Occurrences

Paper

../papers/04-04-02/04-04-02.html

Date of Presentation

Thursday, 23 May

Time of Presentation

09.45

Presentation Level

In-The-Middle

Abstract

The UK has stated aims of making all Government services available online by 2005, and has established technical policies and frameworks for interoperability using XML. The e- evolution is about making the most of the new technologies to deliver better quality and more accessible public services. It will mean doing things in radically new and different ways. Service delivery is being re-engineered to be customer facing, with sharper democratic accountability with greater citizen participation. E.government is an integral part of local government modernisation, involving 482 local government institutions. This paper will describe a development allowing citizens to access Local Authorities services on-line via the Government Gateway, which will register, authenticate, and control access to data and services transactions using a set of electronic forms. It uses the standards mandated in the Government Interoperability framework to define a user interface, which can be tailored for the particular requirements of each Authority. This pilot, as well as providing a live service, is intended to prove the generic approach and the gateway interaction, which can be extended to other Local Authority services and delivery channels, such as audio for reading-impaired citizens, and kiosks or digital TV for those without Web access. Three functional components for this project will be described, all of which are implemented in an electronic forms server. 1. Forms processing software which is able to pre-populate (where applicable), compose and present a specific form using the base message definition for the e-service. This is presented with captions and help text, which can be customised for the particular Local Authority and language selected. The Xforms definition standard has been used, which defines separate XML components for data, help, and caption areas as well as intent-based presentation which is rendered according to the features offered by the target user interface. The initial target platform is the Web browser client, so this Xforms post-processor has also been provided and can be used for any Xforms application. 2. Definitions of messages and forms required to carry out nominated Council Tax transactions. These definitions use XML and related standards and guidelines mandated by the Government Interoperability Framework, to establish a generic method allowing customisation by each local authority, with the possibilities of multiple languages and character sets, and rendering to a variety of channels. Process and data requirements for Council Tax transactions have been defined with representatives from a core group of Local Authorities, using the UK Government Information Architecture framework to ensure consistency and re-use of data in different domains. 3. Gateway Communications, allowing addition of a standard gateway message envelope, canonicalisation where needed, signing with a digital certificate, and submission.