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Can E-Government Help? Improving Governance and Services: Can e-Government Help? RFI Smith, Monash University, Australia Julian Teicher, Monash University, Australia Abstract: E-government can help improve governance and service delivery by refocusing consideration of the purposes and tools of government. However, E-government initiatives pose challenging questions of management, especially about coordination in government and the design of services for citizens. Progress towards implementing e-government raises critical questions about preferred styles of governance and about how governments relate to citizens. At present, interactions between citizens, the institutions of government and information and communications technology raise more agendas than governments can handle. However, trying to find ways through these agendas is to confront questions of wide interest to citizens. At the very least, e-government helps improve governance and services by asking questions. ince the late 1990s the prospect of using Information and Communication Such questions lead directly to a familiar S Technologies (ICTs) to improve effectiveness, dilemma: fairness and accountability in government has attracted widespread enthusiasm. However early hopes that e- How to capture the benefits of coordinated initiatives would bypass intractable questions of action and shared approaches while government organization and transform citizen maintaining individual agency responsibility experience of the delivery of public services have given and accountability for operations and results. way to more modest claims. (OECD 2003: 15) At the same time, thinking about how to use ICTs most effectively in government has generated Many governments have gone to great lengths widening questions about what governments should try to craft pluralist or decentralised strategies for to do and how they should do it. As Jane Fountain improvement. In such models, connections between (2001) has argued, e-initiatives reconfigure bureaucracy diverse initiatives depend on consultation and and disturb settled understandings about politics and the negotiation. Many large and complex businesses have nature of the state. followed similar paths. ICTs open up diverse patterns of personal and However, the opportunity cost of e-initiatives group interaction. But managing ICT infrastructure and is high. Such initiatives need to provide value. For applications to provide better government demands governments e-initiatives need to provide policy, coordination. Within government, e-government management and service outcomes that citizens value. initiatives pose sharp questions about the roles and The concept of public value provides a useful capabilities of the executive. They challenge the framework for making such assessments (Moore 1995; executive to: organise itself for integrated policymaking Kelly and Muers 2002; Stoker 2003; UN 2003; Smith and management; respond to what citizens actually 2004). For businesses they need to grow the business, need; and, manage multilayered and reciprocal build shareholder value or maximize dividends. This has interactions between government organizations and led to steadily more assertive rethinking of the role of technology. These challenges are linked but linking coordinating and framework-setting bodies for the use them in a ‘whole of government’ agenda puts large tests of ICT in both business and government. on executive capability. Themes of decentralisation, devolution and A recent study by the Organization for differentiation associated with New Public Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) sets Management, neo liberal or Washington Consensus out key dimensions of the challenge: agendas, which had a pervasive influence in the 1990s, are critically reconsidered. The OECD e-government How to collaborate more effectively across project team (2003: 99) sets out a long list of benefits of agencies to address complex, shared problems; central coordination. For the private sector Nicholas how to enhance customer focus; and how to Carr argues controversially that similar considerations build relationships with private sector partners. apply: (OECD 2003:11) 62 Chinese Public Administration Review · Volume 3 · Numbers 3/4 · September/December 2006 Hierarchies…may outperform markets when it government. It is also about how organizations in comes to integrating complex information government perceive and apply technology. The systems, leading to a re-emergence of the reciprocal relations between technology and vertically integrated company. (Carr 2004: 12) organizations (Fountain 2001; Bellamy 2002) drive long-term change. In a major study of IT governance Peter Weill Ambitions for e-initiatives in government are and Jeanne Ross (2004) go further; they concentrate on large. A recent UN survey argued that: the private sector but include significant public sector cases. Weill and Ross set out a concept of IT E-government is about opportunity. governance in which decision rights about IT are Opportunity for the public sector to reform to carefully allocated to ensure that business strategies achieve greater efficiency and efficacy. drive IT investments. They propose that as dependence Opportunity to reduce costs and increase on IT spreads throughout organizations, IT governance services to the society. Opportunity to include increases in importance. In words that mirror the all in public service delivery. And opportunity phrasing of the OECD team, Weill and Ross argue that to empower the citizens for participatory the task of good governance is to handle effectively: democracy. a longtime management paradox— But the greatest promise of e-government is encouraging and leveraging the ingenuity of all the historic opportunity for the developing the enterprise’s people while ensuring countries to ‘leap frog’ the traditionally longer compliance with the overall vision and development stages and catch up in providing principles. (Weill and Ross 2004: 236) a higher standard of living for their populations. (UN 2003: 182) Governments introducing e-initiatives thus face contradictory pressures. Making e-government Similarly, in Australia the state government of initiatives work demands significant resources. E- Victoria stresses the need for positive social impacts. initiatives are hungry for political, organizational, Recently it reframed its e-government strategy around human and financial capital. Investments and potential people-centred government. Its aim is: gains are large. But to date, actual gains, however measured, are modest (see for example, Dow and That Victorians are assisted to meet their Teicher 2003). Further, the price of making even modest everyday needs through timely, convenient and gains is to open up controversial agendas of governance. relevant support from government, made Central coordination is back and it is joined by demands possible by harnessing the capabilities of for more responsive and participative government. information networks and communications The propositions outlined above provide a technologies as they evolve. (Government of framework for exploring these issues. Examples will be Victoria 2002:1) drawn from international surveys of e-government (OECD 2003; UN 2003; Yong 2003) and from the state Further: of Victoria and the federal government in Australia. eGovernment should be about people, not technology…Putting People at the Centre…is This paper argues that: our vision for creating a new era of richer interaction between the government and • E-government can help improve governance and citizens. (2002:2) service delivery by refocusing consideration of the purposes and tools of government E-government is thus about the potential for a • E-government initiatives pose challenging transformation of government and governance. Many questions of management, especially about early discussions of e-government outlined stages in the coordination in government and the design of development of e-government in which the final stage services for citizens was ‘transformation,’ ‘integration,’ ‘seamless service • Progress towards implementing e-government delivery’ or some similarly ambitious state. However raises critical questions about preferred styles of the path to transformation is tricky. Early, discrete and governance and about how governments relate to bottom up e-government initiatives tended to meet citizens. barriers. Such barriers included costs of ICT infrastructure, lack of interoperability, and problems of Refocusing the purposes and tools of government coordination. It proved easier to initiate specific projects E-government initiatives focus attention on the long than to bring together integrated packages. It also term impacts of the interaction of technology and proved easier to use the internet to provide information organizations. E-government is not just about using than to facilitate transactions. ICTs throughout the institutions and operations of Smith and Teicher / Improving Governance and Services: Can E-governance Help? 63 Thinking about the path to transformation financial benefits to people of government online raises large questions. Three deserve particular initiatives.’ It found also a demand from citizens for attention. First, how is change in the application of more participation: technology to be managed? Whether the focus is on determining requirements for IT infrastructure, finding Focus group participants indicated a strong and accounting for funds invested, outsourcing desire for more information, greater interaction
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