2003 E-Gov Round-Up

As the year is ending, we look back. I haven’t yet seen much year reviews on eGovernment apart from E-GOV: A year in review from FCW. It’s about US, but would apply for Denmark too: “Talking the talk, but a long walk to walk”, and “Focused on architecture, fuzzy on funding”. In the printed press, ComnputerWorld Denmark had a special section about 2003. There they said something like “A Good Year for e-Government”, and listed all the things that happened during 2003, and that’s actually been a lot, just here in Denmark. Going through my archives gave a pretty good overview, I’d say. I chose to make a number of nominations for “Of the Year”-highlights.

E-Gov Strategic Choice of the Year
Government-wide Enterprise Architecture (EA)
Not just because it the only new category in my blog, and what I do 60 hours a week, but because this is indeed what I see from around the world. As the nominations below will show, not least in the US. Also the Canadian Government is working with EA , namely under the heading business transformation, and has eatablished a Business Transformation Enablement Program (BTEP).

E-Gov Video of the Year
NASCIOs Enterprise Architecture video library (link)
NASCIO�s architecture videos are intended to serve as a resource for CIOs, architects and other IT experts in their efforts to present a compelling message describing the value of enterprise architecture. I have asked NASCIO for permission to translate/subtitle them into Danish.

E-Gov Quote of the Year

“It’s about architecture, it’s about focus on the customers, and it’s about results”

Said Mark Forman, former e-government chief for the US Office of Management and Budget.
Mark could also have gotten the “Biggest Loss for E-Gov of the Year” award, were it not for him continuing to come with good commentary from “the outside”. Here’s a more recent but also good one from Mark:

The future of technology is signaling a shift in focus from proprietary systems to architecture, and the government needs to be ready for the change.
Mark Forman, 11 Dec 2003

Mark argues that government is beginning to move away from using massive data centers to manage systems, and that we see a commoditisation of technologies which is allowing agencies to take standardised systems and open source options and link them to business processes, hereby becoming an adaptive enterprise. To facilitate this development, Forman pinpoints the federal enterprise architecture as providing a framework, and pushing agencies to think in terms of architecture. He refers to the reference models in the architecture, with which agencies can move away from building their own components and instead customise those available and share solutions across the government.

E-Gov Survey of the Year
Accenture’s eGov Leadership Survey
The survey ranked Denmark as number four in the world on e-gov maturity. Canada was – and is – number one.
Runner-ups: Two reports: TNS-Global Survey, which shows that more than six out of ten adults in Denmark use government services online (hightest of all) and the RAND US/EU Benchmarking Report, which shows that Danes have to most positive attitude towards e-government services.

E-Gov Publication of the Year
“The E-Government Imperative”, OECD’s Flagship Report on EGovernment.
The report and the related policy brief goes through policy lessons from current experience in OECD member countries and suggests 10 guiding principles for successful e-government implementation:
1 Leadership and Commitment
2 Integration
3 Inter-agency collaboration
4 Financing
5 Access
6 Choice
7 Citizen engagement
8 Privacy
9 Accountability
10 Monitoring and evaluation

Excellent advice. Read the publication!

E-Gov White Paper of the Year
No doubt 🙂 That is our EA White Paper (get it here)

E-Gov Reference Model of the Year
Federal Enterprise Architecture Business Reference Model, BRM 2.0
The Business Reference Model is “a function-driven framework for describing the business operations of the Federal Government independent of the agencies that perform them.” It is also called Wedding Cake because it is illustrated like this:

E-Gov XML Initiative of the Year
The Danish Infostructurebase
Our Infostructurebase (ISB) got world-wide attention recently, when we published the Microsoft Office 2003 Reference Schemas after an agreement between Bill Gates and Helge Sander, minister of science. Confused? Read the FAQ.
Although XML in government is progressing, few governments have embraced XML at a policy, strategic level as well as a practical level. In Denmark, we think we’re different, and the ISB is central to briding the gap between policy and practice. As a repository, a community, an infosite and a discovery tool, it is unique in the world.

Standardisation Project of the Year
Atom, the up-and-coming format for editing, syndicating, and archiving weblogs and other episodic web sites.
OK, it is not clear from that blog entry that the Real-time Simple Standardisation I talk about ended up as Atom, which is making real progress these days. Atom aims at being 100% vendor neutral, implemented by everybody, freely extensible by anybody, and cleanly and thoroughly specified. See the Atom Wki and the Cover Page for more information. Atom is interesting on many levels – as a standard for XML-feeds, but also with much wider potential. Atom is also leading the way to finally getting better blogtool APIs. It is no good that we’re stuck with XML-RPC. The Atom API was designed with several guiding principles in mind:
– Well-defined data model — with schemas and everything!
– Doc-literal style web services, not RPC
– Take full advantage of XML and namespaces
– Take full advantage of HTTP
– Secure, so no passwords in the clear

Some say that Atom is BigCo thinking. That’s not how I see it. OK, IBM staffs Atom work, and SOAP is a possible transport protocol, and it’s more complex than RSS, but it still doesn’t exclude anyone from anything, as it uses a REST Architectural Style. I think it is stuff like Atom that helps us understand SOAPs many layers – from Simple Object Access Protocol to Service Oriented Architecture protocol.

Runner-up: RSS 2.0
Dave Winer took RSS to Harvard, a bold move. He licensed the RSS spec under Creative Commons. Today is the One Year Anniversary of the Creative Commons tools and licenses, so CC is basically a 2003 thing.

Global E-Gov Infosite of the Year
Directory: O e-Government no Mundo
Blog: David Fletcher’s Government and Technology Weblog