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eGovernment Forschung seit 2001 | eGovernment Research since 2001
Government technology usage and adoption is driven largely by the need to achieve greater efficiencies and effectiveness in product and services delivery, data gathering, data analysis and decision making. IDC IT spending data shows that the government vertical is the third largest IT spending verticals in the Asia/Pacific region, at 15 percent of total IT spending by verticals, behind financial services and manufacturing. It is expected to grow by over 8 percent in 2006. However, the government's mandate differs from private organisations. They have a public service to perform and they are driven by political, developmental and social goals, and not just largely economic gains although there is pressure to balance the budget.

Government technology sophistication is observed to be related to the degree of economic development, market structure and government transparency in that country. Even with technology becoming more accessible and affordable, political and social conditions will influence how the government sector buys and uses IT.

In a recent survey of government executives across the Asia/Pacific region, IDC observes that there are several issues that are top of mind for government executives.

  • Internal bureaucracies, budget concerns, and lack of verifiable product specifications and benefits continue to be challenges for the CIO to push through ICT investments that is required for business transformation and operational improvements. One of the continuing challenges to deploying new technologies in the traditionally slow-moving government sector is the struggle to gain approval from budgetary oversight organisations that have little understanding of the potential or utility of these new technologies. IT managers indicated that they were continually challenged by the need to identify the best way to introduce and educate themselves and others to the availability and benefits of rapidly changing technologies. Of the methods used to review such products, the majority of managers indicated that online reviews were often the best source of up-to-date information.

  • Increasing demand for greater accountability and compliance with the public demanding more government services to be delivered. Government CIOs need to balance between accountability/compliance and innovative venturing which may be costly and higher risk. Governments continues to be slow in implementing open source OS though adoption has increased over the previous years particularly in some developing markets. Total cost of ownership continues to be an issue although open source options provide governments with an avenue to develop applications specific to their plans. These early adopters likely represent the most hands-on IT-intensive organisations within the APEJ (Asia/Pacific excluding Japan) government sector. The remaining organisations were by and large intent on remaining with their current OS vendor. Wireless functionality and office applications continues to see low traction within the government sector in the APEJ region. While logistics companies and some sales-oriented organisations are increasingly reliant on wireless technologies for logistics, warehouse, or mobile executive functionality, majority of the sectors within the APEJ market continue to see limitations in mobile technology. This perceived limitation includes handheld devices, which showed extremely low usage among APEJ government respondents with over 90 percent responding they had no plans to employ such technology in the near future. This is particularly interesting in light of the massive levels of consumer wireless penetration within the APEJ region.

  • Public demand for improved accessibility, sometimes even 24/7 to help them manage their own information. This raises the challenge of providing greater accessibility and yet maintaining high level of confidentiality and security. Governments in APEJ have not moved to engage this need through eGovernment at the same rate nor with the same commitment. IT development on a per country basis is often easily discernable by observation within a few key areas. One of the first requirements that government IT managers generally face when beginning implementation of massive eGovernment initiatives or looking to begin integration between systems of two different agencies, is the need for massive amounts of storage space. When looking at the IDC Asia/Pacific Continuum Survey 2005 results, it is easy to spot the correlation between market sophistication and deployed/anticipated IT storage capacity.

    At a country level, the government respondents that currently had the highest levels of storage also showed the greatest inclination to plan for future growth of storage needs. In the less-developed markets, where government organisations showed very low levels of storage capacity, respondents showed almost no interest in future storage build out. This seems indicative of a less-developed understanding of what is going to be needed to bring these eGovernment operations up to the levels of the regional leaders. This is particularly discouraging considering the high aspirations so many of these developing countries have voiced regarding their eGovernment plans.

  • The government vertical is looking towards more innovative methods of buying technology and of partnering with the vendors and citizens to fulfill its mission. Outsourcing continues to be a viable option for many companies within the APEJ region, even in the government sector. The primary reason given for outsourcing was the lack of skilled manpower. Respondents tend to feel that outsourcing allowed them to leverage their vendor's knowledge and expertise without slowing down their own back-office efficiency with the steps needed to manage internally, such as hiring and training new employees. The obvious question this raises is what kind of long-term dependencies these companies are setting themselves up for by maintaining their core operational groups at a technologically inept level. Particularly in some of the lesser developed countries, the prospect of segregating employees from advances in technology seems to be going in the opposite direction from what is required. Outsourcing may be a great cost-saving option, but as a complete replacement for internal training and capabilities, it often falls short. As part of outsourcing, "Public-Private-Partnership" or PPP continues to be bandied around government circles although the concept is not fully proven yet.

  • Other issues of importance that were noted in the survey included security, team management, and budget considerations. Security and security software continue to be of utmost importance to government sector managers, particularly as more core applications and government databases become more IT intensive. The majority of network, systems, storage, and security management were done so by the same unified team that operated across the organisation and dealt with all matter of systems integration.

  • Finally, IT expenditure showed the highest percentages in hardware and software areas, for years 2004 and 2005, indicating that infrastructure build up continues to be a key area of investment in Asia/Pacific.

Autor: Victor Lim

Quelle: CIO Asia, April 2006

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