role of ict and e-government in policy integration to...

Role of ICT and E-Government in Policy

Integration to Support SDGs

Dr. Adegboyega Ojo, Senior Research Fellow and E-Government Unit Leader

Insight Centre for Data Analytics

National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG), Republic of Ireland,

[email protected]

Expert Meeting on Policy Integration in Government in Pursuit of the SDGs

28 – 29 January, United Nations Headquarters, New York

Objectives

o Explore state of practice in ICT-enabled Policy Integration

o Highlight exemplar ICT-enabled Policy Integration initiatives

o Discuss challenges in current Practices and opportunities from

emerging technologies

Expert Meeting on Policy Integration

UN HQ, New York, 28 – 29 Jan

Outline

Institute Meeting, Friday 14 November 2014

Background

ICT and Policy Integration

Exemplar Cases

Beyond State of the Art

Discussion

Background -

What is Policy Integration?

o Policy integration concerns:

“the management of cross-cutting issues in policy-making that

transcend the boundaries of established policy fields, which often do

not correspond to the institutional responsibilities of individual

departments.” [1]

o A Governance Challenge that involves amongst other things:

o building the collaboration structures,

o resolving potential conflicts,

o engagement of stakeholders and building coalitions

o support and sustain communication and dialogue in potentially

emerging inter-sectoral policy communities network


Background –

Mechanisms for Policy Integration

Categories of mechanisms include (already discussed in this meeting):

o Strategic: policy statements, setting concrete objectives and priorities

o Institutional and administrative: Policy Integration units (e.g. PCD4SD in

Netherlands) , inter-service consultation by requesting opinions of other

DGs1 on a policy, or decision

o Knowledge and Assessment: stakeholder consultation, impact

assessment, dialog processes & reporting

#1, http://ec.europa.eu/about/ds_en.htm



Outline


Background


Exemplar Cases


Discussion

ICT and Policy Integration –

Possible Roles for ICT Pertinent questions:

o How does ICT interface with or support Policy Integration mechanisms?

o Can ICT directly contribute to Policy Integration strategies, e.g.

Integrating Green IT and Environmental Sustainability Policies

Possible “uses” of ICT in Development [Sein et. al, 2004 - 2]:

o Commodity, by producing technology artefacts

o Supporting general development activities, e.g. data to support

planning, management and coordination of development initiatives

o Driver of the economy through general purpose use ICT to support

improvements and efficiencies across different sectors, such as

education, manufacturing, heath, public administration

o Directed use of ICT in specific sector by providing specialised

applications such as e-health, e-education initiatives



ICT and Policy Integration –

Implications

Possible patterns of applications of ICT in Policy Integration:

1) Supporting planning and management of policy integration initiatives

including assessment of effectiveness (Type1)

2) Generic applications in the development and sustainability of different

policy integration mechanisms including objectives setting, institutional

frameworks, engagement of stakeholders, resolution of conflicts, etc. This

category of applications can be reused from one PI initiative to another

(Type 2)

3) Directed use of ICT in specific policy integration initiatives that is less

transferrable (Type 3)



Outline


Background


Exemplar Cases


Discussion

Case 1 – ASEAN’s ICT for Policy Coordination

Type 2 Exemplar

The following set of recommendations were articulated to support policy

coordination among ASEAN bodies and the Secretariat [3]:

o Robust, efficient common conferencing and collaborative software

o E-participation initiatives to deepen engagement with ASEAN stakeholders

o Use of policy blogs and wikis as part of Knowledge Management and

information dissemination strategy

o Provide a Social networking strategy aimed at youths

o All above should be coordinated through a CIO-like structure

This would be implemented concomitantly with capacity building activities,

development interoperability and information sharing standards and common

technology infrastructure such as the ASEAN community cloud



Case 2 - ICT to Support Migrant Language Education

A Type 3 Exemplar

The case is on the use of ICT to support two policy integration regimes in

Netherlands and Sweden on second language (L2) education for migrants [4]

o Case exemplifies how ICT can effectively support the integration of inclusion,

social welfare and adult education policies.

o Two different Policy integration regimes at play in the case

o Netherlands – Knowledge of Dutch is a requisite for entering the country

and applying for residence

o Sweden – Attendance of Swedish Language for Immigrant classes is

linked to social welfare benefits

o ICT enabled the development of highly personalized digital language

contents for different profiles of learners


UN HQ, New York, 28 – 29 Jan, 2015

Case 3 - New Zealand’s ICT-enabled WoG Approach

Another Type 2 Exemplar



Minister of State Services will work with Minister of Finance to direct

government entities to comply with WoG directives

o securing economies or efficiencies across departments

o improving services or service delivery

o developing expertise and capability across the Public Service

Examples of Initiatives:

o Open Government Information and Data programme

o Cloud program

o Telecommunication-as-a-service Program

Case 3 - New Zealand’s ICT-enabled WoG Approach

Another Type 2 Exemplar (Cont’d)

“Telecommunications-as-a Service (TaaS) is a programme of work jointly

managed by the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) and the Ministry of Business,

Innovation and Employment (MBIE). TaaS is an initiative on behalf of the

Government Chief Information Officer (GCIO) as the Functional Leader for ICT and

was signalled in the Government ICT Strategy and Action Plan to 2017.

TaaS aims to radically change the way telecommunications services are

delivered, managed and used by government agencies. The programme will

achieve this by delivering a catalogue that is supplied and managed by a panel

of service providers. These services will transcend agency boundaries and allow

agencies to easily connect with each other and with customers” [?]



Department of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment

Department of Conservation, Health Benefits Limited, Inland Revenue, Ministry for

Primary Industries, Ministry of Social Development, New Zealand Defence Force

New Zealand Trade and Enterprise; New Zealand Police (also representing the

Emergency Services sector)

Case 4 – ICT-enabled Assessment of PI Initiatives

Type 1 Exemplar

Context – Policy Coherence (or policy integration) for Development

Programs for respective countries.

Goal is to assess the impact of OCED policies on food security of individual

developing countries, e.g. on going efforts in Tanzania, sponsored by

Finland and Switzerland

ICT will be used for managing and analysing data collected from fields.



Outline


Background


Exemplar Cases


Discussion

Beyond State of Practice in Policy Integration -

Emerging Opportunities

o Leveraging Big, Open and Linked data, Internet of Things technologies

to strengthen data capabilities of government [5]

o Open data from civil society and international organizations as

development partners in generating evidence for policy integration

effectiveness or otherwise

o ICT-based Policy modelling for design, analysis and simulation of

policy integration options, many graduate programs (policy

informatics and Computational Policy Modelling are emerging).

Communities are also growing.

o Advanced Natural Language Processing approaches to enable

automatic analysis of contents on social media and networking

platforms for spontaneous citizen-led e-participation.

o More accessible citizen deliberation platforms



Outline


Background


Exemplar Cases


Discussion

Some observations

o There is a need for deeper and better understanding of the role of the

ICT in Policy Integration for SD.

o There are very few scholarly work in this area, e.g. [6] and [7]

o We also need to carefully document and analyse successful

applications of the ICT in Policy Integration initiatives for learning, [4] is

a good example in this regard



Bibliography 1) Meijers, E., & Stead, D. (2004). Policy integration : what does it mean and how can it be

achieved ? A multi-disciplinary review. In 2204 Berlin Conference on Human Dimension of

Global Environmental Changes of Policies - Interlinkages and Policy Integration (pp. 1–15).

2) Sein, M. K. (2004). Conceptualizing the ICT Artifact: Toward Understanding the Role of ICT in

National development. Information Society, 20, 15–24.

3) ASEAN Studies Centre and ideacorp, ICT in Governance and Community Building in ASEA,

A study carried out as part of the PANeGOV project and funded by the International

Development Research Centre,

4) Driessen, A. M., Emmerik, J. Van, Fuhri, K., Nygren-junkin, L., Spotti, M., Ferrari, E. A., & Kluzer,

S. (2011). ICT Use in L2 Education for Adult Migrants A qualitative study in the Netherlands

and Sweden.

5) Independent Expert Advisory Group on Data Revolution. (2014). A World that Counts -

Mobilizing the Data Revolution for Sustainable Development (pp. 1 – 32). NY.

6) Kim, R. (2015). United Nations Expert group meeting on policy integration in government in

pursuit of the SDGs ( 28-29 January 2015 ) Role and institutional positioning of e-government

leadership Trends and Issues, (January), 1–22.

7) Ojo, A., Janowski, T., & Estevez, E. (2011). Whole-of-government approach to

information technology strategy management : building a sustainable collaborative

technology environment in government, 16, 1–18. doi:10.3233/IP-2011-0237



Thank you for your attention … Questions?



Discussion

1) Do we know other good cases of ICT-enabled Policy Integration

initiatives? Does any of these cases relate to newly emerging

technologies (e.g. Big Data, Internet of Things)?

2) What are the major barriers to employing ICT/EGOV in policy

integration initiatives?

3) What roles should ICT/EGOV authorities and leadership play and how

should they be positioned in policy integration initiatives (see [6])



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