For Grzegorz Rogaliñski, sales director at Oracle Polska, the government has been a veritable gold mine. The local subsidiary of the U.S.-based software giant has more than doubled its revenue from state contracts in the past year. But Oracle’s success belies progress made so far on Poland’s electronic government initiative – a program geared toward integrating all state institutions. The scheme is intended to allow Poles to perform all vital communications with the government over the Internet.
“There has to be a change in the culture of citizens and the government,” Rogaliñski said. “They feel they need personal contact to make all transactions with the authorities.”
He said the notoriously slow procedures for conducting most government-to-citizen and intra-government transactions – such as paying taxes and registering cars – cannot merely be blamed on a lack of state funding, but is engrained in Polish culture.
“For Oracle, the government is the fastest growing part of the market,” he said. “But people are just too used to face-to-face contact. In fact, we are trying to convince some of our customers, especially large city governments, to allow more online transactions.”
So far Oracle Polska has 700 government contracts and hopes to win more as the country continues to adapt to modern technology and moves toward European Union membership, expected in 2004. But for a lot of citizens, the government isn’t moving fast enough.
Tomasz Kulisiewicz, an adviser at the Polish Chamber of Information Technology and Telecommunications, has been pushing for the government to challenge its reputation as a technological backwater.
“To register my new address, I had to stand in three queues,” Kulisiewicz said. “There is no reason why I should not be able to apply for that change via e-mail. I should be able to download the form and send it back. But I have to go to the offices myself.”
He said the current system also opens the door to fraud.
“If you don’t want to pay taxes, all you have to do is change your address three times,” he said. Apart from citizens not being able to communicate with the government, the various ministries are also not linked electronically, he said. As a result, Western companies, for example, are pushing the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) leadership to adopt modern technologies.
“Poland needs a ‘mentality revolution,’ ” said Jerzy Bebak the marketing director at Apple IMC Poland, which has already carried several contracts with the government.
He said that each state agency has a different software platform, making them enormously difficult to integrate, and in some cases, communication impossible.
“Some integrated solutions would allow you to fill out your ZUS (Social Insurance Administration) papers via your palmtop connected to the network via mobile phone, while sitting in your car during a five-minute traffic jam,” he said.
The prospect of EU membership is also an important factor in bringing e-government up to speed, Rogaliñski said.
He said that most of the government contracts Oracle Polska has performed so far have dealt with beefing up Poland’s technology to meet EU standards.
“A lot of the advancement is the result of the EU,” he said.
On that note, Kulisiewicz said the government hired Wojciech Szewko in July to head the State Committee for Scientific Research (KBN) and rack up the government’s adaption of new technologies. Szewko will not have an easy task, according to Kulisiewicz. “The job is really tough with all the IT problems,” he said.
Quelle: Warsaw Business Journal
