Good governance is key to successful e-Government which will, in turn, enhance the effectiveness of Government. This was the main thrust of the keynote address delivered by Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong at the iGov Forum on 15 June.  “It is tempting to think that to successfully implement e-government, the ‘e’ in e-government comes first… But more than technology and the application of IT, our experience in Singapore shows that good governance is the foundation for successful e-Government which in turn enables us to improve the effectiveness of Government,” said Mr Goh.

Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong delivering the keynote address at the iGov Global Exchange forum.

The iGov Forum was part of the iGov Global Exchange 2009, a week-long international event that brings together thought leaders, policy makers, experts and practitioners from the public and private sectors around the world to discuss opportunities and challenges in developing successful e-Government programmes in an increasingly connected world. Held at Suntec Singapore International Convention and Exhibition Centre, the iGov Forum attracted close to 600 attendees from 40 countries.  The theme for this year’s inaugural event was “Integrating Public Services, Engaging Citizens”.

17 international thinkers and leaders in the e-government arena, hailing from eight different countries, also spoke at the iGov Forum, sharing their insights, exchanging ideas and discussing best practices and challenges.  Some of the speakers included Ms Qian Haiyan, Director, Division for Public Administration & Development Management, United Nations (UN) Department of Economic and Social Affairs; Mr Antoine Brugidou, Global Managing Director, Growth and Strategy and Global Industry Programme – Public Service, Accenture; Mr Ken Cochrane, former Chief Information Officer of the Government of Canada and currently Managing Partner with the SSG Southside Solutions Group and Mr Lim Hup Seng, Deputy Secretary (Performance), Ministry of Finance, Singapore.

Commenting on the features of good governance that were critical to successful e-government, Mr Goh said one of them was a culture of transparency, accountability and incorruptibility. In Singapore, a safeguard is the independent Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau, which operates without political interference. “By keeping government clean, we remove a major impediment to the successful implementation of e-government,” he said.

Another important feature of good government is continuous regulatory review because well-intentioned policies appropriate for the time they were crafted could eventually become obsolete.

The iGov Global Exchange brought together thought leaders, policy makers, experts and practitioners from the public and private sectors around the world.

In Singapore, the guiding principle to regulatory review is the adoption of a risk management approach to regulation. For example, the Singapore government recently did away with the factory registration requirement for some 14,000 lower-risk factories, saving the industry close to S$3.5 million in annual fees. Instead, the factories only needed to make an online declaration that they had proper risk controls in their factories before commencing work, and remained within the Government’s safety oversight through existing inspection regimes. “Such a mindset shift from a ‘regulator or controller’ to that of a ‘facilitator’ simplifies administration and reduces the cost burden of our companies while minimising the overall risk,” Mr Goh explained.

The need for continuous review is a point that resonated with one of the delegates, Dr Zahra Rashid Said Al-Rawahi from the Sultan Qaboos University in Oman. “My research interest is benchmarking e-government projects and measuring their effectiveness. If there is no review, you could end up with a project that costs a lot of money and has little impact,” she said.

The third feature of good governance is the ability to work as one government by breaking down silos in the public service and enabling all departments to work together. “Without the public service first embracing a Whole-of-Government mindset, the promise of integrated e-Government solutions for better service delivery will be unattainable,” he said.

Agreeing with this, Ms Qian of UN noted that the success of Singapore’s e-government model shows that integration is the way forward. In her presentation on ‘Global Trends in e-Government Development’, she noted that e-Government still stood at the crossroads. Countries can embrace it as an opportunity to transform public service and to revitalise public administration, she said.

Turning to the next phase in e-government, Mr Goh said, “The role of government must evolve from being the sole provider of public services, to providing an open IT platform to nurture an ecosystem of IT services. In this new ecosystem, new participants, whether private sector or individual knowledge workers, could freely innovate and create value-added services on top of or even superseding existing public services.”

A model of what is to come is the TradeXchange system. Unlike the previous TradeNet system which provided a one-stop solution for traders to transact with the government electronically, TradeXchange has an additional feature: it is also a platform where private sector service providers can offer their own end-to-end application services to the trade and logistics community.

“Going forward, the government must take on the role of a facilitator and enabler, to encourage public, private and people sectors to work together not only to embrace and exploit change brought about by globalisation and technological advances, but also to collaborate to create new solutions, new businesses and new wealth… This calls for fundamental rethinking and transformational shifts in the way we think about e-Government,” he said.