Qinghai is the largest province in China, stretching across the northeastern Tibetan Plateau over an area of 721,000 km2 - 7.5 per cent of the country. But Qinghai has one of the country’s smallest populations; 5.2 million people are scattered in pockets of the vast expanse of mountains, deserts and grasslands.
This population is unevenly distributed. Just over a third of people live in cities, the rest in the countryside. Local government offices are widely spread as a result. Some county district offices are up to 1000 kilometres from the provincial capital Xi’ning.
“With such a small population in such a large area, our state offices are usually dozens of kilometres apart, and are separated by treacherously steep roads,” says Lei Fuyou, Director of Information Technology Office, Qinghai Province. “We are also very prone to natural calamities here [the number of disasters, mostly from severe snowfall or drought, has doubled over the last decade], and the air is low on oxygen at high altitudes. Needless to say holding a meeting between government officials is a tricky business.”
It can take three days for a government official to get to a farflung location in another part of the province. On a day of bad weather, it can take a lot longer. “When the roads are bad, it really isn’t worth risking your life by getting in your car,” says Lei.
The Qinghai government’s Ministry of Information Industry has spent a lot of money on connecting the province using traditional methods. More than 640 million yuan (US$94 million) has gone into providing telephone access for the region’s villages. But still not all are contactable. A harsh climate and forbidding terrain make setting up telecommunications difficult. Of the 4133 administrative villages in the region, 3860 now have access to a phone. Nearly seven per cent of the region’s villages remain uncontactable on the phone.
While broader phone access has helped bridge a communications gap in Qinghai, the introduction of a videoconferencing network last year has changed a lot in how government affairs are conducted. The system has held meetings between more than 100,000 government officials in Qinghai at the same time, and has done so more than 600 times to date. Mr Lei estimates that more than 20 million yuan (US$3 million) has been saved so far in travel expenses.
“Videoconferencing system has improved our operational efficiency, reduced administrative costs, and brought together people that we may have never met in the flesh, so difficult can it be to arrange physical meetings in Qinghai,” says Lei.
So how does it work? The system uses a distributed approach, explains Lei. The provincial government serves as the centre, where the main meeting places are run from the administrative offices in Xi’ning. Other videoconferencing subcentres are located in state offices. In total, 42 county government and 13 provincial party committee offices are connected via videoconferencing, which covers the entire province.
A single administrative system for making appointments allows any part of local government to independently organise a meeting with the whole province if it wants to. The platform is web-enabled and consists of regular desktop phones, of which there are 112 units, and 74 desktop phones which have video.
Since the system was set up two years ago, it has remained stable and reliable, Lei reports. He adds that maintenance costs have been low and the system has required little attention to keep it working properly. It has proved easy to use, glitch-free and secure.
Qinghai’s videconferencing system has helped other e-government projects get coordinated and executed at a faster pace, says Lei. “Videoconferencing has worked like a catalyst for other e-government projects. And unlike so many other projects, the economic and social benefits of our videoconferencing system are immediate and obvious.”
Conferencing has become a symbol of progress in closing the digital divide in Asia. So much so that the Chinese government marked 60 years of diplomatic ties with Vietnam last month by donating a videoconference system. “The system will help speed up the building of e-government in Vietnam and contribute to our social and economic development,” said Nguyen Xuan Phuc, Director of Vietnam’s government office.
Jirapon Tubtimhin is Director of Government Information Technology Infrastructure at Thailand’s National Electronics & Computer Technology Centre (NECTEC). An avid user of the technology himself, Tubtimhin points out that the videoconferencing can play a key role in how government responds to natural disasters, which are not uncommon in Thailand.
“Conferencing plays a big role in disaster prevention and response. It gives you another window through which you can reach the community, and it can help you give detailed early warnings to communities and local government authorities,” he says. “Most importantly, it can help in post disaster situations, allowing governments and relief organisations to communicate with physically isolated groups.”
Technical glitches
Though the benefits are conferencing are often great, the technology itself has not always enjoyed a reputation for reliability. Users complain that videoconferencing systems often suffer from poor picture quality or, worse, connection failure. Benjamin Green is the Unified Communications Practice Manager, Asia Pacific, for Verizon Business. He says that while this reputation was only really accurate eight years ago, he admits that there are two keys areas that could be improved: usability and flexibility.
“It used to be the case that finding the right ISDN number or IP address was a pain, and putting multiple points together was cumbersome,” he says. “But now, to join a conference is as easy as click and join. The industry has come on a long way in making the technology more user friendly - but there is still room for improvement.”
There is also the need to embrace more open platforms, he says. “You need an environment in which the architecture is open so that other applications can be integrated. Yes, I can see you and hear you. But I want to be able to share data with you in real time, too. Public sector end users want a useful collaborative experience. They don’t care which provider helps them get it.”
The future
Lei in China and Tubtimhin in Thailand agree that the future of conferencing technology is convergence; collaborative tools such as instant messaging and conferencing should work together on a single platform. This is happening fast, and the technology is changing to suit demand for more agile government systems.
Public sector bodies that have integrated platforms such as Skype into individual workstations are able to dial out and hold video calls using the latest watchphones, which have voice recognition, text-to-speech technology and high speed data transmission.
Fancy gadgets are all well and good, but Green points out that there are bigger hurdles to jump. “There is an abundance of solutions now available, from instant messaging and audio/video conferencing through to immersive video and presence tools. The question is whether they are used correctly. That requires a better understanding of the technology and its cultural impact.”
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Robin Hicks and Wang Zhen
Quelle/Source: futureGov, 19.01.2010
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