Tecnimap 2007

The Spanish government recently held their Tecnimap 2007 conference in Gijon. The conference is about increasing citizen participation in government and a lot of that has to do with the web. You can find the presentations with video on presenters from across Europe, as well as countries from Latin America, including Argentina and Dominican Republic. Here's the Tecnimap Blog. Here's a summary of one of the many sessions:

La Ley de Acceso Electrónico de los ciudadanos a los servicios públicos reconoce a los ciudadanos un conjunto de derechos nuevos que deben hacerse efectivos antes de 2010. Las Administraciones están preparándose para conseguir alcanzar este objetivo cuyo impacto social, económico y político va a suponer una revolución en las relaciones entre los poderes públicos y los ciudadanos.

I am quite interested in what they have done with the "Ley de Accesso Electrónico". Martín Pérez' blog, "Information Society" or "Sociedad de la Informacion" (I'm adding his feed to my Google Reader) has a good summary of this egov law which espouses 10 citizen rights:

1.-Los ciudadanos podrán realizar todas sus gestiones por medios electrónicos.
Las administraciones deberán facilitar información y la realización de trámites por internet, móviles, televisión o cualquier otro medio disponible en el futuro.

2.-Los ciudadanos elegirán a través de qué canal acceden a los servicios públicos.
Las administraciones públicas deberán garantizar el acceso a las personas que carezcan de medios propios o conocimientos suficientes. Estos canales deberán ser, como mínimo, oficinas de atención presencial, puntos de acceso electrónico y servicios de atención telefónica.

3.-Los ciudadanos podrán hacer sus trámites 24 horas al día los 365 días del año.
Se crearán los registros electrónicos a través de los que se podrán enviar documentos en soporte electrónico en cualquier momento.

4.-Los ciudadanos podrán consultar en cualquier momento el estado de tramitación de los procedimientos que tengan en marcha.
La Administración estaráobligada a facilitar información sobre la marcha de las gestiones al ciudadano que lo desee por el medio que lo solicite.

5.-Las comunicaciones en soporte electrónico tendrán la misma validez legal que las tradicionales en papel.
Los datos personales de los ciudadanos se tratarán siempre bajo las máximas garantías de seguridad y confidencialidad.

6.-Los ciudadanos no tendrán que aportar datos ni documentos que obren en poder de las administraciones públicas.
Las administraciones garantizarán la comunicación para que intercambien datos que ya posean en lugar de pedírselos a los ciudadanos, siempre y cuando éstos lo autoricen.

7.-Los servicios prestados de forma electrónica ofrecerán el grado máximo de calidad, seguridad y confidencialidad de los datos.
Se creará un sistema de vigilancia y garantías para asegurar los derechos de los usuarios de la administración electrónica.

8.-Realizar un trámite o recibir información a través de Internet o un teléfono tendrála misma validez que la forma tradicional.
Se crea el concepto de sede electrónica, lugar oficial de prestación de servicios electrónicos al ciudadano.

9.-Los ciudadanos podrán realizar trámites de distintas administraciones en un único lugar.
Las administraciones públicas garantizarán su interoperabilidad para asegurar este derecho.

10.-Los ciudadanos se beneficiarán de una administración electrónica de calidad, a la altura de la de los países más avanzados.
La Administración General del Estado deberá cumplir con los principios y obligaciones de esta Ley en 2008. Las demás administraciones, en 2010.

The goals of this landmark legislation are:

1. That citizens are able to perform all of their government transactions electronically.
2. That governmental bodies are required to facilitate all of their services through electronic means, including internet, mobil devices, television, or by other means available in the future.

Here's some interesting official commentary on the law from the Spanish government.

This really is a big job. With over 750 interactive services online, I feel like the State of Utah is just barely scratching the service. Everywhere I look, I see opportunities to improve the way we do business online.

Personalizing the Global Competitiveness Report

I look at the WEC's Global Competitiveness Report and drill down to the "National competitiveness balance sheet" and begin to ask, "what are we doing within our domain to contribute to national competitiveness based on these factors?" Immediately, I find areas where e-government, technical architecture, and innovation play a role. Then, I ask, "how is the state doing in these areas?" and "where can we improve in a way that will make a significant difference?" Will the initiatives that we have planned and are developing contribute in any way?

More on Egov 2.0

Earlier this month, Richard MacManus discussed two Gartner reports entitled The E-Government Hype Cycle Meets Web 2.0 and Government and Web 2.0: The Emerging Midoffice. By now, aspects of web 2.0 can be found throughout government, not pervasive yet, but common. I think agencies are still trying to figure out what they can and can't do and whether it has value. I am currently trying to assess podcasting and how it fits within our technical architecture. How should the IT organization supporting government address this growing trend? And how do you recommend standards in an area that is evolving so rapidly with new tools and concepts?

SurveyMonkey Democracy

The Governor of Alaska is using Survey Monkey to collect citizen input on government priorities. That certainly is an easy way to do it, although you don't have too much control over who your respondents are. I'd be interested to hear the results of this.

e-File Sets Record, but Rate of Growth is Slower

I receive the latest news from IRS by email each day. Here's a graph I created on Swivel using the latest IRS numbers on efiling. It continues to grow, but last year's growth slowed somewhat.

West Virginia Contracts with NIC

The State of West Virginia just announced a new contract with NICUSA to support their state portal. The total length of the contract with renewal options is 3 years. Utah is in the 9th year of contract(s) with NIC and their affiliate UtahInteractive. I met last month with Jeff Fraser, CEO of NIC, and we discussed adding many new services to Utah.gov. NIC is finishing a database of all the services they have developed nationwide, about 1400 altogether, so we want to look at those that are currently not available in Utah and see what potential there is to leverage them. Currently, over 700 services are available on Utah.gov with over a third of them supported by NIC.

Also, last month, California awarded a $14 million contract to Bearing Point to manage their DMV portal.

Creating Mashups with DekiWiki

I've been looking at lots of wikis today to determine which one we want to user for managing our technical architecture process and projects. I've looked closely at about a dozen. So far, Deki Wiki looks very good, although for a hosted service, I still really like WikiSpaces. You can see from this video how easy it is to embed content and create mashups within the wiki, which is something I really want to do. In the process of doing this, I came across Viddler. What I really like about Viddler is the ability to tag video content, including the ability to post video responses to the tagged location in the original video.