Chinese e-government is booming. More than 90 government portals have been established by China's central government. But when you look at the regional and municipal government level the number is far greater: over the last three years the number of government web sites has passed 10,000. "China's market capacity of e-government will reach CNY 40 billion (US$4.8 billion)," predicts Wang Xuan, Vice Chairman of China's National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).
Although much of this online activity amounts to little more than 'web-gloss' for unchanged bureaucratic procedures, a significant minority have integrated existing service procedures with the online channel. Virtual offices, online examination, permit applications and official notification are key areas of focus, particularly at the city government level.
However this civic activism poses challenges for the next stage of e-governance in China.
"China's e-government construction has come to a crucial point and is facing a series problems and choices," warns Yang Fengchun, Professor of Peking University. "The further development will largely depend on whether we can adopt right measures and common standards to solve existing problems."
"Several bottlenecks are beginning to impact e-government development. The lack of standards is one of them," says Liu Yankee, Vice Director of General Office of People's Government of Tannin Municipality.
Since China's e-government construction is conducted separately and independently without unified planning, most e-government systems fail to interconnect with each other. The current lack of e-government standards is leading to a proliferation of information islands at a civic level - digitised pools of information that remain entirely inaccessible to related organisations.
As a result one of e-government's key benefits - the liberation of citizen information from legacy data silos - is failing to be realised. At present, the demand for data sharing becomes very urgent. Standardisation naturally becomes the focus of e-government construction.
China and foreign country's e-government practices have also proved that e-government construction must be based on standardisation to realise connectivity, information sharing, and business coordination.
The Chinese government has attached great importance to standard drafting. As revealed by a government official, China's e-government standardisation guide has been basically completed. Two part of e-document standard has been finished and is in trial operation now. Other standards are also under drafting.
"Standardisation is an urgent need in e-government construction," adds Wang Xuan. Wang pointed out that China's e-government standardisation construction should fall in line with international practice, since this would be quite helpful for Chinese products to enter global markets.
Autor: Edmund Tan.
Quelle: Public Sector Technology & Management, 06.07.2004
