Impact

This is certainly not a one-off phenomenon and will be sustained as its value is more and more appreciated by the public/citizens/businesses and the politicians that serve and support them. This sits within all the other nationally and internationally replicable solutions which e@SY Connects have provided/provides, from finding jobs to booking 24 hours/7 days a week doctor appointments through a wide range of access channels. All “firsts of their kinds” anywhere in the world on ALL such channels. This is not simply a web site/Internet development it is far more pervasive and ubiquitous - with for example more people having access to Digital TV than the Internet in South Yorkshire it made developing interactive solutions on these channels as vital. Beyond the actual service provision itself, the ability to capture at source usage and requirement data and quickly assimilate it has immense capacity planning and shared services implications. The analysis and evaluation of the results, using methodology such as I-PAT as standard on a population of 1.4 million, will continue for the rest of the year. The plan was to implement first in SouthYorkshire, the province of Flevoland in Holland and the City of Riga in Latvia to prove its replicability with the opportunity through partnership networking to roll it out to any other town, region or country that requested it. Local elections in England were called at a time when the system was just about to be completed and effected the speed at which it was launched so it is really too early to directly quantify the success both in the UK and Holland but the fact that a dialogue can and is now occurring is a massive positive for all. The key hypotheses which define that some people, some institutions and some places appear to use ICT to make a positive difference and others appear not be able to do so then these differences can be attributed to whether their regional innovation or institutional cultures are clear. Suddenly this system allows all those who wish, and who can be invited by their friends very easily through their telephone or TV with little effort and certainly no computing knowledge, to become involved, own both the problem and the solution and really, ‘Make A Difference’. Innovation: This development by e@SY Connects is exceptional as it is not simply an Internet solution, it gets to far more people, citizens or businesses, by providing interactive services (Petitioning being just one) by a whole range of cost effective and non-intrusive technology for as providing the service using as mobile telephones and digital television. Also it allows the submission process to be managed and for submissions not only to be scrutinised but also to be easily adjusted to allow them to be resubmitted and accepted. Responsible officers can be allocated and notified who can in turn, should the subject wish be contacted, open a dialogue with them or a sub-group or the whole group who have signed the petition. e@SY's now made the Internet system a full cycle process, allowing the public and not just officers (as it was previously with no integration into the host CMS) to raise petitions although of course they are scrutinised in the host’s preferred method before being made visible. This is a fully replicable solution which can be operated from one 'shared server service' or loaded onto an organisation’s own server. It comes with full system and process management modules. Again, this for all channels. As the South Yorkshire system is now running in Holland, with a Latvian implementation planned, it truly is a replicable solution that requires (besides the wording rendered to the actual user) no changes to the system for it to installed and utilised. This is also a great model in which to ensure sustainability and propagation.

Track record of sharing

Those towns/cities outside South Yorkshire who had previously implemented the 2005 system are now looking at migrating onto this “e@SY enhanced” system. It is seen as an explemplar of shared practice not only in the way it is managed and hosted but also in the way it has been developed. One system to maintain, one front-end, one CMS etc but it still supports multiple channel access which in itself opens up new and exciting opportunities. Working (and implementing) with partners across Europe has ensured that the solution's inherent design and its actual implementation is totally replicable and by moving it onto other access platforms the design has become simple, slick and more importantly intuitive - like all of e@SY Connects services, you don't need a manual to use it as - if you do then e@SY's failed.

Lessons learnt

Lesson 1 - No matter how comprehensive and intuitive the solution/service may be then it has still to be marketed - traditional techniques are fine (but often expensive) but there are other very effective ways to get the message out there and take-up assured. For example the use of intermediaries are so often over-looked. Lesson 2 - The desire to involve and empower the citizen, in whatever guise, is seen across Europe as a way to improve ownership and in the end provide better and used services. Lesson 3 - Working across Europe has not only assisted in developing this module within the e@SY Connects service catalogue and its partners, it has in fact open many other avenues to work on a wide range of essential elements, user authentication and authorisation being an example, with colleagues across Europe who bring interesting experiences, views and skills to any new development.