3

IT LEADERSHIP ZONE:

PUBLIC SECTOR IT

Citizens demand more informa-

tion about the activities of their

government.They demand more

accurate, better quality, more

convenient and speedier delivery

of services. Meanwhile, public

sector CIOs are under pressure

to shrink or flatten budgets and

headcount. Inevitably these twin

pressures will lead to faster

evolution of e-government.

e-Government requires an

integrated approach to public

sector services and greater com-

munications between government

departments, private sector

partners and citizens, all of which

predicates a robust and secure

IT infrastructure.

For the public sector CIO,

persuading government depart-

ments and other agencies to

work together for the sake of

citizen, not in the way that is

most convenient for the

department, is as much an issue

of politics, diplomacy and the will

to wreak cultural change as it is a

technology issue.

Ultimately, e-government is about

reforming government to best

serve its citizens.

CONCLUSION

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MOBILITY

Various studies show that workers can be

more productive when they have mobile

access to basic office services, such as voice

messaging and email, and, better still, to

corporate applications and data.

The public sector has no lesser need than the

private for mobile access because many

employees, such as health visitors and housing

officers, are constantly engaged in delivering

services in the field. Many of these are also

home based. Pressure on governments to

reduce public expenditure while improving

the level of service means home and mobile

working will increase.

Again, this implies a high-performance, robust,

secure network, capable of maintaining the

integrity of data and authenticating employees

connecting from any location using a variety

of devices from laptop PCs to mobile phones.

WIRELESS

While wireless networks are seen as a way

of providing flexibility for workers within any

private or public sector office, in the public

sector, wireless has an extra dimension: the

provision of public-access wireless networks.

Inspired by MIT professor Nicholas

Negroponte s vision of lillypads of public

access wireless providing continuous internet

connection across wide metropolitan areas

and beyond, several cities in the US,

Scandinavia and the EU have embarked on

public access Wi-fi projects.

The rationale behind public access wireless

networks is they encourage citizens to become

more web-savvy, helping to bridge the digital

divide and promoting the formation of online

communities within the local community.

For the local metropolitan authority public

wireless access provides a ready-made channel

for interaction with citizens.They also

encourage businesses to locate and expand

within the region, knowing that there is a

ready supply of people with web skills to

recruit and ubiquitous wireless access for their

existing mobile workers.

Public wireless provision is seen as more

flexible and cheaper than subsidising domestic

broadband.The City of Philadelphia in the US,

for example, estimated it would cost at least

2,000 per household to provide fibre or

cable connections but 10 million to build its

metropolitan Wi-fi network and about 1.5

million a year to maintain.