Real scenarios, real practitioners and real experiences - these are what make the Singapore e-Government Leadership Centre (eGL, http://www.egl.sg/ ) unique and attract public sector leaders from across the world to its programmes.

Ms Ong: e-Government is really more about managing change and transformation in public service, and this involves people, process and structure.

eGL was officially established on 1 August 2006 as a partnership between the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) and the National University of Singapore (NUS). The key objective was to contribute to e-Government developments in other countries by providing leadership education programmes founded on Singapore's practical implementation experience.

"Our belief is that leadership is key and hence the emphasis on educating leaders and senior executives as they are in the best position to drive change and make a difference," said Ms Ong Lih Ling, Centre Director of eGL.

That same awareness, understanding and knowledge also need to be cascaded down through middle management right down to the staff on the ground. To drive this, eGL works with some of its customers to conduct training for audiences ranging from the senior leadership team and Chief Information Officers to IT project managers.

Backed by Singapore's 27 years of e-government and computerisation experience, eGL's strategy is to use experts to teach and/or facilitate in their areas of expertise. It taps on IDA practitioners to share from the depth and breadth of their experience and the NUS faculty for their expertise on public policy, administration and frameworks. The Centre also draws expertise from the industry when required.

A key feature of eGL programmes is the site visits where course participants get to meet and interact with their counterparts as well as e-government solution providers. "The site visits allowed us to become insiders to e-Government in Singapore. We were shown specifically how Singapore built up its e-Government ecosystem of users, suppliers and customers," said delegate Mr Ahmad Jefri Rahman, Senior Counsel at Brunei's Attorney General's Chambers.

Since its formation, eGL has been kept "pretty busy". It has trained more than 550 participants, quite a few of whom are repeat customers. "All of our programmes have been very well received," said Ms Ong. "One compliment we consistently receive is about the actual case studies and learning communicated by a real practitioner as opposed to theories, and this has been our differentiating factor."

She noted that eGL's international audience could often identify with the problems and difficulties that Singapore had encountered in the course of its e-Government journey, and was very interested to learn about how these issues had been overcome. "e-Government is really more about managing change and transformation in public service, and this involves people, process and structure, which are issues that are common the whole world over," she said.

For example, Mr Danville Davidson of Jamaica, who attended eGL's e-Government Masterplanning and Implementation programme in November last year, found it very useful in highlighting the challenges and potential pitfalls involved. "e-Government is something that has been talked about in Jamaica for a number of years but we have not done a masterplan as yet so I saw this as a good opportunity to understand the challenges involved in drawing up a masterplan and implementing it," said Mr Davidson, who is board director of Fiscal Services, a statutory board responsible for driving the IT initiatives of the Jamaican Ministry of Finance and other government ministries.

With its education programmes firmly established, the next phase for eGL is to build up its research expertise. In 2008, the Centre began working with many Singapore public sector agencies to analyse and document their experiences in public service transformation. It has also partnered consulting organisation, nGenera (previously called New Paradigm) to conduct research on Government 2.0 which focuses on the dynamics of government interacting with the next generation of citizens, consumers and employees who are extremely technology-savvy. "We believe this to be the next wave of governance and e-Government to which we must pay attention," concluded Ms Ong.