What goes first in e-government – “Electronic” or “Government”?
Electronic government (e-government) is now a quite popular topic in Kyrgyzstan. To implement
the e-government project, a special body was established within the Government - State
Committee on Information Technology and Communications.
From time to time, we hear news in the media about e-government - e.g. “Kyrgyz officials went
to Estonia (or some other country) to study the work of the e-government”, etc. Speaking of
Estonia, there is a joint project on e-government currently implemented by the two countries –
Estonia and Kyrgyzstan. And there might be more international projects like this.
So what is “electronic government”? And what is the key word here – “electronic” or
“government”?
Ideally, e-government works as follows. Let's say your ID card has expired and you need a new
one. In this case, all you do is you go to the Population Services Center (PSC, ЗАГС), a local
registration authority, sign a standard application form and get your ID car within 20-30 minutes.
And there would be absolutely no need to collect any documents from the house committee or
elsewhere, as opposed to the current practice. E-government already has those ready for you.
And this is true not only for ID cards. This also applies to many other documents and
information, which are now burdensome to collect. A particular problem is seeking document
duplicates from the Civil Registry Office. At some point of life, almost all of us lost some
document and ran into an urgent need to obtain a duplicate - whether it be of the birth, marital
status, marriage, divorce, death or some other certificate. All these and a number of other
documents are currently issued at their place of registration only, which should not be a problem
if you still live in Kyrgyzstan and can go to the district-level Civil Registry Office.
However, if you left Kyrgyzstan and now live abroad, obtaining a duplicate of any certificate from
the Civil Registry Office becomes a serious issue. About one million people have left the country
since it gained independence. Some people have become citizens of other countries, others
migrated for better employment opportunities. Many of them are often faced with the need to
obtain or restore some certificate to be able to enroll their children in a school or kindergarten,
etc. – situations may be different.
For example, a fairly common case is property disputes. Let’s say we have some dispute going
on in Germany or Australia, where the testate was born or lived in Kyrgyzstan, say, in Issyk-Ata
or Maili-Suu district. Devisees – migrants and their children – may not even know that
settlements and districts have different names now. They may encounter all kinds of difficulties
in obtaining required documents. We can talk about it forever. Many of you, I am sure, can draw
various examples from your own practice or that of the people you know.
In case of e-government, all certificates and their duplicates can be issued by any Population
Services Center. And there is even an option of obtaining them by mail. All you would have to
do for that is to file the request, make a payment through the Internet and pass identity
verification. While the latter is a critical procedure, it still would not be a barrier to securing the
required duplicate.
Thus, e-government is very important and demanded when it comes to civil registration,
registration of movable and immovable property and land titles, etc.. A separate topic is the
registration of a legal entity, which entails the registration of a taxpayer and all the related
interactions between the taxpayer and the State.
It is already clear that the scope of e-government is not limited to present-time registration and
documenting of relations. E-government also covers the delivery of services based on requests
pertaining to the distant past. Whereas these are just some obvious things e-government can
do, it also embraces healthcare, education, judicial, pension, penitentiary systems, etc..
For e-government to happen, virtually every government unit will have to maintain its own
database, or register. That is, every ministry, agency or committee and so on will have to keep
their own register, and sometimes more than just one.
Access to these registers should be differentiated depending on a confidentiality level, while
observing privacy shall be a must. This means that no party can assess personal data without
good enough justification, and all changes made to such data by government agencies must be
documented. The system must store information on state employees (usually, identification
numbers) and particular changes made by them.
Is this work being implemented by Kyrgyz government agencies? In fact, it is. It is just that most
of them do not create any registers. Registers they use now are paper-form archives, which are
not always systematized, automated and complete. Often, these archives are still existent due
to the hard work of archivists. Should they retire or simply leave their jobs, the institutional
memory may be lost.
Creating registers is only the beginning of it. The next major and important aspect of
establishing e-government is effective inter-register exchange, which would require a large
amount of error identification and correction work and routine regulation of constantly large
flows of information being exchanged. This is a very large amount of work, even for a highcapacity computer. Just imagine that every 5 minutes you would have to mix a kilogram of rice,
a kilogram of buckwheat and the same amount of wheat, stir them up, and then separate. And
don’t forget to remove poor-quality grains.
Of course, there will be a list of key registers, about 30 of them, meanwhile the total number of
registers may reach 150. We should also not forget municipal registers, which is a separate big
topic. But I would not want to go that far in this article.
So, now I think you can imagine how the “back office” of e-government works.
Ordinary citizen should not and does not want to know this. He/she must be sure that any public
authority can immediately identify him/her and provide services required. Moreover, any citizen
would want to use e-government to enroll the child in a kindergarten or school, choose a clinic,
send a report to the tax office, and so on.
Ideally, you should be able to access the website of the e-government using your login,
password and some additional identification information. After accessing your account you
should be able to obtain any government service with no special computer skills required.
The next example I am going to make might seem fantastic to you. In 2009, I went to Indonesia.
There I visited the Registration Office (a body similar to our PSC) in some small town. This
office had multiple windows used by operators to provide almost all services. There were also
kiosks, where any service could be obtained, which looked like payment kiosks that we have in
our country. The very first question a kiosk would ask was “Can you read?” and there was a
corresponding picture going with it. Every time a person pushed the “can’t read” icon, the kiosk
would switch to pictures and sounds. Instead of signing, the person could simply put a cross in
a special place on the screen. The thing is that 30 percent of the Indonesian population was
illiterate back then. Without knowing how to read, a person could register a company or receive
a duplicate of some necessary document. And obtaining any service was even quicker for
literate Indonesians.
So, coming back to the question What goes first in e-government – “electronic” or
“Government”? I believe that “government” is a key word as every register, each case of interregister exchange, transfer of data from one register to another (certificates of residence,
certificates from the Military Enlistment Office, etc.), and all other interactions between state
agencies imply large structural work. Structural work in this case means making numerous
changes to country’s legislative framework.
Besides this, e-government requires a number of user-friendly formats of applications, summary
reports, etc..
It is important for the country to adopt a special state policy on e-government. This should use
simple terms to describe physical Government’s expectations of the e-government and all
functions the latter should perform. This policy might be most difficult to put together.
After adopting the Policy on e-Government (or we also can call it vision), short and long lists of
required legislation have to be prepared preceded by the description of an e-government’s
operating algorithm, quality and timing of state services.
What needs to be done next is describing all (!) scenarios of interaction between citizens and
state and municipal employees. All processes and procedures must be as detailed as possible.
Any omission in the description can negate all the work. Only after doing this, we can say that
we have a design of the e-government.
What will the results of this work depend on? First of all, the level and competence of an
individual, who will be leading this work. This person responsible for the implementation of the
e-government project should be at least Deputy Prime Minister or Head of the Government
office. It is important to note that wisdom and experience would not be the only requirements for
a person starting the whole new endeavor. Much more important would be his/her knowledge of
all aspects of Government’s work, a broad outlook, and sound information technology
management-related knowledge and skills.
Another option would be to create a separate state project having great powers. However, it is
not viable, as in any case, this project would have to be integrated into the existing state
administration system.
Whatever is meant by “electronic”, also implies a great amount of work. Here, many tasks would
have to be implemented to optimize the identification, protect the information, ensure effective
inter-register exchange, etc. Together with this, it is important to understand that any egovernment, on the first place, MIRRORS the real government.
Thus, the work should start with establishing a high-quality document management system and
simultaneous digitization of it. As far as I remember from the world practice, the establishment
of e-government is usually a relatively short process, taking 1-2 years and a large amount of
initial financial investment.
One more thing. It's time for our government to stop copying the experience of other countries
from 10-20 years ago, and act independently.
Talks about e-government first started in Kyrgyzstan in 2005, but virtually no progress has been
observed since that time. Even if some work is done, the results are still mediocre. This also
applies to the long-talked-of Safe City project, which is actually a major component of egovernment.
Mokenov Aidar, ITdolboor, economist.