ISSUES AND CHALLENGES IN ELECTRONIC GOVERNANCE PLANNING Dr.B.Ramadoss,M.Tech.,Ph.D., Assistant Professor & Mr. Ram Palanisamy, Assistant Professor Abstract The growth of Internet technology is changing the way people live, communicate, and work. What is the impact of the technology in the functioning of the government? Around the world, governments started utilizing the potential of the technology to deliver online information and services to citizens. To reap the benefits of e-governance, issues on technology, management of change related issues, and funding issues are to be considered before launching government-online. Also, it is worthwhile to examine the associated challenges in implementing the complete range of e-governance projects. This paper addresses both the issues and challenges in e-governance planning.
Detailed paper E-governance is composed of information technology, people, and governments (Waisanen, 2002). E-governance is the application of electronic means to improve the interaction between government and citizens; and to increase the administrative effectiveness and efficiency in the internal government operations. Further, it is the application of information technology to the Government processes to bring Simple, Moral, Accountable, Responsive, and Transparent (SMART) governance (e-Governance concept paper, Government of India). The strategic objective of e-governance is to support and simplify governance for e-governance community comprised of citizens, civil society organizations, private companies, government lawmakers, and regulators on networks (Tapscott and Agnew, 1999). Rapid growth of Internet has led governments in both developing and developed countries to use the technology for an efficient and effective service to the citizens. Besides fast delivery of services, Internet technology enables to bring more transparency in governance and many benefits to the e-governance community. With the advent of Internet and related technology , the government services can be extended to all geographical segments in the country round the clock, all days in a year. The services to the citizens could be improved through IT accompanied by reengineering the service delivery processes. The networking and access to data across the government departments enables the policy makers to enhance the quality of their decisions in a more proactive manner. Establishing a content-rich information database about the development related activities facilitate the planners to make a holistic plan of infrastructure such as location of hospitals, dispensaries, and school (Jain, 2002). Egovernance provides up-to-date information from the government databases in a real time mode. In addition to better and fast monitoring of government tasks, e-governance generates more revenue through online delivery of services. A careful planning about the e-governance issues can fully reap the benefits of it; the other side of the coin is the challenges in implementing the plan.
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Figure 1 shows a conceptual view of e-governance, illustrating how the people and government are interconnected through Internet technology, for improved citizen services. The “digital nervous system” connecting the government and citizen enables a real-time display of self-aggregating information and analysis reports for on-line monitoring of governmental activities. The instantaneous flow of data in a constant state of movement prepares the reports for the government decision-makers and problem solvers. The reports could be to monitor the flow of funds, economic indicators, and other news events. The decision-maker has the sharpest knowledge required for the decisions and thus become able-handed to steer the government machinery.
Figure 1. A Conceptual view of e-governance Figure 2 shows an e-governance conceptual model illustrating the interaction among the various e-governance communities. The model assumes citizen interaction as one of the primary objective followed by the interaction with the business organizations. The interaction is facilitated and became plausible by the information exchanges within and between the local and central governments. The information exchange is implemented through computer networks, robust software and databases, easy-to-use Web browsers, and enterprise-wide information portfolio. What are the related issues to accomplish the e-governance? What are the challenges to be faced while moving toward e-governance? These research questions are handled in the following sections:
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Figure 2. E-governance Conceptual Model
E-GOVERNANCE ISSUES E-governance Trends Governments around the globe are awakening to adapt the Internet technology for egovernment; some countries show more resilience in adapting the technology and some are slow in the process (O’Brien 2001). United Kingdom launched UK online in September 2000, with an aspiration of becoming the world’s leading knowledge economies. As a major initiative, a network of almost 6,000 UK online centers is established to allow the people to access and familiarize with the online services. Australia (particularly the state of Victoria) and Singapore are the early adapters of egovernance, because they were quicker to the draw. Canada’s e-governance approach is on par with the U.S. Canada’s approach to e-governance is different from that of the U.S. For online services, U.S. focuses more on the business client at the federal level whereas Canada focuses on key services for both citizens and individuals in a more decentralized way. Several key trends are emerging in e-governance around the world. Government’s Performance: Pressure is mounting on the government to reduce the operating cost. At the same time citizens expect an improved service from the government with more flexibility and efficiency, and without any premium rate for the additional services. Service delivery mechanisms are undergoing fundamental change and moving toward citizen-centered government. Growing number of digital citizens: Internet access is now commonly available for millions of people around the globe. The common man’s skill level in using the digital technology is increasing, may be with a gradual and marginal increase in developing
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countries. Digital citizens are moving from passive consumers of government services to active consumers. Networking Technologies: Internet technology is available in more than 150 countries with an increased bandwidth provision. This makes the citizens to believe “anything is possible”! Consequently, government’s traditional monopoly structure is threatened by the virtual worlds and the industrial-age structure is currently undergoing a change because of the networked technologies. Moreover, the technology is eliminating the boundaries between and within the government branches. For developing countries, lack of vision and cultural issues are hindering the progress in e-governance. Despite the high level of technology penetration, the gaps between digital haves and have-nots are growing in an exponential manner. The countries, which are slow in adapting e-governance, have a lot of work to do in getting services and transactions online. The following section discusses the e-governance issues in terms of technology, management of change related, and funding issues.
Technology Issues A close analysis reveals that there are three fundamental issues to be addressed in technology. They are the infrastructure layer, application layer, integration technology (e-Company Owner’s Manual, 2001) and application software. The technologies and services for networking in e-governance is the infrastructure layer. This is about hardware and software required to generate a web site, as well as where the equipment’s location and who looks after it. Application layer is made up of software and services that either extend the site’s performance or make it easier to manage. The integration layer is to use the Internet to tie together practically all the traditional disciplines associated with various services provided by the web site. Application software is the software that performs the functions of a web based information system (Nickerson, 2001).
Infrastructure layer The various core technologies in the infrastructure layer are given in the following section: Carrier: The most basic issue is how the site will connect to the Internet. Internet connections are provided by ISPs (Internet Service Provider). The bandwidth requirement for the site is the main issue, big web operation might opt for a direct fiber-optic connection that can carry as much as 2.6 billion bits per second. Hosting Center: This is the question of where to house the gear powering to the web site. As bigger firms opting to build specially designed equipment rooms, e-governance also may look for co-location services, which are specialized, cost effective facilities for hosting the equipment and to connect to the Internet. The next issue is the choice of core hardware and software that every Internet operation requires. The core elements are router, web server, application server, database server, and storage system. Information travels on the Internet in packets through routers, which
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help to receive and send the packets going to and from web site. Web server is the physical computer that runs a web site. Web server software is pretty generic and it delivers web pages created in HTML, the basic language of the web. Application servers are capable of running the programming languages such as C++, Java, and Perl and generating dynamic information pages. Database servers extract data from the databases and serve it up fast to the clients. The data is stored in hard drives with capacities from 10 gigabytes to 2 terabytes. The systems connect to database servers via high-speed network switches. For the uninterrupted operation of the web site, three more layers of infrastructure are needed: load balancing, security layer, and caching. Load balancing regulates the traffic generated by the incoming requests to the servers. Load balancing software handles information requests with the most available capacity in order to avoid “server busy” messages. When web server jumps up against its performance limits, especially when the server has to extract too much information during the peak traffic, the cache gives a helping hand by storing frequently requested information.
Basic Applications Layer The core technologies in the basic applications layer are content management system, personalization, transaction engines, site analysis, campaign management, and customer support. Content management system makes it easy to create and organize web content especially with thousands of pages and lots of interchangeable words and images. Other features of content management system are server caching and analysis of web site traffic. Personalization system stores the visitor/ citizen profile while they visit the site. The system prompts the visitor to give their profile on voluntary basis. Also it tracks the visitor’s visits. Transaction engine allows the visitor to configure his/her request and facilitates to pay by credit card or other means. Also it manages the service and visitor information, and it facilitates to have a real time link with a third party such as a credit card company or a bank. As web can reveal more about its visitor behavior than any other medium, most servers collect and store enormous amounts of information about how many page views they serve. Besides, site analysis system stores information such as how many visitors came in every month, how long they stayed on the site, and what they looked at. Campaign management system goes beyond the site analysis and helps to launch certain marketing efforts, such as automated email that responds instantly. Customer support system gives a helping hand to a visitor who has trouble using a site. The system gives automated help with the human touch.
Integration technology The core technologies in integration are application integration, sales integration, and financials. Application integration enables the user to talk with the “legacy” system, which is a non-Internet system. For example, a web site gives the front-end interface to access to various services. To complete the request the back-end systems are to be integrated. This kind of integration is provided by available “Enterprise Application Integration” software. The integration technology bolts together those non-Internet systems and Web operations. Sales integration collects all sales data in various
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government centers in real time and provides remarkable opportunities to forecast and track the visitors. Once the transactions are completed over the web, the transaction details are to be plugged into accounting system. This is facilitated by financials system.
Application software The visitor interacts with the application software when entering input into an application program and receiving output from the program. The application software also performs the processing and storage functions required by web based information systems. In developing e-governance application software plan, a three-step approach is proposed. The steps are given in terms of the following questions. • Where are we? • Where do we want to go? • How do we get there? Where are we? Analyze the existing status of application development in government organizations. Identify functional areas in every government organization for which the application software is developed. Identifying the systems for which the application software is not yet developed is also a primary task. Where do we want to go? The fundamental question here is “What kind of governance do people want in the next millennium?”. By e-governance, we are trying to utilize Internet technology to reshape the way people live, communicate, and work. The mission could be to deliver the government information and government services online. How do we get there? New and innovative Internet business models are to be created in e-governance context to intertwine the relationship between people and their government. The one between the government and citizen as the major stakeholder in developing the application systems, and the other between the government and the citizen as customer of public services. Moreover, the information systems strategic plan is to be linked with the government plan. The implementation can be done in progressive stages such as getting online with an Internet Web site, providing electronic content distribution (news, directories, and documents), implementing financial transactions such as tax or license payments, and finally a full-fledged public service delivery system.
Management of Change related Issues It is important to investigate how the business of government and the nature of governance itself change in the digital networking economy (Tapscott, 1999). Before moving to government-online, it is worthwhile to look at the whole political process and review them constantly. Critically questioning the policy formulation processes in view of e-citizen expectations is a major initiative in e-governance. Ultimately the objective of the process reengineering is to rethink the value propositions of the government and how
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they function in serving the citizens. The major goal is to change the behavior of governments.
Process Reengineering Reengineering the government structure: In developing and developed countries, the traditional model of governance is the industrial age bureaucracy. The old industrial models should give way to new virtual communities to provide a more value-added service to the e-citizens in a networked environment. The structure of existing government departments, work processes regulations or legislation are the major impediments to the success of government-online services. This calls for a fundamental change to the government business model. Involving e-governance Communities: The e-governance community can provide a significant amount of inputs in handling the political issues. The inputs will help the policy makers to look at the problem in a whole new perspective. This will eliminate the government’s biased look in the whole legislation process. The existing web applications in most of the government sites simply provide information and the sites should extend the services to include payment and confirmation of receipt (Jain, 2002). Involving citizens and government lawmakers in the planning process of launching a government site will bring more transparency and access to data. Also, it will ensure the government services to evolve into a form which is more citizen driven. Managing the change in responding to digital economy: To provide government information and services online, use the network technology to flatten the bureaucratic processes of government. The people related and structure related changes are to be managed in the subsequent stages. Successful management of changes in adapting to the digital economy not only gives a better and cheaper government but also a very different government. The different government services may be provided to the citizens through a single window. For example, if some one losses his job, he has to deal with the employment agency, the social security department, Inland Revenue and local authority. Instead, providing the information with one agency only once, the same information will be passed on to other agencies concerned through online. A strong political and organizational will is required to handle cultural issues, which may slow the process of changes.
Funding Issues Around the world, governments provided funding for the select pilot projects on government on-line, including projects such as public works, government services, and human resources. The real challenge for the government is to go about funding the full range of initiatives in order to achieve the objective of “Government Online” (O’Brien, 2001). One suggestion is that the concerned department has to come up with adequate fund by themselves. Other issue is utilizing the available resources both in the plan sector and outside it (http://egov.mit.gov.in/issues1.html). The leveraging of resources from the
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ongoing projects can be made without any critical incremental cost to the proposed project. The private sector resources have to be utilized with their commercial interest and those of the government in a more collaborative way to provide value-added service to the e-citizen. The information kiosks by themselves can generate revenue by providing key services. For example, in Gujarat, India, the interstate check post generates major revenue by providing its services online (http://wwwl.worldbank.org/public sector/egov/egovsites.htm). The increased revenue generation can have a snowball effect to lead to further computerization. Local government can take initiative in investing in IT infrastructure. For example, in Andhra Pradesh, India, a grand plan for IT infrastructure envisaging to connect every mandal or taluka headquarters with broadband fiber optic or wireless links to a state wide network called AP State Wide Area Network (APSWAN). A fiber optic backbone with 2 Mbps capacity has already been inducted, free of charge from BSNL (1999) to link 25 district head quarters with the state secretariat in Hyderabad. Within another three years, the state government is going to network 1200 mandal headquarters and the network will be used for voice, email, and video communication for effective and efficient administration in health care and education. In the next stage every village will be connected via wireless and dial up access. Accordingly, each state government is expected to strengthen the infrastructure in this manner for the project of “Government Online”.
CHALLENGES The biggest challenge is the pressure to decrease the government’s operating costs and improves services to the citizens. Even more challenging, new expectations are being created as digital consumers discover what all possible to do online (Tapscott and Agnew, 1999). E-governance involves not only managing technology but also managing organizational change (Waisanen, 2002). To develop e-governance applications the challenges are greater visibility of applications, financial constraints, bureaucratic processes and unavailability of skilled people in advanced networking technologies (Jain, 2002). Shortage in skills availability to develop integrated applications and limited view of what is important for a citizen, lack of project management skills, inadequate risk assessment and management skills are the major impediments for “Government Online”. Countrywide networking may enhance the risk of implementation constraints such as non-compatibility of software and hardware at different sites, customization needs of certain locations, and overlapping across several departmental boundaries. In adopting the Internet technology, the government may face organizational and management challenges that impede e-governance success. In developing countries, the Internet penetration is relatively low compared to that of developed countries. The spread of the Internet in India has been slow, because there are only a few commercial service providers (Bhatnagar, 1997). Moreover, the Internet users are small in number compared to that of developed country. Creating information kiosks at various places is a solution to this problem. Net users in developing countries are
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highly educated group and high-income young males. So the government’s online services may not reach the other segments in the society. Hudson (2001) gives the key words for e-citizen to use online services of the government will be access, skills, and the confidence to use the Internet. Achieving home Internet access for everyone will be another challenge in strengthening the infrastructure. Flattening the industrial age bureaucracies of the government system will be another major challenge. Even for developed countries, there are biggest challenges ahead. O’Brien (2001) lists the challenges hampering progress in both Canada and the U.S. They are rapidity of technological change, shortage of IT staff, lack of training for government staff, security and privacy issues, organizational and political roadblocks, cross-jurisdictional service delivery and the uncharted territory of e-channel management. LESSONS The e-governance plan should aim to achieve universal Internet access by 2005. Initiatives are needed to promote access at home, at work, and in the community. Establishing government online centers in public places such as libraries will accelerate the IT penetration rate. Through the existing infrastructure, distribution of government information, encouraging the citizens to visit the sites, opening online relationship with business partners, delivering online services and financial transaction services are to be commenced. Other growing work place trend comprises of flexible work place arrangements such as telecommuting, in which employees may work in nontraditional schedules from remote work places. Leaders and managers will need responsive, technology-fueled management tools for their administrative efficiency. Local governments should make use of existing investment in IT infrastructure and expand their e-governance efforts for a better connectivity between citizen and government. The government processes should be reengineered before launching a web site for e-governance. Starting pilot projects by a local government will set examples for other government. Citizen perspective should drive the e-governance application systems development. Because with the vast increase in information availability, the citizen’s ability to share knowledge became manifold and they are empowered as never before. Egovernance success will be achieved by involving the citizens, infrastructure providers, government lawmakers and other stakeholders.
ACTION PLAN Internal processes must be reengineered and employees must be trained to use the devices in online management systems. Identifying functional areas in every ministry / department which are easily assessable to e-governance services will be a good start. Before launching the full range of projects, make an inventory of existing applications / packages, which are already in e-governance umbrella. Then initiate moves to encourage
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local and central governments to develop public domains linking the existing databases. To store the voluminous collection of data, create data warehouses in every government department to facilitate the e-governance process. For online analytical processing of data, integrate the legacy systems with web front information systems; database connectivity and data mining are to be utilized to have coherent data integration. Especially this is required when working with data in different languages. Leveraging the data resources in local governments is essential. Initiate and develop pilot projects that are currently unavailable. Developing special pilot projects on Paperless Government-On-line through an electronics “Intelligent Government” concept, use of e-forms and data entry interfaces through use of web and Internet technology. Before launching the full range of projects devising a suitable egovernance business model independently and jointly by the government will provide a better value added services to the citizens. Launching computer literacy programs to the government staff will articulate the system requirements for seamless transfer of information between offices in both center and state government. The information flow can be made fast by setting up a specific communication networks for the government sector. To get more input for e-governance activities, establish links with worldwide institutions engaged in similar activities. This will bring synergic advantage to the project. Getting advice from the leading IT organizations will be helpful to formulate strategies. As security and privacy are the major issues, identifying more reliable ways of usage such as data encryption, and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) are proposed. Developing one stop shop (OSS) giving one click link (OCL) will enable the citizen to avail the single window services in government online. Establishing Government Information Services to link the state, district, and local information infrastructure will provide seamless transfer of information to the user. Schemes are to be formulated by local and central governments to disseminate information. Involving representative citizens with computing skills will be an advantage to e-governance project. Establishing information kiosks at public places such as shopping centers, post office, railway station, libraries, selected STD/ISD booths will increase the IT penetration rate. Leveraging the ubiquity of the Internet Protocol to distribute voice, data, and video to the audience, regardless of location will bring more trust in using the online services. To move data from one location to multiple places, a reliable multicast file transfer system is required to build a more secured system. Using satellite technology to offload congested wide-area network links is proposed. To handle the usage of local language data, OCR technology is suggested to capture such data.
CONCLUDING REMARKS Since Internet technology has evolved rapidly in the last few years, there is a need to think strategically about where we want to be in the future. As time goes on, new technologies will continue to develop at a rapid pace and we must be flexible enough by
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showing quick response to the technology explosion. The countries that are faster in adopting the technology have started reaping the benefits already. Process level changes are required before rushing to the Web to launch the “Government Online”. At the same time the government managers should quickly learn to use technology-fueled management tools for administrative efficiency and use them for a more value added service to the citizen. To make the futurist vision work, there is a need for collaboration among e-governance virtual communities. This demand more political and organizational will take hard decisions, change themselves and learn to build capacities for e-governance. “Outdated” regulations and procedures are to be removed before launching the project. The above issues and challenges are not beyond our capacity to resolve, but they need immediate attention. References Bhatnagar, S. (1997) Electronic Commerce in India: The Untapped Potential, Journal of Electronic Commerce and Markets, 2/97, April 1997. Budhiraja, R. Electronic Governance – A Key Issue in the 21st Century, Concept Paperhttp://www.mit.gov.in/eg/article2.htm. ECompany (2001). Owner’s manual, “23 Incredibly Easy Steps to Make the Perfect eBusiness” www.ecompany.com Hudson, L. (2001). ‘E-Governance: One Country’s Strategy”, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD Observer, Paris. Issue: 224, 48-49. Jain, R. (2002). “Editorial Preface: The Internet in Developing Countries”. Journal of Global Information Technology Management, Marietta, 5(1), 1-3. Nickerson, R. (2001). Business and Information Systems. Prentice Hall, New Jersey. O’Brien, J.M. (2001). “Canada/U.S. Awaken to e-government adoption”. Technology in Government, Willowdale, 8(4), 16-19. Tapscott, D. (1999). “The Networker”, Government Executive, Washington, 31(7), 106107. Tapscott, D. and Agnew, D. (1999). “Governance in the Digital Economy”, Finance & Development, Washigton, 36(4), 34-37. Waisanen, B. (2002). “The future of e-Government: Technology-fueled management Tools”. Public Management, Washington, 84(5), 6-9.
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About the Author B.Ramadoss is Assistant Professor with the Department of Maths. & Computer Applications, Regional Engineering College, Tiruchirapalli , India. He has 17 years of teaching and research experience including a 3 year tenure at Sharjah College, Sharjah, U.A.E. Published research papers in reputed journals and is a recipient of a Medal for ‘Distinction in Engineering Technology’ from C.B.I.& P., New Delhi and cash prize. He earned Ph.D. ( App.Maths.) from IIT-Bombay and M.Tech. ( Com,Sci,& Engg.) from IIT-Delhi. His research includes e-Governance in education, Mathematical Modeling, relational data base design, data mining and data warehousing. Ramaraj Palanisamy is Assistant Professor at the Department of Information Systems, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Canada. He has contributed over twenty papers in journals, books, and conferences. Some of his papers appeared in Journal of Services Research, Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, and Journal of Information & Knowledge Management . Prior to his current appointment, he had more than a decade of teaching and research experience in U.S.A, Malaysia, and India. He holds a Ph.D. in information systems planning from Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India. His research interests include information systems flexibility, e-business information systems planning, Internet business models, and user involvement. Dr.Ramaraj Palanisamy, Assistant Professor,Department of Information Systems, St. Francis Xavier University, P.O. Box: 168, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, CANADA B2G 2W5. Telephone: (902)-867-2184, Fax: (902)-867-2448, Email:
[email protected] , Web site: http://www.stfx.ca/people/rpalanis
Dr.B.Ramadoss,M.Tech.,Ph.D. Assistant Professor Dept. of M.C.A. Regional Engineering College TIRUCHIRAPALLI-620 001(INDIA)E-mai:
[email protected] Phone :-0431-460626 (Res.) Mobile :- 98424-23468 -Ram Palanisamy, Asst Prof E-mail:
[email protected] Information Systems Dept St. Francis Xavier Univ. Telephone: (902) 867-2184 Fax: (902) 867-2448 http://www.stfx.ca/people/rpalanis
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