E-Government
Government has not traditionally enjoyed the benefit of a good name in relation to the provision of its services to citizens who typically view the Government or Public Service as a slow bureaucratic leviathan with an indolent and de-motivated workforce seemingly intent solely on frustrating the daylights of the general populace. I once heard the late President Burnham describe a public servant as someone who spends a significant portion of the day imbibing copious glasses of ice water and the rest of the day expelling it from his system.
There is no doubt however that a well run and efficient government service is necessary for development. Indeed citizens nowadays apply the same standards of efficiency to the public service as they do to the private sector and have similar expectations for performance in relation to the provision of government services.
Many governments have therefore turned to information and communications technologies in the effort to re-engineer and improve the level of services they have traditionally provided to their citizens and indeed to invent and offer newer and innovative ones. This is a phenomenon that has come to be known as "e-government". It may also simply be viewed as moving citizen services online, i.e. the technology-enabled transformation of government to reduce costs and at the same time promote economic development, increase transparency, improve service delivery and public administration, and facilitate the advancement of an information society. Formally it may be defined as:
The use of information and communications technologies to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, transparency and accountability of government. These technologies can serve a variety of different ends: better delivery of government services to citizens, improved interactions with business and industry, citizen empowerment through access to information, or more efficient government management.
E-Government Modalities
E-Government usually describes relationships across 3 modalities:
- Government to Citizen: deals with the relationship between government and citizens. G2C allows citizens to access government information and services instantly, conveniently, from everywhere, by use of multiple channels.
- Government to Business: consists of e-interactions between government and the private sector. The opportunity to conduct online transactions with government reduces red tape and simplifies regulatory processes, therefore helping businesses to become more competitive.
- Government to Government: Governments depend on other levels of government within the state to effectively deliver services and allocate responsibilities. In promoting citizen-centric service, a single access point to government is the ultimate goal, for which cooperation among different governmental departments and agencies is necessary. G2G facilitates the sharing of databases, resources and capabilities, enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of processes.
The Traditional Way of Conducting
Business with the Government
Traditionally the interaction between a citizen or business and a government agency takes place in a government ministry, office or agency. The ministry is often the interface between the citizen and the service required. Typically a public servant or public officer will receive and process some request made by a citizen or member of the public. The Revenue Authority, Deeds Registry, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Finance etc., provide examples of agencies where on a daily basis, interaction takes place between the general public and the Government in relation to the provision of varied services. Many of these organizations have introduced computer applications in an effort to improve their service level. Unfortunately, in many cases, these systems and applications are mere computerized versions of the old manual processes and as such the power and sophistication of the computer have not been leveraged to the full extent necessary to produce efficiently re-engineered services that are less costly and significantly enhanced.
Next time, these concepts will be further explored to see the efforts undertaken by others, particularly our sister Caricom countries to transform their government services, and a determination made of the extent to which they have benefited. We will of course also examine the initiatives being taken here in our own country to address this important issue of streamlining the provision of government services to make them transparent, more efficient and less costly.
Please permit me, in the spirit of the festive season, to wish all readers a healthy, successful and prosperous 2007.
--- End of Pt. I
Last time we saw that Government initiatives to automate and streamline its services fell into three classifications viz., those initiatives aimed at ordinary citizens or for short G2C initiatives, those that addressed issues related to business called G2B and lastly those referred to as G2G, which foster communication and between government agencies themselves in an effort to improve efficiency and provide better service. In this latter regard, a good example was seen a little over a week ago when President Jagdeo announced that information technology would be used to integrate several related government services. Agencies that come under the aegis of the Ministry of Home Affairs e.g. the Passport Office, the Police and others were cited as several that would be part of these new arrangements. The word "integrated" as it relates to IT implies connectivity and ability to access and share information across different applications
Re-Engineering Government Services.
We also saw that the traditional way Government provides services is through public servants employed in its ministries and agencies who attend to and process the needs of citizens. Technology however has been applied with very beneficial results by enabling citizens to interact directly with automated systems developed and engineered to provide these services, in many cases without any or very little intervention from human operatives. This very advanced level of e-government development however is not achieved overnight and typically countries pass through several overlapping stages en route to attaining this ideal of being capable to deliver "on-line" digitally based services to citizens.
Stages of e-Government Development
The ubiquitous nature of the internet has naturally resulted in it being extensively used by governments seeking to automate their services. The existence of a central government Internet website and the nature of the facilities available from it are usually therefore a very good indicator of the extent of development of the e-government sector in a country.
Examination of the application and use of the internet by countries that have made imaginative innovations in the delivery of government services by that technology, reveal four stages of development and progression. These are briefly described below:
In countries approaching stage four of their ICT e-government development, citizens can transact online, many common government related services such as the granting of licences of all sorts, processing of applications for passports, registration of companies, land registration and the like. I did an analysis of the government websites of Caricom countries in 2002, to determine the facilities available and to get an insight into the level of development of their e-government facilities. It was found that for the most part, they all were somewhere between stages one and two. Next time we will examine their current status to ascertain what further progress if any has been achieved since then.
Follow up to ICT4D
There has still not been any follow up to the highly publicized ICT for Development (ICT4D) initiatives undertaken in 2006 and this is disappointing to those in the ICT community and cause for some degree of concern. I do not share the view of some sceptics that the event was merely a public relations gimmick intended to impress Guyanese in the run up to the August 2006 general election. My feeling is that the Head of State being very keenly interested in this issue, would like to direct it personally and simply has not had the time to address it. In this regard, I would like to remind His Excellency of an event that occurred a very long time ago and which is recorded in the Book of Exodus. On the journey out of Egypt, Moses met his father in-law Jethro in the Sinai. Jethro observed the utter predicament of Moses who was at his wits end personally trying to deal with and resolve the several administrative and other matters that occurred on a daily basis not the least of which was settling many disputes that regularly surfaced among the many thousands of people. He then gave Moses the following advice: "you should choose some capable men and appoint them as leaders of the people: leaders of thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. They must be God-fearing men who can be trusted and who cannot be bribed. Let them serve as judges of the people on a permanent basis. They can bring all the difficult cases to you, but they themselves can decide all the smaller disputes. That will make it easier for you as they share your burden." (Ex 18, 21-23 Good News ver).
Jethro was exposing Moses to a characteristic that all successful managers and leaders find they must adopt and which nowadays management scientists call by a fancy name viz the principle of managerial delegation. It worked for Moses about four thousand years ago and has worked in countless situations since. Try it, Mr. President !!!
--- End of Pt. II
Examining the government website of a country provides a good insight into its state of e-readiness and how far it has progressed along the road of improving the delivery of government services to citizens by the application of technology.
One should however avoid coming to the erroneous conclusion that a good looking and impressive government Internet website automatically means that a country has made significant progress in automating government services, and that its people have at their disposal a wide range of efficient electronic facilities that make doing business with the government easy and hassle free. The condition as they say is necessary but by no means sufficient.
Stages of e-Government Development
Last time we saw that in general e- government development can be classified into four distinct stages as follows:
- Stage 1. Information is generally available to the public on-line. Government laws, policies, rules, regulations etc relating to a wide range of social economic and financial matters can be obtained from the Internet websites of the relevant government ministries and agencies. Application forms for these services are also available on-line and can be downloaded for completion and subsequent submission to the agency.
- Stage 2. Countries at stage 2 may have developed a single government portal in the Office of the Prime Minister or the President. Some services may have been further automated permitting on-line completion and submission of application forms.
- Stage 3. Infrastructure development and re-engineering of services are evident in countries in stage 3, also inter-agency connectivity permitting the access and sharing of information to facilitate the conduct of business. For example, an agency processing a request for a service that requires the applicant to be tax compliant, may be able to verify this electronically by reference to a relevant data resource provided by the revenue authority.
- Stage 4. Countries at this stage feature full deployment of intelligent electronic government services enhanced with appropriate e-payment applications
Developments in
CARICOM
Caricom has placed great emphasis on the development of the e-government sector of member states. The Caribbean Center for Development and Administration (CARICAD) is the regional agency that has responsibility for spearheading regional e-government activity and providing assistance to member states in areas such as building awareness, conducting e-readiness surveys, stimulating private sector involvement and encouraging legislative reform for accommodating ICT.
Member States
e-Government Facilities
An analysis of the government websites of Caricom countries undertaken in 2002 to determine the facilities available on these sites and to get an insight into the level of e-government development of these countries revealed that most were somewhere between stages one and two.
Not very much has changed since then, although most of the countries have enhanced their websites by improving their appearance and navigability. In Haiti and Suriname, there still seems not to have been the evolvement of a central site owned and operated by the government.
The following information can be obtained from Caricom member states government websites:
- Current Government news, announcements and events
- Information about the Cabinet and Government structure
- Government Ministries and Departments. Many individual ministries and agencies now tend to have their own websites. A listing of these with appropriate hyperlinks is a useful feature to have available on the central governmental site.
- Application Forms for common government services such as the granting of marriage and other licences, issuing of birth and death certificates and passports etc.
- Important publications and reports
- Frequently asked questions or FAQs.
In Guyana, there is no central website for the government although the Office of the President www.op.gov.gy, and the Guyana Government Information Agency (GINA) www.gina.gov.gy perform this function to some degree.
These sites are well put together but their webmasters should recognize that the liberal use of video and to a lesser extent audio content limits the effective coverage that they will achieve at least in Guyana since most subscribers have dial up as opposed to broadband Internet access.
Readers are encouraged to visit the government websites of Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados and to examine the features available from the sites and so get some insight of the extent to which those governments have automated their services.
Further afield the websites of the USA and Singapore www.usa.gov, and www.gov.sg are examples of countries in advanced stages of e-government development.
The "Reach" feature in Singapore http://app.reach.gov.sg/reach/default.aspx presents an innovative use of technology by that administration to encourage citizen discussion and debate on current government policies and initiatives.
Quelle/Source:
- Part I: Stabroek News, 29.12.2006
- Part II: Stabroek News, 12.01.2007
- Part III: Stabroek News, 02.02.2007
