Two is company, but 21 is definitely a crowd. Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is the region's largest multilateral grouping and (one hopes) an excellent forum for trade-related issues. But as the largely inconsequential outcome of last year's 2nd Apec High-Level Symposium on e-Government shows, e-government and regional declarations of intent make for uneasy bedfellows. A joint statement of ministers present at the meeting, in Mexico, welcomed the Telecommunications and Information Working Group's work on 'Progress Towards Adopting and Implementing the WTO Reference Paper on Basic Telecommunications' and 'Best Practices for Implementing the WTO Reference Paper', and noted the value of this work in the context of WTO capacity building.
I understand that the APEC High-Level Symposium on e-Government's report will be prodded a bit by senior officials, discussed a bit more, and then eventually be raised as further discussion points at 'relevant meetings next year'. A less inspiring call to action would be harder to conceive. And this shouldn't come as any surprise.
Think local, act local
The momentum for e-government is local. Governments are looking to serve citizens better, and at lower cost, in order to curry favour with their electorates. Regional e-government goals make no sense to the man or woman on the top of the bus in Kowloon - their expectations are rooted in a local context, such as booking a wedding registry online to nab an auspicious date, reviewing their tax affairs, or raising a complaint.
The vision of regional e-government goals might make sense to government administrators in the febrile environment of an Acapulco hotel, but their concerns were far removed from those of citizens in Kowloon, or Kuala Lumpur, or Kolkata, or ... you get the picture.
Regional forums certainly have important roles to play in sharing implementation experience. But at the end of the day, making headway against the institutional inertia of the public sector is difficult enough already, without being hypnotised by a consensus-driven approach embracing 21 very different public administration environments.
Asian governments have made great progress in their leverage of technology in recent years. They will continue to do so only if e-government policy remains closely focused on domestic considerations.
Autor: James Smith
Quelle: Public Sector Technology & Management, 04.01.2005
