Thanks to Eddi Sakti and Edward Malloy for your reports. In addition to your comments, I believe that e-government (or e-governance) should cover not only Government to Citizen matters but also Citizen to Government issues.
Are there any good examples dealing with ICT for local governance and participatory planning in your countries? Even in Japan, major concerns are improvement of services delivery and operational efficiency, not so much on local governance issues. Ideally, the implementation of e-government initiatives has the potential to increase opportunities for economic and social development, and make governments more transparent and responsive. This however would require governments to offer services according to citizen's choices, make government and its services more accessible, ensure and facilitate inclusion of weaker groups, provide information responsibly, and use public resources with greater efficiency and effectiveness. E-Government can substantially increase access to information services for weaker groups and also provide a channel for their voice to be heard and included in the policy-making process. On 5/9/05, Edward Malloy wrote: > > Dear Eddi Sakti: > > Excellent report. My answer to your concluding question is to involve > the citizenry (and the business community) throughout the development of > the e-government program. The primary objective of e-government should > be the improvement of government services to the citizens, business and > other communities, and not operational efficiency. As to transparency, > it is the involvement of the people and not computerization that creates > openness. You may be interested in the approach being taken in Macedonia > (see separate email) which is no bigger than most ketjamatans (old > spelling...) > Sampai bertamu lagi on-line.... > > On Friday, May 6, 2005, Eddi Sakti wrote: > > > The problem with ICT for local government is that there is never enough > > money or people to do the job right. I have experienced this very > > problem in my own country, Indonesia. I will give you an example and I > > am sure the story is the same in other developing countries. > > > We started decentralization of the government responsibilities many > > years ago. Ministry of Health tried to decentralize a lot of > > responsibilities as was demanded by the law. The World Bank funded > > putting computers into kecamatan (Moderator's Note: 'district') to help > > improve their operations. The trouble was that the funding was too > > limited and most of the kecamatan did not get enough funds for them to > > use ICT to do their new responsibilities. > > ..snip... > > > The funding is one problem, but there is an even bigger problem. Donors > > are saying that decentralization will help "transparency" which means > > that the local people will be able to see what their local government is > > doing and will be able to have more control over it. But at the local > > level the people do not know how to get the information that will keep > > their local government honest. > > > ..snip... -- *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- Teruhiko "Teru2" YOSHIMURA (Ph.D), Researcher Human Security Programme United Nations Centre for Regional Development (UNCRD) Nagono 1-47-1, Nakamura-ku, Nagoya 450-0001,Japan TEL:+81-52-561-9522, FAX:+81-52-561-9374 E-mail:[EMAIL PROTECTED], URL: http://www.uncrd.or.jp/ *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- ------------ This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by the dot-ORG USAID Cooperative Agreement, and hosted by GKD. http://www.dot-com-alliance.org provides more information. To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd For past messages, see: http://www.dot-com-alliance.org/archive.html
