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UN Survey: all countries can benefit from better e-governance

Too few governments are taking advantage of e-governance, says a new UN survey.

When the citizens of India's Andhra Pradesh province want to pay their utility bills, renew their driver’s licenses - or even book bus tickets - they can do it online, at a website hosted by their local government.

The people of Andhra Pradesh are well aware of the benefits of e-governance - having enjoyed them since 2001.

But a recent survey of member-states by the United Nations has shown that most governments - particularly those in emerging markets - have a long way to go before they can begin to take advantage of the benefits of e-governance.

Online technologies can streamline government processes

The United Nations e-Government Survey 2008: From e-Government to Connected Governance ranks member-states according to their "e-readiness" and points out that too few are in fact e-ready.

Guido Bertucci, Director of the UN’s Division for Public Administration and Development Management, states in his preface that e-governance has the potential to "improve the internal workings of the public sector by reducing financial costs and transaction time, to better manage the work flow and processes, to improve institutional linkages between different government agencies, ministries and units and enable a better flow of resources and allocation of responsibilities to promote the delivery of public services."

According to this year’s e-government readiness rankings, more than 80% of the countries surveyed sit in the lower third of the list in terms of usage of e-government services by citizens. And not surprisingly, most of those countries would be described as emerging markets.

Mobile, an untapped resource

Meanwhile, another study indicates that there is a huge potential to improve this number if member-states would only shift their focus from delivering content via expensive PCs to delivering content via mobile devices.

Towards effective e-governance: The delivery of public services through local e-content, conducted by the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization, highlights the opportunity that governments might have in focusing their efforts on mobile communications.

This opportunity exists because of the market penetration of mobiles compared to personal computers (especially in emerging markets, where the price keeps PCs out of many people’s reach, and knowledge of the internet can be quite literally non-existent).

The report concludes that mobile phones have the potential to be the most effective technology in a broad range of contexts - whether in emerging or mature markets - because of their:

• Growing subscriber base
• Interactivity, which enables user to demand services
• Increasing ability to give people an internet experience
• Proven track record in delivering value-added services
• Increasing convergence, which has seen mobile phones incorporate ICTs such as the radio

Understanding the mindset of mobile users

Yet, also according to the survey, the importance of mobile communications was not widely recognized, and very few users thought that receiving e-content through a mobile device was important.

"The internet for the next billion consumers will be very different to the services prevalent in advanced markets," says Jawahar Kanjilal, global head of emerging market services at Nokia. "The mass of consumers in emerging markets lives in semi-urban and rural areas. Villages are far apart. A trip to the city is a big event in many people’s lives. We need to understand that their context is highly local."

"Many of these potential customers do not know what the Internet is and what it can do for them. Rather than talk about the technologies involved, the industry needs to turn this around and take the consumer’s point of view as our starting point."

The governments of emerging markets should start as they mean to go on

Clearly, the partnership between governments and the private sector is vital if the quality of e-governance is to improve, particularly in emerging markets.

And already governments have begun to act. In Ghana, for instance, parents and students can now apply to the schools of their choice online or using text messages. In some ways it may be easier for governments in emerging markets to build e-governance into their infrastructures because they have less old infrastructure to rebuild.

Stakeholders need to remember that users’ needs should drive content. As the government of Andhra Pradesh has shown, streamlining operations and improving services for constituents can indeed happen simultaneously.