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The role of ICT in the public sector has changed dramatically over the past decade. Ten years after the notion of e-government took off, countries around the world are leveraging leading-edge concepts like information management and governance, open standards integration, and seamless mobility to deliver better services to their citizens. Asian governments are serious players in the game. Singapore has started its push for a standard ICT operating environment in the public sector; Malaysia became the first country in the world to roll out a multi-application identity-cum-smart card, while South Korea continues to lead the pack in high-speed broadband network deployment. The interview throws spotlight on the key issues in Government ICT, major factors driving ICT projects in Government, Risk, governance and compliance drivers in Government ICT decisions, Value drivers for Government ICT investments.

1. e-Government has been in existence for a decade now. Can you throw light on the evolution of e-Government and how ICT policy plays an important role in the birth of the concept of e-Governance?

PCT: The evolution of e-government started with governments putting information into portals. Individual government agencies began putting their own initiatives in place without a master plan. Following public concerns on the services and flexibility, the agencies may not have realized all the benefits originally envisaged.

This has changed as e-government strategies have matured. The changes over the last ten years are significant with some governments adopting Private Public Partnership (PPP) arrangements as is the case of Hong Kong ESDlife. e-Government has evolved to the point where governments are not only providing information directly to citizens, businesses and other governments they are also interacting with citizens in terms of understanding licensing applications, taxes etc. Now there is a lot of collaboration that you can see between the government, the citizens and business sector.

ICT is very broad in terms of covering information systems and services which rely on the telecommunication and communication infrastructure. The adoption of high-speed broadband services and mobile services such as wi-fi, CDMA, Wi-max is a good example. If you look at ICT, its critical that the communication infrastructure is planned with respect to the information content, so governments can put a lot of information available online to enable collaboration with citizens and businesses. The telecommunication infrastructure needs to be priced at the right level to see uptake of the government services being offered.

ICT evolution in e-Government varies across Asia Pacific countries and the progress of it depends on whether there is a government-owned communication network versus a fully deregulated and competitive market such as Hong Kong where the competition created in the market drives the overall ICT adoption in the country.

What are the major factors driving ICT projects in the Government within these countries: Singapore, China, India, Malaysia, and South Korea. What according to you are the five key factors that form the demands and expectations regarding use of ICTs in government? What are the risks involved while undertaking these projects?

The countries you have quoted have a different focus. Some of these countries have a very high income and mature communications whilst others do not. You have to separate the countries into two groups if you want to know the major factors that are driving these ICT projects. Let’s take the example of developed places like Hong Kong, Korea and Singapore. These countries are facing the challenge of managing the cost and service quality.

They have gone through the steps of providing information to citizens through e-citizen portals and now they are focusing on creating a more collaborative consultative government. Some of these governments are now looking at private sector partners that can increase the use of the e-citizen programs. In addition to citizen collaboration, these private partners are able to bring more businesses to collaborate with the government online.

If you move to the developing phase countries, the usual areas of driving an open government and trying to create efficiencies within government are the major factors fuelling ICT projects.

Expectations of ICT in Government include:
1. The first factor in terms of the demand is cost, i.e. providing ICT in a cost effective manner to ensure wide adoption amongst citizens, businesses and government agencies. An example is the continued drive by governments for the adoption of wireless broadband services in countries like Korea Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore, creating the competitive market pressures on service providers, which drives the adoption of e-government services.
2. The second key factor is interaction and collaboration. ICT has to enable the Government to interact and collaborate with the citizens and businesses.
3. Another area is foreign investment. The benefit of a strong ICT infrastructure is that it helps attract foreign investment. Foreign investors are easily able to understand the expectations of the government when investing in the country, and the type of support they can receive.
4. Trust is a key factor. Any ICT infrastructure must be secure. Citizen and business transactions contain significant confidential information. Secure network and identity authentication and verification technology must be in place together with privacy laws and governance to ensure privacy and confidentiality is protected.
5. Finally, the ICT infrastructure must be reliable. The network, applications and processes must be reliable to ensure availability and integrity of the e-government services.

There are various risks involved. One significant risk that we see in ICT today is uneven adoption across the country or community. This can lead to a digital divide. ICT was supposed to bridge the divide but in some countries it is exceptionally wide.

The UN e-inclusion program has tried to address this gap and a number of countries are following suite. The -dollar laptop is still in its initial stages, while the wealth of information continues to grow. The One-Laptop-Per-Child (www.laptop.org ) is helping to address this gap, and the interest from Quanta has made significant shift in mindset. However, there is still large sections of communities and countries which are not able to access the wealth of information available on the Net.

Security is another major concern involved in implementing e-Government solutions. Problems in ICT like hacking, virus, spamming, invasion, privacy issues can evolve from lack of security measures. Governments need to provide secure access to information, applications and services.

2. Can you throw light on the compliance drivers that are taken into account for Government ICT decisions?

PCT: Governments are not regulated in the same way as the private sector e.g. implication of Sarbanes Oxley, however many governments are adopting similar models, such as ICT Governance and adopting SOAs (service-oriented architectures) that accelerate organizational and IT alignment - while achieving operational efficiency, world-class cost structures and improved IT quality and responsiveness.

3. ICT create opportunities for better governance, foster social and economic development, support entrepreneurship and poverty alleviation and enable broader development goals. However, ICTs cannot be exploited equitably by all, and therefore creates the digital divide. How can we solve this problem of digital divide?

PTC: Lack of access to computers and Internet connectivity prevents the many benefits of ICT from reaching all citizens across the region — benefits that include substantial social and economic development opportunities. This is often referred to as the "digital divide."

Government programs such as Singapore’s Education initiatives as well as NGO’s initiatives such as the ‘One Laptop Per Child’ initiative are designed to increase access to technology and accelerate economic development in under-served communities.

To minimize a digital divide, governments need embrace the UN e-Inclusion programs and to continue developing initiatives and working with key partners to assist individuals and communities in areas including, access to technology, education and micro enterprise business development.

4. What are the roles of ICTs in creating opportunities for better e-governance?

PTC: One key area is security: providing secure access to information, applications and services. In moving towards an e-Government, Governments need to guard against security threats and, at the same time, streamline appropriate information access for citizens and employees. HP is working with governments across the region to provide services such as security assessment and planning to the implementation of solutions for trustworthy infrastructure and identity and access management.

ICT is providing more open, accessible and transparency for better e-Governance. The security policies and segregation of duties is helping the government from a privacy compliance perspective.

5. Although your experience in e-government may vary across countries, can you summarize a few trends that you have spotted?

PTC: Trends noticed are:-

1. Countries moving towards a national authentication framework from a privacy and security access perspective. This is a very complex area involving appropriate legislation and standards being developed in each country.
2. From a national enterprise architecture perspective some governments are creating a meta data model in terms of cataloguing the information within various agencies. This leads to the creation of a federated services environment. For example some work between Hong Kong and Singapore involves a secure web services exchange between government agencies. You can access through a portal but with proper authentication you can get information of what is beyond the portal. For instance if you apply for a business license they will look at your credentials like a criminal record. Those backend service requests are then created between different agencies.
3. Another trend is governments creating an integrated backend basically in terms of a consolidation of backend services. Shared services have gained increased popularity not only in IT Shared Services but Business Process Shared Services as well. IT Shared Services are carried out by the government in the form of consolidation of data centers, putting the various policies in place, disaster planning, messaging system and consolidating them in a single platform.

6. What are the factors that Asian countries need to take into account to foster a better governance model?

PTC: Fostering a better governance model, requires the segregation of roles and responsibilities. For example, the agency that creates the policy and governance guidelines should be an independent agency and not involved in procurement aspects. Countries such as Denmark, Canada, Singapore and New Zealand, have independent government agencies establishing the guidelines, and helping the other agencies design and implement the successfully launch e-government services.

7. What according to you are the frameworks for understanding progress in E-Government?

PCT: A framework should include proven implementation methodologies and best practices that can be measured in terms of how effectively the e-Government initiative helps drive efficiencies within and across agencies while allowing citizens to access services in a seamless manner. E-government progress can be measured by:
1. Take-up of e-government services by its citizens and business e.g. volume of transactions
2. How inclusive are the e-government programs and does it cover all the citizens in every social-economic levels
3. The adaptability and agility of the e-government infrastructure to changes brought from change in government policies and new services
4. The added efficiency and productivity of the government agencies which have participated in the e-government programs e.g. healthcare, education and social welfare, and how the ICT programs have provided savings which have resulted in increased and more equitable distribution of entitlements
5. Number of services available online from the various government agencies
6. Any security compromise detected in e-services provided

8. What are HP’s ICT projects? What are the business drivers for these projects and the success ratio for these projects? Why is the Government interested in investing on these ICT projects?

PTC: HP is working with Government agencies across the region and the public sector is a key focus for HP. The foundation for HP’s solutions for civilian agencies is the HP e-Government Framework. This framework provides a portfolio of pre-tested, pre-integrated hardware, software and services. It leverages portals, integration technologies and Web services, along with proven implementation methodologies and HP’s best practices from around the world.

Government agencies that we work with are looking for HP solutions to help them design, build, deploy and manage a collaborative environment that brings together data, people and processes. To enable them to drive efficiencies within and across agencies while allowing citizens to access services in a seamless manner.

In addition to providing citizens with quick, secure and easy access to government services, the government agencies themselves also benefit from ICT initiatives. For them, a single point of entry means easier access to information, along with an integrated view of that information. Whether they need to access case files, fight fires or catch criminals, they are empowered to deliver services faster and more effectively – and achieve cost savings while doing so.

Some of HP’s ICT projects are in Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, India, Japan and Taiwan. The key drivers are to increase efficiency and productivity. HP has successfully implemented all the ICT projects, which are still actively used by the governments today. HP has delivered 100% successful completion in projects undertaken. In other cases, where we have seen ICT projects fail, it is mainly due to the lack of commitment either from the business owners or the vendors implementing the project.

Governments continue to be interested in investing in ICT projects, as it is key for them to:
1. Be a more efficient and productive government to drive economic growth
2. Improve the quality of life and opportunities for its citizens; and
3. Increase interaction and consultation with the people, resulting in increase trust between the government and its citizens

9. Are there any private players, and if there are, how is a balance maintained between them?

PTC: Public Private Partnership (PPP) is a long-term partnering relationship between the public and private sectors to deliver services. HP was part of the consortium providing e-government services in ESDLife in Hong Kong but the change in strategy of the Hong Kong government has required HP to adapt to the new model. In some countries in Europe e.g. Bulgaria and Poland, HP continues to participate in PPP relationships with these governments. While not directing investing in PPPs, HP continues to work with private investors to bring together the expertise and resources of the public and private sectors to provide services to the public at the best value for money.

There are many possible PPP models, a win-win relationship is created when the services can be provided at a lower cost than that which the government could provide and the private company can still make a profit from it. This leads to a balance in meeting the service level agreements, meeting the policy objectives and maintaining a viable business model for the private players who are managing the services for the government. Leveraging the extensive IT Shared Services practices from within HP, we are able to provide this experience to governments to increase their efficiency and productivity.

10. What are the Government’s roles, agendas and opportunities for the 21st century? How is the Government shaping up opportunities for ICT vendors and the Government agencies?

PCT: Governments across the region are becoming more citizen-oriented and less bureaucracy-centered; more results-oriented and more market based. They are overcoming transformation challenges to interoperate within agencies and across agencies at the local, state, federal and international level.
They are also succeeding in improving service delivery – providing citizens with transparent, convenient and secure access to government services.
The opportunity exists for ICT vendors to help Governments in their role to give citizens immediate access to the right services at the right time. ICT vendors will be critical in delivering solutions to enable governments to achieve their needed level of interoperability without sacrificing their own data integrity, system security, or compliance with mandates.
For public safety, military and intelligence communities, ICT vendors need to provide the interoperability and actionable intelligence needed to help them meet their respective mission goals.

11. What are the key challenges in furthering e-Government in the Asia-Pacific Region?

PTC: Government agencies will be challenged to continue managing their IT environments to lower costs, increase security and mitigate risks. CIOs of government agencies face pressure to upgrade IT infrastructures and execute more complex tasks under limited budgets. The digital divide is a key challenge even within national boundaries and still exists. A conscious effort needs to be made by Governments, NGOs and Aid Agencies to address this gap.

Another challenge is the apportioning of funding for e-government programs when some of the developing countries for example Cambodia, Vietnam, have an immediate and more urgent need in medication, education and healthcare.

Yet another challenge is Cross- agency adoption of e-government IT shared services. Multi-tiered governments with National, State level government, and Local levels, continue to operate in silos with insufficient guidance to put a consolidated shared infrastructure and to bring a single window of services to the citizens.

12. Drawing from your experience with some of the Asia-Pacific countries (citing examples from countries such as Australia, India and Singapore), can you talk to us about some ways of meeting the above challenges?

PTC: Governments that have been effective in modernizing their organizations have aligned their IT infrastructure to the national policies, people and processes. To overcome the challenges above and progress e-Government initiatives, they will need to consider shared service solutions such as IT consolidation, data warehousing, data center management, security, computing and imaging and printing solutions. They need flexible solutions that enable continuous change and provide leaders with the business intelligence to efficiently manage their entire environments.
Countries that have successfully deployed e-Government solutions have recognized that e-Government has a beneficial effect on the productivity and wealth of the whole country. Their approach is to take a holistic view acknowledging the interdependence of infrastructure, security and architecture with services, specific applications and access for all citizens.
Establishing a national ICT plan, involving all government agencies and key private sector players is critical to establishing a holistic e-government strategy. The importance of a national standards body establishing clear guidelines to ensure interoperability particularly in a multi-tiered government is particularly important. Finally, the mandate given to the government by the people is key to ensure on-going success of a national ICT program for the future of the country. This mandate has to be earned with open and accountable government programs demonstrating prudent public spending to improve education, healthcare and sustainable economic growth.