[Kictanet] Fw: [africtic] Africa’s e-government dilemma

[alice at apc.org]

 *Dear All,
> *
>
>
>
> For many African governments, moves towards embracing e-governance have 
> gone little beyond the opening of websites for state ministries and 
> departments. But even where such websites exist, in many cases they 
> contain little information of value to the public, and they do not in any 
> fundamental way connect governments and citizens, as e-government aims to 
> do. While information on the “who is who” in the ministry, its 
> organizational structure and mission will often be abundantly available 
> (though not necessarily updated), the average website will not have public 
> service information, for instance on how to go about applying for a 
> particular service, who the right office/ person to approach is, and where 
> on the website to download and even electronically submit these 
> application forms.
>
>
>
> But e-governance entails more than a government website on the Internet – 
> even if that website has a great deal of public service information, 
> offers a great deal of interactivity and enables citizens to get a range 
> of services electronically. As Queen’s University Belfast law lecturer Dr 
> Subhajit Basu has said, “The strategic objective of e-governance is to 
> support and simplify governance for all parties: government, citizens and 
> businesses. The use of ICT can connect all these parties and support 
> processes and activities. In other words, in e-governance electronic means 
> support and stimulate good governance.”
>
>
>
> One scholar has defined e-governance simply as the use by government 
> agencies of information technologies such as Wide Area Networks, the 
> Internet and mobile computing, that have the ability to transform 
> relations with citizens, businesses and other forms of government. 
> Inherent in this definition are three critical issues for e-governance to 
> work effectively: a range of information technologies have to be applied, 
> government’s attitude towards service provision has to change, and there 
> must be a high level of transparency in government operations.
>
>
>
> The often-cited possible benefits e-governance can bring to developing 
> countries include faster access to government services, lower costs for 
> administrative services, greater public access to budgets and documents, 
> and a corresponding increase in transparency and accountability of 
> government functions.
>
>
>
> For e-governance to work in Africa, governments should be willing to 
> decentralize responsibilities and processes, and to start using electronic 
> means of communicating and delivering services. Citizens could then 
> contact their leaders and public servants through website where all forms, 
> legislation, news and other information is made available. Basu says in 
> effect, governments would serve their citizens better and save costs by 
> making internal operations more efficient, cutting down the complex and 
> over-stretched bureaucratic system.
>
>
>
> But this is only the ideal situation. The reality in many African 
> countries makes e-governance unattainable in the immediate term, and the 
> main reasons have little to do with the lack of money to fund the roll-out 
> of e-government programmes, or the need to fund other pressing priorities 
> like providing access to safe drinking water or funding universal primary 
> education. E-governance breaks bureaucracy and that is not desirable to 
> many government workers. To many of them, bureaucracy means power and is 
> also a source of side income for them. A person applying for a trading 
> license may have to pay the person who dishes out the application forms, 
> bribe the clerk to have their application stamped, and pay a string of 
> other people just to get the application considered, let alone granted. 
> This is an eating chain that e-governance would minimize. And the 
> e-illiterate public servants seem best placed to recognize this.
>
>
>
> Another issue is that just about two percent of the populations of various 
> African countries access the Internet. Hence, whatever initiatives 
> government departments may make in introducing the use of IT in their 
> work, they will not go far if the issue of accessibility and affordability 
> to the Internet for the average person are not addressed.
>
>
>
> Additionally, many African governments have a culture of keeping even the 
> most innocent information in ‘confidential’ folders, and only the 
> permanent secretary of a ministry or other administrative head of a 
> department can authorize the release of any such information. This culture 
> goes counter to the logic of e-governance, which is to increase 
> transparency in governance, including giving the public access to a wider 
> range of government records. What this means is that where public 
> officials or administrative systems benefit from poor governance and the 
> lack of transparency, they will be reluctant to open up their budgets and 
> other records to the public.
>
>
>
> Accordingly, e-government experts like Dr Basu say in order to examine the 
> risk of implementing e-governance solutions, the following factors have to 
> be taken into account: whether a country is a democracy or a dictatorial 
> regime; the government structure – whether it is centralized or 
> decentralized, the adequacy of the legal framework, an the level of trust 
> in government. For most African governments, the scale seems to be 
> strongly tilted against e-governance.
>
> Regards,
>
> -- 
> Vincent Waiswa Bagiire,
> Director, CIPESA
> Plot 30, Bukoto Street, P.O. Box 26970 Kampala
> Tel: 256-41-533057
> Fax: 256-41-533054
> Cell: 256-77-702256 or 256-71-702256
> Email: vincent at cipesa.org
> www.cipesa.org
>
>
>
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