e-Learning for e-Government

The present paper presents some trends in educational activities for central and local government in France. It describes briefly the main characteristics of a brokerage platform used to import and export digitalized educational materials while protecting intellectual property rights. 1 Trends in Education for Central and Local Government Central and local governments are facing the same kind of problems that other educational organisations, in particular private business organisations, are facing with respect to the continuous education of their personnel. − the competence of the local government personnel is, as anywhere else, a prerequisite for improving the efficiency of administrative services. − the persons in charge of providing continuous education are subject to budget constraint as anywhere else. − there is a trend toward organising mix seminars where some teaching is done face to face but there are periods during which the participants interact with instructors from the distance. − they have to help their personnel to receive training concerning new topics and software. To these standard constraints are added others which are known to anybody who has been working for local government. Financial incentive used to reward improvement in competence is nearly non existent since promotion is essentially linked to age. Of course, there is always the reward of doing more interesting things, but in spite of the existence of this motivation for the personnel, it is unfortunately true, in our experience, that persons in authority , in our case elected members of the town council and the Mayor , are usually not very keen on professional education and put their energy on other matters.(like politics, for example!) Another problem is that the public of potential learners in local government are spread all around the country and so it is natural that the educational centres are also spread over the country. In France continuous education for local government is provided essentially by the Centre National de Formation des Personnels Territoriaux (CNFPT) which is offering seminars in about ten different educational centres and longer educational programs in four schools in Anger, Strasbourg, Montpellier and Nancy. Towns and other local governments can also use services of the local universities and private companies. The CNFPT is itself a public institution financed through a compulsory e-Learning for e-Government 89 tax paid by towns its seminars are free and towns rely mostly on its service for their basic continuous educational needs. As a consequence once content has been developed by an expert on a particular topic it is necessary to educate and support local instructors who are going to teach this content in decentralised centres. This constraint is all the more important since the decentralised centres have a fairly high degree of autonomy. They select their own instructors who are usually local professionals. The standard procedure is to educate local instructors to the content and let them use it in courses or seminars run locally. One example in France concerns the educational needs which were generated by the new accounting plan M14 for local government which became mandatory a few years ago in all French towns. The content of the course to introduce accounting personnel to the new accounting plan was developed by a group of experts. Then it was necessary to familiarise the local instructors with this content. These instructors were usually financial managers of medium size towns. For some specialised topics such as the impact of the change of the accounting plan on the financial management of towns it was a need to train instructors in the use of specialised software. In such seminars it is usually greatly appreciated to have an expert taking part in the seminar who can give the benefit of his experience. In certain domains the trend is moving fairly fast. The development of training required with respect to office systems and Internet is a good example of such a domain. The type of competence to acquire is not different from that of any other organisation private or public. In such a situation it is often good strategy to re-use existing course material and learning resources which have been developed elsewhere. In such a situation it is useful to have outside support in order to: − import and export educational material in electronic form − support instructors in mastering the learning resources − make it possible for experts to participate from the distance under the form of a live lecture through video ( Klein,1998,2001). 2 Learning Resources, Course Description and Learning Activities A learning resource in our context is something which is used to transfer knowledge during a course. It can be a case study, a case studies guide, a set of slides to introduce basic concepts of a topic of teaching, a chapter of a book on a given topic, an article, a collection of exercises with solutions etc… The basic descriptors of a learning resource (LR) are: discipline to which it belongs, its type (case studies, complete course, syllabus,…), the key words which helps to define its topic, the language used, the level of dealing with the subject (elementary, medium, advanced..), the author, the educational institution , etc… Persons in charge of teaching a topic are usually looking for a complete set of LR to teach this topic or a specific LR. A learning activity is something dynamic such a live lecture , the coaching of a group of students working on a project, a business game session , etc… 90 Michel R. Klein and Jacques Dang 3 The Use of a Brokerage Platform for Learning Resources We shall now describe briefly the characteristics of one particular brokerage platform, which can be use to help solve some of the problem we have mentioned above. This software was developed within the framework of the European Project UNIVERSAL For more detail the reader is referred to [Brantner et als,2001]. 3.1 Main Function of the System The main functions of the system can best be introduced by presenting the main window of the system.( see fig 1). These functions are: Fig. 1. Main Windows of the UNIVERSAL system Contribute: this function allows a content provider (expert or a faculty member) who has been developing a course or just a given Learning Resource (LR) to add the description of the course or of the learning resource to the catalogue and to up-load in electronic form the learning resource itself: on the platform. Booking: this function allows the instructor to download a LR once he has accepted the terms of use. These terms of use take the form of a contract. It is a this Members and Registration. This function allow a potential user ( content provider, instructor, student) to register to the system, to use its functions and to communicate with other authorised persons. e-Learning for e-Government 91 Search: allows a teacher or student to search for a given learning resource according to various criteria and to access the syllabus and document used in a seminars or course. help & assistance: Provides access to a short introduction to the use of the system, in the future to its user manual. 3.2 Description of the Functions 3.2.1 Registering to the System This function allows an institution to provide a list of persons belonging to the institution (faculties, students, ..) who are authorised to use the system. The registered user is provided with a user name and password. The system then knows to which institution the user belongs. As a consequence a registered user of a given institution can be authorised to access the LR put together by a group of educational institutions. For example all Business Schools of a given alliance can decide to allow their faculties to access each others LR. 3.2.2 Searching for a Course Description or a Learning Resource This function allows a registered user to search for a specific learning resource: for example an introduction to the town accounting plan or a complete course or seminar to a topic at a certain level such as an introductory seminar to the accounting plan of French town. In this latter case the user may wish to search for course descriptions on a given topic, ie their syllabus, describing the course with the topics treated at each class and the associated LR. Two types of search are allowed in UNIVERSAL simple and advanced. 3.2.3 Booking and Delivery of a Learning Resource This function allows a registered user to book and import a learning resource. At the present stage two types of contracts are available to book a LR.. free access or restricted access to the members of a given organisation or association of organisations. The contract is there to provide protection of intellectual property rights and is a key element for decision by potential providers of LR.