Asia-Pacif9ic Region: Government connectivity a ‘prerequisite’ for economic growth - Cisco President
Tan was speaking following the release of a new FutureGov research report - ‘Government Connectivity, Citizen Engagement and Economic Impact in Asia Pacific’. Cisco partnered with FutureGov to produce the wide-ranging research project into governments in Australia, India, Malaysia and Singapore.
“Having a robust connectivity platform is a prerequisite for economic growth,” Tan said in a video interview. “Many people have talked about the internet as a fourth utility: it has become interwoven into the fabric of people’s lives.”
Greater connectivity is also vital because of increasing citizen demands for seamless public services, he noted. “Citizens’ expectations are definitely increasing,” Tan said. “The internet has a big role in this: citizens are getting a lot of services through the web, and the advent of social media is creating an avenue for dialogue, so they’re much more aware of what’s going on.”
He added that, in the future “you will see a much more vocal citizenry, where they’re far more open to giving feedback and suggestions to government of where they see improvement.”
The connectivity advantage
Some countries are already using the potential of connectivity to their advantage, Tan noted. “In Singapore you can apply online for a passport in all of five minutes, and it can be ready for your collection 48 hours later. That’s a great example of how you can get things done much more effectively, whereas some of the markets in Asia it can take anywhere between a week to two weeks to get a passport with a lot more transactional costs.”
As well as improving the quality of service delivery, greater connectivity can help improve their scope, he said. “It also provides - beyond the basic transactional services - the ability to deliver a whole range of other more impactful services to the population. Take the case of education and healthcare, especially in rural areas, where healthcare practitioners or educational professionals may not be available.”
The obstacles
Asked what advice he has for countries that do not yet have cutting-edge digital services, Tan said that “fundamentally, there needs to be a coherent national plan for what they want to do”.
Also, it is “important to make sure that government brings together various agencies, because that’s where the power of connectivity can be unleashed - moving away from agencies delivery services in a silo to multiple agencies delivering multiple services to citizens.”
Joining up services requires a “a government information network to support service delivery,” he noted, and “the next step is building up robust national broadband infrastructure.” Some countries have combined these steps into one, Tan added.
Further, the “advent of cloud technology is going to be critical,” he believes, because it means that “agencies are able to leverage information and collaborate much more effectively - and many issues that citizens are facing cut across agencies.”
New research launched
The new research report canvassed opinions from over 100 senior officials in Australia, India, Malaysia and Singapore - exploring the interconnection between Citizen Engagement and Economic Impact, and the enabling role of Connectivity.
“The value of this survey is that it gives readers insight into what other people have gone through,” Tan said. “It gives them an idea of what they need to be taking into account, how they can use the research, areas of prioritisation and how they can deliver and execute services.”
The research report will be serialised from 11th August, and forms the basis of a series of inter-governmental dialogues over the course of the next four months.
Watch the full interview with Irving Tan about the research findings on FutureGov TV.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Joshua Chambers
Quelle/Source: futureGov, 11.08.2014
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