Jane Fountain, director of the National Center for Digital Government, spoke at the Knowledge Management in Asia Pacific conference hosted by Victoria University last week, highlighting the problems the US has had creating 25 inter-agency Web portals.
Without collaboration agencies also purchase the same equipment, missing out on potential savings. They also track the projects poorly, and not enough have solid plans to connect their IT with their goals.
This often results in simply "putting the status quo online" – automating the problems inherent in the agency, rather than using e-government as a chance to fix them.
"Technology can be used to reconceptualise how we think of government and governance. We have the ability in the information age to make a lot of red tape go away."
Bureaucrats often have "perverse incentives" for e-government projects, she says, because traditionally they've vied for more staff and resources but e-government projects often involve slimming both.
There's also a conflict between the hierarchical and strict separation of responsibility in bureaucracies, and the distributed approach of networks where responsibility isn't so clear.
The US spends 80 per cent of its non-staff $US50 billion IT budget on consultants, and Professor Fountain says this can lead to problems. Consultants often bring in private sector ideas that don't fit into government, such as a customer service mentality.
"We don't need to import consumerist principles into government. It's much more rich and valuable to revitalise the notion of citizenship."
Autor: Reuben Schwarz
Quelle: Stuff, 05.12.2005
