Electronic governance or e-governance is the application of information and communication technology (ICT) for delivering government services, exchange of information, communication transactions, integration of various stand-alone systems and services between government-to-citizen (G2C), government-to-business (G2B), government-to-government (G2G), government-to-employees (G2E) as well as back office processes and interactions within the entire government framework. Through e-governance, government services will be made available to citizens in a convenient, efficient and transparent manner. The three main target groups that can be distinguished in governance concepts are government, citizens and businesses/interest groups. In e-governance there are no distinct boundaries. Generally four basic models are available – government-to-citizen (customer), government-to-employees, government-to-government and government-to-business. [1]
Fortunately in recent years, e-Governance implementation is considered well-known solution for improving efficiency, transparency and provision of simplified public services within Afghanistan government authorities thus focusing on initialization of a number of projects for simplification and digitization of public services, therefore citizens may not require to wait in long queues and also decreasing the frequency of public offices visits for service applicants.
The Afghanistan Government long term e-Government vision is Quality Public Services delivered Equitably by a Trusted Government to an Empowered Citizenry. [2]
Thus to achieve this vision we require strategic approach or to simply put e-governance cannot be implemented through establishment of stand-alone systems, infrastructures or implementation of isolated projects and expect success. Let’s break down our e-Governance vision and discuss:
| Quality Public Services | There are two important stakeholders to be considered: 1. Service provider 2. Service recipient; quality of public service means providing and receiving the services comfortably and efficiently but unfortunately in most of e-governance projects the technical parts are considered (which is good) but mentioned two stakeholders are not considered as required before and during project implementation and in the end when project is completed above two stakeholders are expected to like, adopt and utilize the project and it’s not a surprise that they resist because it’s not what they want or need. If we want to create quality public services, it’s necessary to understand the need, inspiration and suggestions from main stakeholders while designing and implementing pubic services. |
| delivered Equitably | Equitable delivery of public services means to provide services to all citizens of Afghanistan across the country in rural and urban areas in a fair and justified manner, this part is actually not considered in most of the public services design that how all people from across the country can be enabled enough to access the public services equally as people living in center Kabul. This issue and also citizens empowerment issue can be solved not by distributing laptops or tablets to citizens but through long term plans and I would shortly refer to Universal Design of Web by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). |
| by a Trusted Government | Trusted government means citizens feel safe sharing personal information and government ability to process and also identify false information while submitted, as in other part of the world most government authorities are trying to identify its citizens easily and process false information real time but Afghanistan has even no visible strategy or plan to ensure the security of digital public information or identification of false data, and there are no plans yet to integrate different government systems securely as it’s needed to provide online services, other world have found solutions like x-road, single-sign in or mobile ID as no citizen need to submit their date of birth, father name… each and single time and access almost all public services from a single point, however in Afghanistan in single public office from one table to another you need to fill forms, identify and verify yourself repeatedly. |
| to an Empowered Citizenry | Government vision is to provide quality public services equitably to an empowered citizen, and empowered citizens means that in first step citizens has easy and affordable access to technological tools and internet (to access online services provided by government), then the information provided should be understandable and accessible by all citizens (including illiterate, disabled…), and be able to provide requested information easily (avoiding the need to provide same information repeatedly) and confirm the receipt of the service, if citizens are not empowered enough or in other words providing online public services but not considering citizens empowerment to use these online public services does not make sense. |
To conclude, from above analysis it’s clarified that e-governance is not simply about developing isolated systems and applications or establishing technological centers but e-governance implementation require a clear national vision and set of goals to be achieved through strategic and regulative steps that aims to pave path for fundamental changes in public organizations and implementation of e-governance by enabling and empowering all involved stakeholders.
References
| [1] | Wikipedia, “E-Governance,” [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-governance. |
| [2] | MCIT, “MCIT’s-Achievements & Activities Report 2002-2015,” 2010. [Online]. Available: http://mcit.gov.af/Content/files/EGOV%20AF%20-%20D9%20-%20Electronic%20Government%20%20Strategy%20in%20Afghanistan.pdf. |
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