Last time we saw that Government initiatives to automate and streamline its services fell into three classifications viz., those initiatives aimed at ordinary citizens or for short G2C initiatives, those that addressed issues related to business called G2B and lastly those referred to as G2G, which foster communication and between government agencies themselves in an effort to improve efficiency and provide better service. In this latter regard, a good example was seen a little over a week ago when President Jagdeo announced that information technology would be used to integrate several related government services. Agencies that come under the aegis of the Ministry of Home Affairs e.g. the Passport Office, the Police and others were cited as several that would be part of these new arrangements. The word “integrated” as it relates to IT implies connectivity and ability to access and share information across different applications
Re-Engineering Government Services.
We also saw that the traditional way Government provides services is through public servants employed in its ministries and agencies who attend to and process the needs of citizens. Technology however has been applied with very beneficial results by enabling citizens to interact directly with automated systems developed and engineered to provide these services, in many cases without any or very little intervention from human operatives. This very advanced level of e-government development however is not achieved overnight and typically countries pass through several overlapping stages en route to attaining this ideal of being capable to deliver “on-line” digitally based services to citizens.
Stages of e-Government Development
The ubiquitous nature of the internet has naturally resulted in it being extensively used by governments seeking to automate their services. The existence of a central government Internet website and the nature of the facilities available from it are usually therefore a very good indicator of the extent of development of the e-government sector in a country.
Examination of the application and use of the internet by countries that have made imaginative innovations in the delivery of government services by that technology, reveal four stages of development and progression. These are briefly described below:
In countries approaching stage four of their ICT e-government development, citizens can transact online, many common government related services such as the granting of licences of all sorts, processing of applications for passports, registration of companies, land registration and the like. I did an analysis of the government websites of Caricom countries in 2002, to determine the facilities available and to get an insight into the level of development of their e-government facilities. It was found that for the most part, they all were somewhere between stages one and two. Next time we will examine their current status to ascertain what further progress if any has been achieved since then.
Follow up to ICT4D
There has still not been any follow up to the highly publicized ICT for Development (ICT4D) initiatives undertaken in 2006 and this is disappointing to those in the ICT community and cause for some degree of concern. I do not share the view of some sceptics that the event was merely a public relations gimmick intended to impress Guyanese in the run up to the August 2006 general election. My feeling is that the Head of State being very keenly interested in this issue, would like to direct it personally and simply has not had the time to address it. In this regard, I would like to remind His Excellency of an event that occurred a very long time ago and which is recorded in the Book of Exodus. On the journey out of Egypt, Moses met his father in-law Jethro in the Sinai. Jethro observed the utter predicament of Moses who was at his wits end personally trying to deal with and resolve the several administrative and other matters that occurred on a daily basis not the least of which was settling many disputes that regularly surfaced among the many thousands of people. He then gave Moses the following advice: “
