IfG.CC - The Potsdam eGovernment Competence Center

Internet experiences with the private sector have raised the bar in terms of expectations in the delivery of citizen-centric service and this poses as one of the major challenges in turning any e-government into reality. Gartner’s senior analyst, Bob Hayward, identified rising expectations of better citizen-centric services to include self service, better access, customised services, immediate services and results and customer focused services that are better, faster and cheaper.

In his presentation on “Re-engineering the face of Government” to top civil servants in Putrajaya recently, Hayward highlighted that resistance to change in the public sector as another challenge, which inhibits e-Government transformation.

Hayward was in Malaysia at the invitation of Oracle Corporation Malaysia.

“It is not technology that is the challenge. Nine 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 (IS) organisation, organisational matters such as pre-Information Age organisational models, multiple jurisdictions, turf battles and internal policies rank right on top,” Hayward said in a statement today.

Internal processes for human resources, procurement and funding rank second and then only comes technology which includes issues like standards, data integration, legacy maintenance and privacy and security that have to be tackled.

Specifically for Malaysia, improving core government applications and integrating more services across agencies are key priorities in moving forward in its e-government transformation.

Marketing and the attention to monitoring and measuring progress are other priority areas.

Hayward said with the 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) are impressive, quoting the example of MyKad project.

However, he pointed out that Malaysia could still move ahead from this by addressing these four priorities.

In this context, Malaysia should initially look into integrating the cluster of synergistic services across agencies and increasing transactional services at a national level.

“At the same time, serious attention should also be paid to marketing, that is informing the citizens about the e-government initiatives.

“A common mistake by government is not promoting and informing the citizens of the impressive things they have done and easily accessible online. In general, for every 10 dollars spent by a commercial concern going online, nine dollars go into promotion and research and development,” he added.

Quelle: Daily Express, 07.06.2004