An intelligent central nervous system

By Ing. Alexander Tranter

The Maltese government is the midst of a paradigm shift – a transformation in how government will function at a national and local level. It is a fact that as time goes by local government officials are being forced to do more with less, compete with the private sector, operate with tighter budgets and provide better service to the people.
Many local government agencies are slowly but surely becoming under increased scrutiny and pressure from taxpayers, lobbyists, politicians and the media to explain what, how and why money is being spent. This paradigm shift can only successfully materialise if every government agency evaluates their individual core strengths and weaknesses and find new ways of conducting their public activity.
To map this shift, a first initial bold step a few days ago when government published an extremely important white paper detailing the vision and strategy for the attainment of e-government in Malta. Two key elements in the establishment of a successful e-government presence in our lives will be the setting up of citizen data centric warehouses and the querying, analysis, interaction and distribution of this information from government to citizens and vice versa, commonly know as decision support systems.
The citizens centric data warehousing could be the most significant advance in local government computing in the coming years. This will enable the seamless integration of data coming from diverse government department and agencies having different operating platforms. Naturally the data integration requires cleansing, transformation and customisation so as to gather all citizen centric data into properly structured and organised warehouses which will be the cornerstones of the attaining the present e-government strategy.
Government departments and organizations today face the reality that resources are limited. Capital assets are scarce and will only continue to be so, and rightsizing and downsizing results in limited human resources. As these resources decline, government ministries will continue to amass large amounts of data – information that often holds the key to more efficient organizational operation.
However, many public organisations are struggling with the fact that the means to access this information are often crude and underdeveloped. The information exists, but creating smooth, enterprise-wide access to these data stores is another matter. In fact it is probably far to state that government information is possibly one of the largest and most underutilized assets our country has today.
Regardless of the product or service being offered by a government Department, Agency or Corporation, each entity needs to thoroughly understand its customers and constituents. An organisation needs to know how well it is executing its mission and how it can improve service. Organisations must manage costs as well as human and capital assets, while continually finding new ways to reach customers, constituents and business partners. The ability to fully leverage information assets can have a dramatic influence on each of these areas.
Data warehousing and decision support technologies present an opportunity for information management to change the way our local government can leverage and value their information assets. With the ability to easily access information within the data warehouse, mission delivery, resource management and data dissemination can be raised to levels previously unimagined. Government departments could track their departmental budgets, assess appropriate personnel allocations, determine trends and provide analysis, assess service level support and possibly even contractor performance.
Government organisations are measured not by profits and losses, but by their ability to deliver upon their mission. Regardless of this mission, the ability to develop a better understanding of citizens and the creation of personalised services based on their needs is paramount in an e-government scenario. The aim must surely be that e-government will promote constituent awareness, provide a citizen access to government portals and a proactive means of public information dissemination.
The Inland Revenue Department (IRD), for example, needs to understand the profile of each taxpayer to increase the level of voluntary compliance. Identifying the most common filing errors for each age, income and education level would enable the Department to make changes to the filing process, thereby improving customer service and mission effectiveness. The data clearly exists, but offering the best means of accessing it has not been determined. e-government will also provide the opportunity to change this.
Agencies tasked with disseminating information have perhaps the greatest incentive to manage and broadcast information to relevant parties. The Employment and Training Corporation (ETC), for example, could automatically generate and send labour statistics to each Member of Parliament specific to his or her district.
The Inland Revenue Department could notify citizens via e-mail when their tax returns have been received and successfully processed, or when a filing error requires action. The Ministry of Justice could automatically notify lawyers and witnesses when their court cases have been scheduled or changed. The Social Services Department could manage more effectively social assistance programs available to those in need.
The Health Department can co-ordinate, organise and change hospital appointments efficiently and with the least inconvenience to citizens. It is fair to state that the type of applications open to government departments are numerous, but success is contingent upon one factor – access to information, hence the citizen centric data warehouse and the decision support tools.
By employing the latest decision support technology available in the market place today, government can not only maximise access to information, but can bid farewell to the massive paper trail often associated with government bureaucracy.
Rather than providing non-detailed information to uninterested constituents, government can aspire to narrowcast the right information to the right people at the right time. When this happens, it will be one of the most significant developments through which citizens will discover that true impact and benefits of e-government.
This variety of end-user profiles suggests that it is not sufficient for decision support systems to merely provide access to the citizen centric data warehouses. government must enable the distribution of important public information through multiple interfaces to citizens with different infrastructures, skills and needs. Access to the citizen centric data warehouses could be via the desktop and the Web, additionally, information could to be broadcast to computers and consumer electronic devices such as pagers, phones and fax machines – directly from the citizen centric data warehouses.
What is of paramount importance is that e-government must ensure and provide for equal access for all citizens irrespective of their level of education, social background or where they live. This will undoubtedly be the most difficult and challenging goal posed by the proposed e-government approach.
Ing. Alexander J. Tranter is the Executive Vice President of Makeezi Ltd., a specialist company providing enterprise wide intelligent and innovative e-business solutions. For further information please refer to http://www.makeezi.com.