Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 18th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview II. Working Group on e-Government Author(s) Dominik Sypniewski Polish Association for Public Administration Education Warsaw Poland Title The role of ICT in improving efficiency of public administration. Case study: E-Building supervision developed by the general office of building supervision in Poland. File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract Information and Communication Technology (ICT) development exerts increasing influence over economy and society. It also constitutes opportunities and challenges for public administration. On the one hand, the ICT can lead to the improvement of the efficiency of governance as well as to the reduction of public spending. On the other hand, however, it has to be introduced and applied with reference to an existing, often complex legal environment. In Poland, a construction industry is one of the leading branches of the national economy and, as in other post-communist countries in the region, it is rigidly controlled and supervised by a state. The public administration involved in supervising the industry includes separate authorities for building permits issuing on the one side and for building supervision on the other. It also establishes three types of legal relations: (1) between administration and business (A2B), (2) administration and citizens (A2C), and (3) between various administrative bodies (A2A). Thus, the construction-related activities of professional developers and private persons depend – to a great extent – on the efficiency of the specialized administration. The application of ICT to administration requires fulfillment of many financial, economic, infrastructural and legal conditions. In December 2007 the General Office of Building Supervision completed the project e-Building Supervision, co-financed by EU Sectoral Operational Programme - Improvement of the Competitiveness of Enterprises, Years 2004-2006. The project aimed at establishing on-line access to public services for business and private consumers and at improving the circulation of information between various construction-related public administration authorities. In particular, the project covered six areas: 1) the supervision of a construction products market, 2) the register of building permits’ applications and decisions, 3) the central registers of persons who have building license, building experts and persons subject to penalty under professional liability, 4) the document management system, 5) the register of mandatory controls, 6) the register of building disasters. The e-Building Supervision project constitutes a modern ICT system. It provides a technical base for on-line public services. As it appears, it leads not only to the increase of public administration efficiency and public services quality, but also to decreased costs of public services delivery and shortened administrative procedures in the construction industry. Especially A2B services can reduce the cost of a construction process and affect competitiveness within the industry. The paper will present how the e-Building Supervision project was implemented into the Polish legal framework and various challenges its launch introduced. It will show that the entire process of preparing this kind of system requires a close and permanent cooperation between ICT specialists and the administration that set the rules and ultimately uses the solutions. Otherwise it may occur that the advanced ICT that offers great opportunities for construction industry will not be consistent with the legal conditions.
