New Zealand's updated e-government strategy

The New Zealand Government has recently released a paper that provides a stock take of progress made towards its goal of providing the public with a comprehensive suite of interactive government services through the internet.

Since 2001, the focus has been on the development of a number of building blocks and common tools designed to provide a firm foundation for the electronic delivery of government services through a "shop front", common to government as a whole.

The "shop front" is the New Zealand Government's web portal (www.govt.nz) which provides access to a wide range of central and local government services through a single point of entry. The portal has been up and running for about a year, with public usage growing at a rate in excess of the general rate of growth for internet usage.

The "building blocks" have included the establishment of common metadata standards for government agencies, development of an e-Government Interoperability Framework ("e-GIF"), the promulgation of a set of web guidelines and a number of security standards and policies.

The "common tools" include metadata collection and management processes, standardised web-based search technologies, feeds from central metadata repositories, use of inter agency shared work spaces (on a prototype basis) and a secure e-mail framework for electronic communication between government agencies.

The plan is to build on and roll out the products of this work on a "develop once, use many times basis", using a service delivery architecture common to all government organisations.

All of this "whole of government" work has been co-ordinated and managed through the executive's e-Government Unit, with individual agencies responsible for a number of electronic service delivery projects of their own.

These include:

• online public access to New Zealand's legislation on the internet;
  
  
• a labour market portal, a multi-agency initiative for the provision of information on and services for the New Zealand labour market;
  
  
• Landonline, which now enables basic conveyancing transactions in an online, virtual and non-paper-based environment;
  
  
• an electronic facility that allows community groups to submit, track and maintain a history of grant applications made to the Department of Internal Affairs; and
  
  
• access to the New Zealand Inland Revenue Department for the electronic filing of GST returns electronically and the online payment of tax liabilities.

In the next year, the e-Government Unit will be concentrating on the roll out of its service delivery architecture to government agencies and the development of a set of data management standards as part of the e-GIF framework.

The most important agenda item is completion of the detailed design for the framework that is to govern the authentication of individuals accessing online government services. That work is due to finish in the first quarter of next year. Implementation of the solution will take place later next year once Cabinet approval has been obtained.

This is likely to involve decisions not only on operational matters, but also some delicate political considerations, given the privacy implications of the centralised authentication model that government has already chosen.