Adela Mesa and Pedro Martínez‐Monje
Using an online questionnaire and subsequent monitoring of the unanswered questionnaires by a specialist company, in the end a sample was obtained of 45 senior technicians( out of a theoretical sample of 51) responsible for modernisation and technical innovation departments, on the one hand; and on the other hand all of the persons participating in the Inter‐Territorial Sub‐Committee of the Spanish National Health Service. The initial analysis of the responses allowed us to make some preliminary evaluations which we present below on the selected groups of barriers.
2.1 Technical and design barriers
The possible technical and design barriers which affect e‐Government refer to the defective technical design of the solutions adopted in the different applications. Often the systems and services related to e‐Government fail or perform less well than expected due to inadequate design. In fact, the difficulties caused by unsuitable user interfaces in the e‐Government systems can slow down the relations between the public administrations, citizens and companies. Such operating problems can limit potentially successful services and discourage the reuse of this digital dimension of e‐Government for those who experiment with it. The incompatibilities in the hardware, software or the communication infrastructure and networks both inside and outside of the public institutions can also causes significant problems.
One of the issues which has been most discussed is the presence of the public administration on the Internet portals. On this matter, the usability of the e‐Government applications is usually configured according to the requirements of the public administrations themselves, instead of looking at the requirements of the citizens. For instance, it was noticed in a recent survey( AEVAL, 2011) that when the Spanish Internet users access information on the Internet portals of the public administrations, they do so mainly via search engines. This is clear evidence of the fact that the information from the public administrations’ websites is still not capable of organising the contents according to the users’ logics.
On the other hand, accessibility has been another issue which has traditionally been taken into account when it comes to establishing proper technical design. In general, and as an introduction to the next barrier, it can be stated that initially few public Internet portals used technical elements aimed at groups with accessibility problems( deaf and blind people or those with cognitive problems). At the same time, regulations have been adopted from the Web Accessibility Initiative and the World Wide Web Consortium, whose guidelines are commonly accepted in all of the areas of Internet, like the reference specifications when trying to make the Internet pages accessible to disabled persons. In Spain these guidelines have been incorporated through Standard UNE 139803:2004.
Amongst this block of barriers, and refering the results from the questionnaire, the questions were focused on 3 items dealing with: the opinion of the technicians on the citizens’ level of use and level of preparation for e‐ services, as well as their perception about the need to use them.
The opinion from our sample of technicians is that the citizens’ level of knowledge in the use of the e‐services constitutes a big barrier( 60 %), just like the level of use of the e‐services( 44.4 %), although the opinion on this issue is ambivalently divided in terms, on the one hand, of small and very small barrier and, on the other hand, big and very big barrier. The citizens’ participation on the need to use the e‐services is not seen as a barrier for two thirds of the interviewed technical personnel.
Afterwards( through detailed interviews) we have investigated about the reasons for this opinion and the causes which have led the citizens to not be sufficiently prepared to use e‐services. The questions which arise from these results are: What degree of responsibility do the technicians have for the fact that the citizen’ s level of use of these services is not optimum? It is possible that much emphasis has been placed on creating e‐ services applications and trying to be pioneers in the development of e‐Government without considering to whom those applications are ultimately targeted. Finally, is the poor level of use and preparation no more than the logical consequence of a still low level of Internet use if compared to the other countries in the European Union?
2.2 ICT access, skills and uses
The ICT are becoming increasing widespread throughout human life, which has also been accompanied by a phenomenon called the digital divide. The digital divide refers to the access barriers to people’ s use of Internet
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