Ten Emerging E-government Challenges Today 4 th International Conference on E-governance ICEG 2006 (December 15-17, 2006, ) December 15, 2006, Seminar Hall, IIT Delhi, 1:30-3-30 pm Keynote Session: E-gov Brass Tacks
The Future May be Sober and Not Hype by Dr D.C.Misra Independent E-government Consultant, India Email: dc_misra@hotmail.com Web: http://in.geocities.com/drdcmisra Think Tank: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cyber_quiz Tel: 91-11- 2245 2431 Fax: 91-11- 4244 5183 2
What is proposed to be covered? I. Introduction II. Emerging E-government Challenges 1. Efficient Public Service Delivery 2. Emerging New Technologies 3. Global and National League Tables 3
Challenges 4. Management Information Systems 5. Government Websites Information Overload 6. E-government Search Engines 7. Semantic Web for E-government 8. Wiki Technology in E-government 4
Challenges 9. Monitoring E-government Investments 10. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Electronic CRM (E-CRM) in E-government III. Conclusion 5
I. Introduction 1. Current Scenario (at the end of year 2006) Mixed Scenario (a) Almost universal acceptance of e-government (b) Many notable successes (c) Perhaps equally notable failures (d) An unprecedented information explosion (e) Heavy public investments e-government (f) Waste in e-government, and (g) Very promising e-government research, notably in artificial intelligence (AI) 6
Introduction At the end of the 20 th century 2. Loss of confidence in government worldwide. For example -- Visions of Governance for the Twenty-First Century project at Harvard University found that American confidence in U.S. government has sharply declined. -- Americans who said that they trusted the federal government to do the right thing most of the time: 1964-75%, 1997-25% -- Government is not alone. Over past three decades in America, public confidence had dropped by half or more for many institutions: -- Universities: 61% to 30% -- Major companies: 55% to 21% -- Medicine: 73% to 29% -- Journalism: 29% to 14% (Nye 1999) -- U.S. was not alone (Norris 1999). 7
Introduction -- In this environment, e-government appeared on the scene in mid-1990s, and was -- Widely endorsed (as a promising solution), resulting in -- Public investment in e-government 3. Investment in E-government -- USA- US$ 65 billion -- UK- GBP 14 billion -- India- INR 40 billion (INR 4,000 crore), Expected by 2009 INR 100 billion (INR 10,000) (1crore= 10 million) 8
II Ten Emerging E-government Challenges Today-1 I. Efficient Public Service Delivery Drivers of E-government (Politicians, Civil Servants, Technology Vendors, Civil Service Organisations, Citizens) Real Driver: Need for efficient public service delivery Public services: Unproductive, dilatory and insensitive to the needs of citizens New public management (NPM) (application of private sector model to public sector) in 1980s and 1990s also failed Governance a key concept in international development debate (Hyden et al. 2004) 9
Challenges Today Challenge No. 1 How to achieve the objective of efficient public service delivery which is not yet being successfully met by e- government? 10
Challenges Today-2 II Emerging New Technologies Governments usually trail new technologies Computing may become a utility, like electricity, in near future Mobile telephony in a developing economy like India may spur demand for m-government Fewer than 7% of legislators have even the most basic understanding of technology in north America (Thronton 1997). emla programme abondoned by the author in India. Scan horizon for emerging technologies 11
Challenges Today-2 Table 1 E-government and Selected Technological Forecasts 1 2 3 4 5 Human knowledge exceeded by machine knowledge All government services electronically delivered Retirement age raised to 75 Public storage provided by local government to support social use of IT Artificial Intelligence (AI) member of parliament Source: 2005 BT Technology Timeline 2016-2020 2008-2012 2013-2017 2008-2012 2016-2020 12
Challenges Today Challenge No.2 How to make e-government anticipate emergence of new technologies and respond to them quickly? 13
Challenges Today-3 III Global and National League Tables The last decade has seen emergence of many global and national league tables. (a) International organizations (for example, ITU 2006, UNCTAD 2005, UNDESA 2005a, 2005b, UNESCO ORBICOM 2005 and World Bank 2006) (b) National organizations (for example, DIT 2003) (c) Universities (for example, Holzer and Kim 2005, West 2005 and WU 2005) (d) Private companies (for example, Accenture 2005, BAH 2005 and Brainbench 2005) and (e) Private organizations (for example, WEF 2006). 14
Challenges Today Challenge No.3 How can global and national league tables contribute to e-e government policy formulation and implementation? 15
Challenges Today-4 IV Management Information System An unprecedented information explosion has taken place. Almost 800 MB of recorded information is produced per person each year equivalent to about 30 feet of books for storage (SIMS 2003). Print, film, magnetic and optical storage media produced about 5 exabytes of new information in 2002 92% of the new information was stored on magnetic media, mostly in hard disks (ibid.). One expects decision-making in government to have vastly improved. But this has not happened. Reason: Appropriate management information systems (MISs) have not been put in place. 16
Challenges Today Challenge No.4 How to set up dependable management information systems (MISs) in government the light of information explosion and other developments? 17
Challenges Today-5 V Government Websites Information Overload There has been an explosion of government web pages. US.gov top-level domain accounts for 368 million pages (Wagner et al. 2006). Even smaller e-government sites, such as.gov.uk (9.28 million pages) or.gov.au (7.2 million pages) exceed the size of major company sites such as IBM (3.93 million for ibm.com), ebay (3.14 million for ebay.com) And dwarf sites of companies such as Ford (55,700 for ford.com) or Barclays Bank (24,200 for barclays.co.uk). Even Slovenia, a country with only 2 million citizens, maintains a vastly larger e-government website of over 380,000 pages. (ibid.) 18
Challenges Today Challenge No. 5 How not to keep on overloading government websites with all sorts of information but to anticipate and meet information and/or transaction needs of the citizens quickly and in user-friendly manner? 19
Challenges Today-6 VI E-government Search Engines FirstGov.gov, US Federal Government website, went online on September 22, 2000. Its database has shot up from 8 million to 40 million pages. To ferret out information from such huge databases, a specialty search engine based on government databases launched in January 2006. It is based on dynamic clustering (clustering of information on the fly) and meta search (based on searches of other search engines). 20
Challenges Today-6 On October 17, 2006, FirstGov.gov added new image and news search capabilities. Its search now covers government web, images, news and FirstGov. In near future other features like RSS feeds and blogs/vblogs may also be added. This may become a trend-setter for other countries in e-government. Appropriate search capabilities are required to be set up on e-government websites 21
Challenges Today Challenge No. 6 How to set up appropriate search capabilities on e- government websites to ferret out the required information? 22
Challenges Today-7 VII E-government Search Engines Semantic web is being promoted by W3 Consortium and Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of World Wide Web. It has now links to 10 billion pages (Shadbolt, Hall and Berners-Lee 2006). It is not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation (Berners-Lee, Hendler and Lassila 2001) Governments face the difficulties of management of too much information, created by too many heterogeneous, distributed sources. Resulting in issues such as inconsistent terminologies, information overload and too little maintenance of outdated knowledge are only too frequent. (Wagner et al. 2006). One way out is to develop semantic web for e-government. 23
Challenges Today-7 Challenge No. 7 How to make use of semantic web in e-government websites to improve the quality of the required government information? 24
Challenges Today-8 VIII Wiki Technology for E-government Wiki (from Hawaiian word wiki wiki, meaning fast) is a type of website that allows users to easily add, remove, or otherwise edit all content, very quickly and easily, sometimes without the need for registration. (Source: Wikipedia) This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative writing. The term wiki can also refer to the collaborative software itself (wiki engine) that facilitates the operation of such a website. (ibid.). First wiki was established by Ward Cunningham more than a decade back on March 25, 1995. About 1,000 public wiki communities existed as of December 6, 2004 (Turnbull, Yim and Niemann 2006). US Federal CIO Council s Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice (SICoP) has a wiki. NASA s WorldWind, an open source software for viewing satellite imagery, has a wiki. Any one can suggest code modification. 25
Challenges Today Challenge No. 8 How to make use of wiki technology in e-government if public sector is constrained by resources as it is? 26
Challenges Today-9 IX Monitoring E-government Investments 35% of e-government projects in developing/transitional countries were total failures, 50% were partial failures and 15% were successes (Heeks 2003) $23.5 million online university project in UK attracted only 900 students Half of 200 pilot projects for online services in India works for a handful people abandoned $22 million e-voting project in Uganda did not work in Uganda when elections held in 2001(Schware 2004) $17 million shared medical systems (SMS) abandoned in mid-2000s in New Zealand and INCIS development in the New Zealand Police force at a direct cost of $100 million abandoned in 1999 Gauld and Goldfinch (2006) 27
Challenges Today Challenge No. 9 How to monitor investments in e-government as serious problems of unproductive investments in e-government have started surfacing? 28
Challenges Today-10 X CRM and E-CRM in E-government A dissatisfied customer is the norm and not a exception in public services. Public grievance commissions (PGCs) set up in India provide delayed redressal of the grievances. By October 2006, 113 citizens' charters, originally introduced in United Kingdom in 1991, stood formulated by central ministries /departments/ organisations in India (DARPG 2006). Citizen s charters appear to have been overtaken by recently legislated Right to Information (RTI) Act in India 29
Challenges Today-10 Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have complicated and have not made any significant contribution to the solution of the largely intractable problem of efficient public service delivery. The problems of privacy/security are yet to be resolved to the satisfaction of citizens and non-citizens. Harris (2001) s remark that there are snakes in the virtual garden is still true. The interactive voice response system (IVRS) is not only time-consuming but often exhausts citizen s patience Telephone, and not the internet, is still the best friend of a citizen as far as public services are concerned even in developed countries (Newcombe 2005). Proper customer relationship management (CRM) and/or electronic customer relationship management (ecrm) programmes are urgently required to secure the loyalty of citizens and non-citizens to e-government. 30
Challenges Today Challenge No. 10 How to put proper customer relationship management (CRM) and/or electronic customer relationship management (ecrm) programmes in place in e- government in developing/ transitional economies? 31
III Conclusion To conclude, public interacts with government in 3 ways: (i) As consumers of government information, (ii) As customers of government services, and (iii) As citizens participating in government decision making and policy making (Abramson, Breul and Kamensky 2006) In none of these three aspects e-government has made any substantial contribution though modest attempts can be seen here and there. It is believed that identification of emerging e-government challenges described above can assist in development of appropriate e-government policies and programmes to improve the situation. 32
Future of e-government may be sober and not hype These are then ten among many emerging e-government challenges at the end of year 2006. An overview of the field of e-government, however, does show that the field is devoid of any intense activity and its champions too have disappeared All this does not bode well for the future of e-government as its enormous potential remains largely unrealized. E-government may land up as yet another channel of public service delivery and not as an instrument of transformation, or even revolution, in government. A realistic assessment of e-government, however, shows that the future of e-government may be sober and not hype 33
To sum up: Ten Emerging E-government Challenges: How to 1 Deliver public service delivery efficiently 6 Set up search on government websites 2 Anticipate emergence of new technology 7 Note use of Semantic Web for E-government 3 Use global and national league tables for policy 8 Use wiki technology in e- government formulation 4 Set up management information system (MIS) in government 9 Monitor E-government investments 5 Provide needed information on government websites 10 Set up CRM and E-CRM for E-government 34
Questions? Feel free to ask any question. I value them greatly. Feel free to contact me too: Dr D.C.Misra Independent E-government Consultant, India Email: dc_misra@hotmail.com Web: http://in.geocities.com/drdcmisra Think Tank: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cyber_quiz Tel: 91-11- 2245 2431 Fax: 91-11- 4244 5183 35
Ten Emerging E-government Challenges Today This is end of presentation. Thank you for your patience and wish you A Very Happy New Year. Have A Nice Day! -- Dr D.C.Misra D.C.Misra 2006 36