ISO 26000 helps State of Geneva ensure ethics are respected in e-administration

by Sandrine Tranchard

ISO 26000 already had its supporters even before it was published. In Switzerland, the State of Geneva has been using the standard to reflect upon its future as an online administration (e-administration).

Like many public authorities, the State of Geneva makes a Website available to citizens, companies and administrations. Building on progress made in information technology (IT), it offers more and more online information and services to its users.

Technologies cannot be dissociated from society and society cannot really dispense with information technologies. The administration is undergoing a true transformation as it moves towards e-administration. Information systems are at the heart of the transformation of the administration’s core business and this naturally raises ethical issues, such as taking into account stakeholder concerns.

For Jean-Marie Leclerc, who manages the Information Technologies Center (CTI) of the State of Geneva, ISO 26000 is timely: “ISO 26000 will help CTI analyse its core subjects and issues of social responsibility in a context where technologies and society are intimately connected.”

CTI manages the whole IT infrastructure for the State of Geneva, i.e., 22 000 PCs. Millions of messages are exchanged each year, tons of data are saved, and easy and rapid access to such data obviously creates ethical issues.

Today, one may no longer refer to technology without referring to society, and vice versa. Up until recent times, citizens had to make multiple visits to government offices and, when a document was missing, they were told to come back during office hours. Today, the situation has changed. Citizens connect to the Internet and seek accurate answers, night and day.The question is now is how to protect data which includes personal details.

An e-society repository

The State of Geneva has a technological observatory which has been attached to CTI since 2001. Its mission is to provide a strategic vision of the technology that needs to be implemented in order to ensure proper interactions between technical and technological solutions that are both consistent and compatible with the various administration core activities. In this respect, it helps CTI develop a vision of an e-society.

Jean-Marie Leclerc with a brand new copy of ISO 26000 at the launch of the standard in Geneva on 1 November 2010.

 

For Jean-Marie Leclerc, “Our purpose in setting up an e-administration is to put the customer at the centre and to become a recognized partner for all of the administration’s departments and external services.

“A number of studies have thus been carried out and a tool has been devised in 2002 – the référentiel e-société (e-society repository) – in order to identify and list the relevant components for future developments. This repository is a tool for identifying and measuring the impacts of individual projects on the overall modernization and opening up of the Geneva administration through information technologies.

“This goes far beyond mere technological concerns in that it relates to the close relationship with citizens and society. The repository lays the foundations for the development of e-administration projects."

Digital information raises a number of challenges: confidentiality, continuity, filing, sharing, transparency… Information is a strategic resource which must be managed efficiently and in compliance with legal requirements in order to be made available to the public in an accessible manner. The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) held in Geneva in December 2003 highlighted the fundamental role played by information in today’s society. This also holds true for governments and administrations.

According to Jean-Marie Leclerc, “Establishing an e-society is no simple task and the project has been carefully thought out by CTI. An e-administration infrastructure cannot exclude segments of the population which do not have access to information. A number of questions emerge: Can we exclude certain types of people? How to incorporate ethics? How to provide adequate answers to users? How to reduce the "digital gap”? The e-inclusion principle leads us to consider different approaches that encourage the inclusion of all individuals in e-society.”

“We decided to use ISO 26000 as a guidance document to meet these essential and inevitable concerns and to implement the relevant processes”, added Jean-Marie Leclerc, who enthusiastically supports ISO 26000 and sees it as an essential standard.

He identifies the areas where ISO 26000 can help: “How can we transform the relationship between the administration and its users, companies and other administrations and move from information systems to social information systems? Opening up and granting public access to data goes hand in hand with ensuring information and information systems security. Therefore, it is important to implement reliable data collection and data sharing processes and to create confidence in the accuracy of such data. Our problem is how to create confidence. ISO 26000 will help us.”

ISO 26000, a dynamic standard

As Jean-Marie Leclerc explains, “The administration has a vast array of IT applications. Our objective is to map the State of Geneva information systems by 2013 with a view to opening a new era for the administration and to do so, the fundamentals must be in place. The administration will have to act as a regulator and it is important that standards such as ISO 26000 provide guidance. The actual challenge for the administration is not a technical one and the key to its success is in a collaborative approach involving users, companies, and social and solidarity-based economy. The role of government is to prepare for this change.

“E-administration generates a learning process whereby users constantly find solutions. I believe ISO 26000 creates very interesting dynamics and I have understood the type of change spurred by the standard.

“With online administration, citizens will be co-authors and co-players and their individual capacity to create value and to improve the services made available to them will be recognized. Co-creation and co-design therefore appear as essential approaches to explore. Beyond technology, this approach relies on an information creation process in order to provide the best answers to the queries raised by citizens.”

Implementing information systems governance

Information systems are change enablers and essential value components for the activities they support, for the administration as a whole and for society at large.

For Jean-Marie Leclerc, “The implementation of online administration will upgrade our processes and open up our information systems to the outside community. We must implement an information systems governance structure that reconciles government and stakeholders’ interests. In order to guarantee that rules are respected when responding to users, the query answering process must be safe while at the same time ensuring transparency.

“A global and social approach taking into account both the impact of technologies on privacy and the real added value thus created for the administration and its stakeholders should be adoptedThe question is how to move from mere data to information, expertise and knowledge.”

This will require long-term vision and Jean-Marie Leclerc concludes that “the implementation of the standard will have to be carefully analysed.” Through the active contribution of stakeholders, the ISO 26 000 development and adoption process is itself a building block of such an analysis.