Assessing the results over the last few years, Digital 21 is a strategy primarily focused on infrastructure development and adoption. While the government may have made strides in establishing ubiquitous infrastructure and increasing general take-up of PC and the Internet in the territory, the entire economy is still failing to take full advantage of IT. Our e-commerce activities for example are still very limited. According to the findings on the Annual Survey on IT Usage and Penetration, only 9.6 percent of local enterprises had ordered or purchased goods or services via electronic means in 2003. With only 1.1 percent and 13.6 percent of these firms having sold and delivered goods or services respectively. It is clear that most local enterprises merely use IT for communications or marketing purposes and rarely integrate IT into their internal and external business operation. Too few of them are aware of the true value of IT.
E-government is another example of how the government has failed to make clear to the population the real benefits of accessing e-public services. To the government's credit, to date, more than 90 percent of public services are available online. But the government scores poorly on securing sufficient take-up by the public of these online services. The public is unlikely to want to use e-public services because users currently must undergo cumbersome procedures to utilize such services. When applying for a driving license, for example, one often needs to upgrade their operating system (which must be Microsoft Windows), and then visit the post office personally to obtain an e-Cert before they can make a electronic transaction with the government. Without a customer-oriented promotion strategy, it is not surprising that the utilization rate of e-certs remains low since it was introduced to Hong Kong in 2000.
The government often justifies its significant investment in e-public services by the potential to improve their operational efficiency and release resources from front line services such as service counters. However, while usage of e-public services is far from satisfactory, the government is still running most of these frontline services instead of closing them. This may be a way for the government to please the public by not reducing the existing front line services, even though these service are available online. But the government now has to bear the additional cost of operating public services online and offline simultaneously which in turn doubles public spending.
Traditional thinking about e-government may be focused on getting as many services online as possible, as quickly as possible. But a meaningful e-government is far more than this. The true value of e-government must deliver return on investment. If the usage of e-public services are low, the potential benefits of e-government will never be realized. It also implies that the significant investment in e-government programs would be wasted. For our e-government initiatives to make any progress, it is high time for the government to rethink its strategy and pursue a program that will deliver real return on investment.
Sin Chung-kai is Hong Kong's Legislative Councillor for IT. Contact him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Quelle: IDG Communications, 20.01.2004
