Good day fellow GKD participants,
My name is Henry Grageda, a project development officer of the Asian
Institute of Management, an international graduate school of management
based in the Philippines <www.aim.edu>. I've been part of this forum for
a number of months, and would like to elicit your thoughts on
e-governance in the South/ Developing Countries, in part inspired by a
recent forum on corruption in our Institute sponsored by the USAID and
the Asia Foundation, and the GKD contribution of Vikas Nath of the
London School of Economics.
1. E-governance may have greater impact in selected national agencies,
and should be the priority for computerization, instead of harping on a
national integrated computerization program that is not only financially
unviable, but operationally unimplementable in many developing
countries.
A survey by the Makati Business Club (MBC), in line with its
Transparency and Accountability in Governance (TAG) Program revealed
that the most heavily perceived corrupt government agencies in the
country point to:
a) the revenue generation sector (e.g., Bureau of Internal Revenue,
Bureau of Customs), and;
b) the heavy procurement sector (e.g., Department of Public Works and
Highways).
A brief expose from the media last year, using hidden cameras, revealed
that in almost all transaction stations of the Bureau of Customs, even
to the security guard manning the gates where cargo is exited, almost
always required grease money to facilitate the clearance of cargo. The
amounts involved per station are relatively small, ranging from US$2.00
to US$10.00 --- but in the aggregate, based on the MBC study, importers
and contractors expect to pay from anything from 10% to 40% of the value
of their goods and services as "facilitation" or kickbacks, sometimes
cleverly disguised as official "overtime pay".
The more deeply-ingrained culture is the client is "obliged" to make
these undocumented payments - i.e., it is not asked formally, but
clients give so voluntarily, so the case of corruption has gone to the
extent that stems from both ends. The trade-off is "better" service,
ergo, the norm is "poor" service for regular, non-bribing clients.
2) Local governments are emergent flash points for government corruption
Coming from a culture that the local official is de facto also the
socio-economic power broker (largely related to a feudal history of
landlord-tenant relationships), the distinct lack of competence among
local administrative staff (again related to an ingrained practice of
parcelling out local positions to political allies regardless of
background as payback after elections) contributes to this. There is a
tendency to create transaction processes based on the number of
personnel rather than a logical, efficiency-based system.
For example, to propose a development project for a municipality, a
proponent will have to schedule an appointment with the Provincial
Governor (and in the process, have to go through the Provincial
Administrator and all his/her underlings) just to get his/her
endorsement to present the same project to the Municipal Mayor (again,
for which you now have to go through the gamut of local Administrator
and underlings). They will then refer you to the appropriate
Councilor-cum-Committee chair, who in turn refers you to the local line
agency officials in charge of a project - which may require clearances
from the local environment bureau, zoning officials, the public works
official, electrical and fire inspectors, and so on and so forth.... and
you realize now that all of these transactions may cost you -officially
and otherwise.
It takes so much effort, patience and resources that either you give up
entirely, or made to wait till the next local administration is elected
(every three years in our case) --- for which you will then have to go
through the same tedious, even perilous process, depending on the
perception of your political leanings... Is it any wonder then that some
scholars have referred to the landscape as a "changeless" land? No
development happens precisely because systems do not change....
ICT is basically an instrument to compact and make efficient these
transaction processes... but it is just that, an instrument, neutral and
double edged. If no great effort is added to it that will change the
mindset of the wielders of these instruments, then I am almost sure that
any computerization program will fail.
As an almost surreal case in point, in my previous post as development
consultant, one private sector proponent for the computerization of
local business permit applications, real estate tax payments and other
transaction processes to a local government was point-blankly asked by a
petty line agency official : "What's in it for us?" --- now there's the
rub - or rob, you might say.
Henry A. Grageda
Asian Institute of Management
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