Major eGovernment Projects in Health, Education and Transport in Victoria

This paper suggests that an understanding of eGovernment systems can be gained by examining them from the viewpoint of project management principles. The method adopted was to conduct a thematic analysis of documents describing six systems in the Australian state of Victoria. These projects were in Health, Education and Transport. Three were seen to be successful while three were not. The framework for the analysis was generated from a comparison of the general literature of project failure and the principles of two commonly used project management standards: PMBoK and PRINCE2. The comparison of successful and failed eGovernment projects within the same governmental departments enables conclusions to be drawn about the importance of stakeholder involvement and other project management principles

The Value of Local eGovernment : a study of electronic service delivery performance measurement

At the local government level, where a significant number of citizen-to-government transactions occur, eGovernment can be as much a barrier as it can be an enabler for citizen access to information and services. Municipal councils need to ensure that they are effective in delivering the services that are transferred to the electronic domain. As local governments increasingly turn to ESD, it is essential that they put in place performance measurement processes that ensure that they are effectively in achieving their desired aim. Public accountability particularly for more efficient and effective service delivery requires performance measures incorporating both financial and non-financial elements. The substantial reforms to the local government sector, however, brings with it a risk that councils will turn to eGovernment with the primary aim of reducing internal costs. This research examines the progress local governments in Victoria, Australia have made towards utilising the Internet to enhance the delivery of services and the methods they use to measure performance. Using a case study of two councils, the research found that councils concentrate more on the cost benefits of ESD rather than on the quality or effectiveness of the service. It also found that council staff do not incorporate on-going evaluative processes in changes to ESD. Moreover, it found that staff are often reluctant to undertake internally initiated reviews, and often rely on easily quantifiable measures such as hits or visits as justification for ESD

E-Government in Amarah: Challenges and Recommendations for Future Implementation

The growth and changes in the 21st century in the sectors of economics, politics, and technology mean that governments must provide all the services that can serve the demands of their citizens. One way for governments to facilitate this is by implementing e-government. E-government migrates services previously implemented by government employees to internet connected systems accessible by citizens from wherever they are at whatever time they are needed. This system can connect citizens to the government ministries via rule-based systems. Amarah, a city in the south of Iraq, started to integrate electronic systems into the facilities of the city in 2005. In 2012, the Amarah Provisional Council began the first step to build the e-government for the city by working with the UN, but the e-government systems still have not been built because the Council of Amarah is trying not to fall into the same mistakes of other e-government projects in the country. The purpose of this study is to cover some of the challenges that face governments in implementing e-government in developing countries. Another goal is to provide a comparative study to analyze the successful implementations of e-government in such places as South Korea, Bahrain, and Australia. Moreover, this thesis presents a workable framework to implement an e-government system which is suitable to the current situation of the city of Amarah, Iraq because existing successful e-government models or frameworks cannot be adopted as is and be expected to work successfully because of financial, cultural, political, educational, and other differences that exist between the locations

Social networking and dental care: State of the art and analysis of the impact on dentists, dental practices and their patients

Health Social networking sites offering search, reviews and recommendation are gaining popularity. This paper reviews the most popular social networking sites related to dental care. Social networks such as DrOogle and Yelp enable their users to review and rate their dentists and dental practices. Such information is then used to rank and recommend dentists or dental practices to new users/patients. This paper compares the dental care social networking sites in terms of their features and criteria supported for search, reviews and recommendations of dentists or dental practices. Mismatches between features and criteria among different dental care reviews sites are identified, which may cause inconsistency in the recommendations in the dental care. Therefore, this paper proposes a new framework for dynamic dental care recommendation system which takes both local (personalised) and global (crowdsourced) trust into account. It analyses the impact of current social networks on dentists, dental practices and their patients. Finally, it identifies the open issues and challenges that need to be addressed to design a trustworthy recommendation system for both the dental professionals and their patients

FrAmework for Multi-Agency Environments (FAME) : Final Report of the Learning & Evaluation Strand

Framework for Multi-agency Environments (FAME) was one of the Local Government On-Line funded National Projects sponsored by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM). Within FAME there were six local projects (known as strands) led by English local authorities in partnership with service providers. Each strand aimed to improve a particular set of services (for example, to vulnerable older people or disabled children) through effective and appropriate exchange of information. These local projects worked with IT suppliers (known as technology partners) to produce a technical system to facilitate the exchange and management of client / patient information across agency boundaries. Not all the outputs of FAME were in the form of IT systems. Improvements to business processes and information sharing practices were also expected. Newcastle University led two further strands, the Generic Framework and Learning & Evaluation. The Generic Framework identifies and describes nine building blocks that are essential to effective multi-agency working. The FAME website http://www.fame-uk.org contains details of these building blocks, together with a ‘how to’ guide and a toolkit to support local authorities and their partners in assessing their ‘readiness’ for multi-agency working. This is the report of the Learning & Evaluation strand. The Learning & Evaluation team worked closely with the local FAME project teams, who were supportive of our work and generous with their time. Throughout the project we reported back to the local teams both individually and collectively. Evaluation was thoroughgoing and critical, not an exercise in public relations or advocacy. It is important to stress that learning is likely to be gained from what did not work as well as from what did. Problems and setbacks, as well as successes, are therefore documented and analysed in the report

Warrnambool exchange fire: consumer and social impact analysis

How can governments, communities, businesses and individuals prepare for a total communications blackout in the 21st century? Overview This report presents the findings of a research project which assessed the social impact of the Warrnambool exchange fire. The fire occurred on November 22, 2012 and caused a telecommunications outage that lasted for about 20 days. The outage affected about 100,000 people in South West Victoria, a region of Australia covering approximately 67,340 square kilometers. The social impact of the fire was researched by conducting focus groups, by gathering quantitative and qualitative data, and interviewing people affected. The research project findings call for an understanding of the need for government, communities, business and individuals to be prepared for future “extreme events” which result in telecommunications network failures.   This research was supported by a grant from the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network

Birth, life and death of the Victorian Education Ultranet

This article examines the development and ultimate demise of the Ultranet, a major ICT infrastructure project in the education system of the Australian State of Victoria. The case is interesting as it was a very large project, intended for 1500 schools and funded to $180 m (Au). The study traces the design and implementation of the project as a socio-technical innovation in education. Although there are examples of how this project worked very well, its uptake was less than anticipated. The study found that potential benefits from a very large project like this can be nullified by a number of factors including: change in sponsorship of the project, an over emphasis on security concerns, failure to enrol crucial stakeholders and a naive assumption by technologists that technology with potential benefits will always be accepted. The study also found that technology projects must be delivered where a need exists and one that, most importantly, is recognised by the stakeholders. This will also be the case in other education systems around the world. If resources are not to be wasted the problem must be clearly identified and its need accepted before a solution is proposed. The Victorian Government finally abandoned the Ultranet in June 2013

Big data for monitoring educational systems

This report considers “how advances in big data are likely to transform the context and methodology of monitoring educational systems within a long-term perspective (10-30 years) and impact the evidence based policy development in the sector”, big data are “large amounts of different types of data produced with high velocity from a high number of various types of sources.” Five independent experts were commissioned by Ecorys, responding to themes of: students' privacy, educational equity and efficiency, student tracking, assessment and skills. The experts were asked to consider the “macro perspective on governance on educational systems at all levels from primary, secondary education and tertiary – the latter covering all aspects of tertiary from further, to higher, and to VET”, prioritising primary and secondary levels of education