e-governance and citizen information - Universitat Oberta de ...

E-governance and Citizen Information 117 Relationship with CitizensTable 2. Table of Comparative Response Times by Percentage 2002/2006Response Time Year 2002 Year 2006Less than 24 hours 43,75% 76,47%Less than 48 hours 12,50% 5,88%Less than 72 hours 6,30% 0,00%More than 72 hours 6,30% 11,76%No response 31,20% 5,88%Source: in-house productionAs can be seen, the improvement is substantial. On the one hand while in 2002, 6 of the 16contact mailboxes contacted did not respond to the request for information at all, in 2006only one of the emails went unanswered. While in 2002 the number of departments that respondedwithin 24 hours did not reach 50%, in 2006 this proportion rose to 76.47%; in otherwords, the great majority of emails were attended to in a relatively short time. In fact, onlythree emails took more than 24 hours to get a response.This data shows an increase, not only in the response index for emails, but also in the speedwith which they were dealt with by the Administration.In fact, the increase in demand is one of the motors, or most important causes, of the processesof transformation that we are analysing. Despite the fact that it is not always like this,an important incentive factor for change is, in many cases, citizen pressure or pressure exertedby the Administration's users. When this pressure, understood as the accumulation ofrequests for information or demand for a service, creates a critical, even chaotic, situationor collapses the service, then the need to improve the service and change procedures becomesapparent, normally through the incorporation of ICTs, the design of a new informationsystem, etc.In some ways it is as if the Administration only changes when it has no option but to do so. Inthis sense it is very illustrative that the origin of the most important transversal information systemin the Generalitat, the SAC, came in good part from information pressure exerted by citizenson Welfare offices – with a high level of presence in the territory – where they wentto demand information about services and units about other departments.The pressure of demand, however, can take two different forms, depending on the role developedby the administration. On the one hand, when there is clearly a collapse in particularinformation channels (because of the number of calls left unattended, replies taking an unreasonableamount of time, queues, etc.) the Administration acts reactively to solve the currentcrisis – then it tends to improvise and construct ad hoc solutions. A second possibilityhttp://www.uoc.edu/in3/pic