The first Asia Pacific eGovernment Readiness Survey 2006 was conducted by Fairfax Business Research and sponsored by content and business process management vendor, FileNet. The white paper surveyed IT executives in 112 public sector organisations in Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore.
Significant disparities between countries. For example, Australia and Singapore are two of APAC’s most technologically advanced countries, but almost 50% of Australian government IT execs said there were few systems and processes in place to enable their organisation to leverage the internet, while only 14% of Singaporeans concurred.
The top two business drivers for eGovernment implementation were operational and cost efficiency followed by enhancing citizen self-service.
Hong Kong and Singapore provided the highest rate of Internet-enabled process automation at around 80%.
More than 56% of interviewees reported that they had no records management systems in place.
Two-thirds of respondents said knowledge transfer was either an adhoc, informal process or was barely done at all.
When asked to nominate suppliers of enterprise content management systems, 63% were unable to give a response.
Respondents appear to understand the value of eGovernment, with 97% of their senior management having either good or some understanding of the processes required to better serve citizens.
Peter Hind, senior analyst for Fairfax Business Research, said: “Public sector organisations will continue to face challenges finding the necessary budgets to meet the growing demand for their services. The only way this can be achieved is by providing these services more efficiently. This research suggests eGovernment could help them do just that.”
Mr Hind cited the perennial pressure to lower taxes while demands on public funds escalate because, for example, the Asia Pacific region’s aging population needs more medical care and rising numbers of young people enroll in higher education.
“The research clearly shows that while public sector organisations have made progress, eGovernment in its entirety is not widely implemented. In particular, there is a lack of adequate information management capabilities. Organisations are capturing online transactions but many are failing to harness the information internally,” said Hugh Sutherland, FileNet’s Vice President, Asia Pacific.
“This means they lack a disciplined way to track the full lifecycle of records, ensure the appropriate security of content, which potentially includes confidential information on citizens, and ensure the destruction of content at the end of its lifecycle.”
Autor: Stan Beer
Quelle: ITWire, 07.03.2006