Blended Learning and Open Courseware for Promoting Interoperability in Public Services

Abstract

Public Administrations invest a lot to improve their public services by making them more efficient and effective. In parallel, a significant effort is invested in training for Digital skills. However, the desired result is not yet achieved since a transformational approach for the primary users of the services, the Public Administration officials, is still missing. A combined approach for the training and the transformation of the services that need to reach certain criteria for interoperability and thus better public cross border cross sector services is presented in this paper. The Greek National Centre of Public Administration and Local Government (EKDDA) identified the need and created a learning model for Public Administration officials. The solution was proposed and implemented to address both issues, with the use of blended learning trainings, open courseware material and tools to assess and evaluate electronic public services via the Interoperability Maturity Assessment Model for a Public Service (IMM-IMAPS). A blended learning model for promoting interoperable government services will not only facilitate digital skills enhancement but will also help create a “digital services interoperability culture”. The level of the evaluation and the assessment of the 98 real case examples of Public services examined during the training sessions, helped organizations identify actions needed to increase the interoperability maturity of their services. An important parameter that was further elaborated is the high percentage of satisfaction of the trainees regarding the presented content and the methods. These methods and practices were also reused by other countries.