E-Government: moving beyond services

A recent exchange between the members of theW3C group on e-government and the content of the last GSA’s newsletter on Transparency and Open Government, coordinated by Lisa Nelson, got me thinking about how narrowly we often conceive the scope of e-government, and in the process ignore important aspects of governance. 

To most people, e-government is all about better and improved services flowing from the government to the citizen (G2C).  Improvements in service provision usually imply more efficiency in the delivery and services of better quality.  However, the conversion of manual processes to automated processes -which is how most G2C implementation is done- discourages us from using new technologies able to change the paradigm of the relationship between citizens and their government.

Even though I agree that service provision is an important aspect of e-government, there are other aspects in this field that are particularly important for governance in general.  Some of these areas that we need to focus on a bit more are:

• Participation
• Openness/Transparency, and
• Collaboration and Accountability

Participation

Large sections of most developing countries -typically the lowest income populations- are disenfranchised, lacking political participation and voice.  In fact, studies have found that greater economic inequality yields greater political inequality, thus creating a vicious cycle where the poor cannot use the political system to improve their economic situation.  A higher level of income inequality thus translates into a detrimental effect, not only on political interest but also on the frequency of political discussion and participation in elections among all but the most affluent citizens.  This suggests that e-government can strengthen democracy by contributing to increase political participation among the poor.

Unfortunately this is where we get stuck.  Empirical data shows that participation is not typically an important part of e-government programs in poorer countries even though they are the ones who most needed it. 

Openness/Transparency

In spite of many good examples of open government/ transparency, the fundamental change in mind-set that is required for a truly open government has not really taken place anywhere.  In order for this to happen, each civil servant will need to relate in a very different way to data that he/she produces.  Just as journalists today need to be able to have a good handle on legal and copyright issues, social networking tools, and basic news editing and production skills, civil servants will need to be actively involved in the dissemination of data that they produce, in a user-friendly manner.  Infrastructure and interoperability will need to be taken for granted for data to be freely available and usable.  In this process, as much data as possible should be released, withholding only confidential and personal information.  To achieve this, more investment would be needed in building a better search engine and modifying social networking apps for government. 

Collaboration and Accountability

The future of the Web depends on our continued ability to collaborate and access information from different kinds of sources.  In order to collaborate effectively, we need to be able to find information that is relevant to us and we need to be able to share our data without complex conversion processes. Although closely linked, transparency/openness and collaboration alone will not bring about accountability.   Holding public servants and politicians accountable for their actions requires a robust civil society, strong judiciary and legal framework, a free and active press among other factors.  However citizen watchdogs, human rights organizations, non-profits and others that track governance related actions and data can certainly use technology to demand accountability.   

E-governance: A success or a failure?

In the last year of the Vajpayee government, the ministry of information technology announced an ambitious e-governance programme. This was broken up into 26 projects for different ministries, with a budget on average of Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) for each. The vision was grand, the budgets generous, the time-frame five years, and the promise a transformed government that would be unrecognisable from the dysfunctional behemoth that citizens have resigned themselves to. With four of those five years more or less gone, what have we got?

In Gujarat, early this year, Narendra Modi's government issued an order that abolished paper files in the Gandhinagar secretariat. All work in 34 departments would now be done digitally, it decreed -- the implicit promises being speedier processing, better tracking and greater transparency. This is to be extended to the district-level administration as well. Before long, the whole Gujarat government will be a paperless wonder.

At the Centre, the ministry of corporate affairs has digitised the records of 700,000 companies and made all filings and data retrieval on-line. About 25 per cent of all companies were expected to be filing their reports digitally in the first year; in fact, the achievement has been 92 per cent. And the site gets over 4 million hits a day -- by far the largest for any government website. Anyone who remembers the horror of visiting the office of a registrar of companies to search a company's records will know that this is not a small miracle. They say that you can now register a company in three days, instead of 30.

These success stories have generated interest in many state governments. Tata Consultancy Services, which among the IT majors has taken the lead in handling e-governance projects, has helped introduce a digital framework for the value-added tax programme in 19 states (including five in the north-east) -- with a dramatic increase in revenue collection being one claimed result. But these successes hide a much larger failure. For the unhappy truth is that the bulk of the 26 projects have made little or no headway, whether it is setting up a promised 100,000  kiosks across the country for delivering citizen services, or getting approvals digitally from the department of industrial promotion and policy.
One result of the DIPP's failure to make much headway is that India has slipped hugely in the World Bank's list of countries ranked on the ease of doing business. But the even more serious consequence is the loss to the citizen. Andhra Pradesh, which under Chandrababu Naidu introduced the idea of citizen-service kiosks, now has 2,000 of them across the state -- and the state's denizens use them to do as many as a million transactions every month. Bangalore has digitised its land records with equally dramatic results, and the programme is now to extend to all of Karnataka.

These suggest the transformation that is possible in internal government processes, the quality of the citizen interface and the productivity gains, if the national programme makes headway. The prime minister, who claimed a few months ago that unnoticed work has been done on improving governance, should take a closer look at this monumental failure in an area which could have chalked up many success stories.

Another revolution is waiting to happen with the use of RFID (radio frequency identification) technology. In the defence ministry, they use it to track files -- if someone has taken it from one room to the next, you will know. The Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation is using it to tag buffaloes. Remember those stories of banks giving 20 cattle loans with the same cow as security?

Well, that should not happen again. Elsewhere, they are looking at RFID to track railway wagons, cooking gas cylinders and fertiliser bags (you can pay the fertiliser subsidy directly to the farmer who buys the fertiliser, and not to the producing company). Naturally, since there are vested interests that benefit from the status quo, there is resistance to the new technology. But change will come if those at the helm take interest and commit themselves to schedules and targets. After all, the single most important factor weighing down the country today is poor governance standards, and e-governance promises transformational change.

E-governance; Success Story and the Way Ahead

A recent New York Times article described how a fisherman working off the coasts of Kerala used a cell phone on the seas to obtain and compare information about spot market prices for fish at Cochin and Quilon (85 miles apart). This fisherman thus netted an additional $1000 in annual income. e-Governance has thus started reshaping our society in ways unimaginable just even a decade ago. In spite of all thar we have achieved or are achieving, several formidable challenges remain. Almost as many Indians are below the poverty line and illustrate as the entire population of India in 1950. We have entered the next millennium, therefore, with a great challenge. In this context e-governance can be used as a strategic tool for reforming Governance and Improving the quality of services provided by the government to its people.
e-Gov has accelerated the development of India, the various initiatives taken by the government and private bodies in realizing the same, the challenges ahead and how in future it can be tapped to reach a developed country by 2020.


Our society is now being reshaped by rapid advances in information technologies—computers, telecommunications networks, and other digital systems—that have vastly increased our capacity to know, achieve
and collaborate. Entrepreneurs, bureaucrats, and politicians are now advancing views about how India can
ride the IT bandwagon and leapfrog into a knowledge-based economy. Imagine an illiterate farmer in a
remote village in Madhya Pradesh sitting at a desktop wired up to the WWW through a small VSAT link
powered by a small power generator by its side and surfing away to glory, downloading invaluable information about weather forecasts and sowing trends or even checking prices for Soya beans at the nearest
government-run market, or even on an International commodities exchange. E-governance is thus citizencentric governance that covers all of its services and respect everyone as individuals by providing personalized services. It is aptly an effective government that delivers maximum value for taxpayers’ money (quick
and efficient services).
If the benefits of IT have to reach the common man, it is obvious that the common man should have access
to IT services in the remotest part of the country. With the convergence of various forms of information
delivery systems, such as TV, Radio, Newspapers, Telephones, PC and Internet, into one unified environment, it is now becoming possible to enable common man to have access to IT services. The present level
of such facilities in the country as given below is, however, highly deficient in enabling reach of IT services to common man.


It's been said that the only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible. Those of you reading this room are well acquainted with this truth. The very character of cyber technology and the Internet age has been defined by those who have gone beyond what is seen, who have tested
the limits of the possible and in doing so have enriched our society and transformed our way of life. Our
computers have connected us as a nation, as a people and as a global community in ways unimaginable
even just a generation ago.  And it is this type of connectivity that also defines our vision of nation’s development. However, the function is always more important than the format. When governance is good, e-Governance can increase its effectiveness manifold. And if governance itself is poor; it does not help. It
rather magnifies how poor that governance is. As academicians and researchers, our sole objectives would
not have been to make money. We would have tried our best to change Governance first and then implement e-Governance. Otherwise we would not have hesitated to withdraw from the projects even, without
caring much for our consultation fees. For global and local private bodies; it has become a gold mine as
they know it too well that e-Governance without basic good governance would fail. And that means more
and more assignments, and unending projects which will be paid by all Indians for many more years.

India has success stories in e-governance

Thursday, 11 November , 2004, 19:05

India is on the move especially in the area of e-governance. Many states
have taken up pilot projects that deal with citizens in large scale and have
claimed to have one successful project to their credit.
Though there is an improvement in the government services compared to
previous years, we are still long way to go to reach the standards that
Taiwan, Singapore and the US have. According to the Fourth Annual Global
E-Government Study, Taiwan, Singapore and the US are in lead in overall
e-governance performance.
Every year, significant resources to the tune of about Rs 2,500 crore go
into implementation of e-governance projects in India. The National Action
Plan on E-governance has an ambitious outlay of over Rs 12,000-crore
involving public and private investments over the next three to four years.
Robert Schware, Lead Informatics Specialist, the Global ICT Department of
the World Bank, who was in India recently, shares his views on India's
performance in the area of e-governance and its pilot projects with Sify.com
Excerpts


What are your views on India's performance in e-governance?

India improved its position in e-governance. The country is doing better now
and it has some success stories unlike other developing countries. The
country is on the growth path now using ICT effectively.

According to the World Bank, how many e-governance pilot projects have been
taken up in India? How many can be scaled up or replicated in other parts of
the country?
India did take up over 200 pilot projects in the area of e-governance. Some
states do have success stories while some do not. I feel that out of 200
e-governance projects, 100 pilots are worth taking up full scale and can be
replicated in other parts of the country.

What is the global scenario in e-governance?
It is estimated that approximately 35 per cent of e-governance projects in
developing countries are totally failures, approximately 50 per cent are
partial failures - only some 15 per cent can be fully seen as successes.
There are equal numbers of very sad statistics about the number of failed
implementations in the US and Europe.
The primary factors for the failures include inability to deliver government
services that provide benefit to citizens or business, lack of clarity on
business perspective, projects are done in departmental isolation rather
than via a single coordination body and lack of political will and
leadership and lack of skills in project managements among some.
There are many countries that have achieved a reasonable amount of success
in their e-government initiatives. For example, according to Cap Gemini
Ernst & Young Consultants, during 2003, Denmark had achieved 72 per cent of
government services on line with an 87 per cent score on degree of
sophistication. Other countries that high rate for particular e-government
services includes the UK, Spain, Greece, Finland, Austria, Belgium,
Bulgaria, Romania and Mexico.

What is the strategy that the World Bank follows for its ICT funding to the
developing countries? Can you share your views on the strategy?
The Global ICT Department of the World Bank is in the process of completing
a study of national e-strategies across a group of 40 regionally
representative countries with a view to mapping common policy focus area and
interventions across the nations.
There is a consensus in the strategies that e-government can provide
realistic and immediate benefits in terms of improved government
productivity, effectiveness and cost savings. In most e-strategies, the
e-government component refers to an e-government portal as the conduit for
online services. Such services often include land and property registration
(G2C), E-procurement (G2B), centralized census and population data (G2G),
for example. Provisional findings show, however, that e-government
bench-marking is left for another stage and rarely included in strategies.
As a starting point, I would suggest that more metrics be used in
e-governance strategies and consequently in monitoring and evaluation.
Reviews may be done on an annual or biannual basis.

Can you share some of the targets in e-governance set by other developed
countries?
The Government of United Kingdom has set a target of providing all
government services online by the end of 2005. Denmark ranks number one in
Europe for government services available online.

Case Study On E-Government

The Electronic Filling System is the Singapore Judiciary's electronic platform for filing and service of documents within the litigation process. In addition, it provides the registries of the supreme court and the subordinate courts with an electronic registry and workflow system; and an electronic case file. Recent enhancements have added a module which facilitates the conduct of hearing using documents that have been electronically filled.

The ERS provides the legal profession with a rudimentary online case file from which documents can be electronically filled with the courts or served on the other parties in a case. The EFS is also the source for electronic cause book searches that are provided through the litigation module of law-net.

The Electronic Filing System (EFS) was implemented by the Singapore Judiciary to provide a platform for Law Firms to file documents to the courts electronically over the internet. The EFS was specifically designed to fully exploit the electronic super highway to minimize not just the physical movement of people and paper court documents from law-firms to the courts, but also to leverage the benefits of electronic storage within the courts; ie faster document filing and retrieval  eradication of the misplacement of case files, concurrent access to view the same case filed by different parties, etc.

Within the courts, the EFS allows electronic documents to be automatically routed to the appropriate registry staff for processing. The system allows further routing within the courts e.g for approvals by the Duty Registry and a reply is then sent out by the registry staff which is routed back to the originating law-firm  This has enabled realizations of improvements in efficiency by minimizing paper flow to shorten case processing time. Fees payable by the law-firms for filing documents to court are deducted automatically by the EFS. The whole process is fast, convenient and efficient.

For the Law-firms, the EFS provides an electronic case file showing hearing dates and documents file by them, served on them or received from the courts. It also provides an electronic platform for the service of documents on other Law-firms. The EFS also allows for faster response as well as accurate and up-to-date information. Hence, other benefits of the EFS include the speedy inspection of documents electronically and the ability to request for and receive electronic extracts of documents via the internet. Electronic cause book searches and legal research are also available through LawNet, Lawyers can even obtain details of hearing fixtures via short messaging system using their mobile phone.

Within the court room, registrars make use of the EFS to conduct hearings in chambers electronically using EFS.

Security Issues On E-Government

Passwords
Although passwords are commonly used in relatively low-risk environments, they are inconvenient and inadequate for the high-value transactions and communications that travel across the internet.Nowadays passwords are easy to break and users often write down or share passwords or forget them. In addition, different applications require new ID's and passwords. Moreover, passwords by themselves cannot provide often-required security services: They do not ensure privacy (through encryption); they cannot guarantee the integrity of stored or transmitted data ( through digital signing); and they cannot legally prove that a party participated in a transaction.

Personal Identification Numbers (PIN s)
Since the user must provide an access token and a personal identification number (pin). security is stronger than with a password alone. However, a PIN(on its own) cannot provide important security services such as privacy, data integrity and non-repudiation.

Government
When used with a PKI, smart cards enable governments to safely provide citizens, employees, suppliers and partners quick access to critical programs and information while reducing operating costs and improving customer satisfaction. Citizens can obtain smart cards that allow them to access confidential information, obtain benefits electronically, and pay for government services, An example: Using a single card, a citizen might look up his or her military records, receive a medical insurance benefit, of pay a road toll.
Employees can use cards for procurement, travel expenses, or accessing classified data. To provide better service and reduce costs, several agencies of the United States government-including the General services Administration are beginning to implement ambitious smart cards for multiple purposes including easy portability on military and civilian medical data, military personal records and financial entitlements data including purchasing authority and phone calling cards services.
More recently the government has explored using smart cards to store private keys and digital certificates, often with other data to create multi-purpose cards.

Wireless Applications and Services
Wireless applications/technologies are changing the face of the internet. Users can use digital phones, personal digital assistants, and pagers to transfer money,access medical records and maker travel reservations.
But before engaging in wireless transactions, users must be confident that they can reliably identify and authenticate each other, as well as protect information from interception or tempering. When used with VeriSign digital certificates, the smart card's portability makes it the ideal mechanism for ensuring security in wireless applications.
Although digital certificates-embedded smart cards are rapidly becoming the medium of choice for providing a single point of secure access to broad applications, their adoption is still in its infancy. Like the internet itself, smart card applications and technologies will become more sophisticated as issuers and users begin to understand and expand the ways in which smart card technology can be applied to secure transaction exchange. The key to remaining ahead of the curve in this exciting new world is a PKI infrastructure that provides the scalability, stability and interoperability to grow with an organisation as it adds new applications and services.
As the leader in managed PKI services and as an innovator in smart card solutions, VeriSign provides products with proven scalability, reliability and interoperability for interprises poised to take the next step in the digital revolution.

E-Government In Practice

An Irreversible development which helps to form one government and optimize services to the public. The video below shows an example of an efficient/effective e-government which is already in place in Netherlands.

The film entitled "e-Government in practice" takes a brief look at our changing society. Citizens and businesses alike are increasingly coming to expect that anything can be arranged with the aid of internet. In the film we see one businessman explaining how he applied for a permit via the local authority's digital portal. We also hear what shoppers have to say about their digital contacts with the government and public sector organisations. They all agree: it would be hard to imagine daily life these days without internet. Not only must the government not lag behind, it must actually lead the way. The film shows clearly how hard the government is working towards that goal, with many programmes that contribute to improving services. The sheer number of programmes is in fact so great that priorities have had to be set via the National Services and e-Government Implementation Programme, NUP for short. NUP goes further than simply developing new programmes and applications; they also have to be put into practice by the municipal and provincial authorities, the water boards and other implementing agencies. Intensive fine-tuning and extensive collaboration is called for if this is to be successful. It is an enormous undertaking, involving literally hundreds of different parties. But we have no choice, for it is what our citizens and businesses demand of us!