2,000 words and it would be best to be no longer than 2,500 words long.

The report MUST be formatted using the following guidelines:

• Title Page – Must not contain headers, footers, or page numbering. Include your name as the report’s author.

• Header – Report title

• Footer – your name and the page number

• Paragraph text – 12 point Calibri single line spacing

• Headings – Arial in an appropriate type size

• Margins – 2.5cm on all margins

• Page numbering

• Executive summary to the last page of Table of Figures to use roman numerals (i, ii, iii, iv)

• Introduction and onwards to use conventional numerals (1, 2, 3, 4) starting at page 1 from the introduction.

• The report is to be created as a single Microsoft Word document (version 2007 or later). No other format is acceptable and doing so will result in the deduction of marks.

Please follow the conventions detailed in:

Summers, J. & Smith, B., 2014, Communication Skills Handbook, 4th Ed, Wiley, Australia.