E-Government (or Electronic
Government) is described in Wiki as
the use of information and communication
technology to provide and improve
government services, transactions and
interactions with citizens, businesses,
and other arms of government.
The United Nations notes, in its most
recent E-Government Survey, that a
trend towards reforming the public
sector has emerged in many countries
in recent years spurred primarily by
the aspirations of citizens around the
world. These clients of government
are demanding top performance and
effi ciency, proper accountability and
public trust, and a renewed focus on
delivering better service and results.
To accomplish this transformation
governments are introducing
innovations in their organisational
structure, practices, capacities, and in
the ways they utilise human capital,
information and communication
technology (ICT) and fi nancial resources
in service delivery to citizens.
The real benefi t of E-Government, in
the view of the United Nations, lies not
in the use of technology per se but in its
application to processes of transformation
of government and society.In the
developed world the E-Government
agenda is most often less about changing
the nature of democracy and more about
improving the business of government
via better customer relations. In contrast,
much of the focus in developing countries
has been on leveraging E-Government as a
means to overcome traditional governance
weaknesses, notably an absence of
openness, excessive corruption and weak
accountability to citizenries as a result.
At the same time as progress is being
made in E-Government implementation,
the spatial community has been
developing ways of deploying spatial
enabling platforms across government to
facilitate better government outcomes.
This phenomenon is being referred to as
the Spatial Enablement of Government,
a component of a much broader trend,
the Spatial Enablement of Society. The
relationship between Spatial Enablement
of Government and Spatial Enablement
of Society is depicted in Figure 1.
A basic requirement for effective spatial
enablement is the availability of geocodes.
A geocode normally takes the form of
a geographical coordinate, that is, the
latitude, longitude and (sometimes)
height of a point. Geocodes derived from
cadastral and land administration systems
are ideal for the purposes of spatial
enablement because the source databases
of land parcels and road corridors, street
addresses and interests in land have
integrity, are authoritative, are kept upto-
date and are linked to a map base and
a country's geodetic reference system.
Geocoded street addresses are perhaps
the most useful derivative of cadastral
and land administration systems in terms
of Spatial Enablement of Government
because street addresses are one of the
most common elements in government
databases. Geocodes provide the means
of linking information held in databases
in different organs of government,
thus allowing the analysis of issues
on a whole of government basis.
The ability to assess issues on a whole
of government basis is crucial for
governments to be able to effectively
respond to contemporary global challenges
such as sustainable development,
clean water, population and resources, democratisation, global convergence
of information technology, the richpoor
gap, health issues, peace and
confl ict, the status of women, and
transnational organised crime.
The E-Government
readiness index
The United Nations E-Government Survey
provides a comparative assessment of
the application of ICT by governments
of the 192 United Nations Member
States. The fourth global Survey was
undertaken in 2008. The Survey seeks to
provide governments with a measuring
tool that shows their respective areas
of strengths and weaknesses within the
E-Government Readiness domain.
Member States are at different phases of
delivering E-Government services. Some
of the developed countries are beginning
to migrate beyond E-Government to
I-Government (or Connected Government)
(The Government of Singapore
describes I-Government as Integrated
Government) which provides the basis
for the transformation from a bureaucratic
government to a people-centred one.
Some States are in the transactional phase
of E-Government and still other States
are at the initial phase of E-Government
where very few services are delivered
online. The conceptual framework of
the E-Government Survey is based on
a holistic view of development that
incorporates human capacity, infrastructure
development and access to information
and knowledge. The overall results of the
Survey for each country are presented
as a single number, the E-Government
Readiness Index. This is a composite
index comprising a Web Measure Index,
Telecommunication Infrastructure Index
and Human Capital Index. As countries
move upwards towards the stage of
Connected Government they pass through
fi ve stages - emerging, enhanced,
interactive, transactional and connected.
The Web Measure Index provides Member
States with a comparative ranking on
their ability to deliver online services to
their citizens. The Telecommunication
Infrastructure Index is a composite index
of fi ve primary indices relating to a
country's infrastructure capacity as they
relate to the delivery of E-Government
services. These are: Internet users
/100 persons; PCs /100 persons; main
telephones lines /100 persons; cellular
telephones /100 persons and broad banding
/100 persons. The Human Capital Index
is a composite of the adult literacy rate
and the combined primary, secondary
and tertiary gross enrollment ratio.
Characteristics of countries
with a high E-Government
readiness index
The Survey provides an insight into
the characteristics of E-Government in
countries with a high E-Government
Readiness Index. In these countries
E-Government is being viewed as an
enabler of organisational and democratic
renewal rather than primarily a costsavings
technique. There is a move from
static websites to integrative portals
where the perspective of government
operations is based less on organisational
charts and more on citizen usage and
outcomes, and where integrated service
offerings hide, simplify or transcend the
traditional machinery of government.
There is also greater centralisation of ICT
management and functions, and a strong
emphasis on collaboration across sectors
to create networked government. The
view of electronic and digital systems is
changing back offi ce support functions to a
strategic and enabling architecture for most
aspects of organisational performance.
Figure 1: The relationship between Spatial Enablement of Government and Spatial Enablement of
Society
Countries with a high E-Government
Readiness Index are creating an
information infrastructure both within the
public sector and across society at large
based upon reliable and affordable Internet
connectivity for citizens, businesses and
all stakeholders in a given jurisdiction.
The new infrastructure is being leveraged
within the public sector in order to better
share information and bundle, integrate
and deliver services through more effi cient
and citizen-centric governance models
encompassing multiple delivery channels.
There is a fostering of inter-jurisdictional
partnering to the end that national reforms
are being shaped by innovations emanating
from the fl exibility and nimbleness of
smaller, sub-national governments.
One of the most important lessons to
be derived from the experiences of
developed countries, the 2008 United
Nations E-Government Survey notes, is
the importance of collaboration between
governments, that is, adopting federalism
as a key design principle. Even in unitary
government systems, where central
governments can more easily impose
decisions on other, 'subordinate' public
sector levels, leading E-Government
countries have demonstrated that
collaboration provides a better path.
In more formal federalist structures,
collaboration is essential in overcoming
constitutional and jurisdictional boundaries
that are not so different than borders between countries. The lesson here is
that in a federated architecture model
where power and decision-making
authority must be shared across different
governance layers, the willingness and
the ability to collaborate are essential
for positive transformation to occur.
E-Government readiness
in Asia and the Pacific
The 2008 E-Government Readiness
Index for countries who are members
of the Permanent Committee on GIS
Infrastructure for Asia and the Pacifi c
(PCGIAP) is shown in Tables 1, 2 and
3. PCGIAP members are the countries
recognised as being members of the United
Nations Economic and Social Commission
for Asia and the Pacifi c. There is a large
variation in the E-Government Readiness
Index of countries. At one end of the scale
6 countries are in the top 35 globally and
2 of these are in the top 10. However most
(75%) countries have an index below 0.5
and the average index for the region is no
different to the global average of 0.45.
These fi gures indicate that, from an Asia
and Pacifi c perspective, E-Government
needs will be different from country
to country and strategies will need to
be assessed on a case by case basis.
Geocodes and
E-Government readiness
The effective implementation of
E-Government in a country requires a
whole of government approach, that is,
all the organs of government working
towards the common strategic objective of
E-Government. In Australia, which has a
relatively high E-Government Readiness
Index, spatial enabling platforms are
being deployed in government at
national and sub-national levels as a
means of supporting better decisionmaking
in government and more effi cient
government operations, and to support
the implementation of E-Government.
Examples of these spatial enabling
platforms are the Commonwealth Spatial
Data Integration initiative, the Western
Australia State Land Information Platform, the Victorian VICMAP infrastructure,
the New South Wales Common Spatial
Information Initiative, and the Northern
Territory Land Information System. Work has also started on a Trans-
Tasman initiative called the Australia
New Zealand Spatial Infrastructure.
In each of these cases geocoded street
addresses derived from government
cadastral and land administration systems
is playing a key role in the spatial
enabling platforms. Australia is fortunate
in possessing a national authoritative
complete and up-to-date list of geocoded
street addresses called the Geocoded
National Address File (GNAF). GNAF
is produced by a government-owned
company, PSMA Australia Limited. GNAF
is a reference dataset used in government,
business and the community. The way in
which geocoded street addresses allow
whole of government analysis of issues
in Australia is depicted in Figure 2.
Most of the countries of the world,
however, are not as fortunate as Australia
in this regard. They do not have ready
access to country-wide digital geocodes
of any form let alone a national geocoded
street address database linked to
cadastral parcels. In some cases political
considerations such as national security
prevent access to geocodes even if
they do exist. The lack of availability
of geocodes presents a signifi cant
technological hurdle to the achievement
of spatially enabled government. As a
minimum this technical challenge requires
research into new and effi cient ways of
generating country-wide geocodes.
Notwithstanding this problem, cadastral
organisations around the globe, and the
geocodes embedded in their cadastral
parcel databases, provide a key to effective
deployment of spatial enabling platforms
in government, and the key to improving
E-Government Readiness in countries.
In many cases this requires cadastral
organisations to change the way they do
their business. For example, they need
to consider establishing and maintaining
digital cadastral databases. These
databases need to be visible and accessible,
preferable on the Internet, in a way that is
meaningful to users. Unique geocodes need
to be generated for each digital cadastral
parcel and where possible these geocodes
applied to the street address of the parcel.
These basic measures could be
supplemented by cadastral organisations
providing geocoding training and services
to government agencies that would allow
agencies to validate and geocode their
own digital databases. Further, cadastral
organisations could facilitate partnerships
between government agencies with
the objective of integrating their web
portals using geocodes as the linking
mechanism. By taking these actions
cadastral organisations could become more
strategically relevant to their government.
Peter Holland
p.holland@pgrad.
unimelb.edu.au
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