Interview with Thomas Riley, Executive Director of the Commonwealth Centre for e-Governance
Today we want to share with all of you a conversation we had with Thomas Riley, who has been an information and policy expert for the past thirty-five years including being involved in the e-governance and e-government process. Thomas is Executive Director of the Commonwealth Centre for e-Governance. It is a real pleasure for eGovBlog to present this interview.
eGB: Can you tell us about the main projects in which you and CCEG are involved right now?
TR: Currently we are researching and writing a book on e-Governance Polices for Mediterranean countries. We are also writing a paper on privacy in our new environments. Both of these are important issues due to the changing nature of technologies and the way people react and use these technologies. From an e-government perspective in government the new technologies are invaluable in connecting with citizens. Privacy is an important value and in surveys on e-government implementation the issue arises of people wanting assurances their personal information is secure. Beyond privacy there are the security issues on a broader scale where we are seeing the rise in spam, spyware, ad-aware, phishing, identity fraud and a host of other hacker activities (good or bad) that make people uneasy when going online. Government who have evolved e-government and dfigital strategies have put a lot of emphasis on the importance of security and the ensi\uring that secure networks are secure. Lack of online security can be a major barrier to a government developing e-government programs.
However, on the positive side of this debate, emerging developments in e-government provide the opportunity for citizens to interact with their government, such as going online with governments to file taxes, getting the weather forecasts, finding the coordinates of a government official, looking for information on a multitude of health issues and a host of other applications from downloading forms to getting specific information on government web sites.
We, CCEG, have also developed an e-Governance course for government officials.
eGB: During the last two years you participated and organized different projects in India. What can you tell us about those experiences?
TR: Our involvement in India was to produce a major international conference on e-government for public officials in India. In addition, we delivered (in 2005 and 2006) courses at the Administrative College for Public Administration in Hyderabad, India on the role of e-Governance when instituting e-government programs in developing countries. The audience for these courses came from Vietnam, China, Thailand, Mynamar and Cambodia.
eGB: What do you think are the main challenges or obstacles that governments -in general- face to implement a successful e-Government strategy?
TR: There are four main responses to this question.
1. The most important challenge when meeting the challenge of e-government implementation is to develop a strategy that is realistic. It is important that a practical and thought out assessment be made of what exactly a particular government agency or government overall want to achieve and how. This means that a careful analysis will be needed of what the object of the e-government program will be, what resources are needed, are there funds for the technology going to be forthcoming and how does the government decide what the public wants in their e-government programs? There also needs to be a mechanism for input through surveys, on-line questionnaires on what the citizen is looking for from online government and focus groups. There are just three of the steps that can be used so that a government agency, for example, in a developing country, can determine that they are going to give the citizens what they want and not what the government officials developing the program, think they want.
2. It is essential that when developing such a strategy for implementation there be:
a) a major component ensuring there is sufficient funding and
b) that the needed personnel resources, including outside resources, are secured; and
c) most importantly is that there is approval and support from the political and administrative jurisdiction of the country, region or town.
3) Ensure that the projects are directed by government officials and not from outside consultants, especially when decisions on large technology infrastructures are being purchased. Experts and consultants are crucially important to an implementation process. The standard rule should be that when being done by government the leaders, overseers and administrative officials are in government. It is the public officials who should take the leadership role and be the officials to make these crucial decisions.
4) Be realistic about the scope and size of the programs. One size does not fit all for e-government projects.
eGB: In one of your reports you wrote about the difference between e-Government and e-Governance It would be interesting if you could summarize for us in a few lines what are those differences between these two concepts.
TR: e-governance and e-government are used interchangeably, e-governance being the verb, and e-government being the noun. With some users, the choice of terms depends on what they are emphasizing: e-governance emphasizes the governing processes whereas e-government emphasizes the electronic infrastructure. The rationale for this model is that it covers three different types of activities which can be identified and analyzed in terms of their own goals and operations.
