Willing and able, but is Australia e-government ready?

By Jane Garcia

An independent survey conducted by Fairfax Business Research on behalf of content solutions provider FileNet has explored the e-government readiness of public sector organisations in Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand and Singapore.

It found organisations were quite advanced on the front end tasks of using the internet but there was work to be done in the backend of applying systems and processes to leverage those transactions, according to Fairfax Business Research senior analyst Peter Hind.

“It’s important for Australia to recognise the growth in the Asia Pacific region, the expansion of those economies and how they are becoming increasingly IT-savvy, especially in the internet space,” he says.

“The evidence is that countries like Singapore, Hong Kong and Korea have progressed better than Australia in internet adoption so there is a lot we can learn from them.”

An increasing older population, declining birth rate and fewer taxpaying-aged people to support these people are all going to place demands on the public purse. And yet at the same time, it will be politically unpalatable to increase taxes so Australian governments will have to look for efficiency in the delivery of services and explore e-government’s  potential, according to Mr Hind.

One of the key findings of the Asia Pacific eGovernment Readiness 2006 survey is the disparity of e-government readiness between countries.

“There were quite interesting variations between say two economies that you would see as fairly mature, like Australia and Singapore; 55 per cent of Singaporeans saying their systems were fully automated and ready for the internet and only 20 per cent of Australians saying that,” Mr Hind says.

Almost 50 per cent of Australian government IT execs said there were few systems and processes in place to enable their organisation to leverage the internet, while only 14 per cent of Singaporean executives felt the same. Hong Kong and Singapore also recorded a rate of about 80 per cent internet-enabled process automation.

Mr Hind says citizen self-sufficiency has been a strong driver for e-government in Hong Kong and Singapore, much more so than Australia where the drivers are more to do with cost savings. Overall, the survey found the two main business drivers for e-government implementation were operational and cost efficiency, and enhancing citizen self-service.

“If you look at other data which shows internet penetration and the regular use of the internet by households within economies, Hong Kong and Singapore are well ahead of Australia ,” he says.

“There is evidence that Australia to some extent, especially in the area of broadband penetration, has a lot of catching up to do with these economies in Asia and I suspect that the Hong Kong and Singaporeans are dealing with a more internet-savvy populace, a populace which is going online and is very comfortable about it.

“It’s easy to cut costs, anybody can do that, the challenge is to maintain service standards when you cut costs.

“How do you look for operational efficiency yet maintain service levels? What I’m sensing from the report in Hong Kong and Singapore was a realisation that it is citizen self-sufficiency, which is a different issue to going online, what you’re trying to do is to get the citizen to fulfill all the transaction themselves. It’s an advance in thinking.”