Monday, July 7, 2008

E-Government in Malaysia: Its implementation so far and citizen's adoption strategies


The Electronic Government initiative was launched to lead the country into the Information Age. It will improve how the government operates internally, as well as how it delivers services to the people of Malaysia. It seeks to improve the convenience, accessibility and quality of interactions with citizens and businesses. At the same time, it will improve information flows and processes within government to improve the speed and quality of policy development, coordination and enforcement.
To accelerate the objectives of Malaysia Vision 2020, a path has already been defined through seven innovative Flagship Applications such as Electronic Government, Multipurpose Card, Smart School, Telehealth, R&D Cluster, E-business, and Technopreneur Development.
The vision of Electronic Government is a vision for government, businesses and citizenry working together for the benefit of Malaysia and all of its citizens. The vision focuses on effectively and efficiently delivering services from the government to the people of Malaysia, enabling the government to become more responsive to the needs of its citizens.
The implementation of Malaysia E-Government project in progress:
1. Project Monitoring System (SPP II)
2. Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS)
3. Generic Office Environment (GOE)
4. Electronic Procurement (EP)
5. Electronic Services (E-Services)
6. Electronic Labour Exchange (ELX)
7. E-Syariah
The implementation of e-government would bring benefits to the public administration and Malaysian society in several ways:
i) First, e-government improves efficiency since the use of information technology enables improvement in mass processing tasks and public administration operations.
ii) Second, e-government improves services, as the main element in reforming government operations is to adopt a customer-focused approach. These applications will provide a seamless online service and thus improve traditional government services.
iii) Next, e-government would help to achieve specific outcome. The Internet can help stakeholders share information and ideas and contribute to specific policy outcomes.
Citizen's adoption strategies:
In Malaysia, the internal processes for human resources, procurement and funding rank second in the hierarchy of challenges. The main challenge in e-government in Malaysia is the technological challenge, which includes issues like standards, data integration, legacy maintenance and privacy and security. The key priority in Malaysia now is to improve the core government applications and integrating more services across agencies. At the same time, market the e-government services to the public and businesses.
In order to make the right decisions and avoid falling behind, government must identify and resolve the different issues that have arisen from the transition period during which traditional and e-government co-exist.

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