Research firm Gartner considers this one of the key challenges to e-government transformation. Its senior analyst, Bob Hayward, identified rising expectations of better citizen-centric services to include 24x7 availability, self-service, better access, customised services, immediate service and results, and customer-focused services that are better, faster and cheaper. Hayward was in Malaysia recently at the invitation of Oracle Corporation Malaysia.
In his presentation on Re-engineering the face of Government to top civil servants here recently, he highlighted resistance to change in the public sector as another challenge, Oracle Malaysia said in a statement.
“It is not technology that is the challenge. Nine times out of 10, the problem to speedy and smooth e-government transformation has little to do with technology.
"In the hierarchy of challenges of the 'Government Information System organisation,' organisational matters such as pre-Information Age organisational models, multiple jurisdictions, turf battles and internal politics, and legislative fiefdoms, rank right on top,” he said.
Internal processes for human resources, procurement and funding rank second in the hierarchy of challenges, and then only comes technology.
Technology challenges includes issues like standards, data integration, legacy maintenance and privacy and security.
For Malaysia, improving core government applications and integrating more services across agencies are key priorities in moving forward in its e-government transformation, Hayward said.
Marketing and the attention to monitoring and measuring progress were the other priority areas.
Hayward said that with strong support for e-government, Malaysia has made good progress in re-engineering the business of government by using and taking advantage of ICT.
The flagship applications of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) were impressive, he said, quoting the example of the MyKad smartcard/ national ID card project.
However, he pointed out that progress has somewhat slowed recently but considers this to be a normal phenomenon.
"It is common for the initial wave of enthusiasm to abate and governments to pull back to re-evaluate and re-think on all that has been done," Hayward said.
Malaysia could still move ahead from this by addressing the four priorities cited above. The country should initially look into integrating the cluster of synergistic services across agencies and increasing transactional services at a national level, he said.
“At the same time, serious attention should also be paid to marketing -- that is, informing citizens about e-government initiatives.
"A common mistake by governments is not promoting and informing their citizens of the impressive things they have done and made easily accessible online," he added.
Quelle: The Star, 18.05.2004
