The Role of E-Government in Making Communities More Competitive

The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF), an independent think tank which studies the relationship between broadband and economic and social development worldwide. released its first white paper of 2008 on the opening day of the Building the Building the Broadband Economy Conference. The paper, Can e-Government Make Communities More Competitive?, addresses the role of e-government in the economic success of communities around the world.

Among the findings, ICF noted that there are four primary goals that motivate communities when implementing e-government projects:

- Making government more efficient in order to make tax dollars go farther
- Delivering information and services to constituents more conveniently, allowing more to be done for more people
- Increasing the accountability and transparency of government
- Increasing citizen participation in governance

ICF also points out that it is important for decision makers to the see the bigger picture and to take into consideration ways to make the community a more attractive and productive place for employers to start and grow businesses that will prosper in the Broadband Economy. The paper examines how Intelligent Communities from around the world are meeting those goals.

E-Government and Broadband
Broadband has been shown to make a net contribution to economic growth at the community level. Investments by communities in deploying e-government projects that contribute to economic growth by utilizing or sponsoring broadband expansion have paid dividends.

The white paper uses examples from among the 66 communities that ICF has named as Intelligent Communities since its inception. It cites communities such as the French city of Issy-les-Moulineaux, a former Top Seven Intelligent Community of the Year which began working in 1994 to put its government online. The publication of a formal Local Information Plan in 1996 led Issy to become the first community in France to outsource its entire IT infrastructure to a for-profit company, Euriware. By 2006, local government's IT and communications infrastructure had undergone vast changes. Government, school, library, and health care buildings were fully wired with broadband, and there was one PC for every 11 students in the primary schools. The multimedia City Council room began broadcasting deliberations via cable TV and the Web and accepting citizen input in real time. A robust e-government portal provided online public procurement, online training, access to a "citizen relationship management" system called IRIS, and even online voting. And the outsourcing contract allowed Issy to substantially reduce costs. In a 2005 survey, the city ranked among the lowest (96th out of 110) French cities of more than 50,000 inhabitants for operating costs. The population has grown 35% since 1990, swelling tax revenues, without any increase in the government payroll.

The impact on economic development has been profound. Today, 60% of the companies based in Issy-les-Moulineaux are in information and communications technology, including Cisco Systems Europe, France Telecom, Hewlett-Packard, Orange Internet, Sybase, Canal+, Canal Satellite, Eurosport, France 5 and France 24. A partnership between the city and France Telecom's R&D facility has made Issy a test bed for new applications like fiber-to-the-home, which is currently deployed to a test group of 4,000 households. Business attraction and growth have been so robust that Issy-les-Moulineaux currently has more jobs than residents - a claim that few cities in the world can make.