The States of Jersey, working closely with Digital Jersey, have presented their vision for eGovernment in the island.
The morning of Friday the 27th of March saw the States of Jersey present to a broad audience at the Royal Yacht Hotel. The speakers were Chief Minister, Senator Ian Gorst; Mike King, CEO of the Economic Development Department; Neil Wells, Director of Information Services for the SoJ and Paul Masterton, Digital Jersey Chairman. The event was positively received, with a broad agreement on the need for Jersey to quickly move to an eGovernment model. The Chief Minister clearly and passionately established his support for the vision and its backing from the Council of Ministers.
You can access the Chief Minister’s speech here: http://www.gov.je/News/Speeches/ChiefMinisters/Pages/DigitalJerseyBriefing.aspx
Paul Masterton kicked off the morning, describing the exciting prospects that eGovernment offers the island, enabling services to be provided more efficiently and cost effectively, with benefits to the residents, government and industry of Jersey. Other jurisdictions with a successful digital economy, he urged, had pioneered successful eGovernment programmes which had provided a catalyst for local digital growth in both capability and capacity.
Digital Jersey were especially excited to welcome Chief Minister, Senator Ian Gorst, to speak at the presentation. Senator Gorst demonstrated his confidence and commitment for the island to deliver eGovernment successfully, highlighting that the demands of an ageing population and rising healthcare costs. The Chief Minister emphasised that putting the customer at the centre of government is key. He framed eGovernment as the centerpiece of an overall programme of reform, where successful delivery is not about technology but about introducing an enterprise model of service by the States, which builds on the long standing, departmental based structure.
Mike King then went on to establish where we currently are, with less than 8% of citizens transactions with government online while 83% of customers have said that they would prefer to transact using e-channels. Mr. King outlined the vision of ‘tell us once’, where one change or life event creates a single view of the customer. The SoJ have a target for 75% of transactions to be made online by 2018, with traditional channels reduced to 25%. Crucially, paper systems will still be available to facilitate the transition.
Neil Wells then addressed the technical aspects of the vision, the key enterprise components and the enterprise model for core customer and service data were described in detail. Mr. Wells described the opportunities for the local digital supply chain to work together with the States on delivering the vision, and then set the scene for the next session that the SoJ will be holding with industry to inform the sourcing and procurement strategies, which will take place on the 2nd of May.
Digital Jersey have been pleased with the reception of the presentation, which was followed by almost an hour of questions and debate with the audience. Key questions included whether the Chief Minster believed that changes within Government, required to support eGovernment, would take place. Senator Gorst was optimistic that there would be a whole government approach to eGovernment. The panel was questioned about data security, confidentiality and data protection, and whether eGovernment posed any threat to this, to which the panel assured that there are laws and an overall approach in place to protect these aspects; whether or not the the SoJ would support the parishes with regards to eGovernment, which the Chief Minister assured that there would be continued engagement to support this. The audience and the panel both thanked Digital Jersey for fulfilling its role of bringing both the industry and SoJ together.
