The meeting was hosted by the JRC on the 12-13 January 2006 at its premises in Ispra, Italy. The report is structured in four Sections: the first, provides background to the issue addressed and sets the problem space; the second, highlights examples of current best practice in Europe and North America; the third discusses the relationship between RoI/Cost Benefit Analysis for SDIs and related work undertaken for e-government initiatives; and the fourth, summarises the key issues and identifies directions for future work in this field.
The few studies available at the time and summarised in the report provide useful guidance on the range of methods available but were all characterised by a large number of assumptions the validity of which were untested at that point in time. This was the case because they were by and large ex-ante studies undertaken to justify political and financial support, and the authors had not seen enough studies of SDIs in practice able to assess the extent to which initial assumptions were valid. Moreover, the study focused primarily on set-up costs, and short-term efficiency benefits which are relatively easier to assess, than wider measures including indirect and organisational costs, and longer term social, political and economic benefits.
A Subset of eGEP indicators for e-government potentially suitable for SDI impact measurement was presented. Furthermore, the following recommendations were made:
Since 1990’s, a significant amount of time and money have been spent on turning the eGovernment visions into reality. There is no standard way of tracking IT spend across government as a whole, or of assessing its impact. However external estimates suggested that in the UK in 2004 around GBP 14 billion was spent by government on IT. An average of 25% of IT spend was on new projects. The rest was devoted to maintaining legacy systems. At the time of the report, the UK spending on public sector IT amounted to about 1.2 % of GDP and, compared with other countries, was in the upper part of the range. It also rose in real terms over the decade prior to 2004.
Independent reports by Capgemini on the benefits that six of the National Projects could deliver to English councils provide a substantive case for widescale implementation. The estimated average annual values of these benefits (across all English local authorities, for the six projects) were: cost savings: GBP 320 million, increased revenue: GBP 60 million, service improvement: GBP 1,300 million.
Part 2 of the report is available at: https://publications.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/39b96518-21d6-4159-8fce-1b880c2e121b/language-en
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