The world is rushing to join the e-government trend with all that it promises for greater transparency, efficiency and citizen participation. But, according to State IT Agency chief of strategic services Moses Mtimunye, SA has a long way to go to catch up with the e-government bandwagon.
Speaking at ITWeb's e-government conference in Johannesburg this week, Mtimunye warned that initiatives around e-government are still “perched awkwardly between its patchy performance and its persistent promise”.
While e-government has been a buzzword in public administration and IT circles for a while now, the Barack Obama presidential campaign demonstrated the sheer power of the Internet to organise and energise a political movement.
The Obama administration now boasts an “Office of E-government” and every detail of the new president's vast and complex economic recovery programme is being made available for public inspection and comment online.
Attainable transformation
Mtimunye insisted e-government has the potential to transform the way in which public services are delivered and the fundamental relationship between government, the community and citizens - but only if it becomes an “integral part of how government operates”.
He admitted, however, that this will not be easy. There is great enthusiasm for moving forward with e-government initiatives, Mtimunye pointed out. But, he added, this enthusiasm is tempered by a growing realisation of the difficulty of combining organisational change within government and its agencies. Only with the necessary legislative and policy reforms to the thorny problems of inter-jurisdictional co-operation, and the need to train citizens on their rights and on the use of ICT, will e-government become workable, he stated.
Mtimunye also warned that successful e-government will require a lot of investment in new technology, a “project portfolio approach” to manage this investment and multiple partnerships between government and private organisations.
He added that, underlying all this, there are three prerequisites for success in e-government implementation. These are a strong, shared vision, a capable leadership and, above all, a commitment to invest, innovate, monitor and measure the outcomes and benefits of e-government. Mtimunye urged South Africans to “demand a fresh dose” of these prerequisites.
Local success
Mtimunye warned that the factors that are imperative to the success of e-government initiatives are in most cases being overlooked.
“South Africans need to be at the heart of e-government,” he advised, adding that the needs of clients have to be the organising principle around which e-government services and service delivery are planned, structured and “logically bundled”.
However, he said, this means processes need to be re-thought. “Steps in a business process might seem like mundane things to consider,” he noted, but argued that “nothing could be further from the truth”. He pointed out that most South Africans understand this only too well.
“We routinely experience complicated processes, go through unnecessary and confusing steps, get bounced from one organisation to the next, endure delays without explanation, complete lengthy applications, only to learn that we are not eligible and have few opportunities for redress.”
According to Mtimunye, it is time to broaden the definition of e-government so that it becomes a full transformation of how the public sector responds to citizens. The focus of e-government needs to shift its “indifferent adoption” of ICT to focus on the actual needs and desires of citizens and business.
The third ITWeb e-government conference was attended by both the private and public sector. There were 22 presentations with workshops over two days that helped those who attended understand the enormous transformational potential of e-government.
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