Designing e-Government for the Poor - Tanzania Development ...

Enabling local governments to offer e-services to poor citizens:
progress and challenges
(f) ADBI and ESCAP, together with the private sector, should
play a major role in coordinating the development of a roadmap for egovernment
for each country that is appropriate to the development status
of ICT in the respective country, and the promotion of local language
applications.
II. PROCEEDINGS OF THE WORKSHOP
A. Enabling local governments to offer e-services to
poor citizens: progress and challenges
Mr. Clay G. Westcott, Principal Regional
Cooperation Specialist, ADB
ADB’s Principal Regional Cooperation Specialist, Mr. Clay G.
Westcott, gave the opening presentation of the Workshop on the current
progress and challenges in providing e-services to the poor in Asia. He
defined e-government as the use of information and communications technology
such as computers, mobile phones, radios and television to promote
more efficient and cost-effective government, facilitate more convenient
government services, allow greater public access to information, and make
government more accountable to citizens.
Mr. Wescott gave a brief background on ICT progress in the Asian
and Pacific region. He said that developing countries need to be careful
about ensuring that they benefit from technological advancements because
much of these technologies originate in developed countries and are not
necessarily shared with developing countries. This is exemplified by the
inequalities in the use of ICT between rich countries and poor countries in
Asia. The Republic of Korea; Hong Kong, China; Japan and China are in
the top seven for broadband use worldwide. While Hong Kong, China has
2,700 bits of international bandwidth per inhabitant (bpi), the Lao People’s
Democratic Republic has only 0.2 bpi, Bangladesh 0.4 bpi, and Iran 15 bpi.
This is a massive difference in potential for countries to access the Internet.
There are equally wide variations in cost for the internet access. In terms
of income percentages, it costs 0.2 per cent of the monthly income for 20
hours use of the Internet in Singapore, while it costs 250 per cent of the
income in Cambodia. In the Philippines 27 per cent of the population has
access to mobile phones, while in Indonesia it is only 9 per cent of the
population. Mr. Westcott said that if this gap in mobile penetration between
the Philippines and Indonesia continues, the result would be a 1 per cent
increase in long term growth rate for the Philippines. This discrepancy
among countries of the Asia and Pacific region is also apparent in the
United Nations rankings of e-government. Singapore is highest while Palau
is lowest in the world.
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