Implementing a platform for communication between Swiss communes

Transcription

1 Implementing a platform for communication between Swiss communes Authors: Rapahael Küttel Südallee 24a 5034 Suhr Matriculation number: raphael.kuettel@unifr.ch Timo Truöl Route de la Pisciculture Fribourg timo.truoel@unifr.ch Matriculation number: Examiner Prof. Andreas Meier Supervisor Luis Teràn Datum 2. Dec

2 Table of content 1. Introduction 1.1 Background and motivation 1.2 Problem statement and research 1.3 Proceeding and method 1.4 Objectives and output of the thesis 2. Communication between Communes (A2A) 2.1 Municipal Administration in Switzerland 2.2 ecollaboration 2.3 Magic triangle 3. Software 3.1 Open Source Software 3.2 Content Management System 3.3 Drupal 4. Platform Prototype 4.1 Concept 4.2 Implementation 5. Conclusion 6. Literature 7. Appendix (Interview) 2

3 1. Introduction Historically governments are bureaucratic and not very efficient. The digitalization of the modern world leads to new possibilities in the range of electronic government. This approach tries to reduce the lack of efficiency in the field of communication in Swiss policy. The Prototype is invented for a better and more efficient Communication among Swiss Communes. Therefore, the building of a prototype of a Content Management System for Swiss Communes seems to be beneficial. 1.1 Background and Motivation of the Thesis On the one hand, many IT projects of the Swiss government are really costly, take a lot of time or even get stopped. A bad example is the IT project Insieme of the swiss tax administration. The government did abort this project and over 100 million Swiss francs were lost. Only 10% of the necessary programming work was done. On the other hand, federalism in Switzerland avoids a good and strong e- Government up to a certain point. Every commune or at least every canton uses its own technology and software to manage the tasks. This is not very efficient also costly to provide the interfaces to communicate. A good solution for these two problems could be so called open source software. The software already exists and the government doesn t need to invest to much in programming. Of course, there are adaptions need to be done. But this is much less work than programming from scratch. Another advantage is the community behind an open source software. There are many people working on this software. This way, the software gets constantly better and safe. Because of all these reasons, we invented our Prototype to fulfil some government needs. 1.2 Problem statement and research The organisation of states or countries are historically bureaucratic and inefficient. This is especially true for a federal reigned country like Switzerland with 26 states (Kantone) and 2636 communes (Gemeinden) for a population about 7,7 million 3

4 (Stand 2009, vgl.: ) This federalism and bureaucratic characterisation of Switzerland leads to a need for a good and efficient communication within Swiss policy. E-government or E-communication has not been in high gear in Swiss policy. As we already mentioned there were some attempts to introduce more e-government inside of Swiss Policy, but they weren't very successful. As Bakir and Lyer mentioned the implementation of e-government implies different objectives and levels of transformation ( Reddick 2010, p.4). This Approach concentrates on the objective of intern communication and is just one part of many required parts for the implementation of e-government in Switzerland. The approach concentrates to the question, how the effectiveness of intern communication could be improved. Bakir and Lyer said: The effective delivery of e-services requires process and information systems (IS) integration and coordination of processes between disparate organisations and stakeholders (Reddick 2010, p.4). The approach transferred the main ideas from this general statement to our intern communication system: The need of an intern communication system, the governance of intern processes and the integration and coordination within the Swiss communes. 1.3 Proceeding and method To figure out the state of the art of used software in the administration of a commune and the needs for communication between communes, there will be done some basic research. In addition to that, there will be also organized an interview with a municipal secretary. Furthermore, the needs will be identified and weighted for implementing them into the prototype platform, which is done by the Drupal CMS. So the development of the Prototype was structured in three different phases. Firstly we wanted to get a closer look inside Swiss communes. How are things right now? How do Swiss communes communicate? Is there a need for better 4

5 communication at all? Which topics need a better communication and would Swiss Communes use such a software? To receive a first impression we designed a questionnaire and interviewed Mirjam Werder, who is a municipal secretary in the commune Wittnau. The complete questionnaire can be found in the Attachments. Secondly we did some basic research. This includes the particularity of the federalism of Switzerland as well as literature research. As a result we concentrate ourselves to e-collaboration theories and communication needs. Afterwards we abstracted the first two phases and integrated the results into the third phase: the building of the prototype. 1.4 Objectives and Output of the Thesis The goal of this semester thesis is first to figure out the needs of a communication platform between Swiss communes (A2A) and then to implement a prototype of such a modern communication platform with a focus on asynchronous communication. That means, that the communication between two communes is time and location independent. The platform will be implemented using the open source software and content management system Drupal. This web CMS is generally used for creating websites, especially for communities. Because of its modularity, it s possible to set up any kind of websites. There is a huge and active community out there, which contributes thousands of add-on modules, fixes bugs and works. 2. Communication between Communes in Switzerland In this chapter the description of the actual state of the municipal Administration in Switzerland and the increasing influence of E-Government is the focus. Moreover, we will describe the main theories, which support our practical information system: 1.E-Collaboration, including the needs and benefits of an information system and 2. The magic triangle between communication, coordination and cooperation. We will summarize this to the Communication needs and the main results that influences the building of our prototype. 5

6 2.1 Municipal Administration in Switzerland Switzerland is generally known as a democratic and extremely federal controlled republic. As mentioned before, there are 26 states and 2636 communes for a population of circa 7,7 million people. Comparatively Germany, who has more than 82 Million habitants, has 16 states (Bundesländer). Just to receive a better impression, we can compare Switzerland with one big state in Germany,Baden- Württemberg. Baden-Württemberg has more than 10 million habitants and is organised in 1101 communes. Switzerland has less habitant but twice as much communes than Baden-Württemberg. Picture 1: Switzerland and his 26 states. (source: ) 6

7 Because there are so many and partial small communes, it is as well interesting as important how Swiss Communes communicate with each other and with the public. Of course there are big differences between the 26 states in Switzerland. But E- Government seems to become more and more important in all states and communes of Switzerland. Zürich for example shows on their web page that they coordinate and manage e-government (source: was_wir_tun.html ), Bern has an own department for online communication ( organigramm.html ) and Aargau started a social media campaign 2011 to gain new forms of political participation. Picture 2: Example of the social media campaign in Aargau. (Source: externe_kommunikation.jsp ). But Swiss states and communes don't only use digital communication in external communication, they have as well intern communication system. For example, Aargau uses two types of intern communication. Firstly, they use an employee newsletter called QUER, which is distributed four times per year. Secondly they have an Intranet for the Kanton Aargau called InKA. InKA is very important for the administration department in Aargau as well as for quick information about news and changes for the employees. A Similar situation can be found in Zürich,where the State has his own city-intern intranet, which is refreshed and improved constantly. Moreover, the intern communication goes on by and periodic newsletters in Zürich. In the capital of Switzerland, Bern, they use an employee newsletter called 7

8 Beinfo, published 6 times per year. So far we have seen three Swiss states and three different ways of communication. But all of the states have similar goals and sometimes they use similar software for their intern communication. Therefore different intern communication systems are inefficient and expensive. Moreover, the possibilities of autonomous participation is restricted and often impossible in nearly every state or commune. This approach will try to change this participation part likewise the standardisation of intern communication and the communication between the states and communes. During the research we discovered, that the transparency and functionality of some official websites were fractional deficient. Some links and documents couldn't be found respectively did not work.this shows that there is a lack of communication and that an holistic communication system could breed to an improvement. Moreover the possibility to participate and share information and ideas is contemporary and can be easily achieved with our software. 2.2 Electronic-Collaboration People talk a lot about e-collaboration today, but what it is exactly? Kock defines e-collaboration as a collaboration among individuals engaged in a common task using electronic technologies (Kock 2001, p.1). Nowadays nearly everybody use and can use a computer, no matter if its for private or business demand. But to get to this point, it took a long way of developing and many inventions in the last 60 years. The development of e-collaboration can be structured in four phases (Kock 2005,p.22-30): 1. The mainframe era, which is characterized by a domination of large computer systems from 1950 to the end of the 1960s. 2. The establishment of computer networks, which took place between the late 1960s to the middle 1980s. Important for this second phase was the processing of the Advanced Researched Project Agency Net (ARPANET)in Before ARPANET was invented, mainframes could interact only with mainframes of the same brand. ARPANET quickly changed this.in 1971 there were 37 different hosts using ARPANET which now could communicate with each other through . 8

9 3. The expansion of local area networks between the middle 1985s to the early 1990s. Fundamental for the third phase was the development and utilization of personal computers. 4. The Internet era, which is still in progress and changed the way of life in so many ways: New ways of interaction and communication, new ways of participation, new ways of economy business modells and to make a long story short, internet invades nearly all aspects of daily life. All this leads to new ways of collaboration and especially e-collaboration has increased in the last 20.years But what are the advantages of e-collaboration nowadays? The increasing use of e-collaboration technologies led to many possibilities; one of the most exciting was the ability to conduct collaborative tasks interacting at different times and from different places (Kock 2005,p.3). Furthermore e-collaboration is a business process improvement, which means it changes the system and not the people. As a result the organisational performance and efficiency can be improved by an e-collaboration system. But there is also a paradox aspect respectively the so called e-collaboration paradox with two approved findings. The first finding is that group members generally perceive face-to-face communication as posing fewer obstacles to effective communication than other communication media, particularly media generated by e-collaboration systems (Kock 2005, p.7). By contrast the second finding says when group conducts collaborative tasks using e-collaboration systems to support interaction among group members, those groups often present the same or higher levels of performance as groups in which members interact primarily face-to-face ( Kock 2005,p.7). But the advantages of an e-collaboration system outweigh the disadvantages especially under an economic point of view. The following points show the main characteristics of an effective and economy reasonable e-collaboration system and how it supports its users: Communication via or instant messaging Information and knowledge sharing Video conferencing 9

10 Collaborative workspace Shared document management system Work flow management system 2.3 Magic triangle between communication, coordination and cooperation The interaction between communication, coordination and cooperation is important for efficient communication and characterises and classifies companies or stats. Picture 3 shows the classification and the different possible communication systems: Picture 3:Classification according to support function and system category. ( ). Our approach tries to find a felicitous composition between, communication,coordination and cooperation to get a high efficient work system. Communication seems to become more and more important in the modern business world, in the modern society and in the modern policy. There are different ways of communication, but it seems so that an intern communication system is the most 10

11 efficient way for a successful communication especially for big and federal structures. 11

12 3. Software 3.1 Open Source Software Open source software is software, whose source code is free to study, change, improve and even distribute. Usually, this kind of software is developed with a community in a public and collaborative manner. One of the most used free software license is the GNU General Public License. Software that is licensed under this GNU GPL can only be modified and distributed, if it is licensed under the same license terms. By the use of open source software and adaptions of it, consumers saves about $60 billion per year (Rothwell 2008). In most of the cases, an open source software is only successful, if it has a big a community behind. The software is being developed and improved faster, when there are many people working on it instead of a small development group. A lot of wellknown open source software content management systems like Drupal, Wordpress or Joomla have an active community that helps the software being stable and secure. 3.2 Content Management System A content management System (CMS) is a software for creating, editing and publish content. Usually, these systems are used to build websites and publish content on them. Features and programming language differ from system to system. There are open source software CMS as well as priority software CMS. Most of the CMS have graphical interfaces, so that registered users are able to operate it even without any knowledge in programming or HTML. 3.3 Drupal Our egovernment platform is based on Drupal. This is an open source framework and web content management system and generally used for creating websites. It is based on PHP and MySQL and distributed under the GNU General Public License. 12

13 Dries Bytaert, a student at the University of Antwerpen, came up with the idea to build a small news site allowing his friends to leave comments and notes about quite everything. He wanted to enable other people to use and participate on the development on his idea. In 2001, he decided to release the first version of Drupal. The Core of Drupal is the standard release that contains the main features for a content management system such as account registration, page editing, menu management or system administration. After installing the core files of Drupal, you are able to complement your website with thousands of modules and hundred of themes. For a lot of use cases, you can find a corresponding module. As of November 2012, there are over Modules and Themes (Designs) contributed by the drupal community (Drupal Homepage 2012). Today, Drupal is one of the most used content management system in the world. At least 2.8% of all websites worldwide are based on this Content Management System (W3Techs 2012). The Drupal core files are found at and the current release of Drupal is version 7.17 ( ). 4. Platform Prototype Because of all the advantages mentioned in Chapter 3, we decided to implement our prototype based on the CMS Drupal, installed on an apache server. The URL to this platform is Concept The main idea of the platform is to provide an easy communication between Swiss communes. After the interview with Mirjam Werder, we knew that we should create social network for communes. Every commune should have an own profile page with a description, a picture and some additional information like population, area and links to other websites. User of this platform are people, that working on a commune. They need to register to create any content. Once a user is registered, he can get administrator of his commune and can subscribe for other communes he is interested in. In the 13

14 dashboard, he get the aggregated messages of communes he has subscribed. We want also to implement a content type for projects. Registered user can create a project site, and invite other users to work together. They are now able to write and collaborate messages within this project group. A third content type is Questions. Every user should be able to ask the community to help him on a specific topic. Other users can comment on this questions. All questions are listed on a special page. This questions should be categorized by tags given by the author of the question. Picture 4: Concept of our Platform 4.2 Implementation First, there is the installation of the CMS Drupal. All we need here is a web server with PHP and a MySQL-Database. The most important contributed module we installed is called Organic Groups. This lets you create groups that can have content type such as messages. Users are able to subscribe to theses groups either to follow the messages or create some content if they are administrator of this groups. 14

15 First, we created a content type for communes with the some additional field such as population, area, etc. We set this content type to be a group, so that it would be kind of a commune profile page. Then, we created a content type for Messages and defined it to be linked with the commune profile page. A administrator is now able to write messages for a commune. If he wishes, he could add some pictures or files (PDF, DOC, etc.) to this message. They appear right on the profile pages and other user can view it and comment each entry, if they are registered. Picture 5: Commune profile page More or less the same we implemented for projects. Only that this are projects and not communes. 15

16 For questions, we created also a simple content type. A user can write questions that are listed under the menu link Fragen (see picture 6). Other user can comment on these questions. Picture 6: Questions overview The Dashboard is a location, where all entries of communes and projects the user has subscribed are listed. This is kind of a timeline like in Twitter and Facebook. The user gets only the information he s interested in. Picture 6: Dashboard 16

17 5. Conclusion We learned a lot about some Drupal features and modules, especially the module Organic Groups. This is actually is a very powerful module. Also after implementing this platform, we think that Drupal is the right way to realize this project. Not only that Drupal is free of charge it is also a powerful tool to build websites and platform like this. At the end, it s very difficult to make compromises between the important feature a platform should have. To roll this out, it should have also a multilingual option, especially for Switzerland. 6. Literature [Drupal 2012] Drupal: Drupal Homepage. available: accessed 26th November [G. Reddick 2010] G.Reddick, C.: Comparative E-Government. New York: Springer, [Kock 2001] Kock, N; Davison, R; Wazlawick, R: E-Collaboration. A look at past research and ruture challenges. Journal of Systems and Information Technology, Vol. 5 Iss: 1, pp.1-8. [Kock 2005] Kock,N.: Business Process Improvement Through E-Collaboration. Knowledge sharing through the use of virtual groups.london:2005 [Jecht 2011] Jecht, J.: Web 2.0 Technologien: Einsatzmöglichkeiten im egovernment und Einsatzempfehlungen für das Land Sachsen Anhalt. Grin,

18 [Meier 2012] Meier, A.: edemocracy & egovernment - Stages of a Democratic Knowledge Society. Berlin: Springer, [Rothwell 200] Rothwell, Richard: Creating wealth with free software. available: / accessed 28th November [Scheer 2003] Scherr, A.-W., Kruppke, H., Heib, Ralf.: E-Government - Prozessoptimierung in der öffentliche Verwaltung. Berlin: Springer, [W3Techs 2012] W3Techs: Usage of content management systems for websites. available: accessed 29th November Appendix 7.1 Interview Interview with Mirjam Werder. Who are you? Mein Name ist Mirjam Werder, ich arbeit in der Gemeinde Wittnau im Kanton Aargau als Gemeindeschreiberin Stv. Ich bin verantwortlich für die Einwohnerkontrolle, Gmeinedekanzlei, SVA-Zweigstelle, Inventur etc. Ich arbeite nun bereits ein halbes Jahr in dieser Gemeinde. 1. Situation now 1.1 Is there a communication between different Swiss communes? How does the communication between the different Swiss communes take place now? Ja, es gibt sie. Es gibt eine Webseite für den Kanton Aargau. Alle Aargauer Gemeinden haben Zugriff auf diese Plattform. Es hat Information von allen Verbänden, z.b. Gemeindeschreierverband oder Einwohnerkontrollführerverband. Es besteht die Möglichkeit, 18

19 Infos reinzuschreiben, man kann auch Fragen stellen, die andere Benutzer beantworten. Es werden auch alle offenen Stellen der Gemeinden im Kanton Aargau ausgeschrieben. Dann hat es auch noch Infos zu Kursangeboten. Ich weiss nicht, ob es eine schweizweite Plattform gibt. Zumindest brauchen wir keine solche, denn jeder Kanton hat andere Gesetzte, darum kann man nicht alle Gemeinden miteinander vergleichen: Für all diese Infos braucht es keinen Account, aber man kann sich registrieren, dann kann man weiter Informationen zu verschiedenen Gebieten/Themen. Im Moment hat aber nur die Gemeindeschreiberin den Account. Falls ich eine Frage habe, weil ich nicht weiss wie es geht, frage ich eine Person einer anderen Gemeinde mit demselben Aufgabengebiet (Ausbildungskollegin), die ich kenne per Telefon oder Mail. Oder ich gehe direkt auf die Website der zuständigen Stelle (SVA). Für die direkte Kommunikation brauche ich die Website nicht. 1.2 How does the communication work internally? Wir sind eine sehr kleine Gemeinde, daher passiert der grösste Teil mündlich. Das Steueramt ist aber nicht im Dorf. Die Kommunikation geschieht hier über Mail, Brief, Telefon oder Fax. Das geht meistens ziemlich lange und ist mühsam. In grösseren Gemeinden wird es ziemlich ähnlich sein, evtl. haben gewisse Intranet (Infos, aber nur einseitiger Kommunikationskanal). 1.3 Are there any project topics which are used in many (more) swiss communes? Can you share your made-experiences to help other communes? Es gibt viel zu wenig geschriebenes über Probleme. Wenn es bsp. bei Gemeindeversammlungen ein spezielles Traktandum gibt, kann ich nirgends Informationen darüber finden, es gibt keine Präzedenzfälle, die ich einsehen kann. Man muss immer nach Gesetzt handeln, die Frage ist einfach welches, dass man anwenden muss. Bei Inventur ist es ähnlich, nur informiert man sich dort direkt beim Kanton. Ebenfalls bei der Einwohnerkontrolle Experiences 2.1 If 1.4 is yes, do you see any advantages or disadvantages of the platform you are using? Das Problem ist, dass es zu wenig aktive Nutzer hat, dadurch kann man nicht wirklich einen Nutzen daraus ziehen. Man müsste die Plattform attraktiver machen, bekannter machen, Leute mobilisieren, Probleme aufzuschreiben 19

20 + Kurse ausgeschrieben, offenen Stellen Kanton Aargau. + Liste mit allen Zuständigkeitsbereichen (aber nur die in den Verbände) - Suche - auf sind alle Foreneinträge öffentlich einsehbar, müssten einen internen Bereich für Gemeinden gestalten. 2.2 Is the commune in projects involved? which topics of projects? Ja: Zusammenschlüssen von Gemeinden, Gemeinsame Feuerwehr 3. Needs 3.1 Which topics need a communication? Ja, bspw. immer dann wenn es um Neuzuzüger oder Wegzüger geht -> Wegzugsmeldung mit Eckdaten per Briefpost. Adressauskunft mache ich per Telefon, da es meistens dringend ist. 3.2 Are there any special security aspects need to be considered Datenschutz ist wichtig. Keine persönlichen Daten dürfen veröffentlicht werden, in einem geschilderten Fall Namen zu nennen ist tabu. 3.3 Would you use a communication platform? Plattform würde ich nutzen, falls ich Antwort bekomme, falls es eine aktive Community gibt. 20