Technology in service delivery is crucial and ICT can transform local government by promoting good governance through an increased capacity to deliver. This will allow for greater involvement on the part of residents, and even permit them to monitor what the municipality is doing. Not only does ICT assist in speeding up and improving delivery of services, it encourages transparency and accountability.
Deployment of ICT systems can enhance management of local government, as well as streamlining of processes and flow of information. Citizens and business community transacting online to pay for goods and services like utility bills, renew vehicle registrations and engage in other e-commerce activities. Citizens can also use e-enabled communication channels to enable them to transact and participate in the decision-making process of local government.
ICT may be uncharted territory for many in local government, but technology clearly holds potential for improving the operations and outreach of local government. Local and county governments should try to realize this potential by finding the best way to implement technology. There is clear evidence that investments in such technologies could bring major economic benefits to local authorities.
Lack of competence
There is need to encourage skills development in this sector. ICT is an ideal means of making Government more ‘people-centric’ and a powerful instrument in increasing productivity, generating economic growth and creating job opportunities. There are also underlined common pitfalls to ICT implementation as it stands in Local Government: lack of competence in using the technology, lack of finances in both execution and utilisation, and ineffective and incorrect use of the technology.
Choices
Service delivery should be improved. Local Government must inculcate a culture of quality service. Municipalities are monopolies, and their constituents are, in fact, customers, and customers should have choices – choices that can easily be provided for through successful implementation of effective ICT strategies.
Rural areas should be a part of municipal ICT transformation ideal for e-government. In response to the lack of ICT infrastructure in rural areas, there is possibility of having multipurpose service centres, installed in rural areas around the country to make government services "faster, cheaper and smarter through ICT. There is need for core services to be provided to all areas, allowing citizens to use technology to access government services through kiosks or centres situated in convenient locations.
Broadband services
Local Government has a significant role in the development of sustainable broadband services, particularly in regional areas where the business case may be insufficient to attract commercial suppliers. As the primary public service provider and infrastructure manager to local communities, Local Government is in a key position to facilitate the growth of broadband through the delivery of online services to local communities and the development of policies and programmes that encourage the provision of affordable broadband services at the local level. Local Government needs a broadband vision that directly supports the national vision, recognising the need for all levels of government to work collaboratively on this important task and to leverage the unique role of local governments in the widespread uptake and deployment of broadband services.
They have an important and growing role in the uptake of broadband services specifically, in terms of facilitating the development of broadband infrastructure and services, supporting the user case for community uptake through the delivery of e-government services, establishing local policies and by-laws that shape the use of local physical infrastructure assets and as a regional driver of economic and community development.
Municipal fibre
De-regulation of the telecommunications industry is leading to many more new carriers entering the growing telecommunications market. It is imperative that municipalities have a telecommunications policy in place that clearly addresses the issues of rights of way and ownership that these new carriers will test. Many municipalities worldwide are choosing to address similar situations by creating or expanding their municipal utilities to include a municipal telecommunications policy and a municipal fibre optic plan.
Municipal authorities must then respond to changing environments that will require them to decide on accepting or acquiring new technologies that will improve the core competencies of its administrators to achieve or maintain equitable civic operations.
A municipal network in reality is a public network. It is locally controlled, enhances the local economy and can quickly meet the specific needs of the municipality. Significant expenditures are IT related. These might include automated or semi-automated processes such as billing systems, tax collection and inter departmental communications throughout the municipality. A municipally owned fibre can facilitate in solving many IT issues by standardising the data collection and processing procedures, ensuring efficiency.
The Swedish city of Stockholm is a lead example. The City of Stockholm owns Stokab, a service company. The purpose of Stokab’s operations and the infrastructure provided by the company is to promote economic growth and thereby stimulate the telecom market and ICT development in the Stockholm region, particularly in the City of Stockholm. Stokab’s core tasks are to build, operate and maintain the fiber optic communication network in the Stockholm region and to lease fiber optic connections Stokab’s mandate from the City of Stockholm.
The company also operates the City of Stockholm’s internal networks to serve both administrative purposes and more public needs in the areas of education, child care, recreation and culture.
Parking systems
Mobile parking systems could assist, by allowing to reserve and pay for the parking spots parking by using their mobile devices or their computers. Mobile Parking and other parking systems are revolutionising the parking industry value chain while implementing an easy-to-use and cost-efficient solutions.
To provide even higher travel quality, Stockholm city has introduced a smart card system for payment of public transport. The new system, which makes charging more flexible, is expected to increase the number of trips with public transport and make more people choose buses, metro or trains instead of private car. The smart card makes charging more flexible. It also makes it easier to introduce new fares and types of tickets, which will encourage new travellers. Another advantage is that the new system makes it possible to gather and present sophisticated statistics about travel patterns. This gives the authorities on- demand real time data and better opportunities to increase service according to actual demands. Mobile parking which is common in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries, have also been integrated in the smart card system
Traffic congestion
Cities and townships are faced with ever increasing traffic congestion. Traffic congestion now affects most of our major road network. ICTs can facilitate Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) to offer new advanced solutions to today’s transport problems. These intelligent systems can assist the driver, thus preventing, avoiding or mitigating accidents. They can also provide drivers with real time information about the road network, thus avoiding congestion.
Tanzania shows the way
Kinondoni Municipal Council (KMC) in Tanzania is one of three municipal councils that form Dar es Salaam City Council. KMC became the first Local Government authority to initiate an e-government service.
As any other municipal council of a major city, KMC has many political, economical, social and administrative responsibilities. These include social (education and health) services delivery, tax collection, business licensing, council elections supervision, basic infrastructure (roads, water supply, etc) construction and maintenance, waste management, and the maintenance of security, law and order. The KMC project thus established a pilot Management Information Systems for the top administration. Databases for various services and records, such as health, education, birth, marriage and death, are computerised to facilitate good governance and to accelerate public services and the compilation of various social services reports. The project has also enhanced the management and processing of matters pertaining to foreign trade and investment in Kinondoni district, thus attracting foreign investors. This is a vivid example of e-governance’s capacity to boost transparency in government operations at the local level and to minimise the loopholes for corruption can be found in the realms of business licensing and tax collection, which were extremely cumbersome before the e-governance project. Business licensing was contaminated with elements of corruption due to the slow manual processes – often a week or more - that lacked transparency.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Pauline Wangui
Quelle/Source: Standard, 25.05.2008
