www.i-coin.net - i-COIN, a project where the citizen gets the opportunity to influence the new e-government/e-services solutions. Part financed by EU (European Union) and BSR (Baltic Sea Region INTERREG III B).
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The user panel groups
Phase 1
Different user groups, user panel groups  / user (involved groups)
 
  • citizens
  • employees of Municipality (+ politicians, members of the boards)
  • echnical departements in administration
  • e-Government development (NGOs — Non Government Organisations)
To prepare the dialogue with the different groups all project partners created a joint questionnaire. Municipality of Rehna has delivered its part to this questionnaire whereas the focus laid on concerns that were / are interesting for the Municipality of Rehna. Though there have been points that are interesting for all partners. As the basis for discussions in the user panels Municipality of Rehna  decided to use existing structures.
 
So Municipality of Rehna took experiences and knowledge from other networks or contacts, like “e-Government Modellregion Westmecklenburg" to indicate functional aspects considered relevant for the utilisation of the platform of services.  Therefore Municipality of Rehna built an own user panel group were has been discussed and analysed: what are the future arrangements that have to be done that are related to the overall topic of e-Government / e-Services ?
As a result it turned out that the needs and demands for all groups are quit similar - as incomplex as possible, easy to use e-Services with the possibility to work fast.
 
Important for the questionnaire have been at least four groups.
 
citizens
Low participation, because of no time, or no interest. Younger people own a Computer with Internet connection more often than older ones. These people probably would use such offered e-Services, also when the personal contact to a human being is very important to many of them. Because the single citizen on average has to do with authorities quit seldom, there is not so much need to offer every administrative service as an e-Government service.  Additional it is a fact that in contrast to Sweden or Finland for example, in the Municipality of Rehna we have not such wide spread areas with low population density. Instead the Municipality of Rehna is a small administrative unit and reachable easily for everyone.
Prior meaning of the Internet for the citizens at the moment is to get information. So there is less interactive communication

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employees of municipalities
Most of the asked employees in municipalities / authorities see the chance to simplify their work. They think it might be possible that e-Services could raise the effectiveness of their work.
 
Dispensable problems that are not concerning the main topic would leave out. But most of the employees have few or no experiences with e-Government services.  The normal employee does not really get in touch with these new ideas. It is still not really implemented in the structures of municipalities / authorities.

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technical departements of municipalities / authorities
The technological standard in municipalities with similar sizes to Municipality of Rehna is comparable. It is typical to have 2-3 servers were the different software programs are running. Also the operating systems are very wide spread and there are no big differences. The Internet access connection in most of the municipalities / authorities is a broadband DSL connection. In the Municipality of Rehna there is no Internet connection at every workplace, although it is technically possible. An Internet presence is standard almost everywhere. Here the focus lays on offering information, like contact data and interesting news.

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e-Government development
e-Government is quit advanced in Germany concerning the developments and discussions about it. The implementation is mostly in test stages especially when it comes to the direct contact from citizen to authority. Because of the different IT-Systems that are used all over the region and whole Germany it is difficult to work cross platform, although there seems to be not the problem from the technical point of view.
 
Main focus also is in solutions from government to government, that means services that are running inside the structures of authorities, where no citizen has direct contact, for example parts of the registrations service.

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A very important criterion all over this phase has been intense knowledge sharing with external experts ( regional partnership) :
- analysis of possible e-Services ( specification of e-Services )
- partly dialogue with users of  e-Services
- finally filtering of the results: ideas for e-Services
     > G.I.S. application 
     ( The original idea, to eventually connect this with real estate service,
     was not possible. )
     > Info service for politicians / officials (members of boards)
- more ideas ( that could not have been realized because of different reasons )
     > registration service
     > housing allowance
     > day-care centre
     > document management systems (as an application)
     > W-LAN

After the development of the pilot platform by other project partners, it had to be implemented and the developed or to be developed pilot application (e-Service) had to be installed and implemented into the whole system.
 
Here the Municipality of Rehna felt back on the help of external experts as well.
 
Phase 2
In 2. phase the developed e-Service should be analysed and improved with the help of feedback by the user panels / users. The implementation of the pilot platform was completed successfully and the feedback of the development group as well as the technical department of Municipality of Rehna show that this can be a useful instrument. It is possible to connect any application or data bank easily and fast and so to expand the offer of e-Services. This point has not been finished during the last phase of the project. The feedbacks come concentrated between the development groups, employees and technical department of the municipality. Citizens participate limited on a feedback at the moment. This fact will change when the applications are implemented completely at the end of the project.
 
Also having in mind the durability, this is important.
 
The user panels / users will ( or do ) finally participate on the demonstrations respectively usages. Here the applications will be provided to the users. To give a feedback is possible all the time.
(E-mail, technical analysis and so on). ( please look at point: results ) The awareness from the feedback and comments are used to improve and adapt the system.
 
At the end stands the pilot platform implemented in the infrastructure of the IT — system of Municipality of Rehna connected with the developed e-Services. By the extension of details and the elimination of problems that emerge by the feedback of users / user panels the result will be improved and revised consequently.
 
Of vital importance in this phase were / are the results of the questionnaire, the conclusions from the discussions and consultations and the use and knowledge sharing of and with external experts that has been practised very intense.
Updated: 2008-04-10