Building e-government - Technology is not all

5 years, Vietnam has made great strides. Vietnam's administrative reform and e-government reform efforts have been recognized worldwide. But also through the years and expectations of the people about an administration in which people are central and have the right to decide on public service is still a distant wish .

Is it possible to buy e-government if you buy lots of computers and invest a lot on technology infrastructure? Is it possible to build e-government merely to bring IT into public authorities? The technology launcher has created huge shifts in quantity but has produced too few qualitative changes. And it's time for us to ask the question: where does technology stand in the process of building e-government.

Administrative Reform - More quantity than substance

Beginning more than 5 years ago, the first moves of the massive public service apparatus for the construction of e-government in Vietnam have achieved certain successes. The amount of computers equipped at the offices, the number of civil servants sent to train IT applications, the amount of software built for administrative reform has increased exponentially over the years. 70% of ministries have their own websites. 80% of provinces have websites or portals. 80% of administrative agencies have websites . The most important thing is the awareness of the heads of government on e-government has increased significantly.

At the forefront of efforts to simplify administrative procedures for citizens, implementing the one-stop policy is the Ministry of Trade with the granting of online quota, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment to schedule online citizenship, the General Department of Customs with electronic clearance process . But that is almost all that can be seen in the achievement report on building e-government in Vietnam in the past.

Changing the amount of computers does not bring about a change in the thinking of administrative staff. The overlap in management, the complexity of the administrative procedures for a long time, is a colored land to benefit for a part of administrative officials, so they are not easy to give up. Habits of operating with official documents, with a seal that is deeply rooted in thinking and becoming a way to block government administrative and electronic reform efforts . The technology has no errors when thinking of serving It is not possible to replace the original thinking, the mechanism of asking not to replace an open door mechanism. So technical factors, technology infrastructure is important? The answer is: Yes. But the key is Yes .

Where does technology stand?

Mr. Mel Blunt is currently a senior advisor to the Government on Public Administration Reform, and a Senior Technical Advisor to the United Nations Development Program in Vietnam. Before stopping at this S-shaped land, he used to travel more than 40 countries and mess with over 100 community projects. A former senior officer in the British government, and the first senior adviser for British foreign administrative projects, but then he stopped in Vietnam, found the other half, a big family. , and then consider this as my second home.

As a senior advisor to the Government of Vietnam on public administration reform, and with many years of experience working with national governments, he knows very well, what is most important in the transition process. to e-government. According to him, " technology is probably the least important thing in building e-government ."

In agreement with him, quite a few speakers and people present at the e-Government Symposium last week also affirmed: Technology is really important. But it is just a tool, a means to support the transition to e-government. In addition to technology infrastructure, the change of thinking of civil servants also has cultural factors: sharing or not sharing, cooperating or not cooperating; The correlation relationship is both homogeneous and independent between the executing department, the overall architecture . These are also factors that have a significant impact on the transition of administrative documents to administrative documents. electronic.

' E-government is not and never a technology battle. The concurrent consensus on technology must be the last stage . ',' changing thinking from control thinking to serving thinking, servicing and aiming to build an effective public service. More for people is really important. You will never get e-government if you don't change the basic thinking . I really think that e-government can only run well when public administration officials change. Only this, 'said Mel Blunt.

There is still a lesson of Japan, with technology in the world leading category but still not considered a successful e-government country. And the lesson of Hong Kong, big investment, synchronous technology but people still indifferent to electronic administration .

Technology infrastructure is fundamental: right. But that's just a nail. A home is considered beautiful when it has architecture, planning, correlation with the surrounding houses and most importantly, its owner. Who is the ultimate e-government object if it is not an electronic citizen? And so, all of these factors: technology infrastructure, civil servant thinking, relations between public agencies . ultimately, to serve the most ordinary people.

' Take an example in England. He has built a very large, complete e-government system. But they build in a very bureaucratic way, regardless of the needs of the people. Therefore, people are not interested in the system. And what happened to England? The system has been built very well but because people do not care, it has led to a waste and inefficiency. They had to start over . '

Investment in technology infrastructure - How much is enough?

Whether a foundation or a foundation, whether it is the most important or the least important element, the technology infrastructure is still an indispensable factor in the transition to e-government. However, how to invest and how much to invest is not a simple matter.

According to the reporter Kim Long, the Post Office newspaper, ' the recent IT application activities of government agencies . are investing in a regular, horizontal line. This causes many obstacles. Good work places do not have enough resources to do it. In places where there is no good preparation, sometimes it causes waste . '

Back to the story of Mr. Mel Blunt, the mentor has many years of experience with models of public administration reform in many countries around the world. In the last e-government symposium, frankly, he said, it is not possible to speed up the e-government process just by investing so much in technology. Because this is as dangerous as rushing forward without observing, it is easy to fall into a deep pit.

' Investment in e-government is necessary, but if we invest too much in e-government we won't be able to invest in other things. These are medical and cultural education and many other important things. The government cannot ignore these things to make those things okay. So we have to do? Investment must be balanced '

Investment equilibrium, not spread, not horizontal but progressive. Planning investment, vision, roadmap. Selecting the most appropriate and not the most suitable technologies to apply the most modern, advanced technology even though it is not really appropriate . is one of the good answers to the problem: investing for floor - how much is enough.

' We need to determine what to invest, time and construction roadmap. It doesn't make sense if we build a complete e-government if only 13% of our population has access to the internet , 'Mel Blunt said.

Technology is important or unimportant, perhaps no more controversial. In fact, we have come a long way from a technology that has helped us to have a modern administration.

However, as a funny comparison of someone, the process of e-government transference in Vietnam today is like building a house without architecture, every member of the strong house builds, in time The development of e-government in Vietnam desperately needs a master plan and a qualified architect. In the next CSS program, we will continue the story of building e-government in Vietnam with the theme: which model for e-government in Vietnam.

Quynh Ngoc