“There are five key areas when we envision Taiwan’s intelligent government,” said Su. “They are citizen-centric and on-demand e-services, citizen participation through increasing transparency, mobile access to citizen services, social networking and web 2.0, and ICT-enabled green services,” said Su, who appreciated the opportunity to share Taiwan’s journey with his peers from China.
Taiwan has been termed a ‘wisdom or technology island’ due to its e-government accomplishments. Since 1998, it has been enjoying a steady increase in efficiency and effectiveness. Su showed a graph that showed 45-degree progress in public sector performance over the years.
“We started by establishing our infrastructure in the first three years. That was followed by the development of our e-government programme from 2001 to 2004, where we replaced many face-to-face processes with electronic ones,” described Su.
“The third phase, called ‘e-Taiwan’, focused on the horizontal and vertical integration of e-services to improve efficiency. After which, ‘U-Taiwan’ was launched to provide pervasive services to increase transparency, accountability and citizen participation.”
The tax portal is an excellent example of an e-service which was well-received by citizens. In 2010, 67.1 per cent of 4.9 million tax payers filed their individual income tax via the internet. More than 20 million Taiwanese have applied for individual income tax through the portal since it started in 2002.
The government procurement online (government-to-business) web site, which was introduced to promote efficiency and transparency, has experienced much success. Government agencies have posted close to 1.9 million tender announcements and reported cost savings of $1.2 billion Taiwanese dollars.
“E-government empowers citizens and enhances good governance. Giving them power results in a strong citizenry and a strong government. How does e-government give people power? Technology makes it easier, cheaper and more effective to make changes,” he explained. “It also gives citizens more power to scrutinize government. This transparency will highlight waste and dishonesty.”
Today, Taiwan needs a lot of capital, human resources and leadership support to create an ‘Intelligent Taiwan’. According to Su, the heart of this stage is transformation using web 2.0 technologies. “It is important to have leadership support now. As long as there is support, we will have capital and human resources which is critical for success.”
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Kelly Ng
Quelle/Source: futureGov, 01.09.2010
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