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eGovernment Forschung seit 2001 | eGovernment Research since 2001
While e-government is being pushed as the way to go, countries are being reminded that it is not a substitute for i-Government (inefficient Government).

The warning has come from Jonas Rabinovitch, Senior Adviser, UNDESA, as he delivered remarks at the start of the second strategic planning meeting for the 2009-2012 Caribbean e-Government Strategy in the conference room of the Caribbean Development Bank yesterday morning.

He noted that too many countries view e-government only as a means to automate their existing services, to make them more efficient without taking into account the views of their respective citizens. As a result, he lamented, many e-government solutions have not fully met their main objective, which is to transform government to empower citizens to participate in democratic processes.

“On the other hand, many countries believe that e-government could be an automatic solution to all public administration challenges.

Let’s make no mistake; e-Government is not a substitute for i-Government. If workflows, institutional co-ordination, human resources, capacity and overall public administration services are inefficient, having the latest computer model with the latest software on everybody’s desk will not make much difference,” the UNDESA official said.

Rabinovitch noted that many Caribbean countries have started to invest in developing e-government solutions and services such that they are revamping their existing websites and portals to be more citizen-friendly by providing more information and services online.

Noting too that cell phone usage in the Caribbean region has expanded tremendously over the last few years, he said that there is the opportunity to link mobile to e-government solutions and services. With that in mind, he said that from 2005 to 2007 the Caribbean showed the highest growth of e-readiness at 8.69 per cent, web measure at 11.69 per cent, and e-infrastructure at 25.78 per cent within the Americas region.

“I am equally pleased to acknowledge that the Caribbean sub-region showed the highest global growth in terms of e-participation worldwide at 59.27 per cent. The latest 2008 UN e-Government Survey highlighted various good practices in this region, including the site of the Ministry of Health in Trinidad and Tobago displaying video clips in health-related issues, the site of the Ministry of Welfare in the Dominican Republic encouraging citizen participation with a one-stop shop for health information, and the site of the Ministry of Labour in Grenada which allows citizens to create online accounts and download statistics, among other very good examples,” he said.

What we are moving towards, he said, is an era of 24-hour government, 7 days a week and he added that the decreasing information and communication technology transaction costs also allow for a gradual shift to more dynamic interactions between Government and citizens. The result, he said, is for example a move from static websites to integrative portals and platforms.

“We witness a trend towards enhanced institutional co-ordination in the back office to improve service delivery to the public at the front office. At the same time, it is important to avoid the trend to worship technophilia or the “upgrade-and-be-happy” syndrome which moves billions of dollars worldwide without necessarily addressing citizens’ needs. The optimum balance towards investing financial, material and human resources in e-Government to address development goals is a sovereign national policy decision,” he said.

The UNDESA official said that at the same time, the Caribbean Region provides a relevant lesson to the world by demonstrating that national e-government strategies can be complemented by a regional e-Government strategy.

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Autor(en)/Author(s): (JRT)

Quelle/Source: The Barbados Advocate, 22.04.2009

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