Bull Information Systems Ltd, the UK arm of France’s computer and services company, Groupe Bull SA, is laying the groundwork to take the lead in providing online application services to local government in the UK. According to Jim Stirling, Bull’s business development manager, the company is already in talks with three English local authorities, and conducting feasibility studies to determine what kinds of service the agencies will be providing in two or three years.
Stirling believes the future of local government organizations lies in e-government: the provision of centralized information resources, and transaction facilities covering all aspects of the local community’s interaction with government. Bull has been monitoring similar services in the US and Australia, where local government authorities have been the focus for a range of services including employment, criminal and justice information, health services, tax payment and electronically conducted local referenda.
Bull has set up a 50-strong ‘e-government team’ in the UK, 30% of whom have local government experience, and conducted several pilot e-government pilot schemes in different parts of the country. In the city of Norwich, for instance, an Open for Business pilot is providing local businesses have single-point access to information distilled from 10 government departments, four local authorities and the Post Office. A similar Connect in the Community scheme, in collaboration with British Telecommunications offers remote access to information such as birth certificates and electoral rolls.
These ventures are designed to put Bull in the driving seat when local authorities’ e-government contracts are put out to tender. Barry Grisdale, Bull’s UK CEO, described them as pioneer selling initiatives, which seek to add an electronic service awareness dimension to Bull’s established relationships with UK government bodies.
Bull is talking with a range of consultancy firms, including KPMG and Arthur Andersen, with a view to creating joint tenders for future e-government contracts. The company sees the chief opposition in the sector coming from ICL, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle.
Grisdale predicts that the dynamics of public/private sector ventures will change. The UK’s private finance initiative, under which suppliers have built systems for public sector groups in expectation for service revenues rather than product sales, has failed to satisfy either suppliers or customers. It puts all of the risk, all of the responsibility and quite frankly, very little of the reward on the commercial partner, he said.
In future, Bull wants to see its government customers taking some share of the risk and in particular, a reduction in the numbers of public sector staff that are transferred to commercial partners as part of outsourcing contracts. Stirling said Bull is seeking a more genuine partnership between public and private sector. A new legislation modifying present PI practice is expected later this year, Stirling said.
However, all Bull’s calculations may be in vain for the British public shows no inclination towards e-government. Almost 90% of UK citizens were unaware of the Labour administration’s stated aim to deliver all government services electronically by 2008, according to E-Government Report published by Gallup and commissioned by Bull.
