One call, one Web site: integrated Queensland e-government
One call, one Web site: integrated Queensland e-government
One call, one Web site: that is the aim for government access in Queensland. The Queensland's state government is to integrate all commerce and contacts whether on the Internet or via telephone. CiTR, a company owned by the University of Queensland, will carry out the groundbreaking project in a partnership with Technology One.
Queensland Integrated Service Delivery, as the project has been dubbed, encompasses the entirety of Queensland's government agencies. The aim of the project is to allow businesses and citizens in Queensland to access the government and its services through one point of contact. Individual government departments will not have to be contacted separately; customers will service themselves from the one Web site or phone number.
In a project white paper, CiTR point out that a citizen or business may have a single objective in mind when they contact the state government, but then discover that they need to contact a multitude of different departments for different services.
'Queensland government wants to remove the need to know the structure of government and created the Service Integration Infrastructure (SII) to meet this need,' the white paper states.
Until now, CiTR believes there has been 'little or no regard for integration of transactions across government agencies.' If SII succeeds, it is hoped that access to the government and its services will be more convenient and the costs of dealing with government will drop.
Winning the contract is a vote of confidence in CiTR, and its partner Technology One. John Scutt, CiTR's general manager explained that CiTR would provide the integration and the search abilities to allow a user to find their services from the systems at one point of contact. Technology One is to provide the processing and payment gateways to allow users to pay for the services.
"It is an exciting opportunity. In this country there are few initiatives that are built on the whole of government, so this is a sizable project," said Mr Scutt.
Up to 20 CiTR people in Queensland will be working on the project, which is due to be completed and go live in July 2003.
The single point of contact will not centralise Queensland government and rob regional towns or departments of their responsibilities. CiTR aims to enable agencies to maintain 'control and ownership of services.'
'They are responsible for making these services available for delivery through a whole of government infrastructure.'
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