E-Government comments - what say you?

Technology: Enabler or a solution in and of itself?

A couple of days ago, we received a comment in our posting on e-government, from ole. Ole suggested that one factor contributing to the failings of Brunei's e-government initiatives lies with the selection of the change agents or project leaders, i.e. they are all from an IT background. In the worlds of ole:

".... it is a big disaster to let the IT community leading the e-government initiatives in Brunei (such as ITSSD and the EGSPEC). Not only it is a bottom-up approach; IT people don't normally focus on national policy objectives but more on the 'hardware' side of e-government. They always miss the human side of IT innovation. This explains why we have no G2C or G2B after 8 years of e-government".

We're glad that ole has posed this question on Debating Brunei. After all, this site was set up with this goal in mind: to spark discussion and debate about issues that arise from our country's economic, political and social development. We also firmly believe that our maturity as a country is measured by our ability (especially our government) to allow open discussion and debate without devolving into finger-pointing & shouting matches that are more akin to territorial marking behaviour than civilised discourse between intelligent and informed stakeholders of this country's future (off on a tangent,we know, but we wanted to emphasise the goal of Debating Brunei).

Now back to ole's question. We believe that ole's brought up an important issue that we should discuss and analyse. Has the government, in their zeal to push the e-government initiative forward, somehow forgotten about the human element in IT and e-government? To a degree, we believe that ole is right to suggest that sometimes IT professionals may not be able to look at the e-government issue from a national policy perspective - in reality, however, we must also accept that most IT professionals aren't exactly trained to think in national policy terms.

Sometimes, technology is somehow given so much attention that instead of technology being seen as a means to an end - an enabler of change, so to speak - it is seen as an end in itself. That is, technology somehow is adopted for the sake of technology without allowing it to enable the human element to push for development and improvements in our system. A perfect example of this is our national identity smart card. Designed with a smart chip that is suppose to carry all our personal details (we'll research into this in more detail in due course), Brunei's national identity card has become nothing more than an expensive, glorified and somewhat misguided exercise. Adoption of technology in this instance, have done nothing to contribute to any improvements in our government systems and processes, because the human element in the e-government equation have not been followed through with sufficient commitment and resources to enable the technology to push for real change.

Perhaps there are IT professionals out there who disagree with ole's and our assessment. Or perhaps the solution to the question posed is not as simple as we think. Whatever differences in opinion there may be on this issue, perhaps we could spark up a discourse on this issue, and through Debating Brunei, come up with some meaningful answers to the issue at hand.

Well, the floor's all yours......

E-government in Brunei - Where do we stand?

Back on the E-Bandwagon!

From a report by Narissa Noor from the Borneo Bulletin, it seems like e-Government is back on the agenda again. The setting up of the E-government National Centre which began operations today (1st April 2008) marks the fulfillment of only one of many criteria that will be used by the UN when it assesses its member countries' e-government readiness.

Of course there are various other important features that will be used (see below) which the Brunei government will undoubtedly try hard to meet, but one important question still remain - How are we actually doing in comparison to our neighbours and also importantly have we been improving in our readiness for e-government? Narissa's report that 'In a study conducted by Brown University in the United States, Brunei was ranked 104 out of 198 in the 2006 global e-government study, putting the Sultanate well on its way in the implementation of a successful e-government', is certainly optimistic sounding to say the least but unfortunately a fundamentally flawed conclusion (does being ranked 104 out of 198 suggest that we are truly on our way to successful e-government? Perhaps not when we see the figures discussed below)

Figure above: criteria for assessing e-government
readiness by the UN for their 2008 upcoming report

Slipping and Sliding

Data published by the UN from 2003 shows that despite being ranked relatively high in 2003, Brunei Darussalam have consistently slipped down the readiness scale since then. In 2003, Brunei was ranked 55th out of 173 countries that were assessed and indexed by the UN. By 2004, we have dropped 8 places to rank 63rd out of a total of 178 countries. And by 2005, Brunei Darussalam had slipped a further 10 places to rank 73rd out of a total of 191 countries. Amongst our Asean neighbours, Brunei came in ranked 5th, with Singapore (global rank 7th), Philippines (41st), Malaysia (43rd) and Thailand (46th) grabbing the 1st-4th spots (see table below), and Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos ranked 6th-10th respectively. In 2005, Brunei has indexed below the global average of 0.4922, scoring only 0.4475.

Does the slide constitute a worrying trend? Perhaps it is when you consider that Thailand was ranked 56th in 2003, one spot lower than Brunei, but by 2005, have leapfrogged over Brunei while Brunei was sliding down the scale! It seems some of our neighbours have been more proactive in climbing the scale and ensuring their e-government agenda is right on track. And since data for 2006 and 2007 is somehow unavailable from the UN site (2008 is on its way), we will have to wait for later this year when the 2008 report comes out to see if we have improved since 2005.


So what's the problem?
It is difficult to say why Brunei Darussalam slipped almost 20 places from 2003 to 2005. Criteria and features for review can change from year to year, but these changes are likely to reflect the increased expectations of the UN for more inclusive and sophisticated e-government structures to meet increasing demands for ICT services, to achieve what they call e-inclusion. The current situation in Brunei is such that while the Prime Minister's Office have taken the leadership role in e-government initiatives, such as today's launch of the new centre, it still has a long way to go to meet global benchmarks of an inclusive e-government. Trawl the various existing government websites and you will have difficulty finding some features mandated by the UN such as online services and transaction, and the citizen participation criteria set out by the UN for this year's assessment is probably one that Brunei will likely to fall short on. But go visit websites of governments listed high on the readiness scale by the UN such as the US, Canada and Australia, and you will find that anything and everything is possible through their respective government agencies websites. For example, in all these countries e-government initiative, their citizens invariably enjoy the ability to:

• Apply and complete transactions for anything, from driving license to passports, or file in your tax returns ( from anywhere in the world),
• Purchase government publications as easily as it is to order books from online stores.
  
• Download all documentations on procedures, policies and restrictions on all government processes.
  

In fact, you can pretty much do EVERYTHING online in these countries if it is government related.

So what IS the actual problem in Brunei? Let's explore some possibliities that we came up with (and certainly NOT limited to):

1. Bruneians do not actually see the benefit of e-government - how true is this? The only way to do so is to actually survey or poll a sample of our fellow Bruneians to see if they truly understand what e-government means. E-government is created for the people to serve the people at the grassroots level better. It is not only a government agency to government agency transaction per se, but government agency to the people of Brunei. If the people in Brunei (sometimes this unfortunately includes those who work for the e-government initiative) do not truly see the benefits, then no amount of push by the PMO and their agencies will help. This as such is a problem of mindset, of realising the true benefits of e-government.

2. Brunei's telecommunications infrastructure is still relatively poor: Industry insiders would probably be able to give a much more objective and informed decision, but anecdotal evidence suggest that we are lacking behind in our infrastructure. As of today, there are places in Brunei which Telbru still cannot provide broadband services to. Even in existing broadband areas, the service is far from stable. Reports from various economies have time and time again shown that access to broadband services can in fact reduce transaction costs for businesses and government in general. Unless Telbru is given assistance in raising its infrastructure to international standards, we may always be a few steps behind (this is further compounded by our rather small population size, and as such insufficient to support the high fixed costs of introducing and maintaining infrastructure. The introduction of 3.5 G services from DST and b.mobile may fill in the gaps, but pricing remain high and will do no help to the still relatively low penetration for broadband services in the country.

3. Internet penetration, or rather broadband penetration remains low. In order for e-government to be fully realised, broadband services need to penetrate a large proportion of the population. Dial-ups are the dinosaurs of telecommunication and doesn't add any value to the e-government agenda. But while our internet penetration as a whole is relatively high (estimated at 43%, almost there with Singapore - see here for details), broadband penetration remains dismally low, at an estimated 3%. Here's a report on South East Asian internet penetration:

'Of Asias estimated 450 million Internet users in early 2007, only about 65 million were to be found in South East Asia. In other words, South East Asia had around 14% of the Internet user population of the region at the time. Despite highly penetrated Internet markets to be found in Singapore, Brunei and Malaysia, South East Asian economies are more generally in the developing phase when it comes to Internet, with user penetrations typically at the lower end of the scale. At the lowest level we find Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar, all with user penetrations of less than 1%. In terms of broadband access, only Singapore rates as a highly penetrated market (65% of households by early 2007). Despite a flurry of activity in markets like Malaysia and Thailand, South Asia continues to lag well behind the more developed markets of the region in the application and penetration of broadband Internet access. South East Asian - Internet markets - user penetration and subscribers - 2006 Country Internet user penetration Internet subscribers (million) Brunei Darussalam 43% 0.17 Cambodia 0.4% 0.06 Indonesia 8% 18.5 Laos 0.7% 0.04 Malaysia 44% 11.3 Myanmar 0.2% 0.1 Philippines 7% 6.0 Singapore 62% 2.7 Thailand 18% 11.4 Vietnam 17% 14.7

And if you look at Singapore, whom if you remember is ranked 7th in the world in terms of e-government readiness, broadband penetration is estimate at 65% of total households, and 18% of total population (see here). That's 6 times more than Brunei's broadband penetration.

Statistics are provided below:


The e-government initiative's successful implementation does not solely depend on one or two key factors but a whole host of factors that are very much at the macro level. We will have mindsets to deal with, as well as real infrastructure issues to contend with. While Brunei is certainly moving in the right direction, much still needs to be done. At the end of the day however, the government's push for e-government can only truly be successful when all the pieces fall together (some more difficult than others such as the Mount-Everest-of-commercial barriers such as Brunei's small market size). And if they do eventually fall in place, succesfully tied by a vision strong enough to push through those physical and 'metaphysical' barriers, we might just find ourselves rubbing shoulders with our Singaporean neighbours on that UN readiness ranking list. We'll just have to wait and see.