E-Tampere

From DoWire Wiki

Contact: Mr Gianluca Misuraca

Tel: + 39 338 98 38 059

Email: gianluca.misuraca@epfl.ch gianlucamisuraca@postmaster.uk

e-Tampere/Infocity Infocity aims to make Tampere a model city in the development towards the Information Society. This will be achieved by developing practical online services for citizens and by ensuring that all citizens have an opportunity to use them. It is an open cooperation project for public administration, the third sector and private parties. The cooperation is carried out in Tampere, regionally, nationally and internationally.

Contents 1 Background Information 2 Project Rationale and Objectives 3 What was delivered? 4 Communication Activity 5 Successes 6 Benefits to Citizens 7 Benefits to Authority 8 Benefits to Councillors 9 Limitations 10 Evaluation 11 Lessons learnt 12 What could happen next? 13 Additional information and sources

Background Information

Title: e-Tampere/Infocity

Location: Tampere (Finland)

Primary Sponsor: City of Tampere

Organisation: The development of e-Tampere is the result of various institutional actors such as the city, the regional council, the universities and other educational institutions, various educational centres, research centres, and leading IT firms. The role of the city government has been central, and the role of the City Manager is to integrate key ideas as part of a common strategy. He has also been able to commit both political and administrative bodies to the developments efforts.

Budget: 132 million Euro of estimated turnover for the comprehensive e-Tampere Programme. 5,297,920 Euro for the Infocity Sub-Programme.

Project Start Date: 2001

Project End Date: 2005 (ongoing)

Executive Summary

Infocity is the sub-programme of the e-Tampere Programme that comes closer to the ordinary citizen. The project aims at developing practical digital services and providing every resident of the city access to these services. Many services are actually being developed that make it easier for citizens to contact administration sources and to find the desired information directly without having to decipher the sometimes complex organisation of administration.

Because of Infocity, Tampere citizens not only benefit from the faster, easier and simpler services that can be accessed from home, but he/she can also be involved actively in the decision-making planning process. Citizens also are consulted to monitor and evaluate public policies and public service efficiency.

Project Rationale and Objectives

Project Framework Infocity is one part of the e-Tampere programme, which provides a general framework for the e-government development activities in the city. Other projects that make up e-Tampere are:

• Information Society Institute (ISI): This joint effort by the University of Tampere and Tampere University of Technology aims to build an Information Society based on active citizenship through multi-disciplinary research, development and educational activities. The University of Tampere carries the main responsibility for the operations of the unit. The main responsibility for the research work itself remains with the research groups working in different departments and representing different disciplines and fields of expertise.

• Research and Evaluation Laboratory (RELab): RELab is a test environment for producing various information society services and testing their functionality. RELab’s role is to evaluate projects at the beginning and end of their life span. That means researching, demonstrating and piloting the early phases of a product; envisioning trends and new technologies; and predicting the impacts of technological development. RELab complements its own resources by networking domestically and internationally. With RELab, companies can gain access to resources that would otherwise be out of their reach.

• e-Business Research Center (e-BRC): The objective of e-BRC is to develop e-business related expertise, new business models, theories and practices for companies and the public sector. The center aims to enhance business research and training for company management to better face the challenges of the new economy.

• e-Accelerator: This objective is to channel the state of art know-how and resources to support dynamically company growth. The goal is to create 20 globally successful technology companies. Personnel in these companies is estimated to grow to 1,500 employees, with an estimated turnover of 250 Million of Euro (Meuro), of which 50 Meuro of seed financing will be channelled to these start ups.

• Technology Engine Programme: The primary goal is to achieve genuine, world-leading research know-how, which at its best will result in new businesses. The turnover objective of the research work in the engine programmes for 2001–2005 is 18,5 Meuro. The five engines of development regard: Adaptive software components - User interfaces - Perception of information - Neoreality- Broadband data communications. The e-Tampere engine programmes work in cooperation with companies, Tampere university, Tampere university of technology, Tampere Technology CentreLtd and VTT technical center.

Rationale: With 200,000 inhabitants, Tampere is the third largest city in Finland. Tampere is the centre of the Tampere region that includes the town of Nokia, the birthplace of the well-known telecommunication company. The city has a long industrial heritage (metallurgy and transport equipment). When the industrial ages started to decline, large investments and efforts have been undertaken to modernize the city. The first electronic public services operated in Tampere in the early 1990s, and in 1994 appeared the first website. Until 1998, e-government related activities have been taken up with the Service Information System Project. In 1996, Tampere started to reorganize the administrative workflow by using network technologies, document management solutions, and teamware in order to guarantee a city-wide interoperability. In 1997, the city of Tampere issued its further development strategy under the name ‘Information is the key to the future.’

In 2001, the city of Tampere established a new service procurement committee to take new service delivery system under consideration. Even if the reorganisation and restructuring were not systematically planned and scheduled, they were seen as the inherent long-term goal of the entire project development. ICTs were at the heart of the change process since the very beginning, and they were integrated in the city strategies for the development of the Information Society. In this connection, e-government was seen as a way to:

• improve quality, increase efficiency and in the long-term saving costs;
• improve transparency and simplicity of city procedures, as well as accessibility of citizens.

Objectives:The e-Tampere programme at large focuses on three main objectives:

• strengthening the knowledge base of research and training;
• generating new business related to the Information Society;
• online availability of public services to all residents.

Target: The e-Tampere programme is strongly linked with the business strategy of the Tampere Urban Region and the Province development strategy. The programme was conceived and carried out in close co-operation with the Tampere Region centre of expertise programme. The specific Infocity project is directly connected to e-government issues, and therefore its direct beneficiaries are the citizens of Tampere at large, as well as tourists and foreign entrepreneurs.

Scope: On a more general level the e-Tampere objectives are mainly economic as they hope to decrease the city unemployment rate by 5%, to create 20 new companies, to increase the number of jobs in the IT and communication clusters, and finally to raise Tampere to an internationally recognised and renowned centre of research and education in the field of Information Society and e-Economy. In short, the main aim is to make Tampere Region a leader in research, development and application of the Information Society and all this by 2006.

What was delivered?

Planning: The launch of the e-Tampere programme, which is a five-year development project (2001-2005), is the so far most important step in the realization of the Information Society policy in the city. It is planned within the framework of the European Union (EU) “e-Europe” vision. One of the core objectives combining both e-Tampere and the strategic planning of the city is to develop the city as the leading developer and applier of the Information Society in Finland. For this reason, a very large investment was made available. The cost of e-Tampere is evaluated at 132 million of euro of expected turnover which is what the city is ready to gather in order to achieve the planned dream of being “the pilot for e-Europe.” Of course this is much more than the cost for Information Technologies equipment by itself and comprehends research and development in many ways and with several partners. In summary, e-Tampere focuses on “the intersection of economic development and the creation and utilisation of knowledge for the benefit of the city.”

Results: e-Tampere/Infocity As part of the Infocity Sub-Programme, 226 public services have been digitalised. All services are also still available using printable forms. For some of them it is possible to fill-in and submit online the necessary forms, and some of the e-services are connected to specific databases, providing e-Services directly available to citizens and of particular interest, such as:

Online Library Services A library database enables the client to renew loan, check whether a book or other piece of material is available, and reserve it by using a personal identification number. Tampere residents can sign up for an e-mail alert service on new library acquisitions in specific fields. Reservations are answered via e-mail, phone or ordinary letter. Moreover, some Public Internet Point are available at the library.

Online Map Services Map services include address search, roadwork and zoning. In some residential areas the City has carried out a “zoning game” that helps residents to roughly check out how different construction solutions would influence their neighbourhood. For the local authorities, this has been an opportunity to gather suggestions and opinions from the present and maybe even future residents, and incorporate them into their plans. In addition to this, and connected to the system online, it is possible to have specific information of “Skiing Routes” and city transport information. This includes also public transport timetable, fares and routes as well as GSM and WAP-based timetable information. Integrating the Online Map Service with the healthcare information system, it is also possible to make self-research of the doctors and home help and nursing assistance.

Online Moving Services One of the services provided online is the possibility to view the housing market “mirrored” in the web, and apply for housing and renting with a digital form. Movement activities are also monitored through the city administration. After moving, a resident can file his or her notification of change of residence with the officials digitally, and order and manage related services such as electricity, heating, water and waste collection. For some of them, such as electricity and water, residents can monitor their consumption over the web.

Social Services Online services to inform about open positions and interactive online application procedures for jobs with the city of Tampere are available. Moreover, the Department of Social Services and Health Care is developing informative on-line services that are expected to be further developed into transactional activities in the future.

In addition, a special effort of the Infocity sub-programme is devoted to teach the “digitally-divided” citizens of Tampere, in particular elderly people, how to utilise the possibilities related to Internet, to be used for business, fun or to comply public and private daily-life requirements.

A specific tool in this sense is the “Netti-Nysse” bus, which is a mobile Internet facility with 12 PC and wireless (mobile/WLAN) connections. Through professional facilitators the “Internet-Bus” provides help and basic training to specific groups of potential users.

Citizen Participation: Several tools have been introduced for citizen consultation and involvement:

email feed back system: Any question related to administrative matters can be submitted online to the city administration. The system is centralized at the Information Office, that after a screening, submits the related question to the competent office where it is answered by the specialized officer who does not know who submitted the question. In this manner the confidentiality and privacy of the citizen is guaranteed.

e-Agenda, Minutes and Plans: Agenda, minutes, decisions, plans and presentations of alternative plans for issues in preparation by the local authorities are available on the Internet, and it is possible to comment on them, officially or unofficially, by contacting the planners and decision makers digitally.

e-Surveys: For several years, Tampere has launched the plan for the municipal budget by surveying the citizens' priorities. The results of the surveys are presented to the City Council that can take them into account in determining the priorities of the budget. For the sake of equity, the same survey has been conducted in paper form, but the Internet survey has clearly been more popular, and its results are easier to analyse. The survey included an authentication provision in order to be sure that the participants live in Tampere and thus are the right persons to participate. In addition to Internet, some enquires are also made using SMS.

Digital Proposals Official digital proposals and their follow-up are possible with the help of an electronic identity card. This has been used for questionnaires as well, and in this way, it has been possible to put more weight on opinions that the residents of Tampere have with regards to issues on city matters.

On-line Debates: Discussion platforms have been opened on topical issues, and opinions gathered this way have been appended to the policy-making preparation process. Based upon the idea of the “Mansetori” initiative, that involves the establishment of participation forum for residential areas, where the citizens themselves act as voluntary and self-organized “webmasters.” Feedback and debate opportunities are complemented by the questions-and-answers booth, which aims at finding answers to the questions received from the public within a few days. Some of that involved the preparation of a specific “Youth forum.”

Online Preparatory Forum: As a result of a working group analysis in 2003 to evaluate and improve the possibilities for civic participation, a Preparation Forum Online called “Valma” has been developed. Through “Valma,” citizens can now participate in the preparation of administrative cases and proposals, according to the procedure of case preparation of the city administration. The information package related to the case is available online even before the case goes on the agenda of the city council. Citizens can send opinions online to members of elected bodies and preparing officials. A summary of the opinions gathered online is written and submitted to the elected bodies for consideration and published online. Once the proposed case is discussed, the result is published as well on the Valma website. In 2004, 37 cases were prepared and about 500 opinions were posted online.

City Card: As part of the e-Tampere programme, Infocity module, in 2003-2004 the e-Tampere City Card was developed as a pilot application. It is a multi-application, dual interface smart card system that provides a key to Information Society services in the city, offering access to public sector services for the residents.

Tampere City Transport office has distributed over 150,000 Tampere City Travel Cards (contactless smart cards). They have been in use since 1997. The Travel Cards can also be used for paying in the city swimming centers. The city of Tampere has started official digital services with the help of the national electronic identity card in the beginning of the year 2002. The Tampere University of Technology has already tested the use of an electronic identity card in its student services. The national virtual polytechnic project is coordinated in Tampere, as well.

The pilot phase of the project started in the beginning of 2003 for 4,500 Tampere polytechnic and 500 Tampere technical university students. e-Tampere city cards have also been offered to Tampere and Nokia city officials. The total number of pilot e-Tampere cards in use in 2003-2004 is about 5,500. Gradually the smart card could be offered to all Tampere citizens. The distribution goal for the City Card is 100,000 units or 50% of the city population in the next years.

The functions and related applications of the City Card are the following:

• Public transport travel Card;
• a digital purse;
• PKI Certificates for authentication and digital signature, used in www-based services requiring secure transactions;
• e-Ticketing (only once tested);
• Library payments;
• Access control in the city of Nokia;
• Payments of student meals at the University;
• Swimming hall fees;
• Tested also for a student organisation electronic elections
• Login to workstations;
• e-Participation: official municipal motions made by Tampere citizens with the card over the Internet.

The transformations linked to the implementation of e-Tampere do not only concern administration processes but also, still to a smaller extent, the state organisation and the consultation procedures. So far, the City Card is used by students to pay meals at the University, access the library and swimming pools. But all this activities are supported also by a specific card.

Moreover, the future availability of a national Electronic Identity Card may lead to the revision of the idea to generalize the pilot application of the City Card for the city of Tampere.

Communication Activity

The e-Tampere web site is the main source of communication of the project’s activities and its results, but traditional media are of particular importance in the city. So each time that a new service has been made available online, a press release is submitted to the main newspapers and local radio and televisions. Despite the effort of the city administration to communicate the information about the programme, the impression is that many citizens are still not very much concerned about the programme and the possibilities and potential offered by Internet and online services.

With regard to external communication, the e-Tampere case has been presented to a number of conferences and workshops worldwide. Moreover, Tampere is member of SmartCities Interest Group, participating in Southampton in March 2002, in the founding of the Smart Cities network. The Smart Cities Interest group aims to drive the field of open multi-application smart card schemes in Europe. The group focus on the challenges and approaches to the implementation of real projects.

In this regard, e-Tampere has been identified as a sort of “brand” for attracting foreign investors and companies. The marketing of e-Tampere as the vision of the city and the region in the future has been supported by a comprehensive strategy that involve, first of all, the e-Tampere Office. The office coordinates the overall implementation of the programme and is responsible for the programme’s communication and marketing by promoting networking for the sub-programmes and creating opportunities for them to find partners, while at the same time trying to build channels for citizen participation. A complementary role is also played by the Tampere International Office.

Successes

Considering the analysis of the strategic planning of the Programme and its current implementation, many services are actually being developed by the e-Tampere/Infocity Project. They include administration processes, mainly access to information, online filing application, online registration and integrated teleservices.

The whole range of new services include: access to libraries, free public Internet access premises or interactive location maps. Finally some tools concerning political tasks as election or consultation of municipalities meeting are also developed, even if they are still perceived as a complementary means to the traditional consultation processes.

One of the key elements of success for the development of such a comprehensive framework for online public service delivery system is the shared commitment by almost all the actors involved to engage in e-government activities, since the very beginning of the initiative.

Mainly, e-government activities are seen as a way to improve internal organisation regarding administration and external communication with the different partners of the city, at different levels, and especially as a privileged channel to inform, get feedback from, and serve the citizens.

Cost reduction and competitive economic advantages are an expected reward of this programme, considering that Tampere can attract new companies and supported by ICT-linked economic growth, could make a reality of its vision of being leader in e-development in Europe.

Benefits to Citizens

In the city of Tampere, the role of citizens in developing electronic services has been very much emphasised. Citizens have access from home to faster, easier and simpler services, and they are involved actively in the decision-making process, including monitoring and evaluating public policies and public services.

The following data are explanatory of the direct and indirect benefits that the citizens of Tampere received from the overall project, and in particular Infocity:

• 80% of the population of Tampere is connected to Internet;
• 50% of inhabitants is using the city on-line services;
• 150 free of charge Internet computers are planned to be available in public places by end of 2005;
• on-line municipal services receive over two millions access a month.

A particular effort is provided by the City Council to guarantee an effective “e-inclusion” of all the citizens, by providing basic training to the range of citizens that is not able to take fully advantage of the ptential of ICTs and of the Internet. Nevertheless, it is also considered as an important factor by the City Council that not all citizens that want to use the Internet or ICTs. In addition to the “have” and “have not” the City administration is also taking care of the “want not” citizens, that represent still an important percentage of citizens, thus providing services as usual in effective manner.

Benefits to Authority

The city of Tampere has started in 1996 to reorganise the internal administrative procedures and workflows using network technologies. Even if the reorganisation and the reengineering process were not systematically planned and scheduled, they became soon the principal aim for long-term restructuring of the local administration.

Since 2001, with the e-Tampere project, the reengineering process was accelerated, primarily to simplify and improve the administration organisation so as to offer better services, along with reduction of cost and improvement of workflow and service quality.

The process of computerising the procedures at the beginning was not open to public access. But when the city established the new service procurement committee to take new service delivery system under consideration, some of the services were reorganised and made available to public online. Being accessible to citizens, this increased the transparency and simplicity of city procedures.

In general, electronic procedures and workflows are organized in the following way:

• Documents management is based on the Kunta Toimisto, (municipal office) solution, which provide a large range of document management system;
• Teamware: e-mails for all the employees of the city, timetables and forums or EBBs for teams are used to varying extent;
• Software for workstations and file document formats are standardised in order to guarantee city-wide interoperationality.

For example:

A mail (traditional or electronic) is sent by the citizen, the case is registered electronically, and a number is attributed to him/her, and a summary of the request is made qualifying the case. The file contains the name of the sender and the name of the person of the administration unit who will process it. The file is then introduced in the system, where it is accessible by others employees. The paper form if any is then archived and not transferred any further. The process of distribution to the various services involved is done electronically, and the file is sent to responsible officers. There is no paper anymore in the process. Applications or cases are treated and archived, and ready cases are gathered and published on the Internet where the citizen can consult it by using a coded access. This allows users to re-trace the decision-making process of the legal authorities.

Electronic identification by citizens and by administrative employees can allow them to check how far the case has gone through and by whom it is treated within the administration office. The system can be used as well as a control tool by the administration. Civil servants who used to work in a self-organised manner, and following their own speed, must now follow the electronic registration system and the procedure.

Many people do not know how the administration is actually organised, making it difficult to find and reach the right services when needed. To avoid the citizen being transferred from one service to another one, the basic idea is to offer one unique access to administration. This one access is providing general information and in case of very specific enquiries, rerouting the user to the responsible service. The access point can usually be reached by phone, Internet, intranet or simply by going physically to front offices. Those front services using the city intranet are able to deliver all kinds of information. Before it would be the secretary of a specific service who gives the needed piece of information, now the front offices employees are covering all departments. This information is often organised around life events, which help the user to find his way around. This is a much quicker system than before when the citizen had first to identify which services would be the one dealing with the elements he needed.

As a result of this change of approach, the administration is now seen as a reliable and efficient body, and the relationship with the citizen has changed in a very radical and positive way. Being considered a model by other cities and local administrations in Finland and abroad also increased the profile of the city and attracted financial investments.

As a direct consequence of the “change” process introduced by the Infocity Project, the city council has recently restructured its organization and a new unit devoted on “e-Services” has been established to better coordinated the online services of the city administration.

Benefits to Councillors

Political leadership is vested in the city council, but in practical matters, the city board and the city manager and the various committees established have their roles in managing e-government activities within the e-Tampere Programme. In general politicians have committed to the e-Tampere programme, which was seen as a way to guarantee continuation and availability of financial resources. That led to close coordination, common interest and strategy between councillors and policy-makers in supporting the implementation of the project, and in particular the Infocity activities, since they were the more visible to citizens.

In terms of organisation of activities, the project was based on a conventional line organisation, e-activities being considered as part of everyday work. However, during the “transitional period of implementation of the project” the role of the central office of the city government has been a key both as initiator and coordinator as well as a source of extra financial resources. General administrative responsibility in these activities is the communication unit, depending on the Mayor’s office, which means that in the leadership, the content aspect is emphasised more than the technology. The ongoing activities of the project benefited also from the feedback provided by the citizens accessing the various services. At the same time, the results provided by the e-Surveys supported the re-orientation of activities and the better customisation of online services.

Limitations

Despite the commitment to the Information Society strategy, political leaders and top management, at the beginning, have been afraid of the increase of costs linked to e-government activities.

In addition, some politicians have had reservations concerning applying new forms of “quasi direct democracy,” as they may fear to lose some of their political power.

As to the staff in general, new developments create the expectation of an increase of workload and lead to an uncontrolled flow of communication and interactions.

At the beginning of the project there was resistance on the part of employees; they now seems to have got used to it. A manager has recognised that “leading this change programme was among the most difficult years of her professional life,” as employees were resistant and afraid of using new tools that they did not master. Most of the employees had to cope with both traditional and electronic processes and this transition phase was sometimes costly in terms of workloads. These changes have also implied transversal communication between services which were not used to exchange information previously. The administration has been rather fractioned until now, as each department was independent of the others, even sometimes competing with them. Employees have sometimes perceived the open access and sharing of information as a threat. It was therefore often needed to explain and convince them of the new information procedure’s potential.

A limitation regarding addressing national and regional governments was that tools such as the electronic signature and online applications are not always perceived as legal by other government agencies.

In the city of Tampere, difficulties have been identified on two levels:

• at the regional level, the problem has been to assume technological and functional differentiations, with as a result, for instance, the lack of cooperation in creating portals;
• at the national level, the legal framework has developed slowly, especially from the view point of practical needs for business and administration.

In general, the Infocity manager is complaining about the slowness of the development of applications which affect the overall conditions for local communities and municipalities.

Nevertheless groups are organized in all Finland, with the different actors involved in e-government issues, in order to develop common standards and exchange with them experience on building these new types of services.

The lack of Public-Private Partnership (PPPs) development is another limitation. For Jari Säppala, manager of e-Tampere, there are different explanations for this. First of all, PPSs are difficult to organise: motivations of private companies tend to focus on the company's own benefits, often only financial ones. This does not match with the broader expectations of public services. For Prof. Ari Veikko Anttiroiko from Tampere University, what makes cooperation sometimes difficult with private sector organisations is “their limited understanding of the nature and wide scope of the activities of the city and the necessity to commit to equity between citizens, which means looking for low costs, well distributed technical solutions.” “Public portals aim at an easy and simple access for their audience; high tech development, or graphic embellishment can therefore be included only if they do not require an heavier workload,” adds Jari Säppala. “Sometimes, these companies do not also have a realistic understanding of the limits of the resources available to the local administrations.”

The bigger limitation to the project is the low rate of effective use of online services by citizens, and in particular regard to the online participation.

Despite the effort of the city administration, and the activities of communication, the rate of participation to online discussions, Questions and Answers system, and Internet User Survey, as well as online consultation, is about 1% of the population of the city. City managers attribute this low participation to the fact that only a small part of the population is actively involved in political participation, because they see that their main contribution is the right to vote.

On the basis of the results of the Pilot Project related to application of the e-Tampere the City Card, it can be argued that the “not mandatory” use of a Smart card by the citizen, and the fact that other Electronic Cards already exist, is not leading to a generalized use of the City Card. Moreover, being planed a national e-Card to be developed, it is clear that the cost/effectiveness of this operation at City level is not attractive to private companies and thus not useful to be deployed by the City Administration.

Evaluation

Because of the Infocity Project, the municipality is now extensively using the web to make inquiries about municipality decisions and to take into account the answers when preparing new projects or planning. But the low number of participating citizens has been problematic. The consequence is that active participation via electronic forums can be biased. At the same time, observation and analysis of selected users interacting with websites could subsequently improve the quality of services.

A users’ survey has been conducted five times, and a general survey has been conducted twice during the same period. Residents’ responses are also gathered through letters, e-mails, phone calls, forums and discussions.

The project is very ambitious, aiming at becoming the “Pilot for e-Europe.” Its natural benchmark is any other municipality in the European Union. So far, this “positive competition” is leading to an increase of awareness and self-evaluation of the local administration, being very much exposed to international evaluation.

A structured mid-term evaluation of the entire e-Tampere Programme was conducted by an independent evaluator, Nord-Regio, in August 2003, and properly titled “e-Tampere: Building an electronic pathway to the future?”

On the basis of the evaluation, it can be argued that e-Tampere in general has been successful in implementing the selected policy measures designed to achieve its goals. But it has proven to be difficult to cater to the needs of ordinary citizens, businesses, technology-related R&D institutions, and Tampere's civil servants and politicians (among others) all at the same time. In some fields there is yet further untapped potential to combine these different interfaces (e-Health for instance, as well as new media applications).

Thus, in terms of monitoring and evaluation, this “exercises” should be developed further on a regular basis, more as an instrument of organisational learning and internal evaluation than as an external exercise, possibly concentrating more on “bench-learning” than “bench-marking.” Monitoring of the impacts here could be developed as a programme-specific exercise, or further co-operation could be developed between the Centre of Expertise and e-Tampere. In addition to macro indicators, more project-specific micro indicators should also be developed.

Lessons learnt

The first aim of reorganisation of the e-Tampere/Infocity project was to improve internal efficiency of city administration. Through reorganisation of work procedures internally, the networked solution adopted is making it easy to open and facilitate public access.

Renewal of services has led to streamlined access between back and front offices, and time has been saved in recording and exchanging information. Redundant data capture is not needed anymore, application forms have been simplified, and some of them are automatically directed and treated.

The shortening of procedures has allowed employees to concentrate more on communication tasks. The use of network communication as a means to simplify workflows has not only been directed toward citizens' needs, but to improve internal communication and efficiency. This involved a great cultural change within the administration that will have its results only in the long-term. The overall process is strengthening cooperation among different levels of administration, and between the upper management and the policy-makers.

The overall process of public policy choice has also been enriched through an effective e-enabled participatory process where the citizen is actively involved.

In addition to the positive “institutional thickness” of the Tampere region, a certain level of “institutional stickiness” can also be detected. This can make such organisations quite rigid and slow to learn (and as such equally slow to incorporate the paradigm shift or new ways of thinking in relation to the development towards the Information Society where democracy, policy, technology and the economy are all seen as interdependent). Policy-making processes and e-Government activities should be developed in a way that address this “institutional stickiness” and the social and cultural rigidities that it entails. A lot has already been done here to improve the accessibility of Information Society measures among the citizens, but further attention should be directed toward ensuring that Information Society measures are also accepted, indeed embraced, in the public sphere.

What appears to be true is that “e-Tampere is probably better known in Brussels than in Finland.” This may be an interesting point of view considering that there is still a lot of untapped potential as far as internationalisation is concerned. While there is significant international interest in the experiences gained during the e-Tampere process, and serious thought should be given to how to attain concrete advantage from it, at the same time the identity-building aspects identified as one of the advantages of the programme (i.e. the Information Society became one of the elements of citizens’ identity in Tampere) shall create a sort of “paradox” while an activity of local development is not perceived by local citizens. In this regard, the initiative should perhaps concentrate further on the local content for the Information Society. It appears that a risk of “Design-Reality-Gap” of the overall Programme, with regard to the effective participation and needs of the citizens, exists.

Yet e-Tampere is not the only policy instrument that has ensured the proliferation of different co-operation forms, and therefore it may be useful to ask what makes e-Tampere special and what exactly is its value added in relation to other local and regional innovation policy instruments in the region. It is argued here that this value added is most visible in the interdisciplinary aspects of e-Tampere and in the gradual paradigm shift that this may entail, towards a more holistic and multi-disciplinary approach to Information Society.

What could happen next?

The city of Tampere is still very much involved in developing new projects for the future. The e-Tampere programme will continue through 2005, and administrative elected representatives and researchers are busy carrying out the different projects, in view of further implementation. Regarding new technologies, mobile communication will likely become the next e-government interface by using SMS and codes to receive information, and to enable citizens to ask and book services, pay fees and maybe someday to file their taxes. As in the case of e-Tampere/Infocity project, where citizens are invited to express their opinions online and to discuss political issues, ICT tools are already enabling the local government to enlarge the consultation means. At present, the city administration is already preparing the e-Participation Portal, and e-Voting is definitely seen as a possible next step to improve citizens' participation in the community life. At the same time, it is expected that new technologies will give the administration a kind of monitoring tool providing them, in real time, the population assessment regarding their actions. But the issue is again if citizens are really willing and able to participate to the political life online, given the low rate of success so far realized. In this regard, it is expected that the wider availability of e-Services will improve the motivation and skills of citizens, thus leading toward a more effective e-participation and therefore increasing the democratic governance process.

Another aspect to consider is that some sub-programmes, including Infocity, have been over-reliant on public funding and particularly on the funding provided by the city of Tampere. The commitment of the city administration has been essential in launching the programme, but in the second half of the programming period, more attention must be given to technology funding and private investment as a source of long-term financial resources to ensure the commitment of the whole range of Tampere. This has not always been the case.

An aspect to be better analysed in a next phase of the project, or in a replication/transfer of this approach, is therefore the participation of the private sector, which can bring in expertise and skills, and which can strengthen the public sector capacity of modernizing itself and reinforce the economic development of the local community. Internationalisation should also be addressed as a funding question. A clear strategy for internationalisation should be developed as part of the attempt to bring together the different funding institutions and organisations, in order to achieve more genuinely interdisciplinary co-operation. This may be more of a national level issue than merely one for e-Tampere. This issue is of particular relevance with regard to the development of the Citizen Smart Card. In fact, Tampere and other municipalities are looking for a solution to the problem of electronic authentication. In the e-Tampere City Card, the PKI-certificates are combined with the everyday-service smart-card scheme. In the future, mobile phones could be used for authentication and paying fees. But the vision “to have the city in everyone’s pocket” is definitely to be achieved in collaboration with the national level.

Additional information and sources

Author: Gianluca Carlo Misuraca

Co-Authors: Matthias Finger, Pierre Rossel, Thomas Zwahr

Contact: Gianluca Misuraca Tel: + 39 338 98 38 059 gianluca.misuraca@epfl.ch gianlucamisuraca@postmaster.uk

Methodological Note: The Case Study is being prepared by Gianluca Misuraca under supervision of Prof. Finger and Prof. Rossel, and in collaboration with Thomas Zwahr, in parallel with the working activities of the Executive Master in e-Governance, First Edition 2005, coordinated by EPFL - Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne, in collaboration with other recognized international Universities and institutions – http://egov.epfl.ch The views expressed in the Case Study are that of the authors and do not imply expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of EPFL or any other organization.

The Case Study is based upon the Report COST-A14 “Government and Democracy in The Information Age,” by Martine Buser, Linda Cotti, Pierre Rossel, Matthias Finger, LEM /MIR ILEMT-EPFL, 2003, http://mir.epfl.ch/egov/docspdf/government_democracy.pdf integrated by further analysis of research papers, articles and reports available, and interviews by Gianluca Carlo Misuraca in Tampere in the period January-February 2005 with: Mr Jary Sappala, Communications Director, City of Tampere; Mr Harri Airaksinen, Director Business Development Centre, City of Tampere; Prof. Anti Kasvio, Research Director, Information Society Institute.

In addition, observations came from discussion and interaction with: Prof Ari-Veikko Antirroiko, University of Tampere; Prof Jarmo Viteli, Director e-Tampere Programme; Ms Aija Uurtamo, Officer at the Democracy Unit, City of Tampere; Mr Olli Niemi, Director Hermia Science Park, Hervanta, Tampere region.

Project Contact: Mr Jari Seppälä Communications Director City of Tampere Tel. +358-3-3146 6219 jari.seppala@tt.tampere.fi

City of Tampere P.O.Box 487 FIN-33101 Tampere www.tampere.fi