Implementing Electronic Services Transnational Guidelines and Perspectives

Electronic services to citizens are a growing concern to governments all over the world, not inthe least in the domains of social security and labor market. It was at the Montreal Conference of the ISSA –the International Social Security Association – in 1999 that many organizations in many countries showedto be grappling with many questions concerning the implementation of electronic service delivery. In orderto elaborate on experiences of implementation, the ISSA and three Dutch member organizations arranged anexpert work shop on implementation strategies for E-government in social security in the Autumn of 2000.This report summarizes the experts conclusions on strategies, methods, do´s and don´ts. It emphasizes theimportance of a mix of technological, political, legislational and organizational prerequisites.The considerations encompass the following domains or perspectives:(i) Infrastructure, being the technical devices such as network components, servers, protocols, instrumentsfor client identification, which needs some cooperation or coordination between social securityorganizations;(ii) Data management, which poses the question how governments can avoid to ask citizens or employersfor the same information twice;(iii) Standards and responsibilities, dealing with scope, and with how they are to be established,implemented and maintained;(iv) Client appreciation, one of the key issues when designing the services, which ones and how;(v) Issues of flexibility, which are related to changes in legislation, in technical standards and clientappreciation; and last but not least:(vi) Costs and benefits, the context of justification for investments.For each domain or theme, context, goals and experiences are stated first. Only a few examples aredescribed in the report itself. Each theme ends with do´s and don´ts, aiming at the promotion of action, atthe reduction not the ignorance of complexity. A range of illustrative cases is described in a separateappendix