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E-governance and Citizen Information 104 Managing Technological Innovationtionalise resources – “close costly websites with few users” (P76) – and put at the disposalof the entire Generalitat technological tools that would facilitate the control ofinformation published on the Internet.6.3.2. Incentives for ChangeOne of the incentives to overcome administrative compartmentalisation and get the departmentsto accept the transfer of their telephone numbers centred on the costs of the service.Government agreements for 2002 promoted the incorporation of telephone numbers into the012 number stating that: “in the cases of departmental telephone numbers that cease to beoperational by virtue of the present government agreement, the Department for Economy andFinance is authorised to carry out the corresponding transfer of credits to the Presidential Department”.This agreement also foresaw the destiny of the civil servants working the lines thatwould be incorporated in the 012 number: “In the case of departmental telephone numbersthat cease to be operational by virtue of this government agreement, and which are mannedby their own staff, government or outside staff, these personnel will be transferred to the PresidentialDepartment for incorporation under 012 management”. However, neither of these twofactors proceeded clearly since – as one civil servant recalled – “as the departments continuedto be information providers at a secondary level they opposed the loss of their staff – who atthe same time also did other tasks – and the corresponding resources” (P73).For the Citizen Information Department, in particular, the defined strategy “is about, at heart,becoming a lender of front office services”. In fact this line is important because it is a wayof getting all the departments to converge and putting an end to fragmentation: “to make lifesimpler. Instead, the government's agreements and similar actions didn't achieve anythingand made people work on their own account just the same” (P17).http://www.uoc.edu/in3/pic
E-governance and Citizen Information 105 Managing Technological Innovation6.4. Private Sector InvolvementGreater participation by the private sector has also been evident in the cases analysed. Thisshows that carrying out public policies, especially in the area of technological innovation, requiresthe effective participation of numerous actors external to the Administration itself (private,public and mixed).Workers in medium or high positions have a more or less common opinion concerning theneed to incorporate working methods from the private sector and with respect to a negativeopinion of the way civil servants work in the public sector. “Civil servants can decide to 'donothing' and therefore boycott any project whatsoever. For this reason layers of non-civilservant labour contracts were created which allow planned projects to be carried out.” (P2)“The way the public sector functions has built-in delays. There's a shortage of human resourcesto carry out the most important changes” (P60). It is also increasingly common tofind contracted staff who first worked for the Administration from within the private sector,and even people from the public sector who have moved to private companies.6.4.1. Towards More Control from the Public SectorRegarding relationships with the private sector, on the one hand the strong presence ofthese companies in technological innovation processes is clear, but there is also a noticeabletendency to increase the public sector's decision capacity in project design, that no longerwork “to order”, but which are the result of joint working process based on demands madeby the politicians in charge. On the other hand, in the same way that it is not clear that hierarchicalfunctioning of the public sector has been changed radically, neither does the formationof networks of public and private actors necessarily lead to better results in the actionscarried out (Mayntz 2001). In particular, it is notable that the networks between public andprivate actors have not achieved hoped-for levels of efficiency and, in some cases, have ledto higher Government spending and a large loss of knowledge and control, which remainsin the hands of the private sector (Dunleavy and Margetts, 2000; Urgell et al., 2005). Politicalleadership seems to be the most important variable for changes in processes and the redefinitionof the different actors' roles.The Generalitat's IT management could be interpreted based on three moments that arerepresentative of the evolution of the relationship between the public and private sector. Thefirst moment is when the public sector was in charge of services. The efficiency problemsthat arose at this stage led to a process of privatisation. As one interviewee who experiencedthe process said: “a moment came when it cost the departments less to buy from the privatehttp://www.uoc.edu/in3/pic
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PROJECT INTERNET CATALONIA (PIC)E-G
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Chapter 11 Introduction
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