Egovernment and The Future
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E - Government is our Future - Syed Nazir Razik
E - Government is the use of Information technology in particular the Internet to deliver public services in a much more convenient, customer oriented, cost effective and altogether different and better way.
The egovernment movement is being driven by the need for government to:
- Cut costs and improve efficiency
- Meet citizen expectations and improve citizen relationship
- Facilitate economic development
By using the Internet the cost of processing transactions is greatly reduced with savings in paper and printing, mailing and personnel. Online transactions can streamline processes and lead to greater efficiencies and less human interaction. Connecting all schools and public libraries like in Canada is a great initiative by which the department of education can bring egovernance to the academic levels. Filing of Income tax in Australia is completely web enabled and gaining wild popularity as a more easy and efficient process for interacting with government.
The current scenario is such that each department is an island and holds information refusing to share the same with other departments. Egovernment is about linking such islands of digital information across various departments and bringing them online whenever necessary to serve the Citizen, business entity or other departments. The legal frameworks of such governing process should be so placed that it facilitates better cooperation between governmental bodies and other departments, rather than dictating to others and one beating off the other. When egovernment is in place that will proactively encourage businesses and consumer confidence to go online.
Think big start small and scale fast should be order for bringing in Egovernment. Online IT implementation priority should be given to those applications wherein there are repetitive transactions with the people, businesses. We can provide seamlessly integrated services to the people at their doorstep through the Internet as a government portal. No more standing on long queues or waiting for office hours to interact government and other bodies. Egovernment can bring about “Any time anywhere access to the right person�. The cost of developing online services is modest when we look at the utility value and cost incurred on other delivery channels.
Government always has records on citizens right from birth to death compiling records on just about everything they do: where they work, where and with whom they live, how much they earn, where and when they travel, what they drive. Bank records, health records, and travel immigration records. Also if there is debt or criminal records. All this information is held in different departments collected for different purposes but with a common objective of serving the people better. From the people point of view same information is collected repetitively by different departments thus creating “information islands�. This information is hardly shared across departments’ reasons being lack of integration of various platforms and lack of a legal framework for information sharing.
Egovernance is not just about government web site and e-mail. It will change how citizens relate to governments as much as it changes how citizens relate to each other. It will bring forth, new concepts of citizenship, both in terms of needs and responsibilities.
Why e-Governance?
Government cannot exist or function in isolation. For a government to operate effectively, a government-community-citizen infrastructure should be in place. This would result in a sturdy and meaningful information flow between the government and citizens of a nation.
A close-knit infrastructure would yield two fold benefits, which would save time and money for all concerned. First, citizens can enjoy faster, effective and timely government services. This would also evolve a culture of self-service wherein citizens can help themselves wherever and whenever required. Secondly, government can become more integrated into the community itself. Also government can focus its resources where they are needed the most.
What reform has e-Governance has in store?
Automation: Replacing current human-executed processes, which involve accepting, storing, processing, outputting or transmitting information. For example, the automation of existing clerical functions.
Informatisation: Supporting current human-executed information processes. For example, supporting current processes of decision-making, communication, and decision implementation.
Transformation: Supporting new human-executed information processes. For example, creating new methods of public service delivery.
Five main benefits to Egovernance for development:
Efficiency gains
Governance that is cheaper: producing the same outputs at lower total cost.
Governance that does more: producing more outputs at the same total cost.
Governance that is quicker: producing the same outputs at the same total cost in less time.
Effectiveness gains: Governance that works better: producing the same outputs at the same total cost in the same time, but to a higher quality standard. Governance that is innovative: producing new outputs.
Information Technology and Information Highway will together remove the boundaries between various sub-functions of government. Not only this, it will also remove the precincts between governments worldwide because service delivery will now be centralized around the needs of citizens and not on political structures. Thus, it will aim at ushering a new government-citizen network by collapsing the boundaries created by political and historical structures and the focus is on who best can add and build value.
The fundamental strategic challenge faced is e-Readiness for e-Governance. This is a multi-fold challenge posing basic questions such as
- Is the Data Systems Infrastructure Ready?
- Is the Legal Infrastructure Ready?
- Is the Institutional Infrastructure Ready?
- Is the Human Infrastructure Ready?
- Is the Technological Infrastructure Ready?
- Is the Leadership and Strategic Thinking Ready?
These fundamental issues may be clubbed together in following three categories:
Hardware related (Technology Issues)
Software related (Technology Issues)
People Practices (Process Issues)
As the various bodies of Governments function autonomously, it is likely that they might go in for heterogeneous hardware/software platforms. Integration of the data and integration of subsets of these applications from all of these on a common platform may pose a problem in the near future.With e-Governance, a reinvigorated, digital-era government is at hand. When governments, citizens, and private sector partners redefine and reengage their roles, better government—better governance—will be the result.
Existing governments Web sites provide customers with access to government information, allow simple transactions, and provide links to other relevant agencies. But it’s clear that e-Government is no longer just about “webifying� government agencies. The imperatives are to re-engineer enterprise processes across agencies, to integrating disparate systems and applications, and to provide secure and responsive access to citizens and businesses.
While this is a big endeavor, the clarity of the vision helps to cut through the marketing noise, allowing agencies to focus on the important criteria for IT investments:
How can we simplify to serve our customers better?
How can we unify our systems and applications with other agencies?
The answer to both questions may be an enterprise portal, which provides an attractive and consistent interface where customers can securely sign-in and access tailored views of information and transactions across relevant agencies. An enterprise portal improves user satisfaction by simplifying interaction and delivering a unified view across the organization. Unifying systems is not about knocking down the walls between organizations and creating a one-size-fits-all application. Instead, an enterprise portal unifies by making those walls permeable to information flow, synchronizing data and creating secure path-ways of interaction. And a portal simplifies by delivering information in a coordinated, meaningful form – not just to citizens, but also to your agency’s decision-makers. Data flows more efficiently and processes can be re-engineered. The benefits are clear: eliminate redundancy, improve worker productivity, make more informed decisions, and collaborate within and across agencies.
When we talk about unifying disparate business systems across departments running on heterogeneous computing environment(s) on mainframes, adding to the complexities of the systems. Transforming and integrating such systems into an “open system� ensures all these systems remain in sync with each other.
Organizations have two choices to overcome the drawbacks encountered in a traditional legacy system:
ď€ Develop a web-based system from scratch OR
Transform the existing legacy system into a web-based system
The latter option is faster and cost effective. Transformation methodologies use the same business rules by extracting them from the programs and grouping them into components, which are then used to build a web-based system. This process ensures that the new system has all the features and processes of the legacy system, obviating the need for designing a new system. The user now has a new system that provides the same functionality, but with a user-friendly interface.
Advantages of Legacy Transformation
The advantages that a web-based system offers over traditional legacy systems are:
• Reduced costs (adding new resources, training, maintenance)
• Improved access to the system through re-deployment and re-orientation of existing hardware and software resources
• Anytime, anywhere secured access to Users and Customers
• Easy access to Users over the Internet since no extra hardware or software is required to access the application
• Ease of maintenance from a Programming / Maintenance group perspective
• User-friendly interface that requires minimal training / re-training
• Ease in deployment and enhancement of functionality
Streamline Government Processes
To do more with less, governments are building Web sites that:
• Centralize procurement and slash order-processing costs.
• Comply with disclosure laws and trim printing costs by putting public records, manuals, and brochures online.
• Improve reporting accuracy and reduce costs through electronic report distribution.
• Dispose of surplus property profitably through online public auctions.
• Manage online applications and fund disbursement tracking.
• Sell government securities.
• Process income tax returns, collect income and property taxes, and distribute refunds.
• Let employees manage their own personnel records, health insurance, and retirement plans.
• Enable employees to record timesheets and file travel and expense reports.
• Implement wireless handheld applications to support public works projects and manage vehicle fleets
--Syed Nazir Razik 13 September 2005 21:55 (CEST)
