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| Bridging Digital Gap Through e-Government
What is e-government? We put "e" in front of "government" to recognize that a public administration is in the process of transforming its internal and external relationships with the use of modern information and communication technology (ICT). E-government is a tool in the hands of governments for delivery of public value that supports human development. Government - a public organization
- is part of a broader governance system. It is a means to a goal. These
days, government is seen predominantly as a public organization set up
by a society for the purpose of pursuing that society's development
objectives. This comprises articulating the society's development
related demands, proposals and needs, aggregating them and needs,
aggregating them and needs, aggregating them and implementing responsive
solutions. Enjoyment of public consent constitutes the source of
government's legitimacy. Transparency is a condition sine qua non for
government's accountability vis-a-vis its oversight body. E-government is a government that
applies ICT to transform its internal and external relationships.
Through the application of ICT to its operations, a government does not
alter its functions or its obligation to remain useful, legitimate,
transparent and accountable. If anything, this application raises
society's expectations about the performance of government, in all
respects, to a much higher level. ICT is about communication among
people: the quintessence of human society. We have always used
communication to inform, learn, define concepts and viewpoints,
deliberate and reach agreements, in private and in public life. One can
put the electronic features of life. One can put the electronic features
of modern ICT into this timeless communication process and benefit from
doing so. If this is done in the context of public administration, it is
bound to have an impact on the creation of public value. Indeed,
e-government at its best can be viewed as the process of creating public
value with the use of modern ICT. It is in light of the foregoing
that the government set up the National Information Technology
Development Agency, which is to anchor the governments' ICT policy
implementation strategy. The National Strategic Action Plan is to
provide concrete implementation strategies over the next 5 years for the
key sectors health, education, infrastructure, human resource
development, Agriculture, Legal/Regulations, private sector/industry,
media/community, amongst others-as part of an integrated approach to
achieving national development espoused through the new National
Economic empowerment Development Programme (NEEDS). The three main conclusions of the
UN Global E-Government 2003 are: No country or group of countries in
the world owns the monopoly on imagination, wisdom and commitment or
political will for use of e-government for the delivery of the public
value of human development. Original, advanced
content of e-government applications finds a home in the
geographic and developmental South, as it does in the North. Only very few governments have
opted to use e-government applications for transactional services or for
networking. Even fewer governments use it to
support the genuine participation of citizens in politics. Those who do,
in most cases, apply it at a very rudimentary level.
Table 1 presents the global
E-Government Readiness rankings for the top 25 countries among the UN
Member States. Most of the high income developed economies rank the
highest and considerably higher than the global average of 0.402.
Though the majority are the industrialized countries, a few
middle-income countries with developing economies or economies in
transition are in the group, indicating a fast "catch up".
With a global average of 0.402, these top 25 countries are far ahead of
the rest of the world, with rankings that range 60 to 200 per cent
higher than those of the other countries. Overall, North America and Europe
lead among the world regions. South-central Asia and Africa have the
lowest average e-government readiness. There can be little doubt that
underpinning this aggregate snapshot in time is the level of economic,
social and political development of the countries concerned. One of the primary factors
contributing to a high level of e-government readiness is past
investment in telecommunication and human resources. Low e-government readiness in
South-central Asia and Africa is a reflection of the lowest Web Measure
Index across the board, but also a low telecommunication Index and the
lowest Human Capital Index. The disparities in e-government
readiness do not only reflect the low levels of infrastructure and human capital resources in several regions
of the world. They also highlight the magnitude of the existing gap:
North American and European
indicators are around 5-10 times higher in the case of the human
resource base and around 4-20 times
higher in the case of infrastructure development. for example, if
the U.S. is taken as the comparator, even though 40 per cent of the
population is still not on line in the U.S., the telecommunication
readiness of Africa and South-central Asia is 1/20th that of the U.S.
(UN) Over the past decade, there has
been an increasing commentary on the economic, political and social
potential of information communications technologies (ICTs) under the
right political and economic conditions. The development of harmonized,
globally interconnected communications infrastructure that is
transforming economy and society is highly uneven, and the benefits of
instant communications and information sharing between geographically
remote areas at steadily declining costs to the user that characterizes
it, are far from the experience of most Africans. Despite the improvements in access
to voice telephony made possible by mobile phones over the last half a
decade, most of the continent continue not to own any type of phone and
many more have no regular access to communications. The remarkable gains
made towards universal access through the introduction of mobile
telephony, and more particularly competitions, masks the facts that
Africa continues to lag global averages on major ICT indicators. Indeed
since 2003 there has been a growing gap between these countries
with access to communication services and those countries
without. In terms of a range of ICT indicators, African countries,
including South Africa, score lower than the global average, and
although progress was made throughout the period , the gaps between
African and other developed countries
and emerging economies persist; indeed, they have intensified
over the last decade, indicative of a growing digital divide. By Bankole Olubamise Acting Executive Director, Development Information Network (DevNet) (The full article was first published in Development Flash, a publication of DevNet) Invitation to Participate in the Information Society and Nigeria (Click Here to take part in a survey on Nigeria's ICT policy). For more
coverage and information related to this topic, Visit Nigeria's
Information Technology and Telecommunications Center on the Web: http://www.jidaw.com/digitalnigeria.html
Visit the ICT Policy Resource Bank http://www.jidaw.com/itsolutions/policyresource.html
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