Slowness to adopt technology means chance to learn

By PETER GRIFFIN

Local authorities are being urged to pool their IT and planning resources to develop e-government initiatives at a regional level.

Cobis Scholtz, an Australia-based local-government specialist at Deloitte Consulting, estimated New Zealand was 12 to 18 months behind other developed nations in providing local government services online.

But that meant a chance to learn from e-government leaders such as Britain, Canada and the US, and New Zealanders would ultimately embrace a working system in greater numbers.

"We're second-movers but our saturation point is higher," said Mr Scholtz.

Although the Government's overall strategy for e-government, driven by the State Services Commission and the E-government Unit, had put the appropriate building blocks in place for delivering services online, activity at a local level was restricted to pockets around the country where councils had ventured online independently and on a limited scale.

"If you pool things you get to a critical mass of transactions, resources, and available funding," he said.

Integrating back-office systems would be the fundamental building block for local e-government.

Some councils had separate rates-gathering, financial and human-resources systems, and services were duplicated at regional, city and district level.

Overcoming that meant local authorities could jointly invest in technology and services where necessary.

"The difference in the buying power a collaborative group of councils has versus a single, smaller council can be quite dramatic," said Mr Scholtz.

Law changes are expected to give local authorities more scope to determine how they interface with the public.

Councils should also collaborate to find out how 'e' local government should be, he said. That would involve surveys and using existing research on internet usage.

Tony Rogers, chief information officer at the North Shore City Council, said e-government initiatives covering the eight councils in the Auckland region at present extended to the www.aucklandregion.com portal which carried information and provided forms for council business.

Auckland's local authorities had formed a local e-government working party that planned to align itself closely with central e-government initiatives to reduce the burden for individual councils.

"If we do that, then the citizen only has to go through one or few channels to get the service they want," he said.

Tidying up back-office processes would be essential to ensure that when local government did go online, the services would run smoothly and encourage usage.

"If you put up a service like paying your rates online, it has to work online. Those things are on our books as a block of work we've got to do."