1. Poor ICT Infrastructure
Infrastructure to provide the necessary connectivity is generally poor in most developing countries. Governments should take the lead on this in promoting infrastructure development but often lack the resources to undertake major enhancement such as the provision of countrywide high bandwidth connectivity. The private sector is often not keen to participate since they do not perceive it as a high rate of return investment particularly for far flung and sparsely populated rural communities. Fortunately this is changing as current advances in wireless communications technologies have resulted in significant increases in the availability of telephones and other services to these areas. Enhanced features and facilities such as Internet access are therefore bound to follow thus opening new opportunities for urban and rural communities. In Guyana the announcement by the new player Digicel that they will offer coverage to ninety per cent of the country by March 31, 2007 is an example of how quickly things can change.
2. Content Development
The importance of content development and standardized platforms for computerized applications is perhaps the most underrated ICT issue related to the development of e-government services. If such services are to be developed it must be possible to pass information electronically between different government agencies. Apart from the more complex issues of legality, security and confidentiality there is the very basic fact that any data/information to be exchanged must exist in a format that is understood by the computer systems of both the sending or accessed agency and the requesting one. The database systems in use must be compatible or at least able to be converted to format common to both computers e.g. from MS Access into MS SQL or vice versa. In addition the data contained therein cannot mean different things or have differing interpretations. This is sometimes referred to as the semantics of information, e.g. a situation where the employee attribute "Date of Assumption" in computer system A means the date an employee joined the agency but the same attribute in computer system B means the date an employee commenced work in his current job position.
Government agencies therefore need to ensure that there is some degree of coordination and standardization in the development of their computer applications if they wish to have seamless data interchange between the organizations. One Guyana issue that seems to be totally incapable of resolution is the way we uniquely identify our citizens, there being currently in existence at least four different citizen ID regimes. Computer systems rely on unique identification of entities to provide the ability to relate corresponding records containing different data resources. The well known Social Security Number of the United States has worked reasonably effectively in that country despite some much publicized defects of the system.
Closer home, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago have honed their national ID systems, incorporating the citizen's date of birth and other personal details into the numbering algorithm. A well organized national ID system that is accepted and used by all agencies, is an essential pre-requisite for development of government IT database information systems with the capacity for electronic data interchange. Incidentally, the acquisition of a national ID should itself be a service that is electronically available to citizens, at least some aspects of the process such as the acquisition, completion and submission of the application form.
3. Legal, Regulatory and Security Issues
Laws need to be modernized in order to give legality to electronic transactions. All services require applicants to provide information of one sort or another. In the absence of appropriate legislation, it is not possible to deal with e-transaction cases involving fraud or where there has been intentional misrepresentation of facts in official electronic communication. Persons might feel that this would surely be a task of immense proportions to re-write legislation to accommodate e-transactions. Fortunately this is not the case, as the approach taken is to pass overarching legislation that simply enables the existing to handle e-data. UNCITRAL has some time now developed model legislation which countries can adapt to their individual circumstances.
Article 5 of the UNCITRAL Model Law on e-Commerce gives an insight of how the process works. It states: Information shall not be denied legal effect, validity or enforceability solely on the grounds that it is in the form of a data message. Incorporating such a clause into existing law dispenses with the need to individually amend all relevant existing laws to include electronic transactions. Interested readers can download this entire document at www.uncitral.org/pdf/english/texts/electcom/05-89450_Ebook.pdf.
Caricom Countries have instituted varying initiatives to streamline their legislative framework to deal with e-transactions. As far back as August, 2000, the Barbadian Government passed an Electronics Transactions Act, the main aim of which was to prepare a legal framework for the recognition of digital transactions and to put them on a legal footing equivalent to that of paper-based transactions while in Jamaica, a comprehensive e-Transaction Bill expected to usher Jamaica into the modern era of e-commerce was tabled in the House of Representatives in October 2006.
A number of member states as well are in advanced stages of developing appropriate legislation to accommodate digital signatures which enables citizens to securely enter into digital contracts and to accept electronic records and documents.
Quite often however, the greatest impediment to ICT progress in a country is found in the hidden agendas of those in authority for whom automation would result in loss of the ability to exercise power and control. These persons use their positions as avenues for personal enrichment and maintenance of affluent lifestyles by granting services in return for consideration. They therefore perceive automated applications that result in efficiencies as threats that will deprive them of the opportunity to make more money and they hence do their utmost to ensure failure. Unfortunately it is rarely possible to engage such interests frontally as they rarely act in the open. Their modus operandi is deceptive, publicly mouthing platitudes of support but secretly, silently and underhandedly using their positions of influence to throttle, stifle and destabilize development of these systems.
Quelle/Source: Stabroek News, 16.02.2007
