Ebook: Global E-Governance

Governments are being transformed at every level due to advances in technology and innovative programs that open vast opportunities for delivery of public services, interact with citizens and business, and promote democracy. It is essential that those responsible for operating these services are well trained to provide the leadership needed for successful application of e-Services. This is the second volume in the Global e-Governance Series and focuses on Advancing e-Governance Through Innovation and Leadership by presenting original articles by international experts, National Case Studies and CIO Training Course materials.

The International Academy of Chief Information Officers (IAC) is very pleased to be a sponsor of a book in this series published by IOS Press of Amsterdam, Netherlands. The objectives of the Academy are to study various issues and to pursue the universality of knowledge to advance applied theory in the field of CIO. These include: (1) establishing academic and professional standards based on its research on social phenomenon relating to ICT by elucidating the gradual process of its causes and effects, social and technical inter-relationships, (2) facilitating the exchange of information and knowledge among academic members, professionals and others; and (3) introducing a global standard of a CIO model by uniting academic resources with practical case studies to strengthen and enhance international competitiveness in the ICT industry in the Information Age.

The main purposes of the IAC (www.iacthailand.org) are to foster the learning and development of CIOs in several economies with its activities including academic research and organization of policy dialogues in the field of CIO development. Among its activities are organizing workshops, conventions and symposia, lectures and seminars; conducting academic research projects and surveys, issuing publications such as journals and proceedings; cooperation with related academies whenever possible to exchange resources and carry out joint research projects; undertaking global projects, and offering opportunities to young and top scholarly researchers to actively engage in the field of CIOs, including postgraduate students.

Chapters have been prepared by experts from a number of countries and are intended to provide details on the diverse experiences in e-Governance leadership in several countries. They include presentations on: Public Private Partnership in Bridging e-Services Implementation in Remote Area; Best Practices and a Framework for Success in Rural and Municipal e-Government Initiatives in Developing Countries; Open City Portal in Promoting e-Participation; Building Inclusive e-Government in a Municipality in Peru; Leadership Needed for e-Governance and the Knowledge Economy; Japan e-Government; Planning for Implementing of IT Governance and CIO in Indonesia; China Style and Contents of Government in Steering e-Government Construction and Implementation; Thailand e-Government, Another Step Forward; Taiwan CIO Role and Responsibility; and European History of Information Society, Shifts from Governments to Governance.

Authoritative national case studies are presented in Section II, describing the experiences of Thailand and Japan in their implementation of e-Governance programs, special national reports. Section III presents extensive materials prepared as part of the IAC-APEC GCIO Training program and Model GCIO Council. These are practical instructional manuals that can be used by those seeking to learn more about how to introduce and implement e-Governance programs at the national and/or municipal levels.

This book will serve as a research tool for those examining current economic developments, such as the financial crisis and how the consequences may impact the advancement of e-Government programs, including requirements for professional staff and experts to operate e-Services. Several chapters also address issues involved in promoting “Green ICT”. A number of potential benefits have been examined by several international organizations and national governments in which could become a significant component. Consequently there are several practical dimensions to Advancing e-Government Through Innovation and Leadership.

Editors: Jirapon Tubtimhin and Russell Pipe,

jirapon.tubtimhin@nectec.or.th, grpipe@gmail.com

Thailand e-Government at its start, IT 2000 and 2010 were key driving policy frame work. The first ICT Master Plan was the country's ICT and e-Government architecture during 2002-2008. It is about time for reviewing its races and at the same time paving way for future substantial aims. Surveys, Interviews and studies on stakeholders including users, webmasters and CIOs and the present environment conditions have been conducted by the Ministry of ICT to reflect facts and figures of the past e-Government services development as well as future development roadmap has been design as a step forward to leapfrog its maturity level of e-Government development and to keep abreast with the international development arena.

e-Revenue initiative of Thailand Ministry of Finance has been a showcase under the country e-Government development in the recent decade. The prominent record to prove of the success is Tax Filing that hits almost 80% of the eligible taxpayers in filing their personal income tax through internet in 2008. The Revenue Department is now trying to extend its tax collection to remote area where potential online service is prone. Pubic Private Partnership or PPP approach has been applied to help make IT-ready for such high demand community like Koh Tao island, located about 75 kilometers from the coast of Suratthani province to pay tax online. The PPP effort for this online service project is elaborated in many key aspects including Processes, Preparation and Implementation.

Japan even though being an island country situated in the Pacific Ocean, has a well developed ICT infrastructure. In 2008 Broadband Internet coverage has been almost 1/4 of population and FTTH is more than 10%. ICT industry was accounted in 2006 as the largest industry among all industries. However, Japanese ICT companies are still struggling to beat their autonomy to go into overseas markets. e-Government Status of Japan is reflected through indicators listed, Management Optimization, National Portal Service, CIO in Government, Required Interface and e-Government Promotion. Development trends include e-Government and Innovative CIO for e-Government in Japan: New role of CIO, Expanding Role of CIO and Innovation and CIO Core Competences. New IT Reform Strategy 2006-2010 is highlighted as direction of e-Government.

While many developing country e-Government efforts are national government focused, rural and municipal initiatives hold great promise as well for bettering the lives of citizens. Rural and municipal e-Government directly connect government and citizens and can further efforts to provide services effectively, promote economic development, and foster citizen engagement. The paper reviews best practices and success stories in rural and municipal e-Government efforts, and then develops an assessment model, SENSE, for determining the promise of rural and municipal eGovernment investments. The paper concludes with a discussion of Open City Portal – an open source platform for municipal portals – that enables municipalities with limited budgets and technology expertise to develop a municipal portal that helps achieve many of the objectives of e-Government.

The European Information Society or EIS has become focus point of the EU Commission since 1993. This article reveals from the ‘Delors White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness, and Employment’ to reflect the EIS from the starting point at policy review and development as well as the emergence point of view and creating the need for EU intervention in the EIS which involved with technology standards setting and global governance of the Internet and the Information Society. Followed by another two section of ‘Mobilising the Union’ in the Information Age' and ‘Political Innovation’ that are described on implementation activities of the EIS. Under such innovation, the Trans-European infrastructure Networks, or TENs was established.

China in realizing the importance of E-government, started its move tangibly when it promoted the year 2002 as “E-government Year of China”. Since then the Central Government has played a leading role and all levels of governments have joined hands in the process of E-government development of China. This article provides details of efforts of the country's E-government development in terms of Setting-up E-government Lead Agency in Central Government, Leadership of E-government from Core Agency of Central Government, Patterns and Contents of China Government in Steering the E-government and Lead agencies of E-government at the Level of Local Governments. State Council Informatization Leading Group takes the primary responsibility of steering and coordinating the nationwide work on informatization. The key leadership in local government is the so called “Information Work Leading Group”. The group consists of government top leaders and important government department heads with the power to establish strategy and conduct policy framework and coordination work.

Leadership is an important factor in e-Governance process and Knowledge Economy development. This article introduces the ICT roles and promises for policy makers in developing countries. Realization of such promises incorporated challenges for leaders in leading Public Sector Transformation and orchestrating the E-Development Process. At the same time they have to pay attention to related activities and notions including managing risks, the demand for E-Leaders, E-Leadership development and current supply, implementation crisis, e-Leadership gap and promising responses and practices from other countries.

In the era of globalization, Information Communication and Technology (ICT) is widely used in various functions of all kinds of organizations. The installation, transformation, and applications of IT are taken care by an IT leader who may be called “CIO (Chief Information Officer)”. As the function of CIO is likely a knowledge center of the organization. The big challenge on the implementation of ICT governance in Indonesia is that administratively, Indonesia consists of 33 provinces, five of which have special status. Each province has its own political legislature and governor, and each one of them has different governance structures. This condition can lead to information islands. G-CIO established to overcome this challenge and to achieve the knowledge based society in Indonesia. This is because G-CIO position is to fill the leadership gap across government unit and institution. Due the widely and political aspect, a G-CIO has to has technical ability, management skill and soft skill.

Enterprises are all facing a rapidly changing market that global competition is vigorous. It is important for enterprises to win business opportunities by taking advantage of sophistication IT application. The keys for enterprises to growth largely depend on the capacity of using IT appropriately to reduce cost, increase productivity, and enhance innovation and competitiveness. The CEO has been long responsible for management strategy in corporation, as diverse and complex IT applications have developed, the role of CIO, who is in charge of IT related process in an enterprise becomes vital for corporation development. Previous studies are limited in address nation-specific economic and industrial context by identifying differences of roles and responsibilities of CIO across nations. This study employs secondary data analysis to compare the roles and responsibilities of CIO in enterprises across the US, Japan and Taiwan respectively to shed the lights of comparative CIO studies from national economic respective. The results suggest while more transformational leader and business strategist role of CIO is found in the US corporation, Taiwanese CIOs are more likely to characterize as the function head and recently transformational leader that primarily focused on activities that aims at achieving IT operational excellence and on creating change for their enterprise through close partnerships with business operations. The role of CIOs in Japan is shifting toward the US model that emphasizes leadership and managerial responsibilities as top priorities. In all, this paper suggests economic and industrial aspects of global economy should be taken into account in the CIO related studies to understand the change and development of CIO job models and typology.

Within the research literature on electronic government (or e-government), understanding the factors that contribute to digital inclusion has received considerable attention over the past several years. Many studies suggest that the delivery of government services online in a user-centric way would contribute to build an inclusive information society. However, digital equality in access to and use of e-government services still remains as one of the most ambitious goals to be achieved by different levels of governments across the world. To this end, a case study of a local government in Peru was conducted to specifically investigate: (1) the adoption of different e-government initiatives over a 10-year period; (2) the measures taken to promoting digital inclusion; and (3) the reasons behind the success of e-government implementation. Overall, the findings highlight the importance of two categories of government initiatives – e-services applications and digital inclusion solutions. The findings also indicate the existence of four e-government success factors: political will, overall strategy, short-term projects, and public-private partnerships. Based on these findings, this study suggests directions to guide further research on inclusive e-government.

This article reveals an open-source based platform called “Open City Portal” for developing citizen oriented portal especially at the city level. The Open City Portal will help cities all over the world be affordable to develop their own e-Government portals to promote citizens participation and interaction in the e-Development processes. Its features include: A few clicks to create a Portal Framework, Citizen-Centric, Single Windows for every service category, Participatory content development, Interaction with Citizens, Online Application and Tracking System, Result-Oriented Management and Accountability (ROMA) system and E-Participation, Knowledge Sharing among Cities and Focus on Sustainable Urban Regional Initiatives. The article also features the current stage of e-Government in cities, the impediments, what's wrong with e-government strategy and What is the new e-Government strategy for cities that were surveyed during the World Summit on Cities and Local Government on Information Society in Bilbao 2005. In addition, some brief details on Organizations to support the OpenCityPortal, Installation of OpenCityPortal in a country and cities, Benefits of the Government Portal and Recent Trends in Categorization of Government Services in the Portals are also featured with lastly the Call for Advisory Council Members of the Open City Foundation and Institute.

Waseda University International e-Government Ranking was released for the first time since 2005 and conducted by a researcher team and staff of Waseda University. The methodology includes collecting related data and information from its organized survey, from international organizations such as ITU, APEC, OECD and etc. as well as from organizing international seminar and forum on e-Governance. The collected inputs are analyzed and synthesized accordingly to a certain set of indictors and parameters which evolve every year to fit the current development condition and situation. Current 6 areas with 26 parameters to measure 34 countries in the world include Network Preparedness, Required Interface, Functioning Applications, Management optimization, National Portal, Introduction of CIO and Promotion of e-Government. Result of the rankings comprises of the overall scale and categorized area scales.

This article aims to introduce an Intelligent Transport System or ITS that deployed from the use of information and communication technologies, ICT. The ITS can help improve the efficiency of transportation in term of Safety/Security, Comfort/Convenience and Environment friendly. The article also gives details in terms of the ITS components, the needs of ITS in Thailand, the role of the R&D agency, NECTEC in ITS research and development, the role to build up ITS community, the role in international collaboration and the role in standardization.

This paper presents computer security incident handling in Thailand by ThaiCERT. Because ThaiCERT generally receives numerous incident reports every year, we need to manage our limited resources to timely and efficiently deal with every case. This paper will also display statistics of incidents handled by ThaiCERT for different categories of incidents and sources of attackers. It appears that the number of phishing cases in Thailand has dramatically increased over recent years.

The APECTEL 05/2005 project was aimed to design the Government Chief Information Officer Training Model to deploy in APEC member economies. The training model was established to incorporate related parameters including, GCIO Responsibilities, GCIO Core Competencies, GCIO Institutionalization, Maturity Level of ICT and e-Government Development, Findings from the survey, Educational Background of GCIO and Existing Training Courses/Curricula. The project also promote e-Government development networking through the GCIO capacity building and related activities.

Development of Model Government CIO Councils or TEL02/2006 project was endorsed under the former Human Resource Development Steering Group (HRDSG) and Business Facilitation Steering Group (BFSG). The project goal was to establish “An Adaptive Model on Government CIO Institutionalization for e-Government Development” which will be much contributing to the development of e-Government and GCIOs considered the key implementation element of e-APEC strategy.

In project implementation, two workshops were organized successfully. Member economies co-sponsored this project including Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, Philippines, Viet Nam, Malaysia and USA formed up a Joint Researcher Team or JRT to play an active role in executing the target objectives upon the whole project agenda. The project succeeded its planned activities as well as its overall objectives.

Contributing agencies to the project included e-Government Research Center, Waseda University, Japan, for hosting the first workshop and CIO University Program, School of Business Administration, George Mason University, USA, for hosting the second workshop. The two workshops produced the most valuable thought through the Waseda Statement and George Mason Statement that reflected those meaningful direction and guideline towards GCIO development especially in APEC region.