I.A. Tsoukalas is a professor in the Department of Informatics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece.
Leo G. Anthopoulos is a PhD candidate, Department of Informatics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
The Information Society is a vision for European countries, concerning the transformation of society, to one which is based on information and telecommunication technologies (ICT). The route to the Information Society follows national strategic plans controlled by national agencies and by the European Information Society Directorate General.
The Greek government developed the "Information Society" Action Plan [13] since 2002, covering four primary levels of ICT development:
- education and culture
- citizen's service and improvement of quality of life
- growth and employment and
- telecommunications.
The E-City Model
ICT infrastructures and applications installed in a local community and manipulated by the local public administration would create the proper environment where citizens meet Information-Society targets. We imagine the e-City as a local community where ICT projects transform it to an area of improved services:
- In business and employment: Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) would apply e-business platforms like ERP and CRM systems, would use broadband networks and wireless hotspots to promote e-commerce, automate transactions with local government and offer improved services to their customers.
- In public administration: citizens would have access to all public information, services and resources through multiple communication channels (central offices for public access, one-stop e-government portals, mobile phones and info kiosks). Citizens would be authenticated easily with a citizen smart card or a PIN given by a local administration and could navigate public resources and services easily. Citizens would be served with one visit by fully automated batch processes or by executives' groupware systems [1], avoiding corruption and unjustifiable delays. Public administration would be measured and assessed while evaluation results would be available to citizens thus promoting public confidence.
- In the town: Citizens would be able to obtain all possible information about the town from anyplace, through multiple communication channels. An online city guide associated with an e-government one-stop shop -- where all public documents and resources would be available, and with intelligent transport and GIS systems providing information about traffic, parking places and routing schedules of mass transportation -- will make citizens part of a virtual space, where all information would be free for use.
- At home: a metropolitan area network (MAN) would be installed under the responsibility of the local administration, giving access to all buildings in town. A primary fiber-optic network and a supplementary wireless network would offer voice and data services at a minimum cost for citizens and for the public administration and would support intelligent in-house applications. In-house systems for instance, could send emergency notifications to public agencies. Citizens could apply to entertainment services such as video-on-demand and citizens with disabilities could be served by local agencies and tele-care systems.
- In the local economy: training programs on IT skills would be organized under the responsibility of the local administration. Regional telework places would serve the unemployed and start-up companies, offering work places and equipment at a minimum cost. Finally a local e-marketplace would help the promotion of local products.
- In education and culture: "local cultural products" would be digitized and offered through digital museums and multimedia collections. Cultural events would be transmitted real-time through broadband networks. Virtual classes and lessons organized by local community teachers could offer extra support to students and employees, promoting local educational
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- wealth to other regions. Virtual classes would cooperate with local universities in order to interconnect research and businesses. Public and school libraries could accept online orders and deliver books by traditional posting procedures.
Small towns and local communities have special characteristics that differ and must be studied before ICT project development. Parameters that affect ICT planning are described below:- Geographical characteristics that could make the installation of ICT infrastructures difficult.
- Towns that are transportation hubs, offer improved tourist services and advanced cultural activities. This in turn attracts many visitors, which affects the attitude of citizens. Geographically isolated towns, on the other hand, are characterized by regionalism and lack of open-mindedness.
- Towns that are sources of new scientists or artists, display migration of young people to cities with universities or to places offering career opportunities.
- Regions that are characterized by concrete production lines have "narrow" economic horizons.
According to the above conclusions, a differentiation from the Greek Information Society Action Plan has been proposed, directed at the growth of local communities as follows:- Economy and employment.
- Improvement of everyday life is related to the simplification of public transactions, to health care and to the modernization of transportation systems.
- Education, professional training, life-long learning.
- Tourism and culture.
According to the eEurope 2005 action plan [5], broadband networks will replace existing infrastructures offering advanced voice and data services to the citizens, at a minimum cost, through public networks. Public broadband networks aim also to support the back-office system of an e-government platform in order to improve front-office operations.
The Municipality of Trikala considers interventions in the following areas:- Infrastructures: the installation of necessary ICT networks and systems to support the e-city vision.
- Applications: software solutions delivering services over local infrastructures to the citizens, in the areas of precedence.
- Integration methods: plans related to the management of systems and produced information, together with actions to diffuse ICT in local community.
The Municipality of Trikala -- with 50,000 citizens, 25,000 telephones and 2,000 ISDN connections -- is implementing a Metropolitan Area Network (MAN), in order to create a competitive environment in the telecommunications area that will help on cost minimization and telecommunication service improvement. Trikala's MAN is based on fiber-optic lines (32 Km) and will initially connect 40 buildings hosting local public agencies and places visited daily by hundreds of citizens, such as hospitals, schools, mass transport stations, stadiums, etc. Then it will be extended to enterprises and homes, offering low cost, improved service and fast connections. Trikala's MAN is funded by the Greek Information Society Framework Program and will expand over local limits, based on wireless broadband technology, achieving compatibility with future technologies and delivering advanced services to local enterprises' wireless hotspots.
The implementation of such a big network will cost Euro 1.8 million by the end of 2005 and is the result of a study in Trikala which showed a satisfactory number of PCs and ICT equipment in most local public agencies, schools and corporations (two users per PC, while in all buildings hosting public agencies a fast Ethernet LAN exists) are already installed. The same study showed that the MAN's cost is equal to a three-year telecommunication expenditure by local agencies and will offer 1GBps data flow speed to connected users and 3-50 MBps speed for Internet transactions. Its cost depreciation is estimated to cover a period of 5 years.
Applications
E-Government
The Municipality of Trikala is implementing a pilot project,
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which aims to offer e-government full, non-digital services from municipal agencies of seven towns in the area of Trikala. It's called An Electronic Service System for Local Municipalities of the Prefecture of Trikala, it will be funded with Euro 0.6 million by the Greek Information Society Framework Program.
Health Care
Health services in Greece are centrally organised and offered by national hospitals. Municipalities cannot provide health services but they can help in the interconnection with care services and the improvement of responses on emergency calls.
Local Traffic Networks
Traffic problems appear even in small cities in Greece, due to the continuous increase of private vehicles, without a simultaneous increase of the private and public parking stations. A solution can be based on "intelligent" transport systems operated by the local municipality. A park-and-ride model, consisting of a network of public stations, in association with flexible means of mass transport (mini buses) will encourage citizens prefer public means of transportation. The network will be supervised by a center equipped with a GIS system while digital boards, located beside bus stations and in the buses, will inform citizens with messages about arriving time and delays.
Local Market and E-Business
The Municipality of Trikala proceeded in the promotion of e-business in the local market through: the development and operation of organized local e-marketplaces, that will be supported by national banks and will aim at the promotion of local products abroad; encouraging local professionals to propose concrete solutions for e-business promotion (ERP and MIS systems) and provide advisory services; encouraging SMEs to participate in the local MAN in order to exploit broadband facilities in their business activities and promote e-business.
Employment
Trikala's unemployment rate exceeds 10 percent of Greek average value, affecting mostly those aged between 18 and 35 years old. Investments locally are very low, while local universities do not offer chances for participating in R&D programs. Almost 80 percent of the local population works on agricultural activities, while 80 percent of students continue to higher education studies. It is estimated that 20,000 citizens of Trikala moved abroad to seek employment opportunities during the last two decades. Telework seems to be the proper solution and the Municipality of Trikala plans to develop two peripheral telework offices, hosted in municipal buildings, equipped with all necessary infrastructures for 15 workers. Additionally, the Greek national strategy on telework and on the assurance for teleworkers will be supported.
Culture and Tourism
The region of Trikala offers a wealth of cultural information. The digitization of local cultural product has begun and will cost Euro 20,000 for a collection of 2,000 exhibits, a multimedia title presenting local culture will cost Euro 30,000 and a Web portal offering cultural and tourist information is estimated at Euro 50,000. The region of Trikala will benefit from the above activity, while cost depreciation will occur through the dissemination of the multimedia titles.
Education, Training, and Life-Long Learning
In a small- or medium-sized town, uniform quality of services in education and training can be observed. This simplifies the implementation of e-learning courses and virtual classes, offering distance-learning opportunities to students or workers, with synchronous or asynchronous methods. This will result in the creation of a library of courses, available to the local society, but also available to others at a small cost via the Internet. Pilot methods of electronic assessment of students [2] are used in local schools and include mechanisms that can post information to e-government applications of the Pan-Hellenic School Network, together with teachers' evaluation results.
Management and Cooperation
The Municipality of Trikala has proceeded in self investment on IT infrastructures and applications since 1995, such as the development of a fast Ethernet LAN for 50 workstations, the municipal Web portal and a
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system for financial and payment management. Even these activities show the municipality's maturity on ICT deployment, now managing IT projects with a budget exceeding Euro 3 million.
Trikala has decided to follow the IT Governance Institute's [10] model for IT management, following the cycle: strategic alignment, value delivery, risk management and performance measurement. Its Strategic Alignment has focused on local needs and has resulted in contracts with the Greek Information Society Agency on proposed projects. Risks are related to the proper procurement, installation and use of IT systems that will result in the maximum IT delivery to the citizens and to the continuation and improvement of installed infrastructures. Risk management demands the definition of a new public enterprise that will manage all projects and will obtain a normal transformation of the municipality's back-office to an optimal work-flow system [8].
Performance measurement will depend on a statistical analysis of executives' participation in the e-government groupware system and on citizens' acceptance. Performance will be based on the number of citizens that will turn to digital means to access municipal agencies by the end of the first year of the whole system's operation.
Web services architecture will treat interoperability aspects between existing and newly installed systems. Transactions will be based on GovML [4] format. Social perspectives such as the openness of the applications will be obtained with the use of different communication channels for the citizens. In addition the 2 actual offices for Citizens' General Purpose Service that exist today, which operate under municipal responsibility, will deliver citizens' applications to the back-office. Minimal IT skills will be demanded by the citizens to access and operate the municipal Web portal. Executives will be encouraged to participate in IT lessons to improve their skills and to become trained in the use of the system.
The whole IT plan consists of 3 phases analyzed as:- installation and testing (from September 2004 to December 2005)
- optimal operation of systems and projects (from January 2006 to December 2006)
- excluded benefits for the minimization of municipal expenditure and human resource exploitation (by January 2007).
Managing Virtual Teams
The Public Administration is considered [14] [15] as a collection of distributed knowledge that requires well-designed IT plans in order to manage this knowledge. On the other side, IT infrastructures and projects previously described will create seven virtual teams in the area of Trikala, producing different kind of information and having different needs.
The municipality of Trikala as a first scope has to develop bridges between municipal agencies, virtual teams and their IT systems, in order to gather and publish distributed information. Transactions will be based on the GovML [4] format in order to create homogenous data and automatic transmission. For instance, communication with local enterprises will be handled by ERP/MIS systems, with the tele-care centre by the CRM system and with schools with the e-assessment system.
Created information will be stored in an in-house data farm, located in the Town Hall and citizens will have access to all published information, through the municipal portal or the KEP offices, authenticated with the use of personal PIN by municipal catalogues. The municipality will be able to evaluate collected information and to proceed to transparent procedures in order to realize possible needs from the virtual teams.
Performance Measurement
Performance measurement [1] serves in making public agencies accountable to elected officials and to the
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citizens, while giving motives to civil servants to improve their skills and their role in civil service and to increase confidence of the public in their local government.
With measurement methods the Municipality of Trikala will track resources, expenditure and physical output offered in the town. It is necessary to assess the efficiency of municipal human resources by measuring the amount of services offered and citizens who were served. The e-government project presented above was demonstrated in WCIT 2004 [1] and will categorize offered digital services to those which can be fully executed by digital means and to custom and composite services. In order for these services to be executed a network of executives will be responsible. A Web-based asynchronous groupware system, where client applications are used by a number of public executives, automatically selected from the municipal directories will support the execution of a public service.
An e-government directory consisting of all available executives working on different local municipal agencies will be used to construct a network of officers. Web services architecture will be applied on a Web based asynchronous groupware system, which will be handled by the executives. Executives will not know each other's identities to help avoid corruption.
IT Human Capital Plan
Implementing the municipality's IT vision for the e-city, requires skilled and dedicated people and a culture that nourishes and rewards good performance. The municipal Office of the Information Society will work in cooperation with the municipal agencies to develop and implement an IT human capital plan. This plan will identify workforce needs, including possible changes in required skills sets and resource levels based on the municipality's Information Society's direction.
The e-government groupware system presented above will be a helpful environment supporting executives in self-improvement of their skills. Funding opportunities for IT training will be also investigated in cooperation with the Greek Information Society Agency, directing to advanced IT groups in municipal agencies by the end of 2007.
Conclusions
An action plan related to the Information Society oriented to a small local community should take into consideration the particular physiognomy of the community and should "escape" from the national strategic plan. Moreover, a vision of an e-city can become reality through simple applications that are tangible for the citizens and are easily applicable in small- and medium-sized cities.
The Municipality of Trikala presented a strategic plan that is under development and is expected to deliver powerful results capable of boosting the local economy and of diffusing IT benefits to the local society. Methods that enable cooperation between the local public administration, virtual teams, and local enterprises, will support innovation investments and the interconnection between research and market.
Pilot applications related to e-government systems will introduce methods that increase the number of offered digital services, involve public executives in digital transactions and measure the performance of the local administration.
References
[1] Anthopoulos, L. (2004) A human based data network supporting e-government systems. M. Dertouzos Awards competition finalist, WCIT 2004 Athens.
[2] Anthopoulos, L, Zorbas C. (2004) Electronic assessment systems with content management mechanisms and interconnection to e-government systems. Pan-Hellenic Congress on Educational Information Technology, University of Macedonia. (http://dide.tri.sch.gr, http://6lyk-trikal.tri.sch.gr)
[3] Anthopoulos, L., Tsoukalas, I.A. E-Government : A Greek Perspective. (2004) Government Technology International, Center for Digital Government.
[4] eGov Consortium (2002). An Integrated Platform for Realizing One-Stop Government (D111-Platform and Network Architecture Functional Specifications, D121--Services and process models functional specifications). IST Project 2000 -- 28471.
[5] European Commission - COM 263 (2002). eEurope 2005: An Information Society for all
[6] European Commission, Information Society Technologies (2003). eGovernment Resource Book. Synopsis of IST Projects relating to eGovernment.
[7] European Innovation Scoreboard (2003). Technical Paper No 2, Analysis of National Performances. November 20, 2003
[8] Gingrich, G. (2003) Managing IT in Government, Business & Communities. Idea Group Publishing
[9] Hatry, H., Bryant. S. (1998) Performance measurement. Urban Institute, Washington D.C.
[10] IT Governance Institute (2004). Board Briefing on IT Governance, 2nd Edition.
[11] Kaufmann, D., Kraay, A., Mastruzzi, M. (2003). Governance Matters III: Governance Indicators for 1996-2002 (The World Bank)
[12] Kistin, Eschenfelder, R. (2002). The importance of Articulation Work to Agency Content Management: Balancing Publication and Control. Proceedings of the 37th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. IEEE.
[13] Ministry of Economy and Finance of Greece. Secretariat for the Information Society. OPIS Managing Authority (2002). Greece in the Information Society. Strategy and Actions (http://www.infosociety.gr)
[14] Traunm
