• Increase in customer satisfaction and better service integration
• Increase in service satisfaction by developing a single portal providing a range of packaged and single services in ways that make sense to customers
• Branding a municipality as a model user and bringing its citizens into the digital world
• Putting the municipality ahead of its class, and so increasing its competitive position for attracting trade and investment
• Public perception that good government manifests itself in a concern for and action on service delivery improvements, customer choice and convenience

• Citizens want services to be more accessible: at times and places (weekends and evenings) convenient to them
• The service experience is expected to be more responsive: knowing where to start, who to see, getting action on their request
• Citizens want service to be delivered in a way that saves them time

• Moving to e-Government has the potential to transform and improve the relationship between citizens and their municipal representatives and staff
• e-Government services can increase customer participation in municipal activities, provide better and more information to customers, make transactions more efficient and make it easier for citizens to access services
• The move to e-Government enables municipalities to raise their delivery methods to the level that citizens have come to expect by virtue of their dealings with the private sector

• Capacity to manage the change process in the municipality
• Redesigned business processes

At the first meeting of the interested parties, it was decided to have a “how to manual” produced to provide guidance for all municipal units wishing to initiate or further develop their e-Government services.

The e-Government Joint Venture Committee contracted CGI to produce a 130 page document, Transition to Single-Window Government (e-Government) was published in the Local Government Resource Handbook

• To identify, enhance or establish a service delivery environment which may be utilized by municipalities to provide consistent, effective, high quality electronic delivery of services to their clients.
• To enhance electronic linkages among all levels of government.
• To do this in the context of the broader singlewindow e-government initiative.
• Enable electronic service delivery that enhances client service for municipalities.
• Maximize the use of existing and emerging e-Government tools and knowledge within the province and elsewhere.
• Develop a transaction infrastructure that will support municipal e-Government implementations.
• Identify or develop standards and best practices to guide the establishment of new municipal eservice interfaces.
• Integration of all municipal and provincial eservices to provide single window access.

• Economies of scale
• Pooling of transaction volumes for discounts
• Lower cost services
• Single window for gov’t services to provide consistency
• Citizen convenience
• Increase knowledge and best practice sharing
• Inventing wheels once
• Make process easier for smaller municipalities
• Efficiency of application ‘blueprints’
• Menu of available services
• Ability to provide services that municipalities
wouldn’t have resources or ability to provide alone or soon
• Faster implementation

• In 2002, SNSMR purchased the licence for the Google search engine to use on the Province’s Web site as “Ask Joe Howe.” As part of the licencing agreement with Google, the Province of Nova Scotia was able to share this search engine with municipalities starting in 2003 at no cost to the municipality. Many municipalities now have “Ask Joe Howe”.
  
  
• In 2003, SNSMR developed a template for municipal web site development. This was developed with Cape Breton Regional Municipality and was available for use by all municipalities.
  
  
• In 2004, the e-Government Joint Venture Committee and UNISYS did an audit of a number of municipalities to determine the potential for on-line payments for all municipal services. Due to the service charges on credit cards, the payment of taxes was not reasonable. Other than parking ticket payments for some municipalities, it was determined that most municipalities did not have the number of transactions warrant the development of municipal on-line services.
  
  

Municipal/Provincial e-Government Joint Ventures Committee (Phase 3) (2004 - 2007)

The e-Government Joint Venture Committee continued to meet on an informal basis, usually every two to three months, with representatives from municipalities, UNSM, AMA and the Province. The main objective of the committee is to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas, sharing of experiences and programs, reviewing presentations from other government officials and consultants on matters pertaining to e-government. The topics have ranged from on-line payments, electronic voting, web site development, on-line surveys, recreation registration and payment to e-councils.

The accomplishments during this phase included:

• The e-Government Joint Venture Committee approached SNSMR to negotiate with Selfsurveys.com to provide the service to all Nova Scotia municipalities.
  
  
  
• The e-Government Joint Venture Committee, SNSMR and UNISYS worked with the Town of Wolfville and CBRM, to host their parking ticket payments with the SNSMR on-line payment system.
  
  

• The e-Government Joint Venture Committee sponsored the development of the e-Council system with the Town of Wolfville. Through this project, the committee hired UNISYS to also consult with the Towns of Truro, HRM and CBRM to develop a 38 page e-Council Best Practices Guide. This report was published in January 2006 as section 2.4 of the Local Government Resource Handbook and sent to all municipalities.
  
  
  
• The e-Government Joint Venture Committee held a number of on-site meetings at to view the e-Council systems at CBRM, Town of Truro, Town of Wolfville, HRM and the Municipality of Argyle.
  
  
  
• The e-Government Joint Venture Committee hosted a number of information sessions from a variety of organizations and businesses on recreation registration programs, on-line voting and website development.
  
  
• The e-Government Joint Venture Committee and SNSMR developed a more user-friendly municipal website template, where specialized training is not required to manage this website. http://www.municipal-website-venture.com
  
  
• Based on the development of the SNSMR two municipal website templates, the e-Government Joint Venture Committee contracted UNISYS to develop a 78 page Website Best Practices Guide. This report was published in December 2006 as section 2.6 of the Local Government Resource Handbook and sent to all municipalities.
  
  
• The e-Government Joint Venture Committee and the Association of Municipal Administrators have joined forces to develop the AMA-Municipal Website Venture to manage the new municipal website template for 14 municipalities, commencing in May 2007.