Public Sector
E-Government
The federal government wants to be a click away from all Canadians by providing an array of its services via the Internet.
FROM: NOV-DEC 2001 ISSUE | BY JEFF BUCKSTEIN
On November 7, 1885, the last spike in Canada's National Railway was ceremoniously driven into the ground at Craigellachie, British Columbia, linking not just some 4,800 kilometres of east-west railway track, but also symbolizing the forging of a new nation.
In the 21st century, our national ties are electronic, thanks to the Internet, but comparisons to the railway weren't lost on the National Broadband Task Force, which Industry Canada established in January 2001 to advise the federal government on how best to make high-speed Internet access available to businesses and residents throughout Canada. The task force released a report in June 2001 called The New National Dream: Networking the Nation for Broadband Access.
High-speed, broadband access to Internet services is one of the major goals of Government On-Line, an ambitious plan unveiled in the October 1999 Speech from the Throne and designed to provide all Canadians with the ability to access online government information and services wherever and whenever they want by 2004.
The federal government has, so far, committed about $280 million to Government On-Line through fiscal 2002. There are currently 28 core departments and agencies, involving some 450 federal Web sites, participating in this project; they are providing electronic services to Canadians with a speed and reach other sources of delivery could never match. For example, the Finance Department Web site received two million hits on budget day last February alone, followed by another 500,000 site visits over the following two weeks.
And, now, with the help of the National Broadband Task Force, the government wants to ensure that every Canadian individual and business can access such e-services via a high-speed Internet connection.
Access for All
Canadians are already among the most savvy Internet users in the world. According to a recent Statistics Canada survey, an estimated 13 million of Canadians over 15 years of age said they used the Internet in 2000. The majority of respondents also felt that everyone should have access to the Internet, but cost and access were cited as the greatest barriers.
It's no surprise that those who are most likely to face these barriers are users from rural rather than urban settings. The so-called "digital divide" in Canada has negatively affected many rural communities because they reside outside the Internet service provider coverage zone typically centred around urban areas; they also lack the business infrastructure that would necessitate such services. That's why the National Broadband Task Force's report recommends that the government's priority should be to direct public funds to making high-speed Internet access available to First Nation, Inuit, rural and remote communities, where the private sector is unlikely to deliver services. Without public assistance, such communities would not likely be able to enter the electronic marketplace by 2004. But such communities make up about one quarter of the Canadian population.
"Just as it was with the building of a [national] railroad or telephone network, it would be appropriate to have a public subsidy to complete that portion of the national broadband infrastructure which, in turn, would [help] make those communities more viable and provide them with an economic base," said David Johnston, president of the University of Waterloo and chair of the National Broadband Task Force, in an interview.
The task force estimated that the public expenditure should amount to about $1.5 billion, shared among the federal, provincial, territorial, municipal and regional governments, from 2001 to 2004.
"The economic and social benefits of having more prosperous smaller communities participate fully in the economic and social life of the nation and the globe will be very substantial," Johnston says.
Michael Binder, an assistant deputy minister with Industry Canada, supports the task force's recommended public expenditure portion as being necessary to entice private-sector participation in helping to connect remote communities that would otherwise remain relatively isolated.
"We have in this country, roughly speaking, 6,000 communities — 1,200 of them (20 per cent) now have access to DSL services and cable modems," says Binder. "The big policy issue for us is what to do about the other 4,800, or 80 per cent of, communities. We've got to make sure they have access to the same economic benefits that urban Canada gets. It's a nation-building approach — we are building the electronic highways of the future."
Government E-Services
So, once hooked up, what kind of government services are available to the public online?
The federal government's Canada Site (www.canada.gc.ca) is the online starting point for all Government of Canada information and services. There are even plans to eventually integrate live support services, permitting users to conduct an online conversation, into this site. From the Canada Web site, users can access an array of federal departments and agencies that offer online services.
The Canada Customs and Revenue Agency (CCRA) was one of the first federal organizations to provide e-services in order to deliver improved, more timely services to Canadians. Traditionally, users either had to physically go to the CCRA (or its predecessor, Revenue Canada) in order to obtain forms, or else have the forms sent to them. Today, they can download and print forms directly from the CCRA Web site (www.ccra-adrc.gc.ca).
Then there's NETFILE, which the CCRA piloted in 2000 and is now available to all Canadians; it allows taxpayers to purchase an off-the-shelf accounting package and automatically file a specially encrypted tax return through the Internet. Tax refunds can be directly deposited into the user's bank account, as well.
The opportunities associated with electronic filing constitute "a very powerful form of e-commerce," says John Yu, FCGA, senior IT consultant at CGA-Canada.
Stephen Spector, FCGA, manager of standards and research at CGA-Canada, agrees. "Every business has to file taxes, pay its GST and submit payroll deductions, so you're talking about hundreds of thousands of small businesses who presently have to either go to the bank or mail in a cheque and a form," he says. "Not only is reducing paperwork highly desirable from a taxpayer's point of view, the ability to fill out a form online is also of tremendous benefit to the government, because it gets information instantaneously, doesn't have to re-enter the data, and can post everything very quickly."
Canadians will also have access to a national health information highway in the near future. Health Canada and other key stakeholders will join forces on the Canadian Health Network, which will provide links to electronic health records and health professionals. Work is also in progress for Telehealth, which will deliver medical services remotely to First Nations communities.
Further, government programs like SchoolNet and LibraryNet have been instrumental in providing Internet resources to Canada's public schools, libraries and First Nations schools. In 1999, Canada became the first country to link all of its public schools and libraries to the Internet. The next step, hopes Johnston, will be to provide such institutions with high-speed broadband access. "That would make e-learning much more attractive and possible," states the task force chair.
Benefits for Businesses
Electronically delivered government services could end up providing huge benefits for corporations, in addition to the general public, says Robert Gagnon, CGA, vice-president of finance and information technology at consulting firm Frisco Bay Industries Ltd., in Montreal. "It's going to make knowing which door to knock on a lot easier than it is today when you can get lost in the government system bureaucracy," he says, adding, "Over time, business-to-government (B2G) transactions could grow to a point where they become as important, if not more so, than business-to-business (B2B) transactions."
"I think the main advantage for businesses will be ease of use and greater efficiency in concluding transactions. It will be faster and probably less expensive for them online," says Richard Simpson, director general of the electronic commerce branch of Industry Canada.
The federal government provides a number of Internet-based services specifically for businesses. For example, through its Canada Business Service Centres (CBSC) Web site (www.cbsc.org), it offers such services as the Interactive Business Planner, which helps users prepare a comprehensive business and financial plan, and the Online Small Business Workshop, which provides prospective entrepreneurs with information on developing a business idea, starting a new business, and marketing and financing a new venture.
Security Concerns
The prospect of having to use the federal government's electronic services for such tasks as filing tax returns and accessing personal health information is of concern to some.
"There will be a general reluctance for individuals to surrender what they consider to be their privacy," Spector says. "Some people have a genuine mistrust of government. That's a psychological hurdle that has nothing to do with systems and processes, but with the comfort level they have."
Government, too, has concerns in this area, particularly departments like the CCRA, which is privy to a lot of confidential information and is sensitive about having it fall into the wrong hands.
So the federal government has taken a series of measures to enhance the safety and security of the electronic marketplace. In October 1998, it issued a policy on the use of cryptography to assist in proving the origin, receipt and integrity of information.
In April 2000, Parliament passed the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (Bill C-6), designed to protect the personal information of individuals in a digital format.
In May 2000, the Treasury Board Secretariat completed work on a policy for the development of a government-wide Public Key Infrastructure that would enable the secure exchange of e-commerce within federal government departments and agencies as well as between government, external clients and Canadian citizens.
Going Online
Although there is a big push to get all Canadians online, with high-speed access to boot, online services are designed to complement, rather than replace, traditional means of access to government services, such as mail, telephone or person-to-person contact. "E-service is, out of necessity, only one mode of possible deliveries. It cannot be the exclusive mode," says Yu. "There is always going to be a segment of the population that will not go online."
But, for those who choose to access government services online, many experts are predicting nothing short of a revolution — not just in terms of the way services are delivered to them, but also because of the unprecedented opportunity it will provide them to engage with their elected officials and civil servants.
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Jeff Buckstein, CGA, is a freelance business writer living in Ottawa.