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Step1 Overview of Open City Portal

OpenCityPortal

Delta Nigeria, November 2008

Contents1. What’s the e-government

3. Open City Portal strategy and design3.1. Stand-alone government portal3.2. Linking the government portal to the government systems3.3. Services categorised according to citizens’ needs

3.4. Functions of the portal3.5. Daily use of the portal

1.1. The goals of the e-government 1.2. The scope of the e-government

2. What’s the OCP proposal for cities?2.1. The five main features of Open City Portal2.2. The Knowledge Sharing function2.3. The OCP competitive costs






1. What’s the e-GovernmentE-Government consists on linking together in a “single window” all the services they offer through different departments and at different levels.

It is not a matter of creating a new service but of reinventing the old: perform the same functions all governments do but in a better way using the electronic resources.It puts the public at the center of the service delivery task. This means delivery excellence and customer satisfaction become the key objective.

Reinventing the old

For the Government users

For the Government

Global benefits are: • cost savings• efficiency gains• better data for decision making • better access (electronically) to government services

1. What’s the e-GovernmentThe chain covered by the E-Government project:

The user performs the task (consulting certain data, paying an item, sending a content...)

The user surfs the website and find what he is looking for (*)

The system gives the order to the bank of making or receiving a payment in an automatic way

The transaction performed is registered in the DDBB used to gather that kind of data

(*) A friendly interface and tools such as search engines are required

Navigation Interaction Payment Posting Reporting

Outstanding information is organized and

displayed for the responsible person

to monitor

Confirmation to the user

1.1. The Goals of e-GovernmentThe ultimate goal of e-government is to transform the government into more transparent, efficient and citizen-centric one.

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Disseminating government service information in a more comprehensive and citizen-centric way

Reforming administrative processes so that they become more efficient, citizen-friendly and transparent

Providing citizens with access to information, data and documents in order to encourage their participation in the processes of government

Promoting the economic and social development of the country, region, city or municipality through more efficient and transparent information management

Including citizens, the private sector and NGOs in the policy-making process using ICT

In order to achieve it, e-government programme adopt several intermediate goals:

1.2. The Scope of e-GovernmentIn order to achieve these goals, an e-Government programme should cover all the major target groups within its citizen population: households, businesses and NGOs.

Therefore, it is necessary to allow the interaction: • Government with Citizens: G2C• Government with Businesses: G2B• Government with Other Governments or Public Administrations: G2G• Citizens with Citizens: C2C

1.2. The Scope of e-Government: G2CHouseholds are major beneficiaries of government services. There are different segments within the household category. These segments can be differentiated by a number of factors including: income level, place or region of residence, marital status, age of parents and children and health status.

Therefore, E-Government portals should address diverse needs of the citizens according to their service needs:

Such as birth, child-raising, youth development, marriage, getting employed, finding housing, moving the residence, and retirement, etc.

Such as elderly people, youth, people with special needs, immigrants and minorities.

Such as education, health, job searching and work, etc.

By life-stages

By specific activities

By other categories according to the citizen’s needs

1.2. The Scope of e-Government: G2BThe business sector demands more sophisticated and advanced information on government activities. Businesses provide jobs and economic vitality which are essential for regional development. Therefore it is important attend them properly.

There are four types of e-government roles for businesses:

Businesses require detailed information about government policy and the regulations that apply to business activities.

They are sometimes the suppliers of services needed by citizens, such as education, training, health, and various social services.

Businesses need information about procurement policy and the procedures, and specific tender opportunities.

Each business unique products and services, attractive tourist spots and investment opportunities of the municipality are disseminated through municipal portal to global audience.

Regulations

Procurement

Privately-provided services

Introducing local businesses

1.2. The Scope of e-Government: G2G

The government portal can play an important role as the mechanism through which government officers share common knowledge about government services.

E-government programmes also address the need for communication between government agencies and among government employees.

City governments need information about national and regional governments' programmes and vice versa. These offices need detailed knowledge of the policy and procedures of the central and city governments to provide services through direct contact with citizens.

The city government officials also need to know how other cities in the similar situation are doing to cope with the citizens' demands.

Open City Portal has a function to access best practices, and policy tutorials for the various categories of municipal services from other cities.

Competitive advantage of OCP: Knowledge sharing function

1.2. The Scope of e-Government: C2C

Therefore city and/or government portals should provide information about these services and amenities. The availability of such information will also be important for the promotion of tourism and knowledge-based industries in the region.

Lastly, communication among citizens and between these and the Government must be, not only allowed, but also promoted.

Citizens, community-based organizations and NGOs provide useful services to citizens, particularly in social, educational areas. They also provide essential amenities for residents and tourists such as hotels, restaurants, shops and transportation.

Citizens’ must be able to express their opinion about policy issues of their concern

The Portal should also provide a communication forum for citizens to talk to the government officials, and among themselvesThis is the first step for the citizens' participation in the policy-making process.






2. What’s the OCP proposal for cities?Open City Portal presents an advanced design to achieve the major objectives of e-government: Inclusion and interaction of all citizens (e-Participation), Transparency, Making municipal services more citizen-oriented, Regional development and a New way of administrative processes performance.

Open City Portal has the following 5 features which will be explained next:1. Citizen-centric portal2. OCP created with a few clicks3. Inclusion of all the citizens into content developments4. Saving transaction costs5. Promoting transparency and administrative reform

Specially important, is the knowledge sharing function proposed by OCP. This enables partner cities to exchange best practice and lessons.

Open City Portal enables even the smallest city or town to create a portal, no matter how severely limited its budgetary and human resources are, thanks to competitive costs derived by the fact of being an open-source platform and the altruistic and volunteering nature of some of this project aspects.

2.1. The five main features of the OCP1. Citizen Centric Portal

OpenCityPortal Traditional Approach

The OCP aims to provide all the information necessary for citizens' life comprehensively.

Information is categorised based on "life stages" (Birth, Marriage, Retirement), and "types of activities" (Health, Education, Work, Starting a Business), rather than the organizational structures of central and local government.

In this way, the OCP creates the single window or "one-stop-shop" for every category of municipal services. This is a useful first step for the administrative process reform at subsequent stages.

In traditional approaches, municipal services are classified according to the government organization.

The consequent problem is that citizens often search for various agency pages or websites to find the necessary information.

2.1. The five main features of the OCP2. City Portal created with a few clicks


The OCP is an open-source platform, which can be used free of charge (a modest amount of membership fee is applicable to cover training, technical support and global content support).

Once decided the categorization of the city services, the Portal of your city is created with a few clicks.

This Portal has all the functionalities and any government official can start putting content using any Internet browser without using special authoring tools. This means there is no need for software "development” which is the most expensive part of the Portal creation.

A standard traditional approach portal will cost on avarage EUR50,000 to 100,000.

Content creation and software development are not clearly separated. So whenever the city want to add new content, they need to develop software or new pages using the content management system. All the content should be linked to the page using content management system.

2.1. The five main features of the OCP3. Inclusion of all the citizens into content development


The OCP promotes the inclusion of all groups, public and private, that are working to meet citizens' needs. For example schools, hospitals, and transport services are run by the private as well as the public sector.

Citizens need all information concerning one service to be accessed in one place.

In addition, civil society, NGOs, private sector businesses provide useful urban amenities and social services.

The Open City Portal promote all such service providers to contribute content to the Portal.

Traditional city portals deals only with public sector services.

Content is developed by the municipal government officials only.

The citizens miss many comparable services provided by the private sector or NGOs.

2.1. The five main features of the OCP4. Saving transaction costs


OCP provides systematic information about city services, policies, procedures and all the contact information.

Citizens can download all the application forms required by city government services.

If there is no legal requirement for digital signature, citizens can apply some services online.

City government can gradually develop back-office systems to allow on-line applications and can gradually increase the range of its online delivery of certificates, etc.

In the Traditional Approach, city portals are only aim at providing online service delivery, namely, citizens can apply for a service through online and receive the results online.

However, it requires a complex authentication system and back office computerization, cost of which sometimes exceeds the benefit.

Simpler interactive information portal, with comprehensive download function provides much more cost-efficient solution to the citizens.

2.1. The five main features of the OCP5. Promoting transparency and administrative reform


OCP promotes transparency of municipal governance through the provision of budget, action programme and monitoring results of all the city programmes.

Such information on policies encourages participation of citizens in policy-making processes.

OCP also has a policy diagnosis (opinion polls) function, a collaborative strategy and action plan development functions, discussion forums for citizens to make complaints and proposals.

These functions together create a useful policy tool to promote "E-Democracy."

Except very rare cases, Traditional Approach portals did not promote the E-Democracy, or, participation of citizens to the policy-making processes.

2.2. The Knowledge Sharing function

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) allow its exploitation for generating new value by accessing, using, analyzing and sharing the knowledge.

In the New Economy, knowledge is seen as a resource for innovation; it is a renewable economic good.

Increasing competitiveness

Benefitingsociety as a

whole

Generating efficiency

Knowledge Management

(KM) knowledge

used

delivered

acquired

at the lowest

cost

However, the information needed to plan, make decisions, and act is often held by outside organizations in disparate formats.

Information is one of the most valuable resources of government Governments around the

world are increasingly turning to information sharing and

knowledge management

2.2. The Knowledge Sharing function

Different sharing knowledge new practices are taking place among Public Administrations. •From the lowest level (municipalities) by sharing information between agents in charge of related areas such as police and highway.•To the highest level (the State) by coordinating global resources such as hospitals and medical centers to face a public health crises.

Sharing information policy involves new processes and organizational changes.

To be successful, the following requirements are needed:Adequate technical capabilities for sending information across departments and different organizations systemsFull executive involvementStrong inter-organizational collaboration

Information from multiple sources is integrated and used simultaneously by several managers.

2.2. The Knowledge Sharing functionThe Open City Portal has two views in each service category; a city specific view and a global knowledge view.

"Go Global" and "Go to Municipality" buttons allow to toggle between both views

The city specific view provides information about services to the citizens of a specific city or municipality.

The global knowledge view provides tutorials, case studies from other cities, lists of resource persons, global statistics and toolkits for policy makers.

City-specific view Global knowledge view

2.2. The Knowledge Sharing functionContents are developed and stored in different ways in the global and specific views:

When you register your municipality, you are assigned a three-letter acronym unique to it. This acronym is attached to all the category IDs for your city.Each municipality can create up to 81 service categories to cover the range of their services. Some categories may well be the same as those in the standard model of Open City Portal. Others will be custom-made. All the municipality-specific contents are associated with one of the category IDs and carry the municipal tag. In the "municipal view", you will only see content with your municipal tag.

There is a global repository for each service category. This applies whether the categories are from the standard categories or are categories customized for your municipality. Each time you create a new category in your municipal Portal, a corresponding category is opened up within the global repository. There are resource persons who are willing to contribute contents for the global repositories. In these cases, the content will be stored with an associated "global category ID" which has no municipal acronym but which is a three digit number.

City-specific view Global knowledge view

2.3. The OCP competitive costsOCP is a significantly lower costly e-government portal than its competitors.

The total cost of the e-government portal for the first five years (including: installation, training, maintenance and update tasks) (*) is:

Traditional Portal: - Between $99,000 to 378,000 for small cities - Between 337,000 to 629,000 for medium-sized cities

OpenCityPortal:- Between US$12,300 to 16,000 for small cities - Between US$16,000 to 24,000 for medium-sized cities

OCP total price is almost one tenth to one twentieth of the one proposed by traditional e-government portals.

OCP Foundation will develop and manage the OpenCityPortal website which is the entry point for the Partner Cities’ OCP and provider of the global knowledge content. The Foundation will use web hosting service of the highest quality and maintain the web servers. OCP platform will be continuously upgraded to the changing needs of the Partner Cities

2.3. The OCP competitive costs

5. Annual OCN meeting in which all the OCN members will discuss organizational issues of OCP and practical workshops, based upon the member’s experience and the outcome of the annual research activities will be organized as well.

OCP Foundation will provide venue, speakers, and social occasions (lunch, dinner and coffee breaks). The cost of travel and accommodation as well as a variable fee (depending on the total costs of the meeting) will be born by the participants.

1. The cost of implementation of OCP which is 1.500$.

3.1. OCP Network membership fee of 1000$ for the maintenance of the platform2.2. Host server cost of 400$ the update modules and the host server.

The cost for a city to be a member of the OCP Network is made up of three concepts:

2. Training cost which is variable depending on the country costs (hotel, venue....) and on the on-line/face to face format of the training sessions.

3. Two yearly payments

4. Cost of the updates the city would like to implement: 200$ per module

2.3. The OCP competitive costsThe major reasons for the cost effectiveness are:

All the pages and functions of the OCP are created dynamically, when the city defines the "categories" of city services, selecting or modifying from the 81 standard categories. As it is not not required any development of the portal while meeting the city's needs to customize the service categories, there is no significant software development cost. In the case of traditional portals, the development cost of the portal with similar functionality as OCP is estimated to be between US$45,000 - 280,000 for small cities and between US$200,000 - 350,000 for the medium-sized cities. Web-hosting and initial installation cost will be roughly comparable in the OCP and traditional model. Both, the installation and hosting prices are very competitive.

1. Portal development cost

The cost for the training of city council employees is reduced by using already developed on-line tutorial and economies of scale. A training-the-trainers workshop will be provided for several cities together, and the cost per city will be US$5,000. In the case of traditional portals, training cost will be up to US$30,000 for small cities and $50,000 for medium-sized cities.

2. Training costs

2.3. The OCP competitive costs

Economies of scale greatly reduce the technical support and maintenance cost. Imagine hundreds of sites using the same technology. It will be charged an annual membership fee of US$1,000 for small cities and US$1,500 for medium-sized cities, which covers the technical support and subscription to the global content. In the case of traditional model, technical support and maintenance will cost annually roughly 10% of the development cost.

3. Technical support and Maintenance costs

All the portal platform needs almost constant upgrading and adding extention modules to cope with new online service needs. The OCP will use the qualified open-source software development team to meet such demands. The cost for cities to upgrade their portals to new online service modules are significantly lower then the traditional portals due to the economies of scale.

4. Upgrading and adding modules






3. OCP strategy and designThe Government Portal is the starting point for the e-government programme.Open City Portal presents a platform structure that meets all the requirements needed to achieve the e-government goals and have the scope within reach.

It is important to keep in mind that, in order to achieve the highest state of e-government (with all the benefits associated to it), Open City Portal means not only a platform but a whole project to implement and maintain it. Citizens together with the Government employees must been involved in it.

OCP structure is the result of the combined work of several universities and development organizations with a deep understanding of the municipalities and citizens’ needs. These group of agents is called Light Houses Taskforce.

3.1. Stand-alone portal

– “Single point of entry" for information about various government services.– “Interactive forum" which allows citizens to submit questions and city officials

to answer them as well as let citizens express their opinions.– Citizens can participate in the policy decision making process and download

policy documents and application forms for city services.– The administrative reform is promoted, simplifying procedures and making

them more responsive to citizens.

Open City Portal proposes a stand alone portal without causing a heavy burden to the administrative budgets.

Even when there is no back-office government information system, a stand alone government portal can still achieve many of the goals of e-government:

3.2. Linking the Portal & the SystemsDespite its qualities, a stand-alone portal cannot permit useful functions, such as:

- “Online transaction" functions for citizens- Administration productivity enhancement through paperless management

Let’s see an example: assuming a Portal connected to a government information management system, such as a citizen registration system.

That can be achieved if the government portal is linked to its information systems.

Similarly, businesses can apply for e-procurement tenders without physically going to the government office and taxes can be paid/return through the portal.

3.2. Linking the Portal & the SystemsCities should have a medium-term plan to link government information systems to the portal step-by-step.

Linking systems such as e-procurement and e-tax payment and return to the portal will bring important benefits to citizens.

These additional benefits of government portals means an increase of the costs.

Linking the city portal to a government information system need not necessarily be within the immediate scope of the Open City Portal as such information system costs up to 100 times as much as the stand-alone city portal.

Open City Portal will develop such "on-line transactions" as extension modules using open-source software. So within the next few years, major online transaction modules can be installed to the Open City Portal with much less cost.

OCP approach

3.3. Services categorised as citizen needsTraditional government portals simply present information according to the government organizational structure. No attempt to integrate content on the basis of the needs and perceptions of citizens was done. The result is a collection of websites created by different government agencies and departments.

Consequently, users had to check several websites hosted by different government agencies or by private sector organizations offering the same services, each time they want to access to information on schools, hospitals or any other data. This is cumbersome and frustrating for the user.

The Open City Portal offers a design that classify government (or private sector) services according to the citizens' needs and the way they think about them.A standard classification structure is proposed and it can be varied to meet the particular demands and circumstances of each city.

OCP approach

3.3. Services categorised as citizen needsOCP standard structure is made up by 9 sections.

Citizen’s life Life eventsRegional’s development

Education Business workHealth and social care

Municipal infrastructure Social Inclusion Information society

Tourism Business EnvironmentMy city

Creative city Unique local productSustainable city

Safe and secure city Social Inclusion Information society

Example: Regional’s development Categories

All categories are made up by the same 14 subcategories (which are analyzed in the following point: 3.4. Functions of the portal).

Each section contains 9 to 10 categories which are different in each section case an cover all areas concerning them.

All the sections and the categories in each one of them are seen at a glance in OCP frontpage, as it is shown in the following capture of the OCP page.

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Section

Categories

3.4. Functions of the portalThe next step in portal design is to identify the functions needed to disseminate information and interact with citizens in each category of government service.

It is very important to classify these sources of information and interaction from a point of view understandable for the citizen, otherwise they will not use them.

Events E-community ForumBasic Facts

Contacts Policy DiagnosisBest Websites

Business Partners Online Application Making a Business Plan

Funding Resource Persons Case Studies

Downloads Activities

The platform structure proposed by OCP presents 14 subcategories in each one of the 9 to 10 categories in which the each one of the 9 sections are divided.

These subcategories provides the platform with several “Forums” for the users to interact and participate in the community platform.

The 14 subcategories are seen at a glance in the category page, as it is shown in the following capture of the OCP page.

Contents

Subcategories

Contents

Subcategories

3.4. Functions of the portal

• Information about the government policy and procedures for application to the primary schools; this information would most usefully be in the form of questions and answers in the "Basic Facts" Forum.

• A list of all primary schools located in the region and their major characteristics and contact information which is provided by the "Contacts" Forum.

• Notices of events scheduled in the near future or reports of events recently held in the "Events" Forum.

• Case studies of best practices in other cities and municipalities on innovative education programmes in the "Case Studies" Forum.

• Lists of the best relevant websites and of resource people from whom citizens can get detailed and reliable information on the "Best Sites" Forum.

• A forum for teachers, students, and parents where they can ask questions and state their opinions about primary education issues offered by the "E-Community" Forum.

• A statistical site where citizens can have access to various statistical data related to primary education, including budget and indicators data on various municipal activities in the "Activities" Forum.

Example: Information required in the Service Category “Primary Education”

3.5. Daily use of the portal

The contents of the portal should always be updated to provide the newest information and reflect the real and changing citizens’ demands. To achieve this, the contents should be created and updated by government staff who actually formulate policy and guidelines and/or who are in the front offices of such services actually serving citizens.

Contents should be input to the portal and updated through internet browsers not requiring HTML or web design professional knowledge .

Documents and pictures should be uploaded directly through the web portal, rather than using an FTP programme; no knowledge of the portal directory system should be necessary.

The category structure of the government services, which is used to design the opening screens of the portal, should be customized according to local characteristics and citizens' needs and demands.

These can be determined through the E-Readiness assessment.

Contents always

updated

Update process

easy through browser

Category structure adapted to city

Three important features about the portal use determine how must its structure be:

References1. CGI

“Single-Window Government: Using the new generation of e-government to transform government operations” study

Technology

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