“The average daily visits to the myGovernment portal increased from 6,144 in 2006 to 16,714 in 2008. In 2009, the average daily visits to the myGovernment portal has risen to 20,769,” she said in an e-mail reply to StarBizWeek.
She was refuting claims by global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co which stated that despite spending enormous amounts on web-based initiatives, government agencies often failed to meet users’ needs online.
In a report, McKinsey & Co said that despite the continued allocation of enormous resources, progress on the e-government front appeared to have plateaued over the past few years.
“Many new e-government initiatives have neither generated the anticipated interest among users nor enabled clear gains in operational efficiency,” it said.
In the face of the unprecedented fiscal constraints and users’ heightened expectations based on the integration of the Internet into their daily life and work, it said it was imperative that the public sector refined its approach to e-government to ensure that these initiatives achieved maximum impact.
Nor Aliah said since 2006, the total number of hits to the portal had steadily increased by 20%. “There were 16 million visits to the myGovernment portal from 2006 until June 2009.”
Mampu is a governing body responsible for “modernising and reforming” the public sector. Among its main objectives are to conduct research in public administration, human resources, formulate policy for the modernisation of the public sector and to report to the Cabinet and/or Parliament.
The myGovernment portal is a one-stop centre or single point of access to facilitate the general public in accessing information and online services offered by government agencies.
“As at July 15, 2,995 downloadable forms and 1,277 online services were available at the portal. On average, there are 18,511 visitors to the portal per day,” Nor Aliah said.
She said the e-filing initiative introduced by the Inland Revenue Board to facilitate tax payers in filing their income tax returns online had also accelerated the payment of income tax online.
“In 2007, a total 874,814 tax payers used the e-filing system, an increase of 369.5% compared with 2006.
As at July 31, a total of 1,552,128 tax payers used the e-filing system, an increase of 30% compared with (the corresponding period in) 2008,” she said.
The usage of e-Filing also facilitated and expedited the collection of taxes. “The total tax collection in 2008 was RM90.65bil compared with RM74.70bil in 2007, an increase of 21.34%,” she said.
Meanwhile, online payment of traffic summonses showed a five-fold increase in 2008, that is 47,942 transactions in 2008 compared with 9,373 in 2007.
In terms of online renewal of licences, the number of learner driver’s licences renewed increased from 87,892 in 2007 to 135,134 in 2008, up 53%.
“(Renewal of) competent driver’s licences too saw an increase in the number of transactions namely from 687 in 2007 to 2,302 in 2008,” Nor Aliah said.
From 2007 to May 2009, there were 195,000 transactions using the Companies Commission of Malaysia e-lodgement service (renewal of business registration and renewal of company secretary licence).
“A total of 324,900 transactions were made using e-info from July 2006 to 2008. A steady increase of online transactions has been seen each year, that is 16,819 in 2006, 85,847 in 2007 and 222,234 in 2008.
“On the housing sector, house developers have renewed 316 housing development licences from January 2009 until July 2009, via the Housing Ministry and Local Authority Portal,” Nor Aliah said.
However, although government agencies have continuously monitored their portals and websites, there are bound to be hiccups.
“Generally, citizens are still not aware of the services that can be transacted online or the multi-farious information that is available online.
“Then there are others, especially the older generation, who still prefer to have face-to-face interaction with the counter staff at the government agencies. Hence, the need to create awareness is a significant one,” said Nor Aliah.
She said the Government was also concerned about the quality of the public sector’s websites in terms of accuracy and information updates, lack of/or poor use of English and poor navigation capabilities.
“Apart from that, it has been found that some of the links to the government websites are broken and not accessible,” she said.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Eileen Hee
Quelle/Source: The Malaysia Star, 26.09.2009
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