E-Government: moving beyond services

A recent exchange between the members of the W3C 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. 

In Thailand, for instance, the Thai business daily, The Nation, talks about how the Information and Communications Technology Ministry has just announced plans this month to launch an E-Government Road Map, as a framework for e-government developments from 2010 to 2014.  According to the Thai press, the roadmap consists of four stages: Connected Government (c-Government), Mobile and Multi-Channel Government (m-Government), Ubiquitous Government (u-Government) and Transformed Government (t-Government).

The first stage - c-Government - which will begin this year, aims to establish collaboration among all government agencies in the provision of public e-services. The second stage - m-Government - is scheduled for 2010 and 2011, period in which the e-government concept will be expanded and made accessible via mobile devices. The u-Government stage, scheduled to start in 2012, aims at providing government e-services to the public around the clock, through various channels that include websites, mobile devices and future technology. The final stage aims for a complete transformation of government services to an electronic basis, providing e-services 24 hours a day, seven days a week, via a variety of channels, along with interchanged e-services among government agencies.

The focus of the entire plan is on services, with Deputy Permanent Secretary Angsumal Sumalai reported as saying that "The development of an e-Government is a never-ending task that needs to be maintained, with a citizen-centric ideal in mind. E-government services must be created to cater for the needs of every citizen, from birth until death."  However, there was no mention of participation, transparency, and accountability in the information disseminated; although there was some discussion on collaboration.  

At the same time, richer countries that typically do include participation in their e-government strategies, concentrate on the wealthiest segments of the population than on the poor -even when participation might not be as much of an issue among the rich.  These issues need to be addressed – at a minimum by ensuring that there is a solid information infrastructure and related technology in the lower income areas, which would allow a larger percentage of population to participate in the affairs of the government.  

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. 

As mentioned, there are several good cases of open government implementation, although these are mostly restricted to specific examples and are not end to end implementations.  One such example in the current US administration is recovery.gov, which was written up nicely in the GSA newsletter.  Recovery.gov is the government website created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act) to track $787 billion in federal funds Congress appropriated to stimulate the economy. All federal agencies will post information to Recovery.gov about the sources, recipients and use of expenditures under the Recovery Act, to make it easy for citizens to understand the impact of the stimulus legislation. 

Prominent in the news recently because of Vivek Kundra’s appointment as the national Chief Technology Officer, was District of Columbia’s “Apps for Democracy” contest which Kundra organized when he was DC’s CTO. The contest, launched on October 14, 2008, invited software developers to compete for the best new applications to make DC government data more accessible and useful for the public. DC collects and maintains vast stores of data from government contracts to crime statistics to economic development, and has organized and published this data in a real-time data catalog with more than 200 data feeds at http://data.octo.dc.gov . 

Apps for Democracy solicited the best and most cost-effective ways to package and present this data for easy viewing, analysis, and repurposing by the public.   In just a month, 47 usable applications were created, ranging from a parking locator, to location-based crime stats, and a Facebook procurement information application.

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.   

For instance Freedom on the Net, by Freedom House has developed 19 indicators of internet and mobile phone freedom for a sample of 15 countries across 6 regions.  The study found hitherto un-highlighted data (such as 6 out of the 15 countries had sentenced a blogger or online journalist to prison, 7 of the 15 had blocked Web 2.0 applications such as Facebook), and some new trends such as “privatization of censorship”.  The study found online activism to be very impressive, even in middle-range countries such as Malaysia and Egypt, where citizens have used blogs and social-networking sites to organize protests and create pressure groups pertaining to government policies or local elections. In particular, they talk about Ushahidi, an online citizen journalism initiative in Kenya that was launched during a burst of post-election ethnic violence. It catalogued incidents using messages sent by ordinary citizens with their mobile phones, and posted them onto a map to track the unfolding events.

As collaboration between governance advocates and technology specialists increases, hopefully there will be a broadening of the thinking on e-government, beyond just services, and on aspects such as participation, openness and accountability, and more importantly, a renewed focus on the poor – both in developing and developed countries.