Ladies and Gentlemen, good morning. My name is Guido Gybels, and I am the Director of New Technologies at RNID. I will today talk about how eGovernment services can play a crucial role in transforming the Information Society into a more equal place and that aspect of inclusion is one which is very close to my heart indeed.
Before I properly kick off my presentation, I thought it would be helpful to spend a few words talking about the organisation that I work for. RNID, the Royal National Institute for Deaf People, was founded in 1911 and is the largest charity representing the interests of the 9 million deaf and hard of hearing people in the UK. We are a membership charity with well over 34.000 members, employ around 1.300 staff and we spent 46 million pounds during our last financial year trying to dramatically improve the lives of deaf, hard of hearing and speech-impaired people. Indeed, our overall aim is to achieve a radically better quality of life for deaf and hard of hearing people. We do this by campaigning and lobbying, by providing information and raising awareness, by delivering training courses and consultancy on deafness and disability.
We are the largest single communication support agency in the UK and our services include sign language interpreters, lip speakers and speech-to-text operators. We have educational programmes seeking lasting change in education for deaf children and young people, we have comprehensive employment programmes to help deaf people into work and we run care services for deaf and hard of hearing people with additional needs.
RNID also manages RNID Typetalk(*), the national telephone relay service for deaf and hard of hearing people, we supply equipment and products for deaf and hard of hearing people through Sound Advantage and we have an extensive and unique programme for social, medical and technical research.
Ever since James Watt's first steam engine transformed the agricultural society that had lasted for 12,000 years into a fundamentally new type of civilisation - the industrial society - our way of life has been increasingly affected by science and technology.
More recently, we have seen how this industrial world has migrated, in only a few decades, into an Information Society. This evolution has dramatically changed the way we work, the way we shop, the way we learn, the way we entertain ourselves and the way we communicate. Now it is also starting to change the way we interact with governments.
The transition from an agricultural world into a technology-driven society was a gradual process of increased integration between technology and all other aspects of daily life. The ever-accelerating development of information and communication technology is now becoming not just the engine driving the economies of the Western world, but also the key to opportunity and fulfilment for its citizens and a vital instrument in their interactions with local, national and even international government.
While technology is what is driving this transformation, the actual societal impact goes well beyond the pure scientific and technological advancement. In fact, boundaries between technology and our environment are fading away. Technology merges itself more and more transparently with the existing infrastructure, becomes less and less intrusive and manifests itself through more intelligent surroundings.
This more ambient form of technology will make it more and more ubiquitous and invisible, and humans could interact in an ever more "natural" way with their surroundings, through the embedded intelligence that will be incorporated in almost every part of our environment. This ambient intelligence theme has been adopted by the European Union as one of the leading themes for the Information Society Technologies activities in its 6th Framework Program for Research and Technological Development, thereby recognising its importance to all of us.
With this tale of progress also comes, unfortunately, one of the biggest myths of the modern world. It is the illusion, the false assumption that this evolution of science and technology is by definition always opportunistic and will by definition always better the lives of everyone.
However, as we have learned all too often through bitter experience, unless the needs of all people, regardless of their abilities and preferences, are taken into account while technology evolves, there is a very real risk that large groups of people will face increased and even completely new barriers to opportunity and fulfilment as a result.
Traditionally, when mentioning the problems that people might have with information and communication technology, most people think in the first place about people with sensory disabilities or individuals with other physical disabilities that might prevent them from using computers and other devices. We think less habitually about groups such as people with learning disabilities or those who do not speak English as their first language and how that impacts on their ability to use the various technologies surrounding us. Elderly people are also traditionally seen as a possible group that might have issues with newer technologies, even though that link between age and technical skills is in my view rather missing the point. Is the fact that some elderly people experience difficulties with new technologies really simply because of their age? Or is it due to the fact that the ageing process has made their eyesight less good, has diminished their hearing, or has induced rheumatism in their hands which causes them grief using keyboards and mice?
And what about all those young people and middle-aged working class individuals or indeed Oxford educated top managers who struggle with computers all of the time? Let's face it: the digital divide is not just a problem of disabled people versus the rest of the world. It is a much more complicated problem. It is a question that has geographic, social, economic, educational as well as physical and cultural facets and it would go well beyond the scope of my presentation here to try and explore all of those features in detail.
What is becoming increasingly clear however is that with the emergence of the Information Society, a real danger of creating a two-tier civilisation is manifesting itself. Because of the increasing integration of technology in our daily lives, the impact of the digital divide on citizens, economies and health and social life is growing. And accessibility and usability aspects of technology will play a key role in addressing the problem of the digital divide.
However, it's not all doom and gloom. Progress in science and technology is at least as much of an opportunity as it is a threat. In fact, many problems that were absolute and insoluble for most of human history have only become addressable through the progress made in technology. People with disabilities for example are often enabled through technology in a way that simply wasn't possible before. The proper use of information technology can actually help individuals with learning or language difficulties to overcome some of their constraints. And even many predicaments that develop as part of the ageing process can be alleviated through supporting technologies.
In terms of service provision, specifically eGovernment services, technology offers the potential to deliver more individualised, more responsive and more user-centred services. It can, when done correctly, reduce red tape and offer greater citizen input into decision-making and the democratic processes.
eGovernment could become better integrated within the daily lives of every resident and just as many groups of people have been able to overcome disability and other constraints through technological means, eGovernment could increase access to and availability of relevant government services to everyone, making people more involved, less dependent and at a more equal level with the rest of society.
There are other benefits beyond the ones that focus on user integration and fulfilment. The right use of information and communication technology in government service delivery can also make services and institutions cheaper and more efficient. Transparency and accountability could benefit too, and costs could decrease.
The fact that a great number of these prospects remain unfortunately unfulfilled up until now does not reduce the potential itself. It should however inspire us to maybe look a bit differently at how we approach the problems of eGovernment services and it should certainly encourage us to try to realise this potential to the fullest.
Many of these possible benefits and advantages of eGovernment services are of course generic points that relate to the use of information and communication technology in general. However, eGovernment, by its nature, also has some characteristics of its own, some specific aspects that make it quite different from other electronic services.
First of all, government is there for all citizens, not just for some. Democratic institutions are not just for the benefit of the majority, they have an obligation to meet the needs of all residents, whether or not they happen to be blind or deaf, young or old, with a higher education or not, etc. Commercial service providers can make the deliberate choice to target segments of the market. eGovernment services need to cover all people, regardless of their abilities and preferences. In the light of what has been said earlier about the digital divide, this aspect of eGovernment could be really challenging and the only way to achieve it is through a radically new view on service development - I will address that a bit later on.
Because many eGovernment transactions involve very private and personal information, the need for these services to protect the user's privacy, to deal with confidential information in the most secure fashion and to come across with the utmost trustworthiness is another vital point. Like banks, eGovernment services should maintain the highest standards of confidentiality and security and failure to do so could undermine the public's trust in them so fundamentally that they would become unworkable altogether. And I would like to point out that security is an end-to-end problem, which means that a solution is only as strong as the weakest element in the chain. In addition, the problems of security have as much to do with people's attitudes as with the technology used. That is why for example the eEurope 2005 Action plan calls for the development of a "culture of security".
Thirdly, eGovernment services cannot exist on their own. Governance is by definition a problem of total delivery, and interactions between various levels of government, between all the stakeholders, indeed between public and private sector, are essential for it to be successful. Paradoxically, development of eGovernment services has often been hugely fragmented with widely differing levels of quality and functionality. Interoperability has to become a basic design feature, rather than just a last minute attempt to make fundamentally incompatible systems speak to each other, as is the case today. This is important from an inclusivity point of view as well because only proper interoperability will allow fully functional use of assistive technology and it also plays a key role in allowing content and services to be syndicated across information providers and stakeholder groups.
Furthermore, eGovernment services have a direct relation with the realisation and implementation of public policies. They should be the enabling platforms that allow the public sector to deliver more and better services and to realise inclusion and equality policies.
Because eGovernment services are public services, citizens have generally higher expectations of them in terms of quality, functionality, availability and cost. Meeting such higher expectations could be extremely challenging. However, without proper, user-centred design-for-all principles, there is no chance whatsoever that such high expectations could ever be met. As I stated earlier: eGovernment is there for all, not just for some, and that increases the pressures emanating from user expectations well beyond average levels.
And finally, since eGovernment services are a public resource, they are subjected to the public's scrutiny: the demand to deliver the best possible quality for money while at the same time delivering these entirely accessible, fully available, highly secure and totally interoperable services sets the standard very high indeed.
Another particular problem of eGovernment service, partly originating in the need to be available to all and everywhere, is the delivery mechanism. And indeed, while the eGovernment idea is most often linked to the use of the World Wide Web to access information and government services, we must realise that in principle every platform, every network has the potential to become an eGovernment delivery point. To be sure, digital television and even mobile and wireless handsets could act as portals to such services - in fact are already been used for that purpose as we speak. The use of multiple platforms and a plethora of terminals and handsets to provide access to eGovernment services is not just a nice feature, it plays a vital role in achieving some of the critical objectives that I mentioned earlier. Not all citizens have access to one single platform, so the need to be able to target multiple platforms is critical. Yet, while this is an important point, it also creates new challenges in terms of implementation and interoperability. Different platforms use often quite dissimilar technologies and paradigms. Some of the platforms mentioned here, like digital television are not even always fully two-way, which makes the transactional part of eGovernment delivery particularly taxing.
In order to really give every citizen access to eGovernment services, there will be a need to at least offer public access points, in libraries, community halls and other public places. And because of the gradual character of the eGovernment developments, there will be a need for these new provisions to co-exist in an integrated and unambiguous way with more traditional public service facilities for many years to come.
When you look at all these demands, at all these challenging facets of eGovernment, it very soon becomes clear that many of the traditional electronic service development techniques are simply not up to scratch.
What we need is a radically new approach, a new way of thinking. In my mind, inclusive design is the most important aspect of those new beliefs. Inclusive design goes well beyond simply trying to build something for as many different groups of people. It is often misunderstood. The key element of inclusive design is that it centres on the users and sees them all as individuals. It requires content and presentation to be separated; it requires functionality to be decoupled from input and output channels; it demands that we engineers develop systems not based on what we want as designers, but based on what people need as users.
The fallacy of mainstream, average users versus "special" users is the first erroneous notion that we need to get rid of. Not only does every individual have their own abilities and preferences, the environment and the particular circumstances we are in all dictate those preferences to a certain degree. In a sense, when we are walking down a busy, noisy street, we are all hearing impaired. When I had a car accident a couple of years ago and could not walk for weeks, I was in a similar situation to wheelchair users.
By not making any assumptions about people's abilities and preferences, by not designing for a specific situation or modality, we are forced to separate content and functionality from presentation. That tactic is not just beneficial to achieve accessibility and usability objectives for specific groups like people with disabilities for example, it in fact benefits every single customer.
Well-written and clear content, delivered through user-friendly and easy-to-navigate multi-modal interfaces is of value to all users; it is as simple as that. When systems are accessible and user-friendly, they are also more efficient: it will take the user less time to complete a task, they will need less support and so the overall cost is reduced. In terms of cost, there is a bit of a misunderstanding about design for all. Some people complain that inclusive design is more costly than other approaches. That is however an extremely misguided point of view: of course it is more expensive to go through a proper phase of user requirement gathering and to design a system with all such features as separation of content and presentation, multiple, equivalent modalities for in- and output, etc. than if you would simply quickly botch up something. But the total cost of service delivery, including support, maintenance of code and other developments will clearly benefit from inclusive design techniques.
The importance of design-for-all is underlined again through the eEurope 2005 Action Plan in the form of the European Commission's communication to the Council from 26 September last year, where "inclusive access" forms the first and foremost element in the critical issue section.
The secret to proper, user-centred design is to have a good understanding of what the user requirements are. To understand how people interact with systems in different situations, with different sets of abilities and preferences is a central prerequisite for inclusive design. In my opinion, there are three essential factors to success.
The first one is awareness. Unfortunately, many designers, manufacturers and service providers have, to say the least, a very poor understanding of what different users there are, how people interact with systems and how individual's abilities and preferences impact on the way they interact with systems and services. A good dialogue with organisations representing different groups of users can provide designers and implementers with exactly the knowledge and expertise they need.
Secondly, only if inclusivity is being seen and dealt with as a mainstream requirement, from the first stages of design and development, can it be successful. You cannot bolt on inclusivity. It forms an integral part of your design. Accessibility and usability therefore form a basic part of your core activities and should be reflected in the entire architecture, just as much so as security and interoperability for example.
And finally, there is a great need for certification and accreditation schemes in terms of accessibility and usability. Currently, both people procuring eGovernment services and those building them operate too often in a vacuum when it comes to being able to quantify and qualify the various criteria. Unless we're able to actually measure and verify these, it will be hard to enforce them through procurement other than on an anecdotal basis, which is on the longer term neither acceptable nor workable for either party.
In conclusion, I want to say that the biggest challenge, as well as the greatest benefit of eGovernment will be to transform this developing Information Society into a truly Inclusive Society. One where every human being, regardless of their abilities and preferences, is able to fully participate as a citizen and to realise their full potential as enabled individuals.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Speech by Guido Gybels, given at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, 21 New Globe Walk, London, UK on 30 March 2004.
(*) The UK's relay service has since been renamed to Text Relay